Volusia County School Board Meeting 9-28-2021

001today good evening everyone and welcome to the meeting of the volusia county school board would everyone please rise and say the pledge thank you and welcome we are meeting this is september 28th it's 5 30. and we all here at the at the deus we agree to disagree and treat each other with mutual respect we value our diverse views and encourage each and every one of us to express them please silence your phones we will be having uh four different uh times for particip public participation but before we have uh those announcements i would like to introduce everyone um to every one of you to our dias uh to my far left is mr carl purses representing district four to his right is mr ruben colon representing district five to his right is our school

002board attorney mr ted doran to my far right is aaron lieben our resource clerk for our school board in which we could not function without her so thank you erin to her left is miss anita burnett she represents district two to her leftist vice chair jamie haynes representing district one to her left is our superintendent dr scott fritz and i'm linda cuthbert your chair and i represent district 3. items for approval on this agenda tonight is 3.01 6.02 and 20.01 items we will have participation public participation for items on the consent agenda 6 30 certain for items of general interest pertaining to public education in our school district a total of 15 minutes will be provided at this time people who have submitted cards each person will have three minutes to speak i will announce

003the first and the second person to come so it's a nice steady stream we can get it done in 15 minutes time will also be provided for public comment on any action item before the board vote is called and time will be provided at the end of the board meeting for all of those who would like to have additional comment on our school district 1.02 district vision statement and board member comments would anyone like to start this evening mr colon so this past whoa that's loud so this past week i had the pleasure of joining both enterprise elementary and gal and heritage middle school for their donuts with dad and they did a dad bring your child to school day at uh heritage where myself sheriff chitwood a gentleman from all pro dads one of

004our teachers and neville mr wilkinson and neville served on a panel to speak about things that men just don't talk about we don't talk about feelings we don't talk about what's going on we don't talk about a lot with our kids and so we were able to um once the students left uh just the dads were left and i when i tell you that both schools filled the cafeteria with dads who brought their kids to school i mean they were packed and so it was a real blessing to be able to share and learn from from my colleagues who were on stage as well as interact with the dads who took the time that morning to spend time with their children so that was the highlight of my week and uh and thank you okay

005thank you very much mr clone that must have been thrilling did you ink donuts in fact they ran out of food at heritage because they thought middle school first time how many dads could you possibly get and i tell you they were finding food from where i don't know where cereal pastries they were just scrapping to be able to give everybody something because the demand was that big and you know anytime it's involving dads and the dads are participating i mean that's a it's a good thing to run out of food so and you know i don't think there's enough good positive um i guess news out there about that so that's always nice to hear thank you mr persis thank you madam chair my guess is the middle school kids ate all the donuts

006personally that's okay uh what i would say is uh just a big shout out to all the schools that the teachers principals going through their open houses uh that's so much work it's exciting work uh but it's draining work too when when the last parent leaves it's like oh we did it you know but it's a it's a lot of fun and i know with the kobe there was a lot of angst about all of that and how's it going to go and how many are going to show up and you know mask and not mask and all those things but it's it's great for the children it's great for secondary kids too for their parents to follow their children around and see how they go from class to class to class to class and

007how little time they have to get from class to class to class to class so when they see all the teachers and we just have such great teachers out there and it's that one time sometimes for parents it's the only time that they really get to see their child's teacher particularly in secondary school and it's a great opportunity for the teachers to make that great first im impression on the parents and just i i know dr fritz you'd feel this way normally when parents leave they're going wow they just wow what a my child's teacher is so great and they're so smart and you know they just they just really don't get it get the full appreciation until you're actually there so i just wanted to say that i know it's it's a great deal

008of work but i know it's greatly appreciated from the parents too thank you mr purses miss haynes thank you miss cuthbert i too want to reiterate about the open house and the fact that we could hold it this year and allow parents the opportunity to go on but i also want to say thank you to dr fritz and his team for allowing field trips to start back up because you know we've even got one or two that we've had on the last board meeting and on tonight and those are opportunities that these kids otherwise would not have and so i appreciate the fact that we're allowing our students to go back out onto field trips especially with the learning experiences and everything and even being tied into that i've heard from some kids they're excited

009about the homecoming piece that's happening now on campus because they missed out on homecoming last year and so there's excitement about that and that builds that school spirit piece and i think that's part of what we have to build back in especially at the high school level because it wasn't until i was speaking to one of the high school principals and what she said was true our freshmen this year that are on campus some of them the last time they were on campus was seventh grade when they went home for spring break because some of them never returned last year as eighth graders they stayed home and did live or they did volusia online learning or homeschooling and when you just stopped to think about that and you think about what that means not just

010for the freshmen that are on campus this year maybe for the first time it's the same way for sixth graders that walked into middle school some of them walked out of school as fourth graders for spring break and this is their first chance back and we've you know we always know that our vpk and our kindergarten students are new but we've got kids in first and second grade that are also you know coming into campus is new so i think it's a wonderful opportunity because we know schools will run better when kids feel that family peace you know where i'm a part of my school and i have pride in it so thank you dr fritz for everything that you and your team have done to make those opportunities available for our students thank you

011miss haynes miss burnett good evening everybody so um i volunteer on a on a board port orange community trust family days and so this was our big event and it was nice to see on saturday morning they have a parade and there was uh i believe four schools that the band and the dance team participated in the parade and they did a great job i've got some video of it obviously i'm not going to share it here but um it was great to see and they had a really good time not only did the bands participate in the dance groups but a lot of the clubs and individual students volunteered that day and i got to talk to mrs negus from atlantic she's the teacher of the year there and her team she leads the

012teal academy and they were there participating with some of the kids functions and she got to introduce me to some of the things that they were doing at school so it was really nice to see all the kids out there participating and building up the community again and knowing that this is part of what we do in life is give back in the community that was nice and i want to give another shout out to one of the atlantic band members riley lehman she made the band for the macy's great american marching band so she's going to be participating in the macy's day parade so that's quite an accomplishment right there very good thank you very much miss burnett that that's a lot of fun you had good weather oh it was beautiful weather that's

013good it's nice to be in florida at this time of year i would like to compliment all the campuses administration teachers sac teams as well as ptas and students a lot of student government associations at each and every level of school because they are thinking outside the box to create safety when it comes to trying to put out the same normal activities and it's and it's interesting to see the workings and how simple we could have done this so many different times and it's very taxing for administrators to do this because you don't really know how it will and how things will you know like work out but sometimes you just take that risk and it's just a wonderful opportunity for kids to do something different so i do appreciate all of that and also

014i have a shout out because i'm going to be participating uh the volusia manufacturing association has a robot brawl this saturday at jackie robinson stadium i'm going to be judging so watch out i'll try to keep my nonpartisan hat on but uh it's going to be a lot of fun for all that morning and keeping an eye on good weather so i hope your good weather is our good weather so hope to see everybody at the robot brawl saturday morning october 2nd so that concludes our um our board member comments about our vision statement 2.01 agenda changes i would like to announce one adjustment for an agenda we are moving 19.01 a half cent sales tax project oversight committee presentation is going to follow mr dr fritz's recognitions so 19.01 will follow 40.01 is that

015all right with all of you yes okay um so then can i have a motion to approve the agenda amended so moved okay thank you the amended uh agenda has been the motion has been made by ms burnett is there a second i'll second it okay thank you miss haynes is there any further comment all those in favor please say aye aye all those against please say nay okay thank you the amen the agenda has been amended uh 3.01 uh administrative appointments dr fritz thank you miss cuthbert we have two this evening i'm going to ask hillary blunt to come forward board members in public as you know we have a vacancy at mainland high school due to the promotion of miss kim matthews to principal campbell and would be my pleasure to recommend hillary

016today for that position let me tell you a little bit about her she earned her bachelor's degree in art education from the university of central florida and a master's degree in educational leadership from stetson university hillary began in volusia county schools in 2014 as an art teacher at midland high school where she also served as a testing coordinator her current position is she is a toa teacher on assignment at forest lakes elementary school it would be my honor and privilege to recommend her to be the next assistant principal at mainland high school thank you dr fritz you've heard the recommendation of dr fritz to appoint hillary blum assistant principal at mainland high school a buccaneer uh is there a motion i motion to approve okay miss burnett has made the motion is there a second

017i'll second it it's been seconded by mr carl purses any comments or discussion yes ma'am oh sorry sir do you want to go first okay so i have to say anybody that's been a testing coordinator at any level is more than ready to be an assistant principal because when you can manage all of those tests because i did it and it's not easy um so congratulations thank you thank you miss haynes mr colon and so if you add to that being the right hand and helping with our students at forest lake and i'll leave that right there you're ready so even though i regrettedly lose even d5 someday you'll be back so congratulations thank you thank you mr colon anyone else you all in favor please say aye aye aye all those against please say

018no motion is passed i think you're stuck being a you know buccaneer so i'm really thrilled for you and when does she start she will start tomorrow something about buff pride ida used to say what was it about pride pride never dies pride never dies absolutely well thank you very much i'm i'm very honored to return back to mainland and i am very appreciative for all the leadership the great administrators that i've had and the teachers that have inspired me to be here tonight and do the great work that i'm about to do at mainland high school so i'm really glad i'm going back to buccaneer country and you know buck pride never dies thank you thank you thank you very much and good luck to you dr prince and i'd like to ask kelly

019moore to come forward board members in public as you remember we do have an opening at chisholm elementary school for an assistant principal due to a promotion from the current or the previous assistant principal to principal at coronado and i'd like to tell you a little bit about kelly moore who's my recommendation for this evening kelly's earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology from florida state university and a master's degree in anthropology from the university of central florida as well as a master's degree in educational leadership from stetson university she began teaching 10th grade world history in 2011. in 2013 she came to volusia county and taught 7th grade civics at river springs middle school since then kelly has worked as an administrative toa at spruce bruce creek elementary in the chisholm elementary where she currently

020is today and i'd like to certainly make the recommendation that she become the next assistant principal at chisholm elementary you've heard the recommendation of dr fritz to appoint kelly moore as assistant principal chisholm elementary panther country right okay is there a motion i make the motion that we appoint kelly moore as the assistant principal at chisholm elementary ms haynes has made the motion to appoint her is there a second i'll second that the second motion has been made by miss burnett any discussion chisholm is very special to me when i first moved to volusia county in 86 my children attended the old chisholm elementary it's where i learned what red ants do to a person because i was participating in a pta car wash didn't realize that the little little bites on my ankle were

021so deadly and i'm also i also learned i was allergic to them so but chisholm is a brand new school it's only two years old i didn't have melissa marple in class but i worked with with her mom who was a media specialist it's a long long history you're going to a fantastic school so congratulations to i know you will be a wonderful positive you'll be a wonderful positive addition to them so congratulations uh uh all those in favor please say aye all those opposed please say nay okay congratulations young lady would you like to say something yes please please um i just want to thank melissa marple she is an amazing amazing educator and i am so thankful to work with her and continue to work with her and stay at chisholm chisholm is

022a really special place and i from the day i set foot in there i it's just a wonderful place to work amazing faculty and staff and community um i just want to thank my husband for being there for me and supporting me um and my parents are here as well so thank you for everything and thank you guys [Applause] she starts also tomorrow okay good luck thank you that concludes administrative appointments 4.01 recognitions for october 2021. dr fritz we actually have three recognitions that we're going to recognize today volusia county is proud to celebrate the month of october as national bullying prevention month this signature event of national bullying prevention month is unity day which will be celebrated on october 20th to participate in unity day students staff and schools will wear and share orange

023tonight for kindness acceptance and inclusion to prevent students from being bullied one in five students report being bullied at school national bullying prevention month is a time for us to focus raise awareness and recognizing that bullying can be addressed through education and support and what i'd like to do at this time board is i'd like to ask miss rose rowland and mr thomas bond to come forward and i've shared with you that this is an area that we will address and i wanted to share with you some of the work that's already in progress for us as we go forward good evening i'm chairman cuthbert board members and dr fritz as dr fritz has stated october is bully prevention month and i know there's been some concerns in the past about the victim being treated

024more aggressively than the actual aggressor so we have made some changes to our um matrix where um the the victim does not receive the consequences instead of the actual aggressor what we've done this year in our matrix the first offense with the bullet that's substantiated that bully the aggressor will get five-day suspension from school require re-entry meeting with the parent and make the parent aware that the next offense the child will receive a more severe consequence and after the second substantiated bullying incident the aggressor will be given a hope scholarship to move to another school without choice be it one of our alternative settings or another school where he can go to the closest school to his home and the parents is responsible for their transportation we will still offer the hope scholarship to the

025victim but they won't have to it'll be their choice but by law we have to offer to them so we will do that we want to make sure to know that you know bullying is not tolerated we have to be acceptance of acceptance of each other because we're all human we all have to live in this world together so we want bullying to go away all together we know that won't happen but we must protect the victims that are being bullied at every cause because they deserve to be in school and go to school in a free environment that's free of being troubled or being bullied or anything of that nature so we're here to educate the aggressor and the victim both but we don't want the victim to be punished more civilianly than an

