Volusia County School Board Meeting 4⧸13⧸2021

001good afternoon everyone welcome to the volusia county school board meeting of april 13th it is 3 30 in the afternoon please rise for the pledge of allegiance and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all please silence all your phones and we all agree as we sit here to treat each other respectfully with dignity and professionalism so we i welcome all of you those who are present and online i would like to introduce the deus to you this afternoon uh to my left at the far end is mr carl persis his school board member from district four next to him is mr carl persis he is school board member from up ruby reuben goodness gracious okay double trouble here uh mr rubin cologne he's the

002school board member from district five next to him is mr ted doran our school board attorney to my far right is erin lieben she's our school uh agency clerk extraordinaire next to her left is our illustrious brand new school board member but we're working on her in very good miss adida burnett she represents district two and then next to her left is my vice chair this year miss jamie haynes she represents district one to her left is our comeback kid sister or dr uh scott fritz our superintendent and i'm linda cuthbert i represent district 3 and i'm your chairman for this year so welcome items for approval on the agenda is 1.03 5.02 17.01 and 17.02 public participation times for items on the consent agenda also we will have a 5 o'clock certain public participation

003for general interest pertaining to public education in volusia county total of 15 minutes but we we do extend if you come and you spend time in you and efforts to come to speak to us we will hear you the when you come to the des you have three minutes to speak you state your name in the area from which you come time will be provided for public comment on any action item before so when a board vote is called on that item and we have two of those this evening time will also be also be provided at the end of the meeting for public comment for again for general interest and comments for public education in our school district so thank you uh 1.02 we now will hear from our school board members about our

004district vision statement and would anyone like to begin mr club sure thank you so our vision statements to create lifelong learners prepared for an ever-changing global society and this morning i had the pleasure of visiting pine ridge and the hvac academy that is quickly starting to take shape they were getting some of the electrical stuff mapped out and ready to go and so it's super exciting because i know that that's going to reach a subset of students who this is going to change their lives forever and i as you all will be pleasantly surprised the interest in the program is very very high just from pine ridge alone i believe they were at somewhere between 150 and 160 students and they will also be extending it out to looking for folks from the middle schools

005the neighboring middle schools as well in order to ensure that we've got students in there who truly it will make a difference in their life so um i'd like to thank dr fritz bree i know you're back there so there she is uh and and dr nerig and all of those who have taken this vision and desire to bring back vocational education to volusia county uh you know taking it seriously and putting the action where it belongs for our students so thank you thank you mr colon mr purses thank you madam chair uh today i was over at the palm terrace elementary school and i was there because they had delayed their fsa testing one one week which they were allowed to do and it was just the third third graders and we uh with

006mr harris the principal we went to all of the uh class classes and you know just gave him a little pep talk and everything and i will just say that if those students were half as motivated and had half the energy of their principal they they will all just absolutely make perfect scores on that on on that test so they were really fired up today at palm terrace and it was just great great being there it's always great being over there thank you manager thank you mr purses mrs burnett good afternoon well as we've mentioned we're uh we're in this for the students and to make lifelong changes in our global in our changing global society and i was at campbell today and they're doing those things there um it was great i got to

007walk around for a couple hours and be introduced to some of the students they are very engaged over there and while i was there there was a representative from the police station there trying to engage some of the students and making sure that they know that the police are on their side and that we're there to help them and to make a partnership of that and so it was nice to see something of that nature happening in in a positive direction that was very nice thank you thank you thank you very much miss burnett um miss haynes thank you mrs cuthbert um there's a lot of events starting to happen at this time of the year and there's a lot of wonderful things going on out in our schools and we're starting to honor a

008lot of our teachers and staff and everything and um you know we did a teacher here earlier this year we just did their first year teachers of the year just last week and mr hurst has stepped in and i heard gave a great speech about what it's like being the first your teacher which someone was yeah suddenly but this year first year teachers not only you know were they a first year which is always kind of exciting but at the same time a little scary you know when you're out there for the first two wonderful gentlemen first year teachers the elementary one being from citrus grove which is brian levine and the secondary one being from henson which is shane's story that were honored last week and at the same time we also had some

009of our volunteers that they've started honoring last weekend this week and these are these not only are the first-year teachers making such a difference over the years i've had the opportunity to say to a few of the first first-year teachers that have come in you know that their job is they're replacing those of us as we finish our career there's a few out there that i actually taught just like i'm sure the two of you did along the way and but our volunteers are also the backbone and i'm happy that we are opening back up and we're letting our volunteers in because some of these volunteers like this is their life also like their joy and their pleasure comes from being able to be on campus and make a positive difference in the lives of

010kids and so i'm happy to see that we're not only bringing them back but we're starting to honor them for their time because i will tell you as a former classroom teacher every volunteer that walked through the door regardless of what they did you know they just read with a child if they cut out you know something for an activity or whatever that just that lifted a burden off of my plate that allowed me to focus on more of the things that i needed to do so i'm just so appreciative of all of our first year teachers and we want every one of you to stay and i'm appreciative of all of our volunteers so thank you thank you very much miss hayes i want to give a shout out to the port orange south

011daytona chamber of commerce who all year have been working on in their education committee which i'm a member to make career videos for our students in the port orange south daytona area they've engaged students from spruce creek high school and atlantic high school the two high schools in their district to help film careers they've been going businesses have volunteered in the area to explain how they operate their businesses a pizzeria for example they got one in the back before people were in there so to make sure that they understand what it is to own a business how to run it and it's just not from what you see on the outside when you visit a business but the the background of it just to get a little more cte experience at the elementary level plus

012we're also working on field trips as well virtual field trips so thank you to the port orange south daytona chamber who is working with two kinds of communities to help provide more opportunities for our students and also an update from me uh i'm not cancer-free it's a it's a watch and wait for reoccurrence i've had two surgeries in the last month so i just if i apologize for not being here the last i've missed two meetings since january so but thank you for being patient as i fight on so thank you excuse me uh 1.03 approval of the minutes we have quite a few on our list here board members are there any corrections to the minutes seeing none is there a motion move approval move approval um is there a second a second okay

013any other further discussion all those in favor of approving all these minutes and these minutes are from our workshop let's see our workshop session of february 23 meeting from february 23rd workshops uh regular session on march 9th workshop workshop session march 9th as well as regular session the 30th as well as the workshop session on march 30th okay all those in favor please say aye aye all those against please stay nay motion is carried unanimously 2.01 dr pritz are there any changes yes ma'am we do have one change for today we're adding 14.02 where i will give an update on the graduation um that we're also very much interested in and also i have melanie kestery that's going to be here today to kind of walk us through some of the changes and practices that

014will occur with the executive order that was released on friday okay all right then let's do uh 2.02 approval of the amended agenda agenda is there a motion motion to prove the agenda as amended okay thank you mr colon is there a second i'll second that okay thank you miss burnett uh is any more discussion of the agenda okay all those in favor please say aye aye all those against please say nay the motion is carried unanimously thank you 3.01 recognitions dr fritz well we have three outstanding recognitions today i'm very very excited the first one is about declaring april as our national bilingual multilingual learner advocacy month we celebrate our esau students and our heritage learners whose heritage languages are supported in our k-12 world each year we provide proficiency assessments opportunities for our

015heritage and our native speakers so they can proudly be recognized as bilingual and multilingual students with the seal by literacy as they go forward and show that proficiency so it's with great pleasure that i recognize this month of april 2021 is national bilingual multilingual learner advocacy month the next recognition we have declaring the week of april 19th through the 23rd is after schools professionals week our future depends on providing high quality child care services to all of our students and families our edep program which stands for extended day enrichment and our before the bell program serve approximately 3 200 students in over 40 elementary schools in 10 of our middle schools in volusia county these programs will provide a safe environment for our students to develop friendships explore new hobbies and interests thank you for

016all those caring adults to take care of our children before and after school we'd also like to recognize april 21 2021 as national administrative professional day i am here to tell you that is an extremely important day this organization would come to a stop if it was not for the administrative assistance that all of us receive on a daily basis from our team we have one right here on the day we absolutely do we absolutely do miss aaron so we will be celebrating that day we will celebrate those people that help us and they help us make us make us look good so we're very very happy that's that's it thank you dr fritz you're absolutely right they're all three absolutely fantastic ones 4.01 public participation for items on the consent agenda do we have

017any mrs schultz thank you very much uh dr fritz do we have any items to be removed from the consent agenda no ma'am all right 5.02 is there a motion to approve the consent agenda move approval madam chair move approval by mr uh persis is there a second a second okay uh miss anita burnett second at the motion is there any discussion from the board i would like to um have mr group if he's available to come up and speak to two on the consent agenda and that is 10.0 15 and 10.16 and has to do the the um sales tax replacement of two high school tracks at mainland high school and at new smyrna beach high school if he could elaborate and they're they're costing half cent sales tax 550 000 a piece thank

018you mr group for coming forward i think so good afternoon madam chair board members dr fritz i've been asked to bring some additional information to you regarding the uh i thought i was silent there for a second what i'm passing around is uh what most of you might think of when you're picturing in your mind what's happening to a remodel of a track and that's just a portion of what is typically goes on in one of these projects that's the top coat and that's a half inch polyurethane surface that we use on our tracks and what happens is that gets the old track gets that gets stripped off much like you'll see on the highway when they're taking that top coat off to resurface underneath this you're going to find several inches of asphalt on

019top of a crushed limestone base so this is a piece of every project but it's certainly not the entire extent of each project so they do vary widely in the scope and if you'd like me to i can explain a little bit more about what's happening with these projects we're talking about today both projects are budgeted for in the amount of 550 000 and that's based upon previous experience on similar projects and also canvassed some of our surrounding uh districts to see what they're doing to get some consistency on those numbers so mainland high school uh it has quite a bit going on there in addition to resurfacing the track we're also relocating the pole vault and the runway and relocating the broad jump and triple jump runways which are currently on the sideline of

020the field we're moving those to behind the end zones the reason for that is that right now the field is not wide enough to to play soccer they need 180 feet so by moving those to the sides we can now do both football and soccer on that field we'll of course be resurfacing those in addition to moving them we're also moving the straight part of the track where you often see the sprints we're moving those from the west side to the east side in preparation of new bleachers to go in in a subsequent project we have to raise drainage units we have to resold the field there's a lot of other things going on there that really make encompass the entire breadth and scope of this project uh similar to what we did uh in

021in uh previous projects just so you know these are the seventh and eighth track remodeling projects we will have done in the past three years we did three of them in 2019 deland pine ridge and sea breeze uh 2020. uh we did atlantic deltona and spruce creek high school and they varied widely in scope and cost uh one of the most expensive ones was atlantic where there was quite a bit of work had to be done there we had to add an additional lane to the track moving it from seven to eight in order to comply with current standards um so that was the florida athletic florida high school athletic association yes ma'am and the national federation of state high schools uh and the american sports builders association they all have a say in the

022standards that are set the way they're laid out and the way they're striped and everything so as we prepare for these projects again these are phase three documents they're the signed and sealed engineering set of drawings that we're going to take out to bid uh very soon in anticipation of doing this work over the summer i was contact made like i said before i was in contact with some of my peers at surrounding districts i talked with osceola schools and the most recent project they did with a similar scope a little bit different was right about four hundred thousand dollars for that project uh orange county public schools uh has uh 18 schools that they've set up on a rotating basis to do in the next four years and their program uh is a little

023bit more aggressive than ours a little bit more costly than ours they're actually spending uh in essence of in excess of eight hundred thousand dollars per campus in order to do their track improve their drainage and to do their field events like i mentioned before so i'm confident that we're we're scoped properly here we've got a great engineer on board uh we're expecting to get some really competitive bids on these projects and uh if you have any any questions for me i'd be happy to answer them i just have one this will help any school that we have with now to host like a regional or a district-wide um track event correct as far as the track and field itself goes i'm not sure what other amenities that they may be looking for in terms

024of grand stands and cape you know spectator capacity and things of that nature but certainly in terms of the quality of the of the field itself yes this brings them up to these state-of-the-art standards because that's important to the school's athletic program in raising funds for their programs okay thank you very much any other questions for mr group on any other part of the consent agenda i actually had a question about 10.05 so mr group on 10.05 we originally allocated 157 309.36 for the project at sweetwater elementary to replace the fire alarm and it's now coming back that we're having to put approximately an additional 278 000 25 and 64 cents towards that i mean i get it when we see something you know go up because of the materials and supplies have gone up