026aggressor and as dr frist has said that um october is the month and october 20th is actually that we celebrate um bullying uh the day aggressive day for bullying um and we wear orange on that particular day so if anybody wants to participate whether you're at home or in schools we invite you to do that um on october 23rd which is our bullying prevention month october's a month but we celebrate it actually on october 20th and so dr frist has asked us last school year to develop a bullying task force and so we worked on that and mr bond has done an awesome job of putting the task force together we included parents students administrators teachers and we also included victims those that have been a victim of bullying and someone that has actually committed

027the offense we want to hear from everyone um as opposed to just those that have been bullied so we had parents to come on teachers administrators so mr vaughn has done a good job of getting together um a powerpoint that he held his first meeting on september 23rd with those parents and those students so he's going to share right now what he has put together i'm looking forward to wearing orange on october 20th um the bully prevention is something that's close to my heart you know over eight years ago um was a part of a team initiating olayus bully prevention into the middle schools that lost traction along the way unfortunately but it's something that's a that i consider a silent disease because it's the silence where the power is leveraged and we have to

028do more to educate all stakeholders not just students but the parents even the adults to address all angles that are a part of this behavior i also think it's important that we continue mitigating the implementation of some of our programs like social emotional learning restorative practices pbis to understand how those all intertwine to provide bully prevention strategies so at our first meeting uh this past week we took time to build group norms because it's important that we have that safe space because we have um all stakeholders being represented to share their their experiences with bullying uh some positive in the sense that they were resolved and and found that resolution to move forward but then others negative where you know they're still hanging on to some feelings but it's important that they understand that we're

029in a safe environment to listen to one another as we review uh current policy to see what we can do and so i shared with them why we're there why we why we were created to help look at the current situation i want to ensure them that we're not just a band-aid to be put on a problem but we really want to look deep to see where we can make some real change effective positive change and i sure assured them that we had district support with this particular program or this particular committee because of the direct alignment with goal three in the strategic plan we assessed schools that had high high frequency of incidences with bullying to ensure that those folks were at the table and we also assessed access schools that weren't so much

030on the radar but we needed to have a full and fair representation across the district as ms rowland had mentioned we have representatives from students and families from all three levels we have community members we have teachers represented from middle school and elementary schools school level administration from elementary schools and middle schools and then of course our district staff supporting my myself nick prince with restorative practice mandy elsie with pbis craig pinder with discipline jessica excuse me jessica mcintyre with mental health services and ingrid cruz and donette essel home with our support through school counselors and seo we had a pre-meeting again as ms rowland mentioned back in july where we reviewed the matrix to increase the consequences for those that have confirmed bullying offenses and then we had a pre-meeting with my district staff

031of the folks i had just mentioned so that we could really have that conversation about how we're moving forward with presenting the information to our to our committee members our driving goals initially um is to share the perspectives so that we can build that understanding we're going to review the bullying investigation guidelines and the hope scholarship aspect of things that's coming forth at our next meeting we're going to review as i mentioned our seo pbis and restorative practices to understand how these all intertwined to support bully prevention strategies we're going to ask tough questions are we doing enough to protect our victims but then we also have to ensure that people understand that we are doing things to follow the written law you know we have to understand how we're communicating that to families that

032are part of these unfortunate instances i'm thinking the pie in the sky is developing some kind of educational materials i remember growing up in the 80s the infomercials on nbc you know 20 second message and then the little rainbow goes across the more you know right somehow infusing these type of educational materials whether we have to partner with local media stations or whatnot or maybe they already have some things produced but somehow getting like a home-grown scenario using our own kids that have been a part of this or want to be a part of it to send that message to again all levels it's got to be and when i say all levels i'm not talking about just stakeholder groups but i'm talking about all grade levels all the way down to pre-k is where

033the education needs to begin yes and then i want to be able to bring back whatever the committee recommends to this group here for any potential policy change if it's warranted or needed or necessary one of the agreements that we have as a group especially with the families that might have been involved is to understand that we're not there to rehash or help them reach a different outcome than what they may have already received but that we're moving forward to reach positive solutions i asked the group what else they would like to accomplish they said unification and standardization across all schools zero tolerance find ways to support all groups ask those tough questions increase or expand the level of accountability of students that have bullying type behavior remember it's important that we don't label bullies

034or bullying you know we don't say they're bullies you know it's bully type behavior because that kind of labeling gives power and want to make sure we don't do that and then educate we need to advocate for time to provide this education and then find ways to infuse it with sustainability we agreed to uh meeting in a couple of weeks october 13th and we'll review this policies and i'll continue to report this is still a very early stage in what we're doing in this important work thank you for the opportunity thank you thank you thomas appreciate that thank you um board questions comments mr colon so how do we define bullying as far as our policy goes and you know if two kids get into it in the cafeteria is is that bullying how do

035we define bully it has to be a repeated offense by the same offender and the same person that's being offended so it has to happen one time does not consider it once does not consider to be a bullying offense it has to happen on more than a repetitive basis by the same individual against the same victim and i guess this is a question in common at the same time so don't necessarily need an answer but do we have enough opportunities for our students to report i know we have the fortify florida but that you know might be considered an extreme even though it you know it's definitely an avenue that they can use if you know however do we have enough opportunities where the student can proactively know who the safe person is to go

036to that comes as education yeah and the students letting them know what the expectation is when we started with all theis it was an agreement if something happens you tell an adult before you leave school and you tell your parent when you get home but some schools that have uh specific systems in place i know a lot of school counselors have like an anonymous box outside their door right immediately for reporting purposes and in the media center as well but it's certainly a good question because that's part of the standardization that we would like to see as we continue this work because i think that would make it very powerful again everybody you know the same message same opportunities whether it's an app whether it's how can we make it so that students feel comfortable

037enough to report when they are being bullied and and know that you know we actually and and i'm dr fritz and i'm elated that we're finally looking at this uh because it's something that a lot of times the kids don't say anything because they're afraid yeah and so to know that we actually have their back you know that's the silence that i was speaking of and most schools do have a system where they have boxes around school in the media center front office where they can drop it in their counselor's box and those boxes are checked on a period by period to make sure that the kids have to see what kids have dropped items in the boxes for the council to deal with so the students are made aware where those boxes are and

038they are checked regularly awesome we had the data when we implemented all this and we had expected and i'm not saying that's the answer here i'm just based on my own experience and the data we collected we had anticipated a spike in bullying reporting once we started the vegas program program because we were educating on what it meant and we were taking that time to talk and to educate you know you if you had a fight in the hallway the teacher didn't just blow it off or whoever was involved didn't blow it off and not talk about it hey let's get silent let's get back to work we took the time to stop and talk about what went wrong what could we do different next time you know so it's some of these little things

039that we want to put in place that could be very helpful in preventing future occurrences but um we did see a spike after we began the educational piece of it because they felt empowered they could report it was a great thing and then it started to go the other direction thank you thank you mr clone miss haynes thank you miss cuthbert so i want to thank you because one of the things that i know several of us at some point in time have brought forward is the fact that the student being bullied is the child that we've been saying here you can go to another school and that's not fair i mean they're already a victim and then trying to push them off to another school where they may not have any friends is wrong

040so i am happy to see that you've made a change already in the procedures and the student that is doing the bullying is going to be the student that you're going to say you can now go to a different school and not remove the victim because that victim has already been bullied and so i'm happy to see that we have flipped that and that we're going to allow the student that has been the victim to stay on campus where they already you know have a safety net and have people that they know because i have felt all along you know even when i was a classroom teacher that the child that's doing the bullying it's almost like they get rewarded because the victim has to move and and the bully gets to stay there with

041their friends well if we remove the bully from their friend group and they have to go somewhere new then i think that may help deter some of this and just a few suggestions as you meet with this group we've got to get student buy-in but we've also got to get parent buy-in because without the parent buy-in piece we're not going to be able to stop some of these students that are choosing to bully others and our administrators right now are facing some crisis like we're adding extra work onto their shoulders and the teacher's shoulders because the big thing now is to make videos of these fights that are breaking out and they are posting them on like they just every time because i've worked with the communications team as they've come up or we've been

042alerted and we've worked on pulling these fighting sites down but you know we've got some middle schools out there that these kids are just every time we pull a fighting site back down they video another fight on campus and they put another fighting site up and so we need parent we need parent buy-in with this too because there should be consequences if kids are creating fighting sites you know and videotaping you know or actually engaging in the fighting in order to put a video up we've got to come up with some ways to stop this behavior because our administrators then are losing their opportunity to focus on the educational piece because they're having to spend hours dealing with these fighting sites that are coming up and i think there should be some very strict consequences

043that if a student actually videotapes a fight and post it out on social media there should be some consequences for them and there are yes okay because one of the middle schools alone in my district this is a constant problem and mr colon knows because between he and i every time we turn around there's another fighting site up for this school but thank you because the progress you're already making the fact that we're not we're going to hold the bully accountable instead of penalizing the victim i'm so thankful because our victims should not be penalized so thank you thank you miss burnett yes thank you um i'm encouraged to hear the the program that you're starting and it sounds very positive one thing i would like to see with it as well is not just

044the anti-bullying even though i know october is anti-bully month but is increased kindness so not just say we're anti-bully but pro-kindness i think speaks volumes in a positive manner as well yeah you know it's great that we have october and um as the bully prevention month and then unity day on october 20th but you're right we need to ensure that something's infused into daily lesson plans if we need to i think that's where things are you know to it's not just a one-hit wonder it's not only bringing in those guest speakers to pump the kids up for three hours during everybody's lunch about bully prevention you know we we've done that i've done that i've brought them into schools before and it's a great message they have an amazing message to share but we need

045to ensure that there's something in the infrastructure to support the message throughout the entire year every day we talked about adding that sl as well as bullying as a part of the normal day function um it's the beginning of the morning just mention be kind you know you know tolerate each other um just something that simple kids can just hear first thing in the morning and it could change their mindset by the next period when they were planning to bully someone so we've asked them to do a positive message every morning through sal time or whatever time it may be to address bullying and social emotional learning as well okay thank you miss burnett thank you mr purses thank you madam chair and i also appreciate the comments my board members made and appreciate this

046program starting the other thing i wanted to add that perhaps hasn't been said is uh we think of bullying sometimes of the the physical aspect of it but it's that social media name calling torture that some of these students are going through some of them daily some of them over the weekend some of them so upset that unfortunately they don't tell their parents and they come to school just so so sad and they really don't know where to turn because they're afraid it's going to get worse if they say say the wrong thing to the wrong the wrong person so i know that you all know that yeah and and how that works um but i remember as you said uh miss burnett about being kind you know there's there's just nothing better than the

047golden rule yeah i mean just you know if you start today with that you know do you want to others as you would like others to do one to you i mean if we all just live by that you know just think about it uh golden rule just be kind be sensitive be be thoughtful you know let's let's all get along but anyway i just wanted to bring up that social media piece because that's that's that's the one that kind of scares me because it's silent it's it's it's it's it's what you read on social media people saying ugly things about you that's hurtful yeah and and you don't know how to come back because if you even try to come back then it gets even in a barrage comes comes back at you so

048just to make sure you guys are here cyber bullying is included in that and a lot of times when cyberbullying happen it involves law enforcement because it is happening off of our campuses but cyberbullying is included as well thank you yeah i remember when we added cyberbullying to our our student code of conduct that wasn't that long ago and one other thing that i've encountered that i never thought of but when i was teaching i saw where the bullying was generational the two parents didn't get along and now the children are in the same classes and they were told by their parents not to like each other so thank you for addressing not just the what that's going on but the why because i think only knowing why the behavior is there do we reach

049an understanding and all of the strategies the questioning the to re-evaluate the bullying policies establishing expectations the issue of silence and developing materials to educate and your next meeting is the 13th of october this is i think the most extensive investigation into anti-bullying and to understand why it happens so thank you thank you from the bottom of our hearts we're thrilled thank you dr fritz for initiating this and i can't think of two better people to handle it so thank you thank you thanks rose thanks thomas thank you for coming tonight dr fritz our next recognition is extremely important i think during the past year and a half we have realized how important it is and what a role the school plays in in taking care of one of our basic functions for our young

050people which is feeding them um i i'm incredibly proud of our our schoolway cafe workers and everything that they've done for our students each and every day but particularly during this time you know whether we have a hurricane or a crisis our our folks are there you know when our kids when we were forced out of school on march 13th of 2020 our folks jumped up and they they started feeding kids they were driving into the communities they were making it happen and they do that today they help out continuously i'm very happy and pleased to announce that october 11th through the 25th is national school lunch week and you know how personal this is to me with my own my own child who works in the cafeteria they work hard these people work hard

051every day and they do it for our kids so very happy about this our final recognition um it's another one that's very personal and exciting um october 1st through the 12th is the florida disability and history and awareness week this recognition promotes awareness to the contributions of individuals with disabilities and what they've done in our community despite the fact that disability is a natural part of life people with disabilities have not always had adequate access to equal opportunities in fact not until 1975 with the passage of individuals with disabilities education act that school-aged children with disabilities have rights to free and appropriate public education i'm incredibly proud of the things that we're doing in volusia county for our students several of them that i'd like to highlight and i'm going to ask miss wiles to

052come up and share a little bit because i think it's important we have added supports for our students on the spectrum and we have added supports at all levels that means extra teachers and we've made sure that we've done that over the last couple years we've also started the institution of building independent living skills and we call these life labs living independent for everyone which really gives our students an opportunity to practice those life skills but life skills that they will have at their homes in addition to that we've partnered with other outside organizations such as project search well we're doing our own volusia search this year we will train students in jobs in the school district those students that are super seniors that are ready to age out will get job training right here

053in volusia county schools upon completion of that satisfactory they will be hired into our system so i wanted to have ms wiles come up and share a little more about that because i think it's such a cool thing that our county is doing that's why fritz and thank you miss cuthbert and board for having me up tonight dr fritz highlighted many of the things that we're already doing and i know mr purses you joined me at many of the graduations as did dr fritz at the end of the year to celebrate our students in project search we are looking to expand that and have something that we can grow here within volusia county schools and employ our students in our system so we are working with schoolway cafe we are working with maintenance we are

054working at transportation to build in those opportunities for our students to gain work experience while at school we have job coaches for them that will be side by side with them making sure that they understand thoroughly the the job skills that they need they get to rotate through different aspects of the job to find what fits them and what they would like to see themselves doing we are expanding project search as well we're working with many companies one of which is boston whaler we were hoping to get that started this year unfortunately covid throws a wrench in everything but they are committed to work with us and have our students out there they already have the classroom ready for us to go as well there were a couple other things that i did want to

055highlight dr fritz mentioned our life labs our high schools have life labs but we're looking to expand them so the schools are asking for donations to help us do that obviously it can be expensive what we're envisioning is building an apartment situation at every high school because our students need to know how to keep house right growing up i learned how to keep house that's how i became you when you when you graduate you move out on your own you need to know how to make your bed how to do laundry fold clothes make sure that the kitchen's clean and safe sanitized as the bathrooms and all of those things so we're looking to create that situation at every high school so that we can rotate our students through there's actually a curriculum that we're

056going to purchase once we have them all set up and ready to go and our teachers are excited about getting the opportunity to to teach the students those very needed skills that they need when when they leave us and get those jobs that we're also preparing them to get i'm very excited to announce just in the month of september six of our students have gained full-time or part-time employment through sodexco at embry-riddle we have a work based learning experience and a community-based vocational education program and that we do with emory riddle and already this year six students have gained employment that you know their 20 21 22 years old and they can work there well you know for 40 years if that's what they want so we're very excited and happy emory riddle has really

057been a great partner with us um as has halifax obviously you know with project search so a lot of great things going on um for our students with disabilities and i'm happy to have the opportunity to highlight a few of those so thank you thank you miss files dr fritz anything else no ma'am i'm just very proud of where we're headed thank you thank you for your leadership ms wiles okay um do you mind if the board has any questions okay thank you miss miles so any questions or comments miss haynes i'm going to put a plug in for you to dr fritz dr fritz we believe sr-3 funding is coming and this is actually one of those things that you know i've said we should take the esser money and fill the science labs

058and things like that that we don't normally have money for so i'd like to encourage you that as sr3 comes in we look at funding these life labs for these students because that can kind of be a one-time not all not all items but it could be a one-time thing where we could actually benefit from that money and help these kids and i so appreciate everything and i really appreciate the um partnership with embry riddle because there's you know i've got students from different high schools that i have gotten to know over the past few years and they go to embry riddle and it's it's a highlight i mean those kids go over there and they come back and i appreciate what embry riddle has done um with partnering with us for those kids and

059i i love the whole thing about finding out what what job we can find that they can do so thank you absolutely thank you mrs haynes anyway miss burnett so i get to see some of them at work at halifax and they're workers they are constantly working they're always doing their job and very polite so i just wanted to give them a shout out and the great thing about that is they rotate through all of the aspects of the hospital until they find their niche and and once they find it it's like wow you know and they're so successful so halifax is amazing to work with they they really they feed our kids they give them shoes they give them clothes they just go above and beyond thank you mr gentlemen miss mr purses yeah

060i uh i just think it's timely to bring up what i had sent to you i think earlier today amanda about extending the age uh dr fritz of service i know some states are starting to do it because of covet for a one-year thing and i just copied this down in the state of new york students with into individualized education plans could extend their public school education until they're until age 23 up from age 21 22 which is where we are the extension would be given to students who weren't able to meet key learning and life skill goals because of education changes brought on during covid mandated distant learning and other changes my understanding is currently we have 17 students who are 21 and will turn 22 during this school year when when they would

061normally age out and so i just thought that i know this would be some kind of a policy change or something you'd have to be put on an agenda and i think the the rub with all this is that we only get funded through the age 21 or until they turn 22 but to jamie's point that to me would be like just the perfect use of covid funds because it's we are doing this only because of covert not forever but just maybe just for one year to help to help a group if it's possible i'm just bringing it up to dr fritz and if he wants to put it on a future agenda or if miss wiles wildstars thank you mr pindley and i have been discussing this and talking about the ramifications with funding

062um you know absolutely we'll explore sr3 to see if that would be appropriate yeah use of those funds and then you know it's it is 17 kids yeah um you know that are spread out amongst all of the high schools so it's it's wouldn't be an undue burden necessarily so it's something we certainly can consider of course taking um you know into consideration everything that we have to consider great thank you ma'am chair yeah thank you mr colonel good okay thank you all right thank you i i'm reminded of the the parable which the man goes on the beach and he picks up the clams or the mussels and he throws them back in the ocean and somebody asks why are you taking so much time just to throw one out when there's thousands he

063said well it meant something to that one and it's true each and every one of those 17 um are worth worth the investment so and as well as all of our students um but these in particular so i'm all for that for your suggestions so thank you very much thank you miss wiles okay dr fritz yes i'd like to ask miss lisa's need to come forward she's going to introduce our half cent tax project oversight committee and board members i know you share this sentiment as they come forward this is a voluntary service that these individuals do for us in the school system because they they believe in the school system and they want to make sure that they're helping us again voluntary service that takes a lot of time and i know that you

064would like to certainly wish them thank you miss need if you'd introduce the folks coming forward we'd appreciate it absolutely good evening we tonight we have um jacob lamar's am i pronouncing your name right all right um and jim and he's with uh his own cpa firm charles bella and associates and then we have mr jim mathers president of pa pates homes and when we give the report we'll also recognize the other committee members who are not here with us tonight but these two gentlemen have agreed to give the presentation and as dr fritz mentioned we're thankful for the volunteers who serve on this committee as it is quite a time commitment and they all do have very pretty pretty big jobs so thank you um so the project oversight committee if we just scroll

065through this sorry project oversight committee was formed by the school board and the superintendent to implement and track the progress of the penny half penny sales tax referendum and it consists of six private citizens that are not affiliated with or employed by any businesses or occupations that would have a direct or indirect financial benefit from the projects that we are doing and we also have one member of the volusia school administration the committee prepares an annual report which has to be submitted to the board 90 days at the end of the fiscal year so we're meeting that deadline tonight by getting it in before the 30th of september the other committee members that we have are mr mitch attend director of crm sandy burke bishop florida real estate broker with top shelf properties mr ben

066flowers served on the committee this past year however he stepped down on may of 2021 and then we have mr jason meyer the founder and ceo of synergy billing and greg ubinsky also served on the committee over the past year so with that i'm going to turn it over to these fine gentlemen to give us the presentation update thank you very much thank you for having us dr friends and school board members uh this was a um a busy year uh like i guess most others have been but uh this one was just a little bit different uh we even with the challenges we've had we've stayed on track and had regular monthly meetings throughout the year to review the upcoming projects and current projects and their statuses as they move forward as part of

067the original replacement school or i'm sorry the original list presented to the public uh it involved a lot of different projects of a lot of different facets including replacement schools renovations technology upgrades security upgrades and uh and then we always have those external influences that that come about as as time moves on the next slide here is uh is an update of um what was approved versus what's been spent uh to date so far over the last five years throughout the uh the current sales tax referendum uh that was voted in 2014 you can see a total of 480 million dollars was the estimated grand total for uh of what was projected to come in and be spent for the referendum uh of that uh about just over half of that has been has been

068spent to date as you can see on the slide um you're you're familiar with the the current list but uh the uh internal external influences and and things that come to us on a regular basis with changes is uh is something that is often uh folks wonder wonder what we go through and what we talk about when we meet and uh these internal and external influences obviously the uh pandemic is not one that we have to uh to explain a whole lot about um but uh when it comes to capital projects it does change things a little bit um including construction delays material shortages uh increased costs uh things of that nature are are a big um are a big uh external influence that none of us have any control over that that has really

069uh put a toll on on the the department over the last year and uh they've they've had to uh they've had to juggle quite a bit uh dealing with those things so uh definitely obviously the kobe 19 pandemic has has played a part in some of those those influences um obviously uh as well turnover uh throughout the the school board there's been some turnover in the cabinet uh and with the system uh the the new hires that have come on um have continued to be as transparent as as the old and uh and are getting up to speed and keeping us updated as we need to be updated but we recognize that that is a a definite influence over the department and definitely can definitely take its toll on the department over the course of

070the year so something definitely recognized for uh for the facilities department um on a positive note uh we were forced or not we we as a school school district was forced uh to speed up the one-to-one technology initiative uh which uh distributing over thirty thousand laptops over the course of the last year two years ago would have been a dream and uh and they the department made it happen uh in a very expedited and short period of time and has helped the district vastly get over some of those pandemic related influences that we talked about uh and then and then delayed maintenance of major systems is uh is something that that reader said a little bit uh over the last the last year um and those are things that uh that are being being caught

071up and uh and being dealt with and uh but definitely things that weren't foreseen when the uh when the initiative uh was brought in so so those are also things that are that are being dealt with um and uh just uh the last year it's it's been uh it's been a year of adaption and resiliency uh the fortitude of the students and the teachers uh is a direct reflection of the strong community that we have the strong district that we have and uh it's humbling and uplifting to hear stories of success like we've heard tonight and and the way students are getting through and teachers and the district is getting through what what we've gone through over the last year um we've had to be creative flexible versatile and uh and all those things are

072happening to help move forward um our role as an oversight committee is is strictly that it's uh it's to be involved and updated on the capital improvement projects uh that were presented to the general public back in 2014 when that initiative was voted in and just to make suggestions and guidelines and recommendations to to you the school board because ultimately those decisions are in your hands so we are extremely happy with uh with the transparency that that the school board i'm sorry the district provides us and in our regular meetings and uh they they continue to give regular updates on construction projects uh and uh the the different facets of the of what the half ten half cent school ferry have since sales tax covers taking anything to add as jim said in sorry you

073all know it's been a challenging year from for many standpoints especially with the pandemic and such we've had some delays on on some of the projects but i think we're making progress moving forward daytona middle the ortono osceola i think we're all moving ahead in the right direction external things we cannot control pandemic material costs are skyrocketing um but with all that being said i mean we've we've had a lot of bright things come over the past year i think one thing that we projected 45 million in in revenues coming in and we had over 50. so i mean that was a very pleasant surprise to have a excess of 5 million come in as jim alluded to i think there was over 33 000 laptops distributed to the to the students um so just

074with everything happening and and all the challenges and the turnover and just everything all together um that being said i think it was a a positive year overall and uh the future is from our standpoint as an oversight committee is is very bright okay um i so again i want to thank you gentlemen and the committee i also want to thank dr shanoff and his department because they're definitely the ones who do the work behind these projects and um dolly wiederman also who's excellent at kind of bringing me up to speed in the role of this committee and all of the different facets that it takes and she she does a great job with that so that's that's all i have do you all have any questions okay okay thank you mr need dr pitts

075is that all right thank you very much um i appreciate your partnership we need you um we recognize we we cut you a big check to do this job so thank you thank you thank you very much for the dedication of your time and your expertise and working with our team comments from the board thank you dr prince yes mr cohen thank you guys for your service i know not only do you deserve a raise so we'll throw that in the next budget note a penny is a raise but i know you guys go on beyond uh the scope to ensure that the money is spent appropriately so again thank you for volunteering your time to yourself and all the other members of this board who oversight committee who also spend their time to do

076that so thank you mr purchase well i would be remiss if i didn't say this and the sport's tired of me saying it but as we look at that 2014-15 list of schools there's only one school that hasn't started yet from the do we all know the name of that school enterprise so if we could get that that school started as soon as possible that would be great and i know we have to wait for beachside to move out and uh and get that going so i am i am hoping beachside stays on track and uh and you i don't know what you guys monitor that schedule to how they're doing jim maybe you could so yeah we don't take an active part in in monitoring that schedule we take the projects that are presented