025but we more than doubled the price of what this is going to cost so are we staying with the same person that you know had we already selected someone and they came in with originally with 157 000 and now we're up to 435 000 those are just my questions because that's a lot of money to move from this is what it was going to cost us to this is what it's costing us to be honest with you i don't have that backup in front of me to really properly answer the question uh i do know that there were some scope changes there it increased the amount of work that we're doing on the campus and that the previous budget was set several years ago and over time there are some changes certainly some changes uh

026i'd be happy to get back to you on that though and with more in greater detail as to exactly what's going on there okay then mrs haynes do you want to remove this or go ahead and is it time sensitive like for approval for this evening as far as for you starting the project do you have like a start date or could this go on to the next agenda so that we understand why it went from that price to 400 and some thousand of course everything on here is time sensitive when we're coming to summer projects but i i would you know i would probably be safe to say that we could wait one more cycle to get you the proper answers on this one because like i said you know when we see a

02730 000 increase or something like that and and i want to thank you because you've got how many items previously where you've saved money like you know you've come back in and said we've gained this much back because we purchased the materials ourselves and i appreciate that it's just this one stood out because that's just very i mean it's a very significant increase and so i just wondered how you know fire alarm project went from that to this yes ma'am i understand um thank you and i know that um sweetwater is about 26 years old now and i'm curious when you come back with that information could you let us know if this is the first replacement of the alarm system i can find that out for you and also let us know we usually

028see alarm systems uh replaced in our schools which i'm sure very very necessary but how often do they have to be replaced hopefully not near as often as hvac especially on the beach side okay thank you so we're going to remove we're going to amend the consent agenda remove 10.05 and put that on the consent agenda for our meeting on the 27th of april so i would like to um we have a motion to approve the consent agenda so we're going we're let's go back let's see what best way to do this to go back and amend it mrs cuthbert yes i i don't have so much of a question but i have something i'd like to say for a moment about 11.01 oh yes ma'am 11.01 yes ma'am i know a lot of um

029i know a lot of what has happened here with 11.01 but in transparency i just need to make sure that what's happened here with 11.01 is not going to happen again you know that because we have policies in place so that we're not approving something after the fact especially for this amount and i think if we went by this evening and no one said anything then we would not be doing our due diligence or being transparent with you know that this event happened without you know any approval from any of us sitting up here um i want to say thank you to mr kenley and dr fritz and everyone that worked on figuring this out so that there is a savings here but i think moving forward we just need to ensure that we won't

030ever be sitting here in the boardroom again being faced with approving something that to this magnitude after the fact thank you yes thank you as yes mr colon and so i was going to bring this up later but i think we need to or i would like for us to revisit the policy for purchasing and bring back because we you know one of the things that we are is policy makers and you know making sure that we have the safeguards in place that would keep you know an invoice and again she said thank you to all the folks that were involved with renegotiating these fees that that were charged um however we need to ensure that our policy that there are the checks and balances in place in order so that we don't end up

031here again and you know that's one of the you know it's what we're tasked with looking at policies so clearly there was there's room for improvement and and i think re-looking at that policies and procedures and and checks and balances uh that are in place will be a good thing for everybody thank you thank you yes mr purses yeah madam chair i think just to clear the air yes please do the audience probably doesn't have any yes if you were i was going to do that perhaps dr uh fred so you would like to comment on on what this is all about or i mean so people will really understand sure um there was a tornado that that struck one of our schools it was george mark's and there was some emergency cleanup that had

032to happen and the district does have the authority one of the catastrophe hits to go ahead and make things safe and to clean them up um and to do that the concern was the scope was broader than originally planned and so some of that went back and mr pendley led that for us and and reviewed some of what the scope of work really entailed and so coming back the support agenda item represents a adjusted figure that we are agreed to pay well i guess my my point is i mean we had to clean it up and we had to do what we had to do to make it safe and if that's what it cost i mean that's what it costs that's what i'm getting at i don't i don't want the public to think

033that we that we overspent or we did something that we shouldn't have done we had to pay it the project the work scope of it was greater than what we thought but at the end of the day we had to do it i mean we had to do it so i don't think we we overpaid it just was it was a bigger project than what we thought the scope of the work was broad broader than it needed to be um and that that's what the argument was for the emergency right thank you manager and thank you for the clarification thank you the protocol has been in the past to contact there's an emergency um for example there was one at ormond beach uh elementary needed a brand new hvac and but they notified you all

034notified uh the superintendent at the time notified the board members we said verbally yeah get it done because the hvac company had one in stock and they were willing to put it in right away at great expense this there and but see there was no one who contacted the superintendent at the time and that was dr balgeman she was not contacted of the emergency or to even okay the work to go forward when the billing came in i was the one that questioned the billing because there were no details there was no hourly rate the number of people the equipment used and so i objected to it and i did find a few things irregular which the the district took under control then there was um another bill that came before us i had it

035removed from the consent agenda because i still thought it was irregular and not there's no details once again and so thank you to our internal audit that we had they went back and paired along with mr pendley's guidance and the internal audit company compared the actual documents the actual billings to make sure that what we were paying for was documented evidence of work performed of equipment um performed rented or used over a certain period of days and so we we are saving what over 200 thousand dollars in billing i think in 11.01 and so i the district absolutely did its due diligence i saw a report on the cleanup that the district presented to me uh thank you dr baldeman and so i must give a great deal of credit to the purchasing department who

036questioned a lot of this and so we always really have to do our job and the consent agenda is not just a blind vote we do read them we want as much background information as possible if there's something and we do we have a a wonderful department mr dr fritz has a wonderful staff who answers our questions you can ask anyone especially miss miss moeller back there thanks miss moeller who answers all kinds of wonderful questions very patient very kind and it's um we couldn't do it without them and we want we have this due diligence on our part to make sure that we spend the taxpayer money as appropriately as possible and not to waste not waste it so but thank you we appreciate your department for getting all this straightened out so anything

037else mr f anything else for mr group yes mr person i had a telephone conversation this afternoon with dr fritz and i said and i commented about how happy i was with the architectural firm that was selected to design i guess the new charity small and i noticed that they had built to me it looked like this amazing school in kissimmee and that's why i called dr fritz if it was as good as it looked you know and uh and he go ahead if you want to comment it might be great it's it's actually the verse uh neocity academy in osceola county is the first of its kind where it's a zero energy school it actually produces energy and rather than costing the district energy funds it's actually securing funds the way it's designed it's

038actually a neo city academy is a stem school that focuses on three pathways for engineering and these students actually use the building as an instructional tool which is very neat miss haines got to see it that's the first time i actually get to meet miss haines um and just she got to see it but it was actually a very economical school to build it was about 12 million dollars and it houses about 500 students so yeah so we're very pleased that this architectural firm is part of turi t uh the rebuilding um we will we will work with them as we go forward um and the idea behind a building should be more than just a building when i mentioned to you earlier that with neo city academy for example it is is an instructional

039tool for our students as we go through and we start to design touri tea that will be some directions that we give the architect as we move forward how do we utilize this building to produce learning for our students as well as to save us energy okay a little diversified is that what it's called little diversified architecture is the firm and if i could add dr friendship last name yes i i have mark clinch on the hook for a board workshop to explain in more detail the high performance uh school and the zero net uh program so i'm going to get that scheduled as soon as i can excellent perfect thank you certainly thank you mr persis mr columb uh yes well did who made the first motion before can you change your motion so

040i will amend my motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of 10.05 10.05 is there a second second okay thank you miss haynes all the uh any more discussion all those in favor of approving the amended consent agenda please say aye hi all those uh disapprove please say nay it has moved uh been moved uh and approved unanimously thank you mr group thank you okay 1401 superintendents announcements and comments okay we have a lot going on this time of the year friday april 16th we have our all county elementary music showcase at 7 p.m at port orange amphitheater the week of april 19th through the 23rd is also public school volunteer week as we mentioned earlier we just celebrated our volunteer of the year i'm sorry they're back too as of yesterday oh

041okay yes they are futures tomorrow leaders graduation will be tuesday april 20th at jackie robinson ball field at 5 p.m the all-county band showcase is thursday april 22nd at 7 p.m at port orange amphitheater the next school board workshop will be tuesday april 27th at 1 p.m in this board room the next regular board meeting will also be april 27th at 5 30. and that's 14.1 would you like me to go to 40.2 certainly okay district update i do have a graduation update uh at first i'd like to share the press release won out where we were able to with mr doran's help secure some better terms for us as a school district when it comes to allowing our students and families to participate in graduation so mr doran i'd like to publicly thank you

042for helping us with that um also pleased to announce that we've gone from two to four to six tickets for each of our family members that's that's a big deal but i'll share with you how we're looking at this we still want to do this very safely we want to make sure that our families get to enjoy this event but we again we want to make sure that we're doing it the right way so we will stay the florida ward health organization and what we will do is we will re-examine this every couple weeks to see where we're at as we approach those graduations which are still a month and a half away if there's opportunity to do it safely then we will continue to see where we increases can occur right now we are

043we are hovering in the of the capacity of the oc that is what the recommendations are at but that is with six tickets so should should the regulations change at the state level um with the world health organization and with cdc as they start to progress then we can come back and readdress that but i'll keep updating you every time we come to the board table okay okay the next thing we'd like to do is i'm going to ask melanie kester to come forward as she does board members on on friday around 10 30 i will tell you i was able to visit many many schools last week but as we were visiting my phone started to blow up at 10 30 for 11 o'clock in the morning a webinar from the state of florida

044department of education and so pulling over to a parking lot we dr balgemann was in one parking lot i was in the other and we logged in and listened and very very good news we're appreciative that grace and compassion were exercised by the department of education when it came to school districts recognizing this is a year unlike any other and what things we were able to do for our students for our employees and for their families and today what we'd like to do is walk through a powerpoint with you that's very simple to understand there are some district decisions that we had to make that we're entitled to make these liberties that the state of florida has given districts to make and we will share what those liberties are i will i will tell you

045that tomorrow we will release a frequently asked questions on our website as well as to our principals so that when parents have questions about this executive order they can certainly get to it very quickly on our website to see it and we will share it with our principals who will will follow steps so this is this is all volusia county schools rowing together uh ms kestery absolutely the second board members you have a copy of the powerpoint in your books your black scrapbooks that mr doran gave us so you've got copies thank you i'm sorry miss kestrel that's okay good afternoon madam chair board members and dr fritz on april 9th as dr fritz just mentioned florida commissioner of education richard cochran released emergency order 2021 e02 which provides school districts with maximum flexibility on

046topics such as graduation requirements for current seniors student promotion retention decisions and bright futures awards during tonight's presentation i will go into detail on each topic as well the implications of the emergency orders for volusia county students and families the executive order supports the values of assessment so that we have access to formative and student data to inform district priorities student placement as well as student performance we are continuing to move forward in testing as many students as we can but also recognize that parents and students are not comfortable coming back to school therefore i think one of the themes that resonates throughout the executive order is maximizing flexibility for districts to continue to extend grace and compassion for students and teachers as a result of the executive order school districts are authorized to waive

047the state assessment requirements for graduation which includes the 10th grade fsa ela as well as the algebra 1 end of course exam other graduation requirements such as the 18 or 24 credits as well as a minimum of 2.0 gpa are still in place it is important to note that the assessment waiver only pertains to those students expected to graduate in the spring of 2021. students should contact their school counselor for any eligibility questions they have the district is also authorized to waive the required assessments for scholar designations again this is applicable for students who are expected to graduate in the spring of 2021. students that have met all other criteria for scholar and merit designation including earning a c or higher in their respective designation courses but have been unable to take to state assessments

048are still able to qualify for the designation for example many of our seniors would have taken us history last year passing the u.s history eoc was previously a scholar designation requirement however last year's juniors did not have the opportunity to take the eoc due to testing cancellation this is just one of the many examples of the required assessments that have been waived for scholar designation while we have set great goals and high expectations for students this year we also recognize the many many challenges that students and teachers have faced therefore schools will not be given a school grade this year however schools do have the option to opt in to receiving a school grade if they feel that it positively benefits the school once scores are released in late july the districts will have 30

049days to review the data and apply to opt into a school grade if they choose it is important to note that schools must have tested a minimum of 90 percent of their eligible students to apply to opt-in with 95 percent tested being approved for schools that apply to opt-in the state will review the data to ensure that the assessment data fairly and accurately represents all students enrolled at that school for example if a school tested 90 percent of their student population the state would review the assessment data to ensure that the 92 percent tested is a fair representation of their school's demographics if the 8 percent tested that did not test represented a large percent of a subgroup for example students with disabilities that would be a cause for the application to be rejected schools