077to us and and offer our our opinions and as much guidance as we can from the general public on behalf of the general public but as far as the order that that things go in and and the timing that it happens uh is more of a staff that that's that's what they do every day so so we're just on board to help kind of um give guidance wherever we can yeah and as uh jacob said the the good news obviously is that more money is coming in than what we had originally thought uh even through the the pandemic so um that helps to offset those increased costs that are also coming in so uh it's all good okay thank you mr president ladies yes miss burnett i just want to thank you because i know

078it's a lot of time out of your day to spend time whether it's every day or monthly you still spend a lot of time preparing for for meeting and spend a lot of time talking to the community so thank you for advocating for us you miss haynes i want to i too want to reiterate thank you because and i know thank you is not really enough because you've you've taken time away from your families and other opportunities that you might have to be able to serve on this committee and be the liaison between us and the community but what i find so compelling that i think people need to know is not only do you volunteer for this but you make sure that we stay in line with exactly what we told the community we

079were going to do when we asked them to approve that half cent sales tax and i think that's so important because the transparency piece is there and we're using the funding for what we exactly said we would do for it so thank you so much thank you i i want to address something a little different i read your annual report i found it very honest very accurate and i don't know who put it all together but it took many many hours and i want to say thank you for the accountability that you put on our shoulders and if you don't mind i'd like to read the second paragraph in your committee's recommendations and conclusions i think the public like to hear it the public oversight committee as appointed representatives of the citizens of volusia county

080are tasked with providing oversight of the spending of funds generated by the half cent sales tax as committed by the citizens of volusia county we bear no responsibility for the spending and are only entrusted with ensuring the volusia county school board and the district staff remain accountable to the citizens of volusia county we ensure that the district's capital spending remains in accordance with the original capital project list presented and approved by voters in two thousand fourteen and it went into effect january two thousand nineteen wasn't it two thousand thousand seven two thousand seventeen i know it was an odd number thank you ultimately these spending decisions remain with the members of the volusia county school board the project oversight committee holds this as the foundation of our oversight and strive to remain adequately informed of

081all decisions regarding the spending of these funds by doing this we can provide assurance to the voters that they get what they paid for though through our half cent sales tax and i also want to say thank you i know there's been some in the past there's some difficulty with when you're meeting and when the district is meeting with you i hope we continue to work with them and not just tell them what we're doing and just say here it is take it or leave it i firmly believe in this oversight committee um i value your work i mean and it's just far and beyond it should be put on engraved on your backs with tattoos i served on the oversight committee it's that very important and long lasting but as long as we work

082together and consult you about future projects instead of telling you this is what we've done we're just telling you what we've done that's not what the job of the oversight committee does so i hope as we move forward in this year when we have a little more time maybe to you know not have to do things so quickly that we work with you and bring projects to you to consult with you ahead of time before we make those final decisions and i know our technology and our uh operations department as well as our finance department can do that with you so i from the bottom of our hearts i don't think there's um i don't think we can very much say thank you enough uh of your dedication because without you in this project oversight

083committee we wouldn't have a half cent sales tax and that's why on all of our almost uh all of our rebuilds and some of our renovations we put this is what your half cent sales taxes do we put that banner up to advertise and we should also put on our future banners as you know oversight committee project or oversight committee um understood or accepted or something or approved by the oversight committee really unless you don't want the advertising well that's appreciated it's the public's money and yes so everyone that spends money in volusia county pays for those schools and so that's that's yeah that's who deserves the credit oh absolutely and it's through their generosity that we're able to provide the schools that we are able to so thank you for your your part in

084making all that happen thank you thank you okay thank you very much thank you sirs thank you very much thank you lisa okay that was the amended agenda we brought 19.01 forward now we will go to uh 5.01 public participation at 6 30 certain and it's we're about 11 minutes late uh mrs schulz do we have any cards okay we have we're hearing public participation uh that have to do with the general issues of education in our school district we have 15 minutes set aside i will read the first person to come forward i have three minutes to speak as soon as the three minutes is over your time is over and it's time for the next person to speak so i will say the first person and the second person so the second person

085can come up make sure you're speaking into the microphone state your name as well as the area of the county you were from so elizabeth albert is first and then scott clearly good evening madam chair board members dr fritz members of the audience i'd like to speak with you today about priorities and the crisis that is currently occurring within volusia county schools as you know we have a substantial number of vacancies in our schools and our work sites the hr update that will be provided this evening is very interesting but as it was pointed out in a previous board meeting numbers can be made to show a variety of outcomes i'd like to remind you that each one of those numbers the averages and the percents equate to students who are not being taught by

086a certified teacher or receiving supports from an educational support professional although the data will be presented in a manner that would lead you to believe that the 108 instructional vacancies and the 129 support vacancies are evenly spread throughout the districts i wonder how that data would look if it were provided in a school-by-school breakdown certainly d5 with 29 instructional vacancies and only 15 schools is sure to look very different than the others so further please recognize that the educational professionals currently working in our schools are doing yeoman's work to provide the highest quality academic instruction and supports to our students it's time that the board and the district begin to recognize the sacrifices and dedication of our current employees i am not a fan of using tricks and gimmicks like hiring bonuses for potential employees

087while our current employees continue to suffer and fall further behind there is no greater crisis than not being able to provide a certified teacher or educational support professional to our students it is time to stop talking about making things better and to actually prioritize those who are doing the work we must realize that without our educational professionals our systems will fail and that our clients our parents will seek other options we're not going to need to worry about the parents bill of rights or school choice because we won't be able to provide what they need for their students or their children and they will go elsewhere we are not competitive with other districts or the private sector our teachers are looking to leave to work in other districts and our support professionals are looking to

088work in the private sector um we can't compete with the wages and benefits that are being offered in other places so you know this guy right 12 to start if you're a crew member fifteen dollars if you're a manager you guys know where this is fifteen dollars to start plus benefits you all should know what this is they come to some of our houses almost every single day particularly mine they're starting at sixteen dollars an hour and the one i'm the biggest fan of all right down the street from us mr purchase yes right and this is no joke starting at six fifteen dollars an hour for cashiers with uh 401k three weeks paid vacation and benefits now let's talk about school districts we are the lowest school district in i got 25 seconds in

089central florida with 44 335 for our our instructional folks lake 44 750 seminole 46 310 flagler 47.5 orange 475 osceola 46 1. my point here is this we have to retain the people that we have the people that are sacrificing and doing what we need them to do we've got to do better thank you thank you miss albert mr scott clearly and then mr dr jerry pikett good evening sir good evening madam chair board members dr fritz um two weeks ago you made some decisions and i've been kind of thinking about them since then and while i could say many things i i want to bring something up that was often expounded upon by dr caldwell who you may well remember that was unintended curriculum when less than one-fourth of our students have in fact

090opted out i'm concerned we have taught that the minority can terrorize the majority to act from position of fear moreover i'm concerned about something else something a discussion earlier this year between either mr persis or mr clone and attorney doran in that in essence the advice of council was that maintaining federal guidelines would shield this district from liability now with the functional end of quarantine protocols i wonder what unintended consequences we may yet face thank you very much mr cleary dr jerry pikett and then kelly faust good evening sir good evening good evening madam chair members of the board community group business partners superintendent schools again i come before the board to express my concerns as related to the success of all focused and struggling schools as well as the educational inequalities and discrimination of

091minorities as related to volusia county schools leadership and instructional faculty superintendent we need you to take a stand for what is right for everyone you were chosen for a reason and for that very reason you should challenge yourself to leave with the highest level of conviction honesty integrity and character that you can demonstrate as a former principal at campbell middle school axel served on the most critical time in the history of the school that was based on jerry pike as a person the district wanted me to lead on my own conviction being monitored closely by the state come and i would also add to assess my decisions and the results to report on record by the state their findings so i'm asking the superintendent if you were in a situation as such what would you

092do mr willie williams 29 years of service hands down one of the most impactful school leaders in volusia county we allowed the system to fail him the same system that's going to eventually change the grading system in the state of florida currently as an assistant principal he still upholds what he represents as a volusia county schools leader i think leadership needs to take this situation and make it right so i asked dr fritz if this person was you what would you do dr stephanie owens an administrator that worked alongside me at campbell middle strong leader very compassionate love the kids outstanding esc knowledge named esc ap of the year and i asked how could a person with those accolades all of a sudden not understand her job so i asked if this person was mrs

093fritz what would you do and finally tequila d pike at my wife 20-year educator and yes one of her curriculum roles is testing lead and have served at sea breeze high school 28 years she's been a reading coach and she served in multiple levels at the school now all of a sudden dr fritz she doesn't meet the expectation to serve as a school administrator at the end of her career so i'm asking you as a superintendent if this was mrs fritt fritz and i'm sorry what would you do so i conclude by saying history tells us in the most critical times and the toughest situations the very best leaders are able to get the best results for the greater good i'm asking you make the right choice thank you dr pikett miss kelly felst and

094then willie williams good evening good evening before i start i want to tell you guys okay make sure you speak into the microphone i'm sorry so we can hear you i've never done this before okay so okay siri is working here okay state your name the area of the county you're from and then you have your three minutes okay my name is kelly faust and i live in deland florida and volusia county thank you you're welcome okay am i doing good so far okay all right um i'm so nervous that's okay but all right i'm trying to take deep breaths here what i wanted to come and talk to all of you about is the employee mask mandate that you guys have gone on right now and i it doesn't affect me personally but my

095husband is an employee here and while he's not a teacher he works in a different area altogether he's a mechanic so being a mechanic he's working on cars buses every and all kinds of vehicles and so sometimes he could be in a bus in a car have his head stuck inside an engine or underneath you know looking at the chassis and all kinds of pieces parts and it's been a tough year and a half doing that because the covet and the mass and everything when the mass were off it was okay now the master back on for the employees it's tough because of the type of manual labor that he's doing and he he'll come home and he's got a couple male cloth mouths he'll put him in his little blue bucket wash them out

096and hang dry them and use them again for the week and everything so i know he's not a teacher and i know everybody seems to be super you know focused you know teaching everything like that but you got to think about the non-teachers too i mean the people who are you know working on the cars and the buses and everything like that and it takes a toll on him he has to stop he has to take extra time he has difficulties breathing and focusing and getting lightheaded excuse me and so i know you've got something coming some kind of i'm not all familiar with it some kind of review coming up in october so i'm just kind of hoping that you'll take that into consideration and kind of let the employees have the option of

097wearing a mask or not but like i said you know i i see this every day and you know i witness it every day and my husband's not the only mechanic that works for districts so i'm quite sure that everybody who's a mechanic or you know warehouse person or maintenance person has the same struggles so i just thought i'd come and explain and thank you mrs faust we heard you loud and clear thank you so very much and we appreciate you coming here tonight thank you very much ma'am mr williams good evening sir good evening good evening madam chair excuse me greetings to madame chair linda cuthbert school board members superintendent dr fritz my name is willie f williams jr and i live in daytona beach at the last meeting at the end of my

098remarks madam chair commented that the rosa parks book will be a part of the agenda conference i was hopeful that we would get a complete and full investigation into why the book was pulled at tonight's meeting i will repeat again the decision to pull the rosa parks book by eloise greenfield was the worst decision in the 29 years i've been an educator again this is not the union's fault putting the book back does not solve the issue i exchanged emails with dr bagama about my concern with the book being pulled i feel as if i was dismissed as someone who did not matter i asked dr balgerman did we order the book on dr mary mcleod bethune also by eloise greenfield and still have got no response this is what happens in a district that

099gives lip service to equity diversity and inclusion it is not lost on me when i see we have no black representation on the school board if this issue with rosa parks is not transparently investigated before the board this board has lost all credibility with the assault on educational freedom and all the talk around teaching critical race theory and the white washing of history i can't believe you could miss this badly on this decision this is how the racist incident at ormond beach middle school happens a substitute teacher and a hangman activity with the n word spelled out and being encouraged by white students in the class while two black male students have to endure this trauma if one of the young scholars had not taken out his phone and snapped a picture and showed his

100mother i wonder if we would heard anything about it this is how so many black educators don't see any future in this district because our superintendent has a process that favors his friends and privilege more than qualification i sent an email to dr frick asking about the process for the campbell middle school principal job he touts communication and transparency let's be clear i love principal matthews she came to spartan country as a teacher a few years after i started i support her 100 i asked about the process since i applied for the job and did not get an interview then there was a big secret as to who was on the interview committee and who were the applicants and when were they interviewed i heard nothing so i did a public records request found out

101who was on the committee and six applicants but only one kimberly matthews was interviewed on teams on august 23rd at 1 pm now you say community is important i grew up in south street south side for life baby i went to campbell as a student came back to campbell as a teacher the spirit of the number one spartan earl c mccreary and papa spartan stanley h witted runs through my veins and i don't get an interview the people on the committee didn't ask any question as to why only one person was interviewed crushing dr eagle x kennedy in his book how to be an anti-racist talks about racist policies and people who will race his power if we ought to change the current state of our community then we have to be actively anti-racist you're

102either a segregationist assimilationist or an anti-racist why am i outraged look at our world right now history will record where you stood in this moment as for me i'm an anti-racist learning all i can to make my community better we've got to do better thank you and to god be the glory thank you mr williams um at this time this concludes public participation we've had our 15 minutes we will have a 10 minute break thank you we'll be back in 10 minutes you thank you for coming back we will resume our meeting 5.01 public participation concerning items for the consent agenda ms schultz do we have any cards for the consent agenda so okay we have one card mr williams you want to address 15.03 on our consent agenda i think let me look let

103me get that read for you sir 15.03 is the approval of the superintendent's 2122 evaluation instrument you have three minutes sir excellent thank you greetings to matt greetings madam chair linda cuthbert school board member superintendent dr fritz my name is willie frank williams jr and i live in daytona beach i'm here tonight to speak on a board action item 15.03 approval of superintendents 2021-22 evaluation instrument the purpose to assess the performance of the superintendent during the contract year with regard to the following areas of competency high quality instruction high quality staff safe and supportive environment resources and operational processes communication and community engagement effective board relations i know that these eras mirror the strategic plan with the addition of effective void relation my first noticing after reviewing the metrics for success is that they are

104too low in my opinion superintendent fritz says with confidence that one of the reasons he was hired a superintendent is that he has a track record of moving schools as it relates to student achievement let's see it represented in his evaluation for example category 1 high quality instruction performance indicators 1.1 improve district grade from 52 for school year 2021 to 54 school year 2122 way too low a bar in my opinion the goal is an a correct on our way to an aid the volusia way 62 should be the bar for this year category 2 high quality staff should add this statement on the end of performance indicators 2.1 to 2.5 that focusing intentionally on equity diversity and inclusion category 3 safe and supportive environment should add this statement at the end of the performance

105indicators 3.1 to 3.4 with a focus on equity diversity and inclusion to to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline especially for our black and brown students with additional intensity on our males category 5 community communication and community engagement performance indicators 5.1 through 5.5 should add this statement especially in and with our marginalized communities i believe the bar is also low on superintendent's contract performance goals number one academics i think you know i don't believe in the grading system schools are so much more than grades this system historically measures income over competence standardized tests only perpetuates the narrative that a class system exists where marginalized communities suffer but it's a system we have for now so the bar should be every elementary middle or high school is either an a or b every metric starts at the b

106level in my view we can't send the message that a c is acceptable for example the metric all elementary schools will have learning gains in reading and math with the lowest quartile students of 42 percent or higher black and brown and students with disabilities overwhelmingly make up the students in the lowest quartile are we sending a message we are okay with them at the c level 54 should be a minimum expectation for every group i believe every employee last year in volusia county schools had a formal evaluation except the superintendent if the superintendent says that student achievement is why he was hired i believe his evaluation instrument should reflect his level of expertise thank you so much and to god be the glory thank you very much mr williams okay would you please give it

107to ms levin please thank you sir okay 6.01 are there any items that need to be removed from the consent agenda dr britt you have any no is there any board recommendations yes ms haynes i would just like to make a comment about item 9.0 application of pathways to career opportunities grant yes yes ma'am because this is in the consent agenda i was afraid that people may not like notice it and so i wanted to draw attention to this because i think it's very important that our students and parents and community members hear what this application is for we were very fortunate at the beginning of this school year to go out to pine ridge high school where we opened up the hvac program and when mr colon and i joined the school board it

108was very apparent that the west side of the county didn't necessarily always have the same offerings as the east side of the county and i want to just say thank you to everyone that has worked on this grant and is submitting it because this is actually going to impact another one of our schools on the west side of the county as well as a school on the east side of the county and this is something that we need to move into and so for those that are listening in from home and maybe have not opened up you know the multiple attachments for this we're looking at adding an electrical academy piece that will allow a pre-apprenticeship and i really want to say thank you to all of our local electrical companies that have stepped forth

109to say that they will support us in this and that they are willing to employ our students when they finish this program and help them with the next step which would be their apprenticeship to become electricians because this is a need in our community i don't know if anyone's tried to get an electrician lately to do anything at their home or their business but it's very difficult and so i am so appreciative and i'm hoping that this goes through and that we are awarded this because it's going to impact mainland high school on the east side of the county and it's going to impact taylor middle high on this side of the county and taylor is that place that we all know because of its size lots of times it gets overlooked and so i'm

110very thankful and i appreciate mrs costelli and all of the work her and her team have done and anyone else that has worked on this and so i think we've just got to make sure that it comes through because this is another thing that our kids deserve and i just didn't want it to be overlooked by being buried in the consent i totally agree thank you yes any other comments okay then uh 6.02 approval of the consent agenda is there a motion motion to approve agenda as presented second uh the motion has been made by mr rubin colon and seconded by mr carl persis to accept the consent agenda as written and read any other further comments okay all those in favor please say aye aye all those disapproved please say the consent agenda has

111been approved thank you very much 16.01 the superintendent's announcements and comments just two quick ones tuesday october 12th at 10 a.m we will have a workshop here in this boardroom and then our regularly scheduled board meeting will be at 3 30 also on the 12th i'm chair back to you okay thank you sir uh let's see 18.01 human resources update dr fritz i'm going to ask mr west to come forward and as he does um let me share with the board as you know i was with fellow superintendents last thursday and friday um as well as dr bagelman and i'm going to share with you that the conversation is vacancies um it's been very different than in the past there's been other conversations that happened but that really has been the the flavor if you

112will and we are not immune to them i'm going to tell you we're not immune to vacancies there are var variety of reasons but it is not specific just to volusia county and so some of the things that mr west is going to talk to you about today are some of the initiatives that we are putting in to help mitigate some of those vacancies but again you know this is one that's plaguing our our profession not just even the state of florida it's it's difficult to get people to go into this profession at all areas and it's becoming more and more difficult and when i was talking to one of my cabinet members about this yesterday the comment was made this didn't start last year this started five years ago and that that's truer words

113could not have been said so mr west is going to go through a little bit with us today mr west thank you dr fritz and thank you board members for having the opportunity to come tonight um and obviously thank you miss albert for bringing up the significance of what this this issue is in regards to human capital because i think everybody it's on everyone's mind it's something that significant we know is because having highly qualified employees in front of our students and doing the jobs that they need to do throughout the district is critical so i appreciate you giving me this opportunity and this time to come every board meeting and uh report out to you um and of course i'm gonna go ahead and through the slides here and so that is there it

114is sorry about that um it's uh based of course on our enrollment and our students that are here in our district this year as compared to last year you're going to notice we have about 5 900 more students here than we had last year that's a good problem to have but that also means of course that we have need more teachers and in front of our students and more employees to support those teachers of course you're familiar with um what the information that we put before you i just want to take a second to acknowledge the efforts and the data that's being collected around this and i'm going to single out miss hazel tonight because you all know she does a phenomenal job all the time but she specifically calls every principal every week to

115get you this information and what i don't show at the board meeting but of course each of you do get at the end of each week is every vacancy that you have broken down by school so this is just kind of a summary of what it is that i share at the board for the public's consumption and that sort of thing but you have that information each week and we like to just go over the numbers we're we're not trying to hide anything we're trying to be as transparent as possible to make sure that you have the information in front of you it is true when we take a look at the numbers the number that we have here and we've broken it down for you for classroom vacancies and you see district-wide is currently

116at 77. but the encouraging thing that along those lines is that we've actually hired 21 or excuse me filled 21 of those vacancies and by the way i'm going to mention this a little later on that's in addition to whoever has left in the meantime so we're actually on the positive side 21 people so we'll talk a little bit more about how loas and resignations have affected us this year as well we do have our non-classroom vacant non-classroom instructional vacancies as well and you'll notice those vacancies have actually gone up so what is typically or what we have seen has happened is our principals have like resolved ourselves and the teachers have said i would rather fill a classroom vacancy than sit in a coaching position all year long with the opportunity of possibly not

117having a teacher go into that vacancy so that's why those numbers are the way that they are and then of course our support vacancies as miss albert mentioned about 129 vacancies that we have across the district and i'm going to tell you about a little over 100 of those are paraprofessionals so those are an area that we are really definitely hitting and and looking to see what we could do to improve so as we go through each district you're going to notice of course miss haynes there with district one it hasn't broken out and and what we have there i want you to also keep in mind as we're going through each one this is including the additional allocations that we added in the last or since school started um as miss wiles stood up

118and and and came up and talked about what we're doing to support our esc students as well we have added a number of allocations to support our esc students including peras as well so uh that kind of contributes to some of those vacancies the encouraging news okay that's not here we have 30 schools with no classroom vacancies zero okay and that that is a positive thing that's the hard work of the principals that are out there right now to make sure that those classroom vacancies are filled we have 19 schools that have no instructional vacancies at all in in their schools so our principals are working hard and they are doing what they need to um to try to get those vacancies filled i i don't need to go through each district here because i

119know that you all have seen this data but as we go through district uh two will notice that um we have 13 classroom vacancies there in district 3 11 classroom vacancies once again those support vacancies are those areas those hot topics that we're looking at with 18 in district 3. district um 17 classroom vacancies and 18 support vacancies across the schools and of course the district 5 as uh miss albert mentioned before we have 14 classroom vacancies but in addition to those non-classroom vacancies of 15 that is in 29 instructional vacancies in district 5. but once again i'll point you to the support vacancies is a concern there with 28 as well so we obviously have have been working um and i want to share a little bit with our recruitment office um because what

120i was going to to to say and one of the things that we've really worked on is not just hiring teachers because you'll notice last year we hired 355 teachers by this time last year this year we've actually heard 475. so even though we've hired 120 teachers more than we did last year let me share with you some more disturbing news okay and that is when we take into account our leave of absences combined with our resignations okay last year we had loas and and resignations for the period that we're at right now this year we're up to 341. so you'll see we we're still on the upside we've hired we're on the plus side of about 30 teachers more than we were last year but we're having a hard time because i feel like

121we take two steps forward and one step back with not only recruitment but retention as well so we are working to try to get our teachers here in the state we have taken another step that has not been done before and that is our centralized hiring and you'll see that we've interviewed a number of the folks that are out there that are qualified for these um for these vacancies particularly in ese our critical shortage areas our science our math our ela and we've been able to offer um positions to a number of those candidates now for the candidates that actually have accepted and come in they're not as many as we would like but hey it's like ms comfort said about that starfish it's one at a time right absolutely um so what i do

122want to do is talk to you a little bit about the paraprofessionals because this is the situation that we're we're recognizing is is somewhat it's it's i don't want to say it's dire but it is is a an area that needs our focus and our attention and um what i'm going to talk about a little bit is not really tricks or gimmicks but it really is about what we're trying to do to recruit folks from outside to get them to to come to our district and to do the job that possibly they want to do we have offered an mou to both unions in regards to not only a signing bonus for anybody that comes on but also i'll call it a finder speed bonus for our current existing employees so we've offered uh that

123mou to both of our unions the asme has agreed uh to that already and we are we are undergoing that and moving forward with that with our bus drivers and our bus attendants um we're we're working with the view to hopefully sign that mou for our paraprofessionals because we recognize that is a definite need in addition of course we are in negotiations to look to see what we could do for salaries as well but an area that um we've been working on and we've actually met with a couple of companies this past week um in looking at our substitutes and potentially trying to enhance what we're doing with our substitutes and they're staffing companies that are out there that will help us with providing subs what i found was very interesting was that when we

124started talking to both of these staffing companies um they ask us well what's your feel right right now and when we told them they're like oh well that's actually higher than our fill rate so i i actually had rachel gather some information for you on our substitutes and it's a single piece of paper here and it actually tells you by day since the start of the school year what our sub fill rate was for the school district and you'll see our average is about 82.3 percent those companies that i was talking about has been hovering around the 70s so i think the recognition as dr fritz kind of mentioned it was that this year is a very difficult year for for all companies and by the way not just education this is across the board

125but we are looking to do some things to try to encourage our substitute fill rate not just our teacher subs but our para subs as well so i've established a committee of principles because i will tell you they have some great ideas of what we can do um you know from looking to see what we can do to the actual sub pay rate and we have comparisons to what other districts are doing to potentially providing some sort of maybe benefits to them stealing that from some of those staffing companies you know we would look at the the status of what they are and see what we could do to provide some additional benefits to our substitutes so you'll be seeing some things that i'm going to be bringing to you all hopefully by the end

126of october that's going to help truly incentivize what we want to do with our subs so um that really is the um the presentation that i have tonight um it's not all rosy but it it's it is what it is and we are all working very hard to do what we can to get our qualified qualified employees in front of our students thank you thank you questions or comments from the board yes ms haynes so i actually um had written an email and asked for a lot of different data on these topics because this is one of the things i wanted to speak about this evening and what is happening because um even and i don't know if they get i don't think they sent to each of you everything so that's the thing that

127i'd like to bring up right now first mr doran we've talked about this before if one of us asks for some data you know via email or whatever such as asking for how many vacancies there are in different categories what's our sub fill rate um you know i mean i have the whole list i thought that we had had an agreement that if i asked for something or mr persis asked or something that when we got the response the response would come back to all of us so that we could all see what the question was that was asked and we would all have access to the data is that accurate well that's certainly accurate as far as information that's requested of me but as far as the district i think that's been the practice