050that do not opt in will retain their pre-covered school grade status or school improvement rating learning gains for students will be determined by comparing the 2018 2019 individual student results to this year's individual results traditionally learning gains are determined from one year to the next however with the cancellation of state testing last year learning gains are spread over a two-year time it is important to note that only students that have a prior fsa score are eligible to demonstrate a learning gain for example a 7th grade students ela fsa scored will be compared to their fifth grade fsa score to determine growth in elementary school typically fourth and fifth grade students can demonstrate learning gains however since there was no state testing last year the fifth grade students are primarily the only ones who will have

051a prior score to determine the learning gain this places a heavy emphasis on our fifth grade class this year this also aligns with the information that the state provided earlier in the year and we have been working closely with leadership to ensure that they are prepared for this unprecedented accountability system the executive order also authorizes districts to waive the end of course exam calculation into the final grade typically for those courses that require an end of course exam the eoc score counts as 30 of the overall grade this year the final grades for eoc courses will be solely based on the four quarter grade calculation it is important to note that this waiver only applies to courses taken and successfully completed during the 21 school year the eoc courses are civics in 7th grade algebra

0521 geometry biology 1 and u.s history while the end of course exams that i listed above do not count for 30 of a student's overall grade this year it is extremely important to note that those end of course exams will continue to be counted as a graduation requirement as well as being used for scholar designations for students that are not graduating this year for example if a 10th grader is taking algebra 1 the end of course exam will not count as their 30 30 percent of their overall grade due to the executive order however that student is still required to pass the algebra 1 eoc as a graduation requirement because remember the assessment waiver is only for students who are expected to graduate during the spring of 21 i know i've said that a few

053times already we must ensure that this executive order does not diminish the value and importance of our state assessments as you know for third graders the reading fsa carries very high stakes as it is typically a retention year for third graders who score a level one or do not take the fsa the executive order authorizes the district to provide reliable evidence of a student's performance or good cause exemption from retention good cause includes a qualifying score on the iready diagnostic three which students will take at the end of may curriculum portfolio points which are accumulated throughout the year or other qualifying exemptions that are specific to english language learners and students with disabilities those will all remain in place any third grade student that is demonstrating a severe reading deficiency and is trending towards the

054level one range will be invited to the third grade reading camp as we have heard at previous school board meetings volusia county schools is offering a very robust summer program for third grade students specifically opportunities over the summer include face-to-face or virtual tutoring in june as well as face-to-face third grade reading camp in july 10 sites will have a face-to-face tutoring and the virtual tutoring will be available at other sites this year third grade students with a reading deficiency have potential for summer opportunities in both june and july for students that are expected to graduate in the spring of 21 there has also been flexibility in regards to bright futures typically students have until june 30th to earn a qualifying a-c-t or s-a-t score the executive order has extended the deadline to earn a qualifying

055score until december 1st 2021 additionally seniors expected to graduate in the spring of 21 are also provided flexibility for volunteer hours for bright futures applications it is important to note that the flexibility is granted towards seniors that were already working towards meeting those requirements prior to the start of the pandemic but were unable to fulfill their volunteer hours due to health concerns or limited volunteer opportunities again students should contact their guidance their school counselors for any questions they have the school district is also authorized to suspend the value added model system known as vam as part of the calculation of the summative evaluations for instructional and administrative staff over the weekend dr fritz sent an email to all staff notifying them that vm scores will not be used in the calculation of summative evaluations for

056instructional and administrative staff this year however it is important to note that that the department of education will still be calculating vam scores for teachers in those eligible courses teachers in eligible courses will still be awarded a single year two-year and three-year aggregate score calculated by the department vam will likely continue to be used in transformation schools for hiring purposes as well as retention of quality teachers teachers have the option to verify the roster that their vam score is based on through a process called roster verification we are currently in the roster verification process as we speak and lastly this school for some districts the 21 summer vp cro program will consist of a minimum of 200 hours of instruction rather than 300 hours that is typically required in a vpk program that is because

057of the extended school year however in volusia county i've confirmed with wendy reeves that we will be offering our full 300 hours that works well within our schedule this year at this time i will open it up to any additional questions you have thank you melanie thank you miss kestre very much uh mr cologne all right so i think the key word that sticks out to me a lot is case by case and i know a lot of parents have reached out and asked is this the same as last year what the what does and dr fritz or either one what do we envision this case by case in other words each student will be looked at individually this is not a blanket everybody is you know moved on how what does that look like

058it it actually isn't really a case by case more so um when we look at case by case it's very specific for example we're putting conditions in that will apply to all students but we're looking at things like third grade retention we have the flexibility with using the portfolios and student-based evidence to move a student on so that's the case by case that we're talking about if a student does not show evidence to be able to move on if then we can mandate that they come to a virtual or a brick and mortar summer program so they can get some enrichment and extra support before we make a recommendation whether or not that child goes on to fourth grade or repeats third grade that would be an example of case by case the earning the

059credit in algebra really is not a case by case so for example if you pass the course you pass the course or you're you're moving on you're getting credit for that course so some of the things in the way we went through and made these decisions will apply to all of our students but the third grade is probably the best example i can think of off the top of my head where we will look at students case by case and so what so you you mentioned something that's important for folks to understand and it's that if a child has straight i'm just going to go extreme they have straight f's they're in third grade and their i ready scores are not where they should be along with all the other assessments i'm sure there's acronyms

060i'm missing out on we may require that student to as a condition to be considered for the following grade they may be required to participate in the summer program correct at which point then we would determine and this is what i heard we would then determine if that student then meets the criteria and whatever the criteria may be to move on to the following grade what does the process of appeal look like so let's say we tell a family who's been on live and you know and they we say your child doesn't have the supporting uh portfolio scores to move on and they say well i don't want my kid to do anything in the summer it's vacation time the process of appeal is the same as it always has been where they would refer

061that back to the principal the principal consult with the district staff and then we'll make a determination on that um but you know the evidence itself at this point in the game you know we're going to want to see some evidence i'll be very transparent here you're going to want to see some evidence of mastery of those standards or at least the attempt that's why the virtual option is there if a parent wants to go on a vacation with their child they can they just need to build to have that virtual approach but the appeal process to your question will be the same it'll go from the you know from the principal through miss clayton and ms clayton and her team will help guide that direction great thank you those are my questions thank you

062mr clone miss burnett yeah i have a question thank you the um the algebra that's still required to graduate when will the students be offered that test since it's still a requirement so we are continuing to test through the remainder of the year in addition to that there are several makeup opportunities throughout the year so for example this year a student that would have needed algebra would have had three opportunities once in the fall once in the winter and then once again in in the spring so there are multiple opportunities um throughout the year at each of the schools and again i i believe there'll be an opportunity over the summer as well and so what if the student was did not want to come into the brick and mortar and take up advantage of

063any of these opportunities will there be an opportunity next year and will they have some opportunity for um some help to uh to to to remember what they didn't what they learned the year before absolutely you bring up a good point which is is seizing the opportunity while the information is fresh from the student's mind so that would be the first recommendation but i know that doesn't necessarily work for all students as i mentioned each student would have a up to four opportunities throughout the year to take the assessment many schools will do a boot camp style right before the assessment and sometimes you know if they're taking the assessment in the afternoon they would do it that morning or a couple days leading up to um they're so they are preparing those students for

064you know really honing in on the skills they need for that for the algebra one but again i think the key is if if if it is possible to take it while they're taking the course because that's when it's most fresh in their mind thank you you're welcome miss castro i believe there they can also earn a score on the geometry eoc correct is a concordant for that algebra eoc that was one of the things that we learned about from last year is that correct yes the geometry acts as a concordant for the algebra eoc um so there are other are other opportunities in addition to that this year pert it has been also a concordant for the algebra eoc this will be the last year that pert is a is a concordant for that

065score okay anymore miss burnett no thank you very much oh you're quite welcome thank you miss haynes no i just this is what i want to say this is what we were kind of hoping for during the summer when we talked about you know the possibility because of what our students faced last spring and the fact that we didn't have any data was that the state would you know stop and take a look at this so i was actually very encouraged on friday when this came out you know i understand the need for whoever we can go ahead and test please let's test because we really just kind of need to know where our kids are at you know how they made up what they missed last spring and you know with a little bit

066like later of a start date for us you know are there some areas that we need to still concentrate on that can happen if they choose like a virtual or a face-to-face summer program or it gives that teacher next year a heads up of like where they're at and some of the standards that they may need to back up and and go over but i am very appreciative because you know at first it looked like we were going to be grading everyone as they said taking seventh graders and looking at what's their learning gains from fifth to seventh grade and that's you know that's just impossible i mean that that was just going to be a huge heavy burden on everyone um because if you figure you know last year they were in sixth grade

067with no assessments you just really didn't know where they are and it's it's been a moving target all year you know parents have done a great job teachers have done a great job kids have done a great job but there's been a lot of movement and in and out so i'm very appreciative of the fact that you know they've given us these options and and they gave us choices you know and choices are nice i mean when we kind of sent that letter up in the fall and kind of asked you know to consider this i didn't think we would i figured something was going to come you know and i actually we got it a little earlier i think than what i thought we would get it but i didn't think they were going

068to give us truly options where they would allow us or allow dr fritz and his staff at the district level to make the choices i figured they would just still come down and dictate it and and i like the flexibility i'll be honest with you i like the fact that you can actually look and if one of our you know focused schools has made the growth and they test that 90 of their students are higher then we've got the option to boost up their grade to possibly get them out of being a focused school or not having somebody marching in and out of their classroom you know every day because those teachers you know go through a lot their their classrooms are revolving doors of people walking in and out and and i also even

069though i'm happy to see that we're still going to be able to maintain the 300 hours this summer for vpk i'm appreciative that they gave an option there also um and you know and i may reach out to wendy if you don't mind dr fritz because i'm hoping because they said 200 you know that maybe if there is a conflict with a family that they won't get penalized if they do have to miss you know right a few hours or whatever but i just you know i didn't i i expected something or i think i was hoping for something but i think we got i think we got a lot more than what any of us could have asked for and so i'm very pleased with what they've come out with and the fact too

070for what they're you know and i thank you for sending out the email about the vam scores and all of that because it's been a tough year but everybody's worked really hard and and it's nice to see that they've taken that into consideration thank you miss haynes mr purses yeah just just a quick comment i think i agree with everything you said of course and uh i think it just goes to show the impact that collectively we can have on the state legislature and the governor and the commissioner of education when you have the florida school board association the superintendents association the teachers union the florida pta number name any group that was associated with children in any way they were all saying the same thing and when everybody is just about saying the same

071thing give or take a few you know tweets here and there the legislation governor listen and as to your point other organizations were saying even more than what maybe we were saying and so that's why i think we came out with a final product that is so uh flexible in nature with all the options and i think you just i know i was fearful too about oh my gosh what's going to happen and now to come out with with this so i don't often praised what they do up there to us in tallahassee but this time i am commending them i think they they listened and i'm and i'm happy with the result thank you um it just goes to show that speaking up is very important uh we have to lift our voices up

072to our state legislators um and it's because with their it there can be a result in our favor especially with the recent parents objecting to the bright futures when the state legislator wanted to narrow the ability of students take whatever course course series that they wanted that they were trying to do it just so it would be career ready and that's i mean i have a bachelor's in english literature of course i taught english but i had a degree in secondary ed as well but still if i had just had my bachelor's in english what could i have used that for i would never been able to be a bright future scholar so you'd have to go to a master's program it's very important that we continue to lobby for what is best for our

073students and there's still a lot of work to be done because this is not the best year of legislation for education at all there's still some um we still have to fight for bright futures because they want to tie it into whatever the the money available is each legislative year and so one year you might be eligible in the next year you might not be eligible and this is not good for parents when they need to start budgeting for college education for their children so that we we need to continue to be very much aware of what's happening so miss kestry i have a a grandson who was an 8th grader last year was delighted that he didn't have to take the algebra eoc so this year he's taking geometry does he still have to

074take the eoc or just is it skipped the information that we have right now indicates that graduation requirements for non-seniors will remain the same i i'm sure you know just as as we did this year i'm sure the state will be evaluating it but so far the only information that we've had as far as waivers or exceptions have been towards this year's graduating class which is why you know we just have to continue to inform everyone of of what's available to them and what's happening down the road because we we really don't know but as of we have not received any notification that it wouldn't be a graduation requirement for non-seniors but he's not definitely a non-senior freshman taking gender so he will take the eoc and geometry this year he still has to pass

075it yes he has to pass this course um he has to pass the course the fourth for geometry yes oh i apologize i thought you were asking about algebra well last year was algebra this year and i and i know he would have he the geometry eoc would take the place of algebra one but i just want to make it clear especially for a lot of parents who had eighth graders last year moving into the high school realm and then all of a sudden they are not seniors what's what's going on for example if we have a freshman in a brand new high school and more academically established programs it's a big difference between middle school and high school those students might have been quarantined two or three times during the year might have been

076sick themselves what if for example that nice young man that i have in my family does not pass the eoc still he will be required so as well it's fresh in his mind when would uh our district be able to offer makeup course or refreshing for geometry so he can pass that eoc so i did want to clarify gmail from the other course geometry is part of the executive order that was that was discussed the geometry the scores will not be included in a student's course grade so it's great for him to take it but it will not penalize him if he doesn't do well and one thing to note i mentioned scholar designation so passing that may be a requirement for scholar designation somewhere down the road but the the geometry would be included

077in part of that eoc that will no longer count towards 30 percent of the student's grade for this year for this year but he still will have to pass it to graduate no geometry eoc is not a graduation requirement okay i just want to make sure that's very clear so we have no arguments and i tell him his nana won that forum yes okay so that would be a question i think that would be very nicely to put on our website especially for eighth to ninth grade students or even fifth grade to sixth grade students those students who were left one level of education to another and who are faced with all kinds of different challenges and um and i know our rising seniors the class of 2022 oh my gosh that class um and

078if every and if we go back to normal what will they be facing because they've had their sophomore and junior years affected um we will have to also brace for a lot of remediation to help them pass any of their exams so because all that will be in place for them when they graduate you're absolutely correct and that's why i mentioned multiple times in my in my presentation that it applies to the graduating class of 2021 the eocs does is across the board for anyone in an eoc course but the majority of the waivers applied are for our seniors so we really do have to look ahead to those non-seniors and begin to plan for what that looks like well good thank you and and again you know i was part of a statewide press

079conference with school board members the president of florida pta and the president of the florida alliance of schools um board members from across the state uh on march 9th and we appealed to the governor as well as to tom leake who is a state representative from our area he does cover a lot of my own district because he had not scheduled any kind that bill the house bill that was to help our students in assessment um one other thing i i think we need to do many people assume the test is like any other test and it will always test the true abilities knowledge of our students but there are times when the test there are glitches the practice is not what actually happens when the test occurs is there a way and and i

080don't know if this is what we always do but is there a way to make sure that we talk to teachers who proctor the tests i know they can't look over the shoulder but what they hear and also from what students experience can we find out what our students are experiencing during the testing time in order to address the needs that they have when they sit down and take a test especially if it's on a computer yeah i definitely think that's something we can look into is is um surveying the students experiences within the limits of what we're allowed to ask them but yeah i think definitely think that's something we can look into to try to improve the process i think it's very important that we know what is it that they are experiencing

081on test day how different is their practice that we are told that whether it's the district or the state says this is our practice and then on the day of the test how different is it or if it's the same or if everything that they were told ahead of time in practice and learned in the school year it was on the test and they were tested on what we thought they were going to be tested on because we all know as teachers the test is a reflection of what was taught and if the student hasn't learned what is on the test then we can't be successful on that test so and tests occur this is april and doesn't it like the fsa 8th grade fsa ela for example does it test on the whole year

082or is it just just an accumulation of what they've learned so that would be specific to the course so for example fsa eighth grade fsa ela would be tested on the skills that they've learned throughout the year however f 8th grade science would be tested on the skills that they've learned in 6th 7th and 8th grade that's a little more unique similar to 5th grade science is assessed on skills that they've learned throughout the year but for the most part it's assessing on the skills and standards that they have learned that year for the most part okay so as our scores come out when they took the test which was last week correct and it was based on their entire eighth grade year we started late we started the end of august students might have

083been quarantined a couple of times they might have been ill so if we take a sampling of students whose grades are low or high how much did they miss how much of their school time was sacrificed because of the pandemic or results of the pandemic teachers are out staff is out we we didn't have our volunteers up until yesterday so i i would think we would we need to know the results of what this year caused to help us analyze as when our school results come back that they don't fall squarely on the shoulders of our students that they don't fall squarely on the shoulders of our teachers or squarely on the schools themselves as an english teacher myself i always thought it was my fault because if my student failed the test it was

084the test that was wrong or something that they just didn't learn so i want to make sure we have a good look at actually what happened at the test during the test times i'd like to add to that if i could miss cuthbert you know we looked at our data we just did our goal 3 stock take with ms rowland and her team in one of the areas you know that we're looking at is attendance and when we looked at that we look at a metric of 10 days or more of a student missing 29 of our students have missed 10 days or more this year and so this is this is what um i want us as the adults the ones that are in charge of our system to adopt and i want us

085as parents of our children to realize yes this has been a very different year but even our best students have had learning loss there is no question this has been a year of learning loss this is a gift and how we move forward with this gift in our hand is extremely important we can we can go that was wonderful and go forward like we always do but i'm going to tell you we're going to get caught next next year when it comes time to assessment volusia county has taken a very very aggressive approach of having a very extensive summer program virtually brick and mortar for the month of june for the month of july it is it is for our our students that need remediation is for acceleration for all of our students we have

086got to make a really bigger effort than we ever have to get those students to continually be engaged in their learning through this summer i'll give you an example i really worry about our students that are in fourth grade this year so the fourth graders this year they they went through they missed their last quarter and third grade last year um as a third grader right they moved on to fourth grade this year and then this year they've missed a lot of key components and then next year they're going to be the fifth graders going forward or that even carries on forward if we don't catch them up in this next year they'll start middle school behind and then all of a sudden we don't have students taking acceleration courses in middle school as we

087want as we should we should be trying to get most of our students through algebra and middle school because when they get through algebra in middle school that means their opportunities in high school to take more rigorous courses are there and then their future is wide open to them but if we don't do that for this group of students that are currently fourth graders we're going to have a whole bunch of students when they get to ninth grade they're going to be taking remediation courses we've got to jump on this we've shared our summer programs with in fact with the futures board i've asked each member to put it out on their own personal websites our principals are going to reach out to these students in need and we're going to ask them to personally

088invite students to the summer learning and we're going to ask for some documentation they're going to come in and we're going to ask the principals to send documentation their assistant superintendent when they ask a parent about summer programs and will they participate what the parent says because we've really got to make this something be an opportunity for us it's not a it's an opportunity and for us to move forward this is what we need a couple board meetings ago i stood here and i said to you that we're a better district than our numbers show i believe that but if we don't take this chance we're not going to get out in front again and it's the school districts that move forward with this opportunity that are going to be the ones that triumph years

089from now so melanie thank you very much any other questions for melanie thank you thank you very much miss kestrel thank your husband thank you and i did want to circle back to settle the debate in your household um you mentioned that he he's in geometry this year in algebra last year so keep in mind that somewhere along the way um he will need to to pass the algebra eoc um as a graduation requirement so it might not be geometry but as dr fritz mentioned that it could also be used as a concordance score so it sounds like it's a it's a 50 50 on that on that argument okay thanks we look forward to algebra one tutoring all right thank you thank you very much okay dr any others oh ma'am that's it thank

090you all right okay we have 12 minutes before we get to public participation at five o'clock next we have a 1601 human resources update mr west um if you are not done in 12 minutes do i have your permission to interrupt you we will be done okay all right i have miss fields here with me today and i'll be running the powerpoint she'll be talking okay all right good afternoon all right we will we'll just start out with the vacancies um i'm just praying for the day i'm wondering if there will ever be a moment in time where every single spot is filled but i don't think there ever will be but our numbers are pretty low right now we are at instructional 59 people and across the district in our support roles we have

091114 vacancies we are hiring every day april is a busy month for us we have currently we're in the middle of our transfer fair at its height we had 311 teachers enrolled in the transfer fair this year so a lot of movement is happening every day we're getting lots and lots and lots of movement which is a good thing some some teachers are moving from one school to another opening spot so that's even the displacements we have which will be finalized later this week um some it's diminishing so that's that's a really good thing we are using we have a virtual transfer fair i think christie spoke about it in a prior school board meeting it's working very well really good feedback from that from the teachers from the principals it's really allowing them to

092get a good glimpse people can put in video responses to all of their questions and then choose to follow up with a face to face or a team interview if they would like to on friday is our big day in hr we would love for any of you to come to the ocean center to be with us i've been blessed to be a part of it as a hiring team in the past and it is an amazing day with excited young people ready to start in this profession so we're really excited to meet them on friday so we will be we will be there at 6 30 if you'd like to come join us for breakfast or later in the day we would love to see you and this year it is two part there

093is a face-to-face component which is the 16th but there's also about half and half are attending virtually and if they attend virtually it begins on the 16th but it continues through the end of the month so that's a nice feature also as mentioned we are we have um principals have um indicated who they are displacing at their school um the number as i said it's decreased a little bit it was 1 30 when i made the powerpoint presentation yesterday i believe about five more teachers have been added back into the mix and that could continue the largest number of displacements is because of vol they pretty much had to displace every single non-tenured teacher back into going back to their home school so on thursday another fun day of a very fun week we will

094be sitting in a room a whole team and we will know at that point what our vacancies are of that moment and we will try to pair up all of those displaced folks in their area of certification as close to home as we possibly can we will be communicating both with the schools and the teachers involved immediately as we're doing it on thursday and um i did want to talk a little bit about loads that is it has been quite the process we have been in contact um at its height this was 209 was how many leave of absences we sent letters to earlier in the year and these are pretty much people who had taken the leave of absence for the whole year a hundred of those persons have indicated that they do want

095to come back to us next year their schools know and have created a spot for them some have chosen not to come back to us that's the 36 a further 45 have extended their leave of absence into next year for either the whole year or for a piece of the year and we are still trying every method we know how to get in contact with a few that have yet to make contact with us and finally another event we do not have a firm date yet but we would like to invite you to we are going to have a celebration for our retired and retiring persons and we are making plans for it to be at the jackie robinson memorial ballpark sometime in the month of may we're just coordinating that date and we will

096send you invitations as soon as we know the clear date so just to kind of wrap up thank you miss haines for mentioning last week on tuesday we had our first year teacher of the year celebration and we were very excited we had all of our schools represented there with with their first year teachers and we were able to have that celebration at the jockey and jackie robinson stadium it was a great event um we we actually did that and miss mahini uh with with the help of futures and the view we'd like to thank them for definitely sponsoring that that event but we basically kind of want to roll that out and we're excited about this retirement reception that we're looking at because frankly we did not have the opportunity to uh to acknowledge

097our retirees last year because of of course the covet situation but we are looking forward to to doing something at jackie robinson this year for those folks so we have a lot going on this is a busy time of the year for us of course we're very excited about this friday because remember what we've been shooting for this whole year is identifying what our true vacancies are so that friday our principals will know very clearly this is who we can hire when these bright young teachers come in uh on to the uh ocean center on uh this friday to uh for recruitment purposes so we're very excited about that so thank you for the opportunity to talk about that uh yes mrs haynes so mr west i just want to piggyback on what you said

098because i'm this was going to be one of my questions since we did not have anything last year for the retirees yes are they being invited to this year's or is this just the ones that are retiring this year because i have a real i mean right i understand what we were under last year yes some of those people that retired last year had dedicated 20 25 30 35 40 years of their lives and it's not at any fault of their own that we weren't able to celebrate them and so i just don't and i apologize but i don't know if we've looked at that but i would like if at all possible to see can we invite back those that retired last year that we did not get to honor so i will say

099we had that conversation there was a lot of discussion about this and um one of the things that we talked about was maybe looking back at the date of when the actual last year retirements were i mean i don't i don't know how far we could extend back into the year last year but maybe we could look at at the end of the year how many folks were and i believe that what we had anticipated was those folks that were retired at the end of last year correct and that that number does include those as well right yes ma'am march because that was one of the tough things with that there was nothing we could do at the time you know we could not hold anything but i'm happy to hear that um you're including

100them in that and then i had um because sometimes you know questions come up to us and and um so i just wanted to clarify a few things um i do appreciate all the work that you're doing with the transfer fair and you know that you're doing it virtually and things like that like i think those are positive things because i think it allows you know people aren't driving around and having to meet and all that and so i see that as a um a very positive but so right now what you're doing is you're you're you are transferring teachers that are in good standing and that's the first thing that's going to happen then you said this thursday you're going to go in to start handling all the displacements to match displacements to schools