128but i i don't well let me jump in here i'm sorry miss haynes when some the information that you asked today we we just tried to pull it together as quickly as possible and so you did send an email requesting a number of different items and that was that was on me because i basically just gathered the information from a number of sources and sent it right back to you because i wasn't exactly sure what you needed but i can definitely share that with the remainder of the board i was not trying to keep it from anyone but no and i wasn't actually referring to today's because okay you you did that very quickly okay and and i didn't even know that it would be done that quickly and and i appreciate um how quickly

129you did it i was just referring to um other items you know because we sometimes learn and that's why you know i i brought my questions because i didn't i wanted to be transparent that i asked these questions and i asked for this data i just know that at other times at board meetings it's been brought up by a board member where they asked a question and they have data and then the rest of us don't have that data and so i just would like to reiterate that you know we establish a practice because the way that we can all work together the best is if we know what questions have been asked and we all receive the data and so i i do know mr dorn that if we ask you a question you

130provide it to all of us and i would just like the same courtesy to happen when we're asking district staff um for data and and and i'm not referencing you today because you didn't have much of a turnaround time for this but i did i asked for data i asked about this subfill rate i asked about how many substitutes we had that were active at this time versus substitutes that are inactive you know how many you know what was our fill rate looking like each day at schools because i've started hearing from some parents where children are missing two and three class periods either sitting in the media center the gymnasium or the auditorium because there's no substitutes or there's no classroom teacher so that's why even though um and i have to say a

131big thank you to miss hazel because she sent me mine on sunday evening and i thought here she is on a sunday giving up her time to send me a chart that shows by school each vacancy and what the vacancy category is so i thank miss hazel for that as i said this is the best data we've ever received and i i know we're all appreciative for receiving that and i know that she's taking her giving up her weekend to do this um so i thank her for that but one of the primary focuses and i know i was not the only board member that had this focus when i came onto this board was that we would build our budget from the school level up and we would staff our classrooms first because and

132this is me speaking i'm not speaking for anyone else on this board i spent many years working for volusia county schools where my perception was we built our budget from the top down instead of first staffing our schools we're here to educate children and they come first everything beyond that education piece yes we need everyone okay we need bus drivers we need bus attendants schoolway cafe guardians you know custodians we we need district staff but and dr fritz i don't think i'd be remiss to say i told you that was like my top priority was to have our schools staffed so one of the other things that i asked for that i don't think any of you received and miss hazel once again worked on this and it's it's even more detailed than what i

133was asking for but i asked where we are right now um because i i only see my page you know where i can look at blue lake elementary and say blue lake elementary still needs a classroom teacher where i can look at deland high and deland high may need two core teachers and a non-core teacher we've got to staff those spots like i we shouldn't hear from a parent that we're at this point and their child still doesn't have a teacher in front of them or that they're missing three or four periods a day without a teacher providing instruction because that to me is heartbreaking so what i asked for and what i have and and i think miss hazel would be willing to give it all to you but i need to explain what

134i was asking for i asked for a breakdown by each campus how many individuals were certified on each campus that were not tied to a classroom okay but they were certified teachers or educators and and i'll just use one of my schools as an example one of my elementary schools has a third grade vacancy but it has one two three um academic intervention teachers and i really was not looking for counselors but she gave that information to me and i wasn't looking for a media teacher or even the esau teachers but she gave that to me so i listen those intervention teachers are great but where are we at if if that third grade class is not getting their core instruction how are we benefiting from the intervention piece because if they've missed their core

135instruction which comes the first layer because we didn't put a teacher in there then i'm struggling with okay but we'll we'll pull six kids out of that group to give them intervention and i'm not saying that they don't need intervention but they need core first so my purpose in asking for this is i think we need to take a long hard look at what's happening at our school level and a few years ago mr west we put a freeze on pulling anyone off of school campuses and bringing them into district positions because we said our priority was our schools i have recently heard that we are taking some and and listen it's i i love every one of those teachers but we're taking some teachers right now off of school campuses and putting them in

136district positions so that still means we're looking from here down instead of focusing on building this strong and you know i've said it before if we don't build the foundation and that's what we are in our classrooms first then we we can put we can put a hundred more people at the district which i disagree with okay but that's not going to be the instructional piece for our students and every one of us no matter what job role we're sitting in here tonight our focus first is kids and so i want to thank your team because i know i asked some other questions and if that information can also be shared with my colleagues i would appreciate it but dr fritz i'm going to say to you again tonight i'm challenging you to take a

137long hard look and look at each of these schools just like we get the report so that we know what's happening and i'll be honest with you until i was handed this tonight i didn't know at that school i knew there was a position but i didn't know what the position was okay but thank you miss hazel for allowing me to know what the position is as of today and i know it could change tomorrow but i think we've got to staff our schools first because if we can get our schools staffed first yes i totally agree we got to work on the substitute piece and figure out how to get people and and i i'm putting a big plug out there if you are a parent a community member a grandparent a guardian and

138you don't already have a full-time job and you can even give us one day a week to be a sub i would encourage you to walk through the process to do that for all of our students because they are our future but i think we've got to take a long hard look and that may ruffle some people's feathers but ultimately anyone that came into volusia county with an and is certified to teach i have to believe in their heart they came to teach and to make a difference for children and that's where we need them first and i'd like to ask you dr fritz and i know that you know it's your decision but i'd like to ask you not to take any more teachers off of campuses at this time or any support positions

139at this time and move them to district positions because our schools need them that's all i have to say at this time thank you very much uh miss haynes anyone else yes mr cologne and then i have a question so substitutes are golden well they're they're not a part of bargaining units so really this is something that we as a board should we have the desire to do can have an impact on and what i would hate to do is because i mean we all agree our subs are way underpaid right now bottom line and yes there are other people that are also underpaid bottom line and i know we're in negotiations right now but you know it really um you know when our subs just went up to 10 bucks an hour because of

140the minimum wage houston we have a problem and what i working in an industry that uses a lot of staffing agencies and all that what ends up happening is the organization is willing to put more money into hiring those folks because everybody's got to make a dollar both the employee and the company rather than allotting that funding to just make it right i'm curious and you may not know the answer to this i know i didn't ask you before but you know everything so it's okay how many permanent subs do have folks who serve us all year long i mean it's just a rough number and if you don't know the answer we could talk about it offline but folks who serve us all year round and have just been a staple to our operation

141how many would you say we have in the district so i'm going to qualify when you say permanent subs you're probably talking about what we call long-term subs which go on uh for more than in our our practice is if they go more than 30 days we consider them a permanent sub so for example if we have a vacancy or a teacher that's on leave for the year we may hire a sub into that position and try to keep that sub consistently for the entire year so that is the question and and um i think we had that number at one point and it was it was not a real large number but it was um something that was manageable and so that's kind of one of the ideas of what we're floating to is

142if we're looking at somebody that we would consider a long-term sub if we could kind of ratchet up their benefits if they're willing to stay with us for that period of time even though they may not meet the qualifications obviously for certification reasons or whatever is a teacher but they they could do that as a substitute those are some of the things that we're looking at to try to look at a long-term sub and the benefits that we could give them because i'll share with my colleagues and i and i do owe you a response on this dr fritz we had some folks who served us all last year and were not eligible for the thousand dollars that we gave everybody else and you know these are folks who served us i mean in a

143year that nobody i mean i mean it it was a it was difficult for a lot of folks and so um you know those those are the things that leave a very very bad taste in folks mouth and so i you know dr dr fritz has agreed to look into it and i haven't given you the opportunity to but i think you know the subs we can impact and um i'm glad to hear that we're considering that i we have one young lady who has been working as a permanent sub for almost 20 years and everybody seems to know her i just met her and she has been one of these subs that when the teacher is out she takes the class and she's there for pre-planning she's there she's her classroom for a year

144and you know due to circumstances she needed health benefits so she had to change her position to take another position which is not in the classroom in order to get health insurance so as we discuss about the and by the way this young lady loves being in the classroom but she's not in the classroom right now because she needed health insurance so i i think it's you know we're gonna have to be innovative all businesses are getting innovative as it relates to the workforce and i i don't know that i favor going to a staffing company because usually they charge theirs and then some verse you know when we still have a lot of work to do to even make it inviting for folks to come and and do the difficult work that is required

145so bring us ideas bring us numbers i mean at least that's what we're trying to do is bring options because i mean you know fortunately that group there we really can make a difference on you know agree so thank you i need to correct something in the same said we don't have campuses with teachers running all over without in front of kids the majority if we have intervention teachers are filling vacancies i met i've met with half our principals yesterday and that was the topic of conversation a lot of the academic coaches and intervention specialists are filling vacancies on their sites that's where they're at i'm not saying it's a hundred percent but that's that's what we're we've already encouraged our teams to do that and at the district level we're sitting on positions and

146we have six positions in elementary right now that need to be serving other schools that we're not filling unless we can find somebody from outside the district so i think we're doing the right work i think that we need to go back to where the problem is rather than throwing stones the problem is there aren't people out there and this didn't start the beginning of this school year it's gotten worse there's no question about it but we have encouraged every single principal that if you have an academic coach a literacy coach a math coach an intervention person on your campus and you have a vacancy that's where they need to go more than encourage we've told them that that's where they need to go thank you madam chair thank you dr fritz um i just

147have some specific clarifications on your um slide number 10 the centralized hiring update did the candidates who accepted um positions or the candidates we offered positions um those who didn't accept our positions did they give you a reason why so some of them did and some of them didn't you'll notice the second column there is actually candidates who took jobs elsewhere yes so a number of them actually uh did to take jobs elsewhere some that we just offered positions to just simply said this isn't for me so they would go to another position and you'll notice that um you know some of them for example if it was an esc position um if they were looking for a support facilitation position and it might have been a multi position then you know they made that

148choice to get to do something else but um that yeah it's kind of broken down and some of them did tell us that it was the job that they took somewhere else and sometimes it was just that they chose not to take the job that we offered did many of them say was salary um i don't know i would have to ask miss mahini that that is obviously always something that um our our teachers take into consideration as miss albert brought up before relative to other districts our starting salary is um is lower than some of our surrounding districts and so obviously um that is a concern yes ma'am all right thank you very much um i'd like to kind of know why some um are not accepting the positions i think that might be

149helpful i can ask miss mahani to get that information for you she does do a very extensive kind of interview process and we're trying to do exit interviews for those folks that are leaving to find out why they're leaving and that sort of thing as well so but i'll try to get you that information about why these folks didn't get it first okay thank you and also i'd like to know um when you look at resignations and retirements were there more and you lumped them together we do but are there more retirements last year than this year or more resignations this year from last year you don't have to tell me that right now you can send that to us i think that would be interesting to see how many just kind of said i'm

150done i can definitely look at that i just found because when um it was interesting the reason that i bring that up is because i asked the question i said christy how is it that we've hired you know over a hundred teachers more this year than last year but we have you know this many vacancies still because i know we didn't add that many allocations we did add some because of the students that came back but we didn't add that much more and when we started looking at the retirements i asked let's just find out what the retirements and the loas are from july to right now so we we took the time period between july august and september of last year compared to july august to september of this year so what i don't

151know is whether some of those people who didn't want to come back last year waited till the last second and that could attribute to that number as well but um i do know several who did that yes and one in particular waited until her husband retired when she he retired she did as well so everyone has a different personal situation and i also noticed on your vacancies um the one sheet you gave us that miss hazel put together as in most companies when you're hiring most the absences are on a friday or a monday thank you for bringing that up i'm so glad that you saw that yeah i'll tell you friday september 3rd was real popular and and part of thank you for bringing that up if you don't mind what mr colon talked

152about also in the group that i'm getting together is maybe even to think about of some sort of an incentive that we can do to have teachers you know who would be willing to sub on a monday and a friday you know an extra i don't know 20 a day for fridays good lord you know or something like that what would be a definite benefit because you do notice every one of the fighters or the uptick of when it hits so yes i also noticed um on monday the 20th which was a professional development day yes there was still 227 at vacancies yes yeah or that that actually that were out correct yes and you'll notice the 23 that were filled were probably vacancies the substitutes that were filling vacancies that we allowed them because

153they're considered long-term subs to actually go to the professional training so that they would be able to take advantage of that so yes ma'am okay i just thought it was interesting and i have i have something i'd like to reward miss carl um carol sawyer um in your in your slide 11 when you have your mou for bus attendants yes hopefully paraprofessionals and substitutes i think we should call it the sawyer reward that's what we do kind of over hr that's exactly right it was her idea and i think her she needs to somehow have her legacy emblazoned we need to have a banner apply for the sawyer reward it's actually the sawyer moyer award because the two of them are like yes in tandem they rhyme okay i would just like to and if