101so do displacements just include those that sometimes you know we had six first grade units and now we're down to five because our you know our enrollment has changed and the teacher's in great standing but lots of times we know it's the last person in the door and we're you're looking for a place for them but does that also include non-reappointees for the displacements or is that now those are two separate groups so if a teacher was displaced they were invited into the transfer fair because it happens first if they're not able to find a position during the transfer fair with their five chosen schools or their area then they would be placed on the thursday if a person is non-reappointed then they have been invited to the job fair on friday okay so first

102we're handling transfers people that chose yes and said i'd like to make a change because maybe i lived on the west side of the county and now i live on the east i got married and come over there yes next year handling displacements but if they were displaced they were invited into the transfer yes fair but if they didn't make a match then you're handling them on thursday yeah at the end of the day on thursday when we move into friday friday will be brand new people that are coming into education yes or coming to volusia county and non-reappointments yes okay that's open her yes ma'am all right i just wanted to be yes thank you people batting around different things and i just wanted it to be clear yeah it's hard because there's lots

103of different words yes we've asked we fielded a lot of questions as you can imagine but thank you for answering that okay um do you mind if we um a little bit so we can have our um our public participation five o'clock certain thank you thank you right back miss schultz do we have any cards thank you thanks very much all right we have three that are asking for public participation to express their views um so i'm going to call devon davina underwood first and then anna harmon and then after anna will be elizabeth albert um have a seat welcome thank you you're quite welcome please state your name davina underwood and tell us where you're from and you have three minutes you'll notice your time is on the tv there i started already ormond

104beach florida um i'm the proud mother of three daughters who will be attending pine trail elementary one who currently is there i'm a certified school counselor and i bitter sweetly chose to resign from deltona middle school as the lead school counselor in 2015 to stay home and raise my children i'm an advocate for the public school system as both my husband and i dedicated our degrees in education i'm here today to address the decision of superintendent dr fritz to designate lgbtq plus mental health awareness week without the approval or vote of the school board i stand with a very large group of moms who have committed to teach our children unconditional love respect and acceptance of people no matter their differences we can and do this we can and do teach this without being complicit

105and accepting what goes against our family's beliefs we want our voice to be heard when we say we are not against anyone but we are for parental rights we are advocates for our children and their education we firmly believe things like religion politics sexuality morals and values are topics that should be taught in the home this is not the role of the teachers and they are not being paid for this type of education they are trained and trusted to teach on core subjects and barely have enough time to meet those required standards lgbt awareness does not belong in the public school setting as i've heard echoed by teachers administrators and parents through the last two weeks instead of this week unifying and supporting as intended it certainly does the opposite by isolating individuals and shining

106a harsh spotlight on their differences being that the lgbt awareness week was introduced hastily this year many parents are rightfully concerned about what this entails going forward how is this awareness week going to be taught by all the year for all the years to come how is this even considered an awareness week when literally zero awareness is being taught i'm certain that the lgbt community can certainly agree that putting a title on a calendar does not bring awareness to anything it seems that this is a political agenda that's being forced onto our students by a small group of people when the vast majority of interest holders feel it has no place in public education i would challenge the school board to take a poll and to conduct an unbiased survey to get the vote from

107parents and educators asking for their input my main concern is that this lgbt health awareness week is just the beginning when does the awareness week transition into advocacy and promotion i want to come to you today with a solution that i feel would meet the needs of all students if we're truly worried about all students we should implement a week of mental health awareness that umbrellas all issues our children have each school could offer age-appropriate mental health education through school counselors with signed parental consent in the previous board meeting we were told the lgbt students represent four percent of the student population but what about the other ninety percent six percent thank you please um send that to our superintendent what solution you you have uh we'd be more than glad to read it thank

108you very much for coming and thank you go wolves [Applause] please we are we're here to agree to disagree we're here to respect everyone's views we're not clapping for one view or the other thank you very much for expressing your view miss anna hannon and then miss elizabeth albert loomis hannon you have three minutes please speak into the into the microphones we can all hear you and state your name in the area from which you're from my name is anna hannon h-a-n-n-o-n i'm from ormond beach my son attends seabreeze i want to express my concern about the power of the school board this year i have learned that the school board does not have anyone in authority that they are held accountable to or over them other than their constituents not the county council not

109the board of education not the state representatives there is no chain of command so i was deeply concerned when the mass policy was implemented the school board was somehow allowed to make a health mandate when the school board is supposed to be in place to make education decisions this year the board used their position overstepping the parents and asserting themselves above doctors and creating a mask mandate the rationale you are following the cdc guidelines and the health department we didn't elect them the cdc has other recommendations that have not been made mandatory in order to receive a public education such as the annual flu shot our schools opened when the cdc was not yet recommending that you opened because of our governor's orders however when our governor's orders say no penalties for not wearing a

110mask you say that doesn't apply to schools the face covering policy is a hoop that must be jumped through in order to attend in-person school what happens when the cdc recommends the covid emergency youth use authorization experimental vaccine for children and by the way the johnson johnson vaccine was paused today by the fda because of serious blood clots per your current rationale how can we know that you won't create a policy that children must have the coveted shot in order to attend school and that you'll then say no vaccine passport act which is also being introduced at the federal level doesn't apply to our schools if cdc recommendation is all that is needed to defend a policy then there is too much power within the school board this past week one of the district's administrators

111replied in an email that those students who are vaccinated will not have to quarantine from contact tracing while those unvaccinated will still have to quarantine the excessive quarantines have been inconsistent and all of this reeks of medical choice discrimination you have also said that if you choose to veer away from the cdc recommendation you would need a medical advisory board to consult with to which i again say those are not our elected officials and if such a panel is created we who are against medical mandates want a parent clinician seat at the table an advisory board without such representation should not get to weigh in on a mandate of a medical device for my child this is your cons constituents holding you accountable for the extreme overreach and the parents that stand together to say

112never again should a policy such as this be permissible thank you thank you very much please one more time please please miss elizabeth albert your last participant this evening good evening madam chair members of the board dr fritz members of the audience well first i'd like to provide a point of clarification uh regarding the displacements that i know mr west miss hazel and miss fields are well aware of before any new hires can come into the district all of those who have been displaced must be placed first and i know that they're going to do that but i just wanted to make sure that you knew that that is contractual what i'd like to speak with you about for the majority of my time tonight is a vam situation and i do want to publicly

113thank dr fritz for exercising his flexibility and providing that relief from the any potential negative impacts to instructional and administrative summative scores we do appreciate that however there are some clarifications that i do need to receive and not tonight in this public forum but we do need to have this work addressed clarification such as what are the potential impacts in subsequent years what are the impacts to teachers who are not in the testing grades what does it mean for them how will this uh translate if for some terrible reason they bring back performance pay and we have to look at those scores right so these are things that i'd like to have some work done and then ultimately i think that we absolutely need to codify this in the form of an mou and so

114that will put it all down in writing it will be clear it will be understandable and will all be marching in the same direction so i hope you're supportive of that and then i'm going to ask the million dollar question i hope that it was somewhere slated to be discussed later this evening but we need some direction on volusia live we have surrounding districts who have publicly made statements about what they're planning to do with or not do with an innovative model for the coming year and so i think we deserve to have some conversation about that as well and then finally mrs cuthbert whatever you need your union family is here for you thank you thank you thank you very much we appreciate all that who attend and who express their views they're very

115very important we do not take them lightly it's all something that i know that as we discuss here on the dais it weighs very heavily on all of us and as my husband was at an administrator at deltona high for about six years a little ways ago we still have pictures of wolves all over our house and so but but thank you for your service for all of you being great advocates for your children so um may we have mr west back again too and i think there are a couple other questions thank you ladies very much yes ma'am okay any other questions yes mr colon has one for yes mr clown question for mr wester just because it's come up a lot what what happens when a teacher last year for example went to

116vll and they've taught at the school where they're at for ever and now they find themselves without somewhere to go back their principles are saying you know i ended up in january accepting a vol teacher who needed to be placed and so now you no longer can return to your school while this person's been there 15 years and now finds themselves looking for another job where both the principal may want to bring them back because this is home for them and at the same time cannot displace the person who's only been there for a few months can you explain that for so that folks understand what is our process policy because i think that questions been asked of me several times and and i think folks don't quite understand what the algorithm for how this

117has all taken place again this is all coveted related i don't believe this is anybody wanting to do harm to anybody uh i just you know it's not often you have so many teachers shift over to an online platform due to a pandemic and then back so i just if we could just get some clarity for the folks who are listening who are in that situation and and some are really really hurt by it sure so um and as you said this past year was unusual in just the number of uh frankly the number of transfers and the number of the amount of movement that we had in the middle of the year um what we look at though is that the appointments or the assignments that we have our annual assignments they're for the

118year um and we recognize that we're going to have and we have a unit loss process in place that has been contractually agreed upon with the union as well in regards to and that's the displacement process and as miss albert did mention we make sure that every teacher that is displaced has a position has a place to go before we open any hiring for um our our external you know candidates in that particular area so um the the obligation that we have is to make sure that everyone does have a spot this year with the increase in vol and the opportunity that teachers took advantage of to actually get to vol to be able to teach virtually and and that platform which was a great opportunity for a number of them um for some of

119them it will continue because we do know that those vol numbers are not going to shrink completely down to the way it was so we have actually allocated a number of units to vol they will still be much larger than they were last year at the beginning or less year precovet i'll put it that way um so we will still have a number of vola teachers there but we will have vol is where we have the most displacements because that's where we had the the the biggest excess in teachers this year and the agreement was is that that would be for the year and once that basically we shrunk back down those folks who were in vol will are given the opportunity that's why we have so many of them in the transfer fair right

120now we're giving them all the opportunity to find their own position as emma said to see what's a school that's convenient and close to them if if they're not able to find that position they want we will make sure that they are placed on the 15th so while i recognize that some of those folks might have been i'm going to say caught when they left to go to vol and not be able to go back to the exact position they were at or maybe even the same school that they were at because that vacancy has already been filled with a displaced teacher that displacement process is is what we have in place to make sure that all of our teachers have positions and it's a protection for them as well so even those folks who

121are in vol right now finding us a spot so is the displacement process that you're describing in the mou the same as it is usually every year yes actually the it that that part isn't part of the mou it's actually in our contract that the displacement process will take challenged because this is not a normal year this is not a normal contract and if a principal said i want give you an example i know one school where there's a fourth grade teacher was there forever it came time somebody needed to go and she said you know what i'll go i'll go she she said i'll go went to another school okay like i said new teacher from vol came in january they would love to have her back but the principal wasn't given the choice

122to bring her back and i get the contract yes but that was pre-coded all of this i understand but and i think miss albert would actually agree with me on this in the fact that um are you shaking your head yes or no elizabeth i'm i'm dying to see this she says yes okay good good to hear um what we base our our displacement process on is unit losses so um it would be very difficult if we didn't because then um frankly principals would say well carl i want you this year but reuben i don't want you so see ya and i'll pull somebody else in and the contract is in place to make sure that if we have unit losses and we have a vacancy in a particular area the principal will be able

123to bring in someone if a displaced teacher is in place there so it is in a protection for our teachers and to give them the opportunity to make sure that we're able to place our teachers and have places for each one of them so that that's why we actually have that contract in place in the process principal you hired carl you didn't hire the vol teacher who showed up in january and so again i'm just trying to i'm trying to get us to understand and maybe i'm off base if i am please tell me i just i struggle with someone who you know who really found themselves fearful who are now vaccinated who have been at a school for 12 15 years their principals want them back and are being told sorry and so because

124they don't have a position for them correct well because someone else has been in that position for a very short period of time but but they don't have a position for them and i think that's the kind of key that i want to portray and and i'm i'm i'm not trying to pinpoint on that but i am trying to say that we we're trying to be very careful to make sure that we have pl positions for all of our teachers and if i go into that teacher by the way there's just as many people who have been in our district for let's say 20 years that i had to place that was displaced into a position that if i go and that principle says well i don't i don't want you here anymore well then

125i'm going to have a very seasoned teacher who may be very good displaced because i wanted to bring my vol teacher back so we just have to be very careful and look at each one of those situations we're trying to find a place for everyone and that's and we're trying to match that's what i'm asking for understood i understand completely pre-covered yes sir but i think there are situations where and again this one teacher said you know what the other teachers are new i'm seasoned you know what i can handle going to another school for a year i can handle that i can do that right and so i just think you know if if our principals had the opportunity to say you know hey this was the scenario you know if they were a

126part of that conversation which i'm not i mean i may be wrong maybe they were if they were a part of that conversation there may be some situations that folks are caught in the crack and we may not be offering the most grace and compassion possible okay um and so that's all i'm asking is you know i get that there's a said contractual process right but there are real folks who were really really scared last year absolutely and at the same fashion these folks stepped up to uh stepped up for us to go to vol to handle that so i i appreciate them all but someone who went from a classroom to teaching online when we needed them most it just it feels wrong the problem with is this while you're you would tell one

127person yes you're telling someone else no and you know while i understand your concerns and what you're trying to do that would open up a whole can of worms for us across this district because there is not a process it would be allowed to an individual to make that decision and a public organization like ours that has a bargaining unit we have rules and processes that we have to follow and so the situation you're talking about a vol teacher could truly bump if we allow that to happen a veteran teacher that has been at the school for a long time based on a decision by a principal not following that process and that would cause us a lot of grief and headache over time you have to have a process when it comes to placing

128staff you're right mr clone people did what we asked them to do out of grace and compassion out of fear because of being in brick and mortar as much as we possibly can get people back to the assignments they want to be in we will certainly try to do that but we still have to follow a process so you're opening yourself up unfair labor practices with current employees sitting in those positions right so very good and we will work on the grace and compassion piece absolutely because we recognize that yes sir any other questions for mr west okay and then um i'm look as soon as we're finished we're going to take a 10-15 minute break before we go into our board action items i i i feel and i can understand what that teacher

129is going through and at the same time though it's i've had i had uh more teachers than i can count on on two hands ask me before they were going to make that decision to go to bol their main thing was will i get back to my same school if i do this and i said no i mean maybe no guarantee right if the principal has a vacancy and you're certified in it then and your principal likes you and you had a good relationship then if all those things are there then yeah probably you probably would but if there aren't any openings then you you can't take the place of somebody else who's already at that school because that's not fair to that teacher and then their comeback usually is yeah but i've been teaching

13020 20 years at that school and well you know no one's forcing you out of that school you're you're you're putting in your application to go to a vol so it's it's just it's just hard it is just hard all the way around and i know there are principals right now who probably are struggling with the displaced teachers side of things the transfer thing is is is is is much easier because you know yes the people who want to come to your school you have a chance to interview and see them and check out and all that but now the time period gets really crunched and i know that call that you make yeah and you say carl we have three people we need to place and you know jane dick and tom and so

131you know and that's that's a tough one uh and because every principal wants to be able to hire the people that they want they're going to work at their school right they want that opportunity they they want to be able to go to that job fair with two or three vacancies you know clear vacancies yes but um i think it's i think it's just a tough a tough thing and you have to think about it system-wide because otherwise then you then you would it'd just be chaos yes you'd have so many hurt hurt feelings and mad and mad people thank you mr person thank you miss burnett thank you on the um on the vacancies we've decreased those a lot it looks like um and i know you probably can't get this to me today

132but it would be okay to get later is it able to are you able to get me a breakdown of where these these are in relation to each school like so maybe all 10 of these ese teachers are at one school so just for an example i know that's not the case but just if you could get me a breakdown we absolutely can i will also say those are the vacancies as of right now more importantly what we're looking at is the vacancies for next year okay so that's what we're focusing on coming up um because that's the part that we're going to have to have for all of our applicants well first of all we're going to have to have it for our displaced teachers this thursday okay and then of course we will

133have it for our principals and our new applicants on friday so yes ma'am that's what we're actually focusing on right now so yes ma'am all right thank you thank you okay any others i just wanted to um say do you have any idea yet of the number of teachers that you've invited to the friday job fair you know like for people that are new do you have like a number of how many are coming yes that's on your uh on the list i'm sorry it was on the slide that said we've got about a hundred and oh is it 150 is that right emma i'm sorry about 150 coming face to face then we have about another 150 that are going to be coming virtually or that have signed up virtually yes all right and

134i want to piggyback off of what mr purses said because i had several teachers reach out to me in august that you know thought they would like to go to vol but because there was no guarantee that they could come back to their school they chose not to go and you know any time you make a change and i did in my career you know i left elementary went to high school at one point well you know after i taught at high school a couple years i i didn't think that i could just walk right back i mean i had to go in and apply for what positions were open and the same thing like when you go out and do like a grant position you know they're typically funded one year or two years

135whenever i stepped out and did that i knew that you know at the end of one or two years that may no longer be funded and i would then have to find a new place and and you know like otherwise i would have said i want to go back to enterprise you know because that's where i started and all of that but um it's hard but you know as everybody has said there has to be a process and so when people made those decisions you know there was no guarantee that they were going to come back like we'd love to be able to guarantee everything but at the same time you have to look at the person that already stepped in and took that position and you know if they're already a 10-year teacher or

136whatever we can't turn around and say to them well thanks for coming in and filling in this year but you know you're the one now because i want to bring somebody else back and so i i know there are people like you that they chose to stay where they were because that's where they wanted to be and they didn't want to risk it after a year so right thank you i just want to plug for the retirement um reception yes ma'am i know a lot of teachers think it's you know you know why go out there i attended and i loved it um back in 2012 it just gave me a finality closure it gave me closure and also i was able to see others who were retiring across the district and i was amazed

137i've made many good friends and so i encourage all teachers who have decided that this is the year that they're going to go out and and have lunch at on tuesday at 11 45 to say so choose i think we need to celebrate that and so i encourage all of them to attend this retirement uh celebration in may so thank you very much we're very excited about that so thank you we will reconvene in 15 minutes at quarter to six thank you so much i check my check my check mic check mic check [Music] mic check is gentlemen let's go we're back at six uh quarter to six thank you for waiting for us we are now going on to our board action items 17.01 dr fritz i'd like to call mr penley forward for

138revision of our policy uh regarding open and open enrollment and thank you choice fritz madam chair members of the board we're bringing forward tonight item 1701 seeking the board's authorization to advertise an amendment to policy 203 which is our school choice policy there are no significant changes here except to move the window for application from the day after winter break through march 1st so it just gives a little more planning time for capacity budget uh for the next school year so with that unless there are any questions we'll advertise that uh policy if it's the board's pleasure and most likely put that on for the may 11th or may 25th meeting dates okay okay does anyone have any questions for mr penley okay may i have a motion then dr uh fritz the superintendent enthusiastically

139recommends the approval of this policy to allow more choice and more time for our parents to make those decisions in our school district okay is there a motion motion to approve the policy advertising okay there's a it's been uh there's a motion been made by mr ruben colon is there a second i second promotion okay and miss uh haynes has seconded the motion is there any more discussion thank you mr pendley for bringing us all up to date on all of this it was very well self-explained thank you for this new amendment to school board policy 203. um all those i'm sorry what any other discussion all right all those in favor please say aye aye all those against please say nay thank you mr pendley the motion has been uh passed unanimously thank you

140thank you and 17.02 okay and i'm going to give this one over to mr doran thank you madam chair uh while i'm making the initial presentation with your permission could i invite mr shinoff up from california certainly it's nice to have a west coaster around there we go william shinoff is an attorney and he's with the france law group um and out of california i told him he could appear by phone or a presentation in some other format but he said we were way too important for that he was going to fly out here just to answer any questions and make sure everybody was comfortable with what we were proposing he approached me a couple months ago and with this and i thought it was a pretty good thing i went to the superintendent he

141was open to it i went to our general counsel and he gave it his blessing so now we have it here before you to discuss and possibly approve the short of it is we're looking at joining with many other districts the number of which mr chinoff can i'm sure share with us and around the country who are focused on uh the losses that they've incurred and the harm that has incurred been incurred by school districts around the country due to vaping uh and he even has a little bit of extra news that just broke here recently today or yesterday or something like that so he'll share that with you let me just turn it over to mr chenov who can give us a little overview and then certainly answer any questions thank you all very

142much for the opportunity to speak with you this evening as mr doran said my name is william shinoff i'm an attorney with the france law group and i'm out of our san diego california office prior to joining the france law group i myself was an education law attorney for nearly 10 years representing school districts in southern california and during the end of my tenure in representing school districts the issue of vaping was coming up across all my clients it was taking up a lot of staff time and it was becoming a major disruption in the learning environment when i came to the france law group i saw this as an opportunity as specializing in representing public entities but now on the plaintiff side to see if we could tackle this issue and potentially provide the

143resources for school districts to appropriately handle this issue to let you understand how these cases work this is not a class action this is what we call a mass action so each school district that's involved in this case will have their own lawsuit on file and how the federal courts handle this type of issue is when there are many plaintiffs alleging the same legal issues alleging very similar damages the courts coordinate it into one courtroom in order to avoid litigation that would go on for the next 30 years so that's happened in this case it's what's called a multi-district litigation and we're venued in uh the northern district of california in san francisco in front of a a great judge his name is judge oreck we've been litigating this case now for almost 18 months

144at this point my firm represents over 250 school districts in 22 states we started off with just the school districts in california and has grown exponentially um and what we're alleging in this case and what we truly believe the uh discovery is going to show in this case is that these two main defendants there's jewel labs uh which was based out of san francisco and now is out of washington dc in altria which many of you may know as marlboro they intentionally targeted the youth they sold their products they used the exact same market marketing scheme that was done by the tobacco companies over 30 years ago which led to the tobacco litigation and we now have children who are addicted to the product because when they went out and put their product out on

145the market they made it look as though and they were exactly saying that it was safe and they weren't advising the harms of the product about the extent and the amount of nicotine that there is in the product so to understand it one of the joule pods that is in the device is the equivalent of two packs of cigarettes and what they've also done is when you're smoking cigarettes you can only smoke so many until physically your body just won't let you so they advi they invented a salt that they put into the device that allows you to be able to inhale as much as you want without any physical effect so you could literally in one sitting do an entire pod and all of a sudden you've done two packs of cigarettes and that

146that is extremely harmful and extremely harmful for children and so based on this and based on their marketing scheme and now the effect of that what's what we're seeing on school campuses we've brought these lawsuits and what we're trying to deal with in this lawsuit is not only provide the monetary needs for school districts to deal with this in the future but also to create change a lot of change that happens in this country is through litigation and so first i want to explain to you how the monetary component of this case works so under two theories of negligence and public nuisance we have the right to uh claim damages for school districts first what we do is we look uh backwards so we go and we look at you know have has the district

147what steps have they taken to deal with this issue you know some districts have already went and installed vape detectors well that's money that was should never have had to be an expended and so we're going to get them reimbursed for that some districts have already went on and started putting on professional educational programs and have to spend general fund money to do that get them reimbursed for that one thing that i can tell you that every district has had to deal with is staff time dealing with vaping on campus whether that be supporting students that are dealing with this issue or the unfortunate discipline that's coming with us and so we we work with each one of our clients in trying to determine how much staff time to date has been spent dealing with

148this vaping issue and then we have our experts calculate how much public funds have been spent to date dealing with that through this staff time and so that's a past economic harm that's been suffered by these districts then under a theory of public nuisance so that these these companies have caused a harm to the community has caused a harm that now the district is dealing with under that theory you have a right to remedy abate that nuisance and so we've worked we're working with our experts in determining what do we need what do these school districts need in order to be able to fight this issue and be able to properly support the students and so what we're focused on is three parts deterrence support and education so what our experts have told us one

149way we can help deter vaping on campus is by the installation of vape detectors and bathrooms and school buses a lot of districts are not able to do it just because of the cost what i can tell you is that the cost of installing a vape detector vape detector can take anywhere between two thousand to five thousand dollars a bathroom so even for a small school district that's a lot of money to come out of a general fund uh to do to deal with that issue so that's what we're going to be claiming in this case the need for that another part we're looking at is the need for further staffing for support and to be able to put further eyes on campus so what we're looking at is a five to ten year damage

150model to to go and provide funding for your district to go and hire additional staff on your middle school and high school campuses so children are aware that there are staff members that are going to be looking out for this issue another factor is the support we need to be able to support students that are now dealing with nicotine addiction and the ramifications of nicotine addiction and what what our experts have told us is be able to provide funding for districts to be able to hire additional counselors at their middle schools and high schools that can help kids that are dealing with nicotine addiction and dealing with the social and emotional issues that come with nicotine addiction and then finally what i think is the most important is education as we've seen in the past

151education is key to combat issues like this as we saw with dare so what we're looking at is providing again five to ten years worth of funding to be able to put on educational programs for students and parents on the harms of vaping that's that's what our at this point that's what our experts have told us is these are the elements you need to look at this is how we need to fund this issue and that's the best way that school districts can combat this issue because unfortunately this is an issue that's not going away and what i can tell you is that it is an issue in your county your county your health departments all over the country have been studying this issue for about the past five years and recently your county uh