154we can put that name in a policy i would love to do okay she can be enshrined i'll work on that okay thank you very much mrs west dr fritz anything else no ma'am okay so thank you um 2001 board action item adoption of proposed amendments to school board policy 303 let me ask ms wiles and mr pendley to come forward thank you dr fretts madam chair board members bringing forward tonight item 20.01 for adoption school board policy 303 special programs and procedures for exceptional students this is an existing policy 303 this amendment has been advertised to bring our local policy in line with state and federal rule changes that are on a trailing annual basis so these are actually changes to our policy amendments to our policy that are required pursuant to federal and

155state law changes that have occurred the policy has been brought before and read for first reading it was advertised for the requisite statutory period and is ripe for adoption tonight if you have any questions concerning the specifics of the amendments ms wiles our esc executive is here to address this okay are there any questions from the board okay thank you very much um is there a motion is there a public yes as soon as we make the the superintendent recommends the adoption of the pros amendment to school board policy 303 special programs and procedures for exceptional student education or exceptional students thank you for your recommendation dr fred is there a motion now based on his recommendation okay thank you mister versus for emotion is there a second second okay it was seconded by mr

156um reuben cologne okay are there any cards thank you very much miss short would you come on up good evening we have three minutes ma'am good evening i know that this is pretty much a standard document that the district fills out and submits to the state every few years but i did want to take the opportunity to address a couple things one is in section d where they talk about surrogate parents i had the opportunity to go through the training a couple years ago and i don't think we've been offering it and i just want to say that i think that that's something i've had parents um and community members actually ask me about how to become that so i think we do need to spend some time on opening that back up to the

157community i also want to talk about the fact that we have some things going on in regards to esc that i'm a little concerned about some of our esc classes i know that we're saying that we're you know talking to schools about staffing them correctly that's not what i'm hearing there is a specific situation i think at pathways elementary school where there's a teacher who's out on maternity and i guess until after christmas and they've had a sub in there since day two and they've been pushing them to put you know somebody in there who's esc certified and they were basically told no so i and that's just one situation i'm hearing that we have campus advisors on some of our campuses that are not um doing their job you know making sure that our

158our campus camps our campuses are are safe and secure instead they're kind of covering some of these classrooms we have way too many kids in in some of these classes and i know i keep hearing that we're you know we're staffing we're giving them units this is all wonderful but we need to do something we need to take and look at how we're going to get these classes addressed and and i know that the people in this room care about especially this population of children and so you know pretend for one minute it was your kid in this class and i can tell you if it was mine i wouldn't be okay i wouldn't be okay for one minute and i don't think any of you would be so we have to do better i

159mean and that means maybe making some people do some things that maybe they don't want to do leave the district no one's going to be crying i can promise you about you know the district people having too much work to do kids have one chance at being in school one chance every day every day of this year is whatever grade they're in and whatever they're doing and they deserve to have a teacher in front of them and we're starting week seven so i i want to see this population get more attention thank you thank you very much miss short all those in favor of my of adopting our policy 303 proposed amendments that we've already advertised it's been moved and seconded for special programs and procedures for exceptional students please say aye aye all those

160opposed please say nay policy is passed thank you very much mr pendley and miss wiles okay we now have 21.01 i have two cards left are there any additional cards miss schultz for public participation okay miss rove rose overcast miss rose overcash hello come on down say your name where you're from and you have three minutes and after miss overcash is dorothy featherston i'm pulling this up my name is rose overcash and i live in edgewater florida and tonight i am here i was given letters from a couple of teachers that feel like that they do not have the freedom to speak i'm going to read the letters verbatim that i received the first teacher says we write referrals into the focused grade book but when we go back to look for them they're missing

161i have written three referrals and they're missing and other teachers at my school have noticed the same thing our class sizes are busting at the seams i have 38 kids and 20 of 25 of them have ieps how am i supposed to provide a quality education wasting of time professional development right now but this year with the stress of teachers through the roof why don't you allow us to stay home instead of watching the videos and give us the time to grade papers and provide lesson plans with the number of absences due to quarantining why do we still have a must scan the dia by x date the rushing and shoving concepts down kids throats to meet an oh so important deadline is killing our kids they feel deflated when they get a failing grade

162because they were out for 10 days because of quarantine why is this deadline important please just let us teach why are there overflowing classrooms not enough teachers not enough substitutes when we have many people maybe at the district level who can come in and help we're not allowed to kick the bad kids out of class now due to new rules so now the disruptive kids are allowed to stay in the room and continue to disrupt and it denies the students that want to learn their right to a valuable education and now the kids know that there's no punishment and there are many more fights on campus the kids are now running the show also in addition kids are now being sent to arena subbing that's being run by secretaries campus advisors hall monitors and sometimes

163even the school resource officer that was the first letter the second letter that i received today zero consequences for kids detention is taken away these kids need to learn right from wrong the fights are getting to be out of control kids think it's cool to video this the fights are much worse than what they used to be the level of disrespect that the kids are showing not only towards each other but showing towards the adults the teachers as they go over the rules the kids think the rules don't apply to them anymore and since they're not held accountable they're destroying bathrooms they're destroying our campuses the kids in some schools are allowed to be tardy to class with no i am i'm so sorry is there a way that you could email that to me

164yes i would appreciate it thank you very much to everybody or just you um and i will say well yes you can just send it to my um school address and i will give it to dr fritz absolutely thank you very much okay uh miss dorothy featherston and then kim short can i take my math yes ma'am thank you good evening good morning my name is dorothy featherston i'm a third year art teacher at south daytona elementary and i'm here for a couple of reasons first is to implore implore dr fritz hi i've never met you in person it's my understanding that elizabeth has been asking to meet with you um about once a month just like a casual chat thing and i just wanted to say i just really wish you would reconsider that

165and just to meet with her this isn't protocol but i do okay um just to re-establish i understand there's trust on both sides between teachers and county that's been broken and i just want to see that repaired i love elizabeth i've known her for a long time so we all have the same goal so just to educate children as best as we can also want to bring your attention um that i along with nine other art teachers in volusia county are the only art teachers for um 750 plus students so i have 750 students that i got to do grades for midterms and everything 10 other art teachers are solely responsible for 600 plus students seven are responsible for 500 students solely responsible and 16 are responsible for 400 and below our second art teacher

166position was eliminated at the end of 2019-2020 and when coveted started for budget reasons last year i had multiple students attempt to hit me i invoked my right to have one of those students removed from my class but the question was where to put them because there's only one art teacher ultimately my request was denied but the problem still remains not only for me but for all the volusia county schools that have only one art teacher i can never have a student removed from my class because there's no other art educators to educate them and i'm put in a situation where i have to teach that child who was violent with me last year i also wanted to make you aware that i was told that a student's violence was a manifestation of the disability

167and i don't understand how this is acceptable excuse for allowing students to continue hitting teachers so i skimmed through the 168 pages of the school board policy 303 which you just went through for clarification on this term to see if it even applied to my situation so it's my understanding that that order is to determine if a student's behavior is a manifestation of his disability requires an iep manifestation committee determination and i just want really better explanation of the usage of this term manifestation of disability as it pertains to violence thank you um can we make that happen okay thank you miss featherston we we appreciate you you coming and staying it's valuable information okay miss short and then after miss short miss carol sawyer hi i i'd like to go back and talk about

168the budget for a minute thank you miss haines for addressing a lot of my own personal feelings um there was a budget presentation that was done to our dac committee that i was very excited about back on december 2nd 2020 by deb mueller who is our current who was our chief financial officer of at the time and the reason why i was so excited was because it looked like we were actually in our general operating appropriations we were actually making a shift from uh looking at what we were spending in the district administration to our instruction and instructional support when you looked at it it said that our actuals for 2020 we were we had planned that we were going to spend about 26 million in district administration but we actually came in at about

16923 million and then we were finally budget budgeting it for the year 2021 at 22 million so it was moving it from being five percent to four percent and we were moving in the right direction and that was something that um dr fritz had answered questions to me regarding that during that meeting that we were doing that purposefully because it was it was noticed that we were definitely out of whack with some other districts as far as what we are doing as far as a percent to the total at the same time we had moved spending our instruction and support from 2020 actual it was about 72 355 million to planning to spend 378 million at 74 percent of the total so we were moving in the right direction i'd really like to see the

170totals on where we are currently as to where 2021 i want to see it all added up in the same little chart um and presented to this board because i'd like to see what we actually ended at for 2021 because it was not presented that way again i'd also really like to see what we're planning at because i want to see if we're really going in that direction because it doesn't seem like we are anymore and and again i have real concerns about what we're doing in our schools as far as how we're staffing these jobs it does not seem to me like this is a recruitment problem whatsoever and and i don't i mean nothing against our new teachers but you cannot expect a new teacher to have the same ability in front of

171a classroom that a tenured teacher has you know you got you got there's just no way we have got to work on retainment i i can't tell you the last time i saw anybody put pencil to paper and tell me what it costs when we lose people in this district and i think we've gotten away from that entire process it's something that i think this board should be looking at and as a matter of fact i think this board should be proposing an amendment to get it in line thank you very much mr short and miss carol sawyer thank you miss cuthbert you're welcome i didn't know you were in the audience you're nice words i was back there nice and quiet and yes at bargaining the other day mr moyer and i we do

172have a very good working relationship and i and i said uh i wouldn't trade him for anything and somebody made the remark what about a four percent raise and i said no but i would for a six percent raise he was a nice man okay but i didn't want to disappoint you guys tonight and all the human capital that's on the wall over there by not speaking tonight so i wanted to say i think it's about time that we make masks optional for our staff or our human capital whatever you would like to call them after we heard ms faust talk tonight about her husband who is a mechanic and he's trying to do his job with a mask on to me is a little ridiculous anyway that's all i have to say let's make

173mask optional for your staff thank you thank you very much miss sawyer that concludes public participation um now we are at the end of our meeting 22.01 comments and items from the school board would someone like to begin mr persons thank you madam chair i actually had three three things i had written down before i came here this evening the first one i've already spoke spoken about and that is asking you madam chair or superintendent if if the board if they would uh consider on a future agenda about extending the age for esc students from 22 to 23 for one year and if that can be put on an agenda for discussion i would like that uh the second thing that i had was uh actually um to ask dr fritz about the uh what

174he was thinking with the employees wearing masks it actually was what i had on my paper were you looking for a certain um uh positivity rate in the district or i wasn't sure what your guideline was going to be because that i believe is not a policy it was just it's not about the superintendent so you could change it whenever you decided to and i didn't know what you were gonna and you don't i mean i don't know whether there's a magic threshold that you were trying to find before you made them optional ms roland and i are talking about the numbers we still have a fairly large number of unvaccinated employees and quarantining our employees is problematic it's problematic for us when they go out and we're filling positions yeah i've shared with you

175some examples of when it's been problematic um so i you know i i told the employees that we would go do this all the way through october 15th i don't see any reason to change that at this point it will be reevaluated as we get closer to that if we feel like that things have stabilized then absolutely i will reconsider that but right now um part of the reason we did this and if you'll remember i went to my principals and we had conversations about this um the importance of making sure that we're not only protecting and one another and being able to stay in the workforce but also protecting our young ones that are incapable of being vaccinated or not vaccinated so it's one that will be continually re-evaluated if we get close to

176that 15th which is only two weeks away and i feel like that we're stabilizing then then it's a good chance i could revert that decision but right now we're staying the course yeah that's fine i just wanted to to get an understanding of of your thinking and the other thing i think that's important is that foreign i need to address that you have brought up two things so do you mind if i address the first one can i just make a comment about the second one first and that is that if in fact the employees are are kind of hearing that you may be reconsidering that i'm just saying for those who maybe were on the fence still about getting a vaccination you know i think that if i'm an employee and you know i

177don't i don't want to wear a want to wear a mask i may want to consider getting a vaccine i mean there are some that you could make it optional and they may decide to to wear the mask still i mean it's just because you make it optional doesn't mean that everyone isn't going to wear wear wear a mask but i i just think that i don't think that hearing just what you said i don't think the expectation is likely that they'll be wearing masks for the rest of the school year i i just i just don't see you saying that but we'll see uh we'll see and yes no that's all right i'll hold anything else sir i was i thought he was he wanted to comment on the first one no i i

178said i would hold on that i'll oh oh okay okay and the last one that the third one was um the way we report on our dashboard the covid cases i really do wish that we would report it school by school rather than the way we do it now and i understand a little bit of a problem i understand that someone might say that well if there's a small school like coronado let's pick on coronado that's our favorite small small school and there's one case everybody would know who that case was well as a principal from at a small school like coronado let me tell you everybody at coronado knows anyway small schools everybody knows everybody's business it's just the way it is i mean you have one case at university high school you know

179that's another thing but at a school like coronado whether you're making it public or whether you're not everybody knows and that's just the way it goes and i just think it'd be helpful helpful for um for parents and for staff too and as we try to make things as transparent as possible and not trying to hide anything so that people can make good decisions about whether they should have their children come to school wearing a mask or if you start to make the employees mask optional i think i would be influenced by knowing well how many cases are there at my school i mean if there are a lot of cases maybe i would want to wear a mask if if there aren't so many maybe i would not but i i don't know why