152put out information on a survey that they did that they went and studied children under 18. so these are people that should not have access to this product since they're not of legal age between age 11 and 17 they were asked you know within the past 30 days how many of you have tried uh a jewel a jewel product a vaping device 30 percent said that they had and that's a large number then they asked well how many of you are doing this on a daily basis 24 so that they're doing that on a daily basis these are all minors and so the what we're dealing with is an issue of they've created a product that can that is easily hidden that not not cannot be found at all times but we know that's being

153done and so we need to be able to provide that support to the children to be able to make the right decisions to be able to combat an issue of a company that intentionally marketed their product to kids and are now have immensely profited off the backs of children so that's the monetary component of what we're looking to get for each one of our school district clients and then the other factor is creating change and so in litigation we create change not by only holding these companies financially responsible by by also requesting relief from the court we do that through what's called injunctive relief and that's a court order to stop conduct and so what we're what we're doing is taking exactly what was done in the tobacco litigation where the tobacco litigation what resulted

154was restrictions on how they can market their product so they cannot market their products intentionally to children and they have to be honest about what's the contents of their products so now that is what we're trying to get in this case is to make sure that they stop marketing their products to children and also putting more clear warnings on their product of what these products contain so so that's the what we're looking to do in this case and to wrap up uh what i'm talking about here i want to provide you two questions i end up getting from school boards every time i i uh present on this matter how much that's definitely one of them and one of them is also one is time commitment of the staff to be involved in this case

155so because this is a multi-district litigation this is not like traditional litigation that school districts unfortunately have to deal with from time to time so there's not going to be the depositions the mass document production all that's going to be required of your district to be involved in this case is to be is to respond to what we call a discovery questionnaire and that's about 30 to 35 yes or no questions and provide the supporting documents so the staff time to be involved in this case is minimal and that's because we already have uh selected plaintiff school districts to be the representatives of a trial that's going to be occurring in march 2022 and florida has one of the school districts that's going to be that and that's going to be broward school district they're

156going to be the rep one of the representative cases that we're moving forward with um so the time commitment to be involved it shouldn't be an issue the other question is cost the cost to be involved in this case we handle these this case on what's called a contingency fee basis so that means we're not charging the district an hourly fee we're not charging the district uh for the co for the cost would come from a contingent based on the result so what that means is if at any point we lose the case down the road whether it be via a motion or at trial i do not come back to the district to get reimbursed for my time or costs the only way we're paid is through a financial outcome for the district and

157what how that works is a percentage of the financial outcome normally uh plaintiff litigation would be 40 percent of the financial outcome but what our my firm has done is we've cut our fee um so if the case uh resolves within the first six months it's 20 and then any time thereafter it's 25 and so the the fees are capped at 25 um and so that's where i would come from so the bottom line is not a penny of general funds of the district would be used in this case it can only bring in funds to the district as a result of this case with that being said i want to provide the opportunity oh mr dornan said there was there was a recent update to this case so what happened uh at the end

158of last year all the defendants brought motions to dismiss on the school district's cases claiming that school districts don't have a right to bring these cases they've suffered no harm uh the judge denied those motions but what he did uh oh what he did grant was their motion to dismiss a rico claim which is a racketeering it's a criminal uh it's criminal claim but in the civil courts we can make that claim and it ha it's punitive in nature but it's the same type of elements that you would claim in a criminal case but the judge left the door open for us to try to bring that again we did and as of an hour and a half ago he's now letting us move forward with a rico claim against altria and jewel and their

159directors which is a very big deal in this type of case this is exactly what happened in opioid litigation it's exactly what happened to tobacco litigation so it is a big accomplishment for us to get that involved in this case um so with that being said i want to provide the opportunity to answer any questions you all may have thank you it was very clear very much in layman's terms i i understood it so thank you very much sir um are there any questions from the board mr colon i just want to point out i'm looking at bloomberg jewel was valued at 38 billion dollars in 2018 and you know there's no question that our every principal who's listening to this right now is going and so i am supportive of this just to be

160clear how much will it cost our district to be a part of this zero thank you and so as a board member and as a proud respiratory therapist i am in full support thank you mr clone uh mrs burnett thank you um i noticed in the contract there was um wording about if there was non-monetary reward we would still have a fee what what does that look like so that is talking about if there is a so for example what's happened in the tobacco litigation there would be there was a ended up a pool of money that's that schools could come to uh then there would that would be something that you could gain for the next future but that wouldn't be money that you would get at that moment the case resolved so that's

161the type of that that's what we're talking about so there's a fee on that but that would be down the road when it's when the district's getting that money okay so that that's what it's focused on okay okay thank you sorry thank you thank you um miss haynes i appreciate you coming and explaining it um i had participated in some previous um discussions about this that the florida school board association had put out based on some of the other counties in florida that were having these same issues and so i found it to be very clear and you know and the marketing that was done did target our kids you know and i i don't think parents even understood you know what could happen with their children doing this because you know nowhere in there

162did it say but unfortunately we've seen you know if as you read the news stories and everything we've seen children that have lost their lives or you know or to the point that they need lung transplants and things like that and and so i appreciate what your firm's doing yeah and the truth is we're just at the beginning and we don't really know at this point what the long-term health effects are but we do know what the long-term health effects was of cigarettes and that took a long time to see and so unfortunately i think that's the road we're going down and it could be a lot worse too correct mr persis do you have any questions sir well i was just thinking when the uh cigarette tobacco lawsuits were all taking place the the

163plaintiffs were were individuals right wasn't that just that wasn't that a class action there there was there was plaintiffs as there are in this there are individuals but there was also in that case there was the state there was counties and there were schools too okay um and florida was a big one a big one involved in that yes yes so um you just answered my my question now with with tobacco now with vaping are there individuals doing the same thing yes they are they're they're on a different track though in the courtroom okay all right thank you thank you very much before we move on miss schultz are there any questions from the public no okay thank you thank you for very much for traveling so far no problem it's nice to see the

164sunrise yes it's only 20 minutes east you can see the sunrise tomorrow morning okay dr fritz the superintendent recommends taking legal action to send e-cigarette use among students and to recover past and future costs of the district related to vaping epidemic exciting deceptive marketing practices targeting school-age minors the lawsuit will be filed against jewel labs inc okay is there a motion to start legal action combat the vaping epidemic among our students okay it has been moved by mr colon and seconded by mr purses any more discussion okay um all those in favor please say aye aye all those against please say no sir thank you very much uh it was approved unanimously have a safe trip home thank you thank you all um we are now at um 1901 board members is there any other

165comment questions okay thank you miss schultz who would like to go first miss haynes i normally don't ask to go first but i'd like to tonight um in trying to be better prepared for next year and you know everyone know what's happening um i did speak with dr fritz um and asked if it would be appropriate this evening to have mr penley come up and join us so that we could have a discussion that in the event we're going to review the mask policy for next school year and what it would look like what the time frame is because i want everyone you know parents teachers everyone to have an opportunity to know like i don't want i'll be honest with you i don't want to sit through this summer like we did last summer

166with you know making decisions right at the last minute and everything because that's not what's best for our kids our teachers our families and things like that so um if you don't mind mrs cuthbert i'd like mr penley certainly if mr pendley thinks it's all right since we made this a policy in order to make any adjustments to it there's a timeline we have to follow thank you mr pendley thank you madam chair members yes the policy if it was to be amended would need to be advertised just as we've done with 201 here tonight you see the the procedure for that we bring forward based on the superintendent recommendation to change or amend a policy that is then approved for advertising that period is a minimum of 28 days according to the administrative procedures

167act that we follow uh for policy amendments and our rulemaking procedures then once that's advertised we'd bring it back at the next board meeting following the 28-day advertising period and the board then would have an opportunity to vote that policy up or down uh in this case if we were to do something prior to july it would mean bringing this forward at least by the first of may okay first of may so that gives us the next board meeting may 4th i believe is the may 4th or 5th i can't recall april 27th 20th april 27 so the next board meeting okay so that's something we will have to discuss tomorrow at our agenda conference yes mister when i when and so when i sat on the florida border respiratory care we often opened rules

168we met quarterly so we often opened uh rulemaking or said you know for example we knew every year the department would have changes to the application for and so we were able to open rules i mean we had a whole list that we said okay we're going to open these up for rule making and so some time could go by at which point then we could decide okay there is a change you know this year we're not going to ask the age in a bubble form we're going to ask it in a write it in form because that's what the department or the legislation or whatever changed and we would then have to advertise for the 28 days but the rule was left open uh so that we could in other words it wasn't open

169it meet wait 28 days so arguably i mean does that not apply the same here because what i'm thinking is if we let's say we open this up for rule making and that would mean if we were trying to make a decision by july then we would need to know by the first of june to be able to get to those 28 days but it could stay open for that because you have to advertise after you make the change so is that any is that different for us i'm just wondering i i really couldn't speak to that i don't know about that we do not have under the administrative procedure act a way of holding rules open if if i'm understanding your question right so okay so i'll share that with you because again we

170met quarterly so we had to basically say we want to open these 10 rules that we know every year are there's changes we still had to vote and advertise so that meant it came back the next quarter but it was left open for that so in this case it would be 28 days so we would if there was a change we'd have to advertise it and then bring it to the next board meeting 28 days later i'm not sure exactly but i can tell you it sounds like i've represented clients before that only had rule making twice a year so all of your rules were you had one workshop if you want to call it that and you went over all the rule changes but then you couldn't on a every other month or as

171we do as needed basis revise any other rules it was that was your time for doing rule making policy revisions at the january and november meetings or whatever but you weren't then allowed to bring forward any amendments to your policies in the interim so here at least since the nine months i've been with you it seems that you don't have that practice i i think it's a good one if that's what you're asking yes miss haynes so mr pendley my thought in this is you know if parents are going to choose um you know there are parents waiting out there right now to determine if they're going to send their kids back to brick and mortar because there are parents that chose to not send their kids back because we did put a mass policy

172in place at the same time we may have some parents that'll say i now may not want brick and mortar i may want volusia online learning because you're going to make it optional you know my my personal thought is i would like to make this optional you know and i've said that before where students can choose whether or not they want to wear a mask there is no shaming either way there's no bullying you know it's because right now um you know the mass goes against our our you know dress code policy you know and so we've got a mass policy we've not had we've not had everyone adhere to it this year um at times we've had children punished which i said from day one i did not agree with children being punished and

173but that is still going on out there and it's wrong i mean it is wrong to punish a child over a mask i believe um you know what we've not looked at is we've not looked at peer-reviewed data to actually see you know we're listening to one group of individuals but yet we're not looking at some of the statistical data that's coming out because quite frankly in the united states we've never had mass policies like we've not had our you know children or adults masked for any periods of time you know yes i've been on a flight before where maybe somebody has chosen to put a mask on on that flight but that's a choice they made it wasn't something that was dictated and i just would like to see um and granted i'm one

174person but i'd like to see it brought back up look at making it optional and you know and and no are having penalties or you know punishment for students or even teachers that choose to not wear it or wear it and i i need it i want it personally done in a time period that parents don't miss deadlines if they're wanting to make another choice you know because if we wait too long then we then do like what happened this past summer then they're like well you you decided this now and i can't get into vol or i can't go this route or whatever and i think when i talk to you though i did ask you you know if something were to like if we were to move forward on making adjustment to the

175language publishing it you know for the 28 days coming back and voting for it to be optional if something were to change like if we were to hit you know august which is what happened this past year and we were looking at the numbers and there was some drastic change that you know even where the federal government or state government came down and said we've now got to institute this we could at that time even if we made it made it optional we could impose an emergency order correct just as we did last summer with the 90-day emergency order the purpose under the federal under the florida administrative procedure act is to allow you to advertise an emergency policy during that 90 days you can't extend it beyond the 90 days as we talked about

176when we implemented this policy 503 back in in october on a permanent quote unquote permanent basis i know you don't like the use of the term but on a we adopted the policy as a regular policy not an emergency policy in october for that reason um the only caveat that i would give you to think about and i know that mr colon at the following the presentation from the health department at the last meeting the affirmative defense to lawsuits over covet that the legislature just passed and the governor signed back at the beginning of the month is contingent upon you following cdc guidelines that's the only concern that i have about modifying the policy because the cdc has not modified their guidance and i hear you on that but as we learned in the workshop

177last week or two weeks ago um we've not followed all of the cdc guidelines we didn't follow the cdc guidelines for sports you know which was very clear after you know miss boswell read what the sports guidelines were we haven't followed those you know yes it's been reduced to three feet right now but you know from six feet to three feet but we've been at three feet or less in some instances for a very long time what bothered me last week and when miss boswell spoke and i let it go at that moment was when she answered mr colon she said these could go away she said plexiglas shields could go away did she not all right but when i said for testing when children are sitting in an assigned seat for testing where we

178spread kids out for testing to ensure hopefully that there is no cheating that takes place because part of being a testing coordinator is you have to submit a seating chart for that classroom that says that's where jamie haynes is sitting for this test for the three days she's there that's her spot and jamie haynes is behind plexiglass and when i i said to her she's like fine that they can have water but the minute i said to her so if they're sitting behind plexiglass for three days or five days taking this test can they remove their mask she's then like no you're removing the layer well is this a layer yes but she said this layer we could go earlier then she said this layer can't go this is cherry picking what we want to

179do versus what we don't want to do i still go back to this i i fought hard that kids would not wear these outside for pe and recess and running and everything that's we still got spots where people are doing that to them okay we fought hard that kids could lower it to take a drink of water and then i get i have a kid send me an email saying i can't take a drink of water in the stains because my teacher yells at me we've got children that have the children have worked hard at following the rules especially those little ones okay and they've got dirty mask on their face i still i said that to miss boswell how is a dirty mask healthy for children to be wearing all day all right so

180i i would like to see this optional i understand if an order comes down we may have to go back into an emergency piece and make it not optional but you know we're moving forward people have i feel i really feel like washing the hands and keeping the areas clean are making a bigger difference than kids touching their face i mean i find myself all day long when i have this thing on just spending my time touching my face adjusting it and i can't think that that's healthy because i used to not ever touch my face so that's just where i stand and i know that i'm only one of five but i'd like to look at us i'd like to ask the rest of you to consider making this optional advertising it choosing to

181vote for it or against it and with the thought that if something changes when it's time for school to start we put forth an emergency order which is what we did this past year okay thank you thank you miss haynes um miss burnett i don't have anything to say thanks i'm sorry i didn't hear nothing to say thanks okay anyone else have any comments about um i i would suggest that we look into it again i just think if we can somehow advertise it superly so folks understand because the thought that we'll make a decision in two weeks for something that's going to be three months from now four months from now i can't count how many months from now it is at least three you know that that's hard and i will say it

182does feel like we are heading in the right direction as far as you know the vaccinations and all that that's taken place i don't know that in two weeks we will be there and so i just think if we explore that you know i don't know right now how much i am in favor of going ahead and amending a policy and then going the emergency route versus if we could leave the policy open we would still have to advertise and so that then would cut down on a little bit of the time it would be a month away from the decision rather than four months away let me count what are we in april mr clone i'm looking at if we brought it back up from the next board meeting which is april 27th because

183i took a calendar out and went through it with mr pendley we would make the changes to the language on the 27th then it would still have to go out to be we would have to agree on the changes of the language and we may not and so it would come back up then to the next meeting then go out 28 days so we'll we would be voting on it towards the end of june to institute it for next year because if you remember we only have one board meeting scheduled in july unlike last year where we had six you know because we had to keep doing it we typically only meet once in july well if we wait till the end of july to make a vote on this enrollment for other programs at

184that time will be closed and so we will have we will shut a door not really letting parents know where we stand on what we're going to do or not do and so i walked through the calendar with him to figure out you know where we were time wise because we wait then you know we it's 28 days and so we'd be talking about this the last week of july with school getting ready to start the middle of august and we won't we won't make it in time and i don't want pair i want parents to know i i don't i want teachers to know and i want students to know i i don't want to be where we were last year you know making decisions at the last moment and impacting people and everybody

185being upset i i i'm a planner and an organizer and i think we need to get the information out there what i'm afraid of is what the decision i may make in two weeks may not be the one that i make in august or in july or even in june and i think you know that that's kind of where reuben is on it because we are that's a long time away in covet time and at that point we would be choosing to steer away from the guidance and that if you think about it we're breaking what the governor already put out i mean in one sense he says you can't find anybody or penalize them for not wearing it and then yes i know what came out in the the other piece and like there's

186all this contradiction and you know what i'd be a whole lot better if people had followed the policy the way we even put the policy out but policy's not been followed this year and we like said we've cherry picked which rules we follow from the cdc okay thank you for all your views um do you have anything your view do you have a view you're a healthcare worker as well well i mean i can take i can understand both sides of all of this and um i do think that we owe it to our students and the teachers and the parents to have a plan in place in enough time to where they can make a decision based on what they want to do and where they believe where their beliefs are where they're where

187their health where they want to manage their health um and is there something you know is there something that we can do that if a mandate does come down that says you must wear a mask from whomever the governor the president whomever isn't that something that can be built into this policy um that we would like to amend anyway i i do think that we have to plan in advance for this and i think we've all seen this coming but i do think we need to plan for that okay would you like to add anything about miss payne's suggestion well you know i i was thinking that um uh you would think in april 27th um because it's going to take a little time to flesh out my language even though i know you'll do

188a great job but giving us as many options so we can make it as flexible as we can and i know that's that's kind of hard to do but i i was thinking you would want to do it maybe that first meeting madam chair in may that's normally our workshop day you know that first tuesday i think it's the 11th i think isn't the 11th the first tuesday in may you know one of those 10 a.m workshop days i don't know i was just i was thinking along that line and my my thinking was that um of course i i i wanted to get something optional in place by the july summer school which starts july 6th or 5th or something like that um i i have deep sleep at the very end you know

189at the very least that may show us hey did this work or did it not and how many kids wore a mask and how many did it what kind of feedback did we get from that i mean i don't know but i mean but i'd like the policy to be so that if we decided that we didn't want to do that then we could go back you know to make it a mandatory or make it optional i hate that we have the first 28-day thing all the time and then plan a month almost before the 28 days well in our last meeting our last meeting in june is june 22nd and that was i mean like i said i took a calendar and worked my way back to try to figure out you know when

190we could do this yeah so if we advertise that that whole month of may the middle of may to the middle of june that would still give you that one school board meeting at the end of june to uh to vote okay dr fritz would you like to weigh in uh this is you know i'm respecting our roles this is a board policy um you know you know i certainly have an opinion but but i i would like to succeed this is almost like with the graduation ticket you got to kind of see where we're going but at the same point in time i'd like us to start working towards a voluntary program i think that's what our families want um but i agree with you that i don't want to have six board meetings

191in july um i think we have to look at the timeline i think the more information we could put out with the caveat that if we have to come back and change it we can i think parents would appreciate doing it earlier rather than later um but that's just my two cents but again truly this is a board decision decide whether or not we go forward mr pendley and i will take the information if you just if you decide to go in that direction and you want us to bring it back on the 27th we'll start the ball rolling if you want to wait until that first board meeting in may recognizing that the final approval with that would be the june probably the second board meeting in june that's fine if you wait past

192that second board meeting in may though to make a decision you're talking about how holding a special board meeting or only giving parents two weeks to make a decision and they're going to have to make some educational decisions based on where we go that's that's not fair to them so i i would suggest that we either try if the board has a pleasure to move in this direction that we either do it at 27th of the first board meeting in may at the latest okay uh mr pendley do you agree well i was just looking at the dates we're looking at may 11th as being the workshop date in the 25th then it may we could bring it back for discussion informally on the 27th at the next meeting to kind of give you an

193idea it's very difficult to write a rule or a policy that's flexible by nature okay that's my challenge i will accept it thank you for that mr persis i will do my best um we could then bring it back in final version uh with a request for authorization to advertise on the 11th that would put us with publication deadlines around the 13th or 14th getting that out to the papers one two three four that would be right then for discussion and for revision approval final approval that would be after the 11th of june and i'm not sure i believe the the meeting date for that for june is the it's june 22nd 22nd and that's the last one for this fiscal year for this school year and then we don't meet again until july 27th

194which is too late yep everything needs to be in place at latest by the last board meeting in june if not before i only have one concern looking back you know now that we have this opportunity to look back this past year first of all it was my age group and and older that were very much at risk and affected a lot of the the um vaccine started with my age group and older and recently very recently the 20 to 40 year olds are are becoming ill more severely and the cases are going up and also even though the cases in florida may go down but we're what number one in the country are part of number one in the country for the variants so i think that might help you in maybe putting a

195data point in the policy that if if the um the cases become more dangerous to younger people because they're talking about children and 20 year olds and 30 year olds we have a lot of faculty members and volunteers and admin or in those age groups our teenagers even our ese some are with us until 22 24 years old they're all affected so um that might help us if that becomes worse then that would be a way for us to remove ourselves from this but i worry about about our children yeah and because we cannot control what they do at home we can't control what they do in spring break or christmas break or or over labor day and um and because of that i think a lot of the smaller districts have been successful because

196there's more of a family camaraderie there's more of a community message and even our smaller private schools have been able to keep their numbers down because everyone agrees in order to go to that school they agree to behave in a certain manner so their children are healthy we don't have that we don't have that luxury because we accept every student who walks in our front door so i think that may help us make those decisions and my concern is summer school you know we're in july and when students are going to be going for the remedial programs in june and july what will they be experiencing they're going to go out for recess and how crowded will they be in those rooms and i know our we have some really good pilot programs starting july

1971 but i do know a lot of my schools in my district are having a lot of difficulties with cleanliness these days with abm and there's some a lot of staff problems going on so i think all of it together i think uh we'll we'll discuss it at our agenda conference tomorrow so i would rather look at it sooner than later so we can meet what what our parents are discussing i'd like to hear from the parents i'd like to hear from our faculty and our admin because the they're the ones that have to uphold it but also we have to make sure our schools are clean and sanitized and ready to go we have to have that deep cleaning this summer so we everybody has to buy in and everybody has to maybe we

198can you know in order to do this we have to make other other i can't say demands but other strong suggestions of cleanliness in order to help help this occur so but that's helpful i if i understand the board's pleasure based on consensus it's that the superintendent brings forward on the april 27th meeting a recommendation for amendments to policy 503 and we will try to build in some threshold levels and flexibility to the maximum extent that we can to address the board's concern and then we can make modifications at that meeting and bring forward for advertising uh those changes after the board has an opportunity to review the draft policies okay so sum it up thank you thank you good job sir all right okay i think you have a consensus okay well thank you

199very much sir thank you thank you one thing one thing i just saw this pop up okay where is the beatrice is after several months of mandating masks in beatrice public schools the school board voted to make mask wearing optional for students and staff for the remainder of the school year the action included the stipulation that the board can reinstate the mandate if there is a considerable risk because of increased positivity rates or sudden spikes in school cases so we can do that yeah and that has to do with a lot of the especially the variance there i think we're up to right now 26 districts in florida at the last count how this is optional so for next year or this year so some some made it optional from the start this year like

200they never instituted a policy but some have now backed off and made it optional like to finish out the year or for already made the move for next year and i've talked to a few um board members in some of the other districts that made it mandatory like we did and they're in the same place as looking at it being you know optional for next year and so you know i want to be very clear i said last june optional i'm still saying optional i'm not saying we say no mask okay i'm just saying allow staff parents and students to make that decision for themselves you know and and mr purses i like what you just you know read because we could i mean mr bentley i don't even know if like if we could

201even put like if we have a hot spot of a school you know that you know like if i'm gonna use pine ridge for a moment like if we have a breakout on pine ridge and you know we've got you know 150 kids out or something then you know what's our steps that we're going to do we're going to go in and clean pine ridge and maybe have to say all right they've got to do something but i mean i think i just want options okay this is what i never asked it because i know you all wanted nebraska yes this this is what i feel good beatrice nebraska ninjas of school uh school board attorneys i can't wait to see his writing on this i think it's going to be great um but but

202he's got his marching orders um to go go forward and we will we will bring it backward 27th for review with the board okay thank you all right that was a very nice board member comment so thank you we we but we needed the discussion mr pendley i thank you very much for assisting us in in miss haynes endeavor thank you thank you uh miss burnett you have any member comments no i'm good thanks thank you so much uh mr purses you have anything else to not say okay thank you mr colon how about you darling is this a bad time to say we should revisit uniforms uh let's not do that tonight thank you even i who have always made that a hot topic um let's not do that tonight but i greatly appreciate

203you thank you so much we can talk about that may may is a good time when we know we're almost out of school okay the only thing i would like to say is um we just recently had future celebrate the first year teacher i'd also like to celebrate all of you in the audience tonight who are our first year administrators would you stand if you just finished one year or just short of one year or maybe a year and a half you've been with us that's that whole whole team over there thank you very much for your dedication volusia county schools the um the oldie but goodies in the audience [Music] um and i think it's a good mixture we learn from you and you learn from us so with that said if there's oh

204wait a minute uh you have anything else to say okay anything else to say sir all right with that we adjourn and it's only 6 40. all right baby doll