180we continue to not want to share that on the basis of that it may be a violation of some hippa law and other districts do it so even with small schools and they haven't been found in violation of any hipaa laws or privacy laws so i i would i would hope that we might be able to consider that too thank you ma'am chair those are my three things okay thank you nice triumphant thank you mr colon so i wanted to share with you all something that's happening in my district and none of our districts are immune to this we had a meeting last week at deltona high specifically because we had some of our sheriff partners who have been visiting our schools at dismissal time and writing parents tickets as they stand in the line

181and and so we had a great meeting with the sheriff's office and um you know they recognize that this is a different year that parents are driving their kids to school because they you know with the delta variant and and all of that you know they felt safer so we our ridership may be down and more parents are dropping the kids off you know and they were kind to to agree that you know this is all related to circumstances and we agreed to make some changes on the side of the school and how we can get more cars off in campus and off the road we had this issue at another one of our elementary schools we worked together to get it resolved today i heard of another school where the parents have been threatened

182that they're going to get tickets and so i shared that with chief newman and so we'll follow up but i just wanted to share that with you all because you know this is becoming an issue at a lot of our schools and you know deltona high in particular the fortunate part is it hangs on wolf pack run but it doesn't go out into howland if it was going out into howland may potentially be a bigger of an issue so i don't know if we need to start proactively looking at our school campuses to see because all of this takes money how we can better flow our cars if there's even the space i share with you we had this issue of timber crest last year last year and we all met and all the mines

183came together and they decided to put a it wasn't asphalt but they dropped like the black asphalt and kind of rolled over it and so they created where they can probably get 30 40 more cars off the road and onto the campus by just creating that driveway that was able to you know take the cars in and they switch the bus loop for the other one so just just something to keep in mind because it is something that's popping up and you know thankfully the sheriff and the lieutenant have been very kind to talk about it i know there was an incident in debary where the you know mom may have gotten upset at the officer and ended up getting arrested as she's picking up her kids from school mind you i don't know the

184details of the story but you know it's an issue and so thankfully debary has partnered with us to help correct this but it is something that i think we probably you know as a board need to look at to see if there is that opportunity at schools because we may have to put some money into that so that was all i had for today thank you thank you very much mr cologne miss burnett thank you um so going back to the subpay and whatever we can do i know dr fritz and um ms sneed and i were talking earlier today about it and i think we're all committed to to doing something so that we can benefit our students can benefit from that and to your point mr clone about the uh the driving i

185drove by atlantic on my way here today and it is there's there is issues on the road and i've had parents as well from spruce creek who live in the area complain i'm sure you have as well miss cuthbert so maybe that is something we could get some of our internal people to look at in order to help better the community as well that's what i have thank you thank you ms haynes so since we're on the um traffic piece i'd like to start there because we are very fortunate um you know in debary when debary elementary was built which you know they're coming up to celebrate a big milestone we didn't have as much growth going down high banks towards the river that we do now but you know i watched a berry open

186i watched it almost double in size before they opened manatee cove and we reduced the size i mean at one point we had every pre-k through second grade classroom we put 36 kids in each room with two teachers um in order to because there's there's not a lot of space on that campus we've added on to that building in the front they built around the elevator shaft and added classrooms upstairs and downstairs but they're kind of landlocked and so i appreciated the city of debary coming and joining with us and we're hoping by spring you know that we're going to have a much better traffic flow there but with that being said what i'm hearing from still from a lot of administrators and as a lot of you do i i get their weekly like

187call out messages or if they send an email or whatever and i have to give leslie frazee credit at debary because she's been very clear like she has met again with the sheriff's department and the city and everything we can't block highbanks road i mean we had a situation where an emergency vehicle could not get through i mean we can't allow traffic to block a roadway and someone possibly lose their life because the emergency vehicles can't get through or someone lose their home and things like that so she's been very clear with her parents and said i need you first of all not to line up i don't know how many of you have seen this but i have especially at the elementary level and i even saw it at deland high at one point

188um and i don't know because i guess i never had that luxury as a parent that i could go and sit for two hours in my car prior to school getting out and just wait to be car number one car number two or three in the line and i don't understand the need like especially at gas prices right now because you know they're not turning their cars off and so i don't know how you have that much extra money to burn but she's been very clear and said to parents we need you not to start coming to even get in line until a certain point and she's told them you're going to get a ticket i mean i don't want people to get a ticket but when you choose to block a roadway or you

189choose to sit out there for two hours before school gets out i mean i understand but at some point you have to be responsible for yourself so i i need parents i think we all do to think about when is my kid getting out do i have to be the first car in line or the third car you know if i'm the 15th car or the 50th car i'm still going to get my child but you know and be cognizant of the neighborhood you know am i am i in a situation that i'm going to keep some an emergency vehicle getting to someone i mean we've got to stop and be a part of the community and everything um i will say dr shanoff and his team have done a great job they re for

190those of you that haven't been over to manatee cove in river springs it's just one road in i mean it i said this you know at one point we can build beautiful campuses but if we don't think about the infrastructure on how to get buses and cars in and out of places and that's kind of what we have in orange city with manatee cove river springs and even university high we didn't plan for the infrastructure on how to get cars and buses in and out of those schools in a safe way so dr shanoff went out there at the beginning of the year and for manatee cove they're coming down that one road because it's one road and instead of being you know lined up on blue springs and everything else which then was blocking

191emergency vehicles he's feeding them through the river springs loop and then they come and so if they get there they're going through the loop they can't line up and block that roadway and then being able to go in to manatee cove to pick up their students and and it took both principles working together and and some training and encouraging people but that is a workaround at the moment you know for that school i think what we have to do is i think we have to involve our cities because the schools sit within our cities we need to come to the table we need to be open and honest and discussed but at some point i think we have to be very clear with parents and say two hours and even listen even 45 minutes before

192school gets out is way too long to sit waiting you know in a vehicle and blocking traffic and and i apologize if any of them get a ticket but if that's what you're choosing to do you may need the ticket to change your pattern if we've asked nicely and you haven't changed you know the way you're going to do this and i understand you know some people are not riding buses but when it comes to debary it's pretty much a walk zone school everybody that goes there is pretty much within the two miles and the school's over 850 kids so it's headed back up again this year i think it's our largest elementary right now followed by maybe citrus grove so i want the art teacher to know that i heard what she said because

193that that's a that's a lot to place on that's also for gym teachers music teachers right what happens though i will tell you having taught at elementary what happens is because pe is like a requirement piece we typically will have two pe coaches on a campus or we may even have three and and then art and music can get slighted like one may only get one and one may get two and it all depends on the size of your school but i think it bears looking at you know the distribution that we have at the elementary level for our special area teachers because it's a lot more when you when you have those types of numbers on your campus and she did her homework to tell us that and then um mr purses to go

194back to your first thing about extending extending the age when i taught at the high school level i always knew 21 was the you know the magic cut off on that i did some further research and learned you know that it's once they turn 22 they phase out either like i have a young man at university high who's going to turn 22 in november so ideally he phases out in december at the end of the semester his family was happy to hear that because they thought the day he turned 22 he phased out so they were happy to hear that he gets to finish the semester some of those students they did miss out on a year last year for a variety of reasons because some of them parents felt it best to keep them

195home and everything so i don't you know i don't know if we can legally do it or whatever but i would support what you brought up to allow those kids a one time not not going forward every year but a one-time chance if possible that they could phase out in the semester that they turned to 23. so i appreciated you bringing that up [Music] i already talked a little bit about my thoughts um on getting classrooms staffed i agree with mrs burnett and i think everyone else we've got to figure out how to get substitutes in and i think we we need to do some advertising and and explain to parents you know that you can come in and and be a sub you know you can you can select the school like you may

196only want to go your child may be in elementary and you only want to go to that elementary school like at this point we'll take it you know we'll take anybody if you just want one school and you only want wednesdays i mean in my opinion that's great that you're going to come and i even thought we should maybe reach out to some of our clubs and organizations out there and i understand you may be part of the rotary or the chamber or whatever and you may have a full-time job but i also know that sometimes they're looking for ways to give back to the community and i'd like to challenge them that you know even if they can only do two days a month you know but they pick a school and say i'm

197available on these two days we've got to do something about making sure that we have that we can cut down on this cafe you know piling them into the media center or the auditorium or the gymnasium because remember our administrators and our teachers are trying to overcome that some kids haven't been on campus you know for two years and and we got to get a handle this fighting like this fighting just it's not benefiting anyone and and we need parents support on that we need parents to set expectations for their kids um i can nicely say my father told me when we went to school that if we got in trouble at school whatever happened there it would be double at home and trust me i believed him and i never stepped out of line

198because i didn't want whatever double was going to be but i think we need to do that and so dr fritz if in any way i said people weren't doing anything on campuses like intervention teachers and all that i know that they are but i think my thought was it may be time to ask some of those individuals and i know some have already volunteered but say would you like to go back in and take a third grade class this year or something like that because our children deserve stability and they deserve someone that's going to be constant for them so that their instruction can be the very best instruction that we can give them and i heard you say that you don't you know you have some openings at the district i would like

199just for you to take a review to see if we have filled any um even in the last you know month that the only physicians we've filled so far we've said they're the person has to stay there until we backfill the position so they've been offered a position but not until the principal hires another position to replace them is that just instructional or all areas instructional okay i'd like to ask you to also take a look if you don't mind at all areas because for a school right now to lose their registrar that can be devastating if they don't have someone constantly staying up with that work or you know to lose even a schoolway cafe person you know at this time um if they can't get lunch served to everybody in the time that

200they're a lot of that can make it difficult and i understand that people want to apply for the positions and move up but i just would really like to stabilize our schools before we work at stabilizing the district but thank you and thank you miss cuthbert thank you my comments will be for last mr doran do you have anything for us nothing thank you thank you mr doran uh dr fritz oh ma'am okay thank you um i know this this is uh very much we have not a whole lot of information but i did was very happy with the governor's decision to get rid of the fsa at the end of next year i am cautious however about three times a year progress monitoring i'm concerned about the paperwork the time i mean now it's

201three times and just like with the fcat it started off with fourth grade eighth grade tenth grade and then it expanded to almost all grades and then four i mean it was so i'm a little cautious um i'm all for progress monitoring but i also i'm concerned about the onus on the shoulders of administrators our campuses and especially our teachers and even more especially our students so if there is information coming down the pipeline i do know you will be keeping us abreast i can give you an update as what i know now if you'd like oh yes very much so yeah we were at the superintendent's meeting last last thursday and friday and the chancellor did come and i'll tell you that they said they learned about that 12 hours before we did there

202is no plans yet we did give them ideas i was the first to speak up and and they had to take the microphone away there will be things that are statutes that will not change for example the third grade requirement for promotion as of now that would not change because it would require a change in law and so the standards that we the best standards that we've recently adopted those will not change so what they're talking about doing is doing a a three time a year assessment where the first and the second would be a formative assessment that would not count really in for the school grade there would be a way to measure students progress as they're moving along but again as we talked to the department they really hadn't figured out the plans

203yet no going forward you know we know the fsa is here for this year and then next year will be a baseline year we did request that um some folks that are superintendents with a background in teaching and learning be given the opportunity to sit down and work with them for example i'll give you the suggestion that that i made i asked that we moved to a more of a mastery approach of learning i don't believe when students get an f it means they didn't learn anything in that class and right now we make them take everything over and i think that's wrong when a student takes the algebra eoc which is the gatekeeper for many of our students to graduate we know how many of the students or we know which subsections of the

204test the students pass so if you pass five of six you still have to take it over and where we're trying to have conversation about was if they've already shown mastery of five or six why would you possibly make them take the whole thing over again because what we've seen is the score decreases over and over and over so we ask them to consider that we ask them to consider that formative one and two if they're really going to be powerful let them show some progress as they go along and let them count and when you do a formative one and two let it be on what we've taught that point not what the entire year set of standards are sore so let's really make that be aligned um they heard that loud and clear

205from us um that we've also uh talked to them about the um opportunity that we have right now of of uh mitigating some of the high stakes pressure that are on our kits we ask to be a part of that at the table with them as they develop this so that that first and second formative can replace things that we're doing at districts that we're not double testing kids and so we we really gave them a lot of food for thought and this was actually on friday um and we'll stay tuned and as updates come in i'd like to come back to the board to be able to share with you the timelines and what's going on but i i too was excited hopeful it's an opportunity for us to get it right and i

206think those were the words i used to jacob oliva i said it's an opportunity for us to get it right and so i hope we embrace that approach of mastery learning rather than a one-size-fits-all pass or fail i'm chair back to you thank you thank you very much i heard from human resources about programs in the pipeline uh for retainment and i'm thrilled and and i'm i know you're not ready to say anything about it yet but i'm look i'm very excited about it and just thrilled it's been programs that i've been advocating for for quite a while so thank you for that work and thanks a lot to ms mahany because i'm sure we will hear about that sometime soon traffic patterns have always been a problem and i remember campaigning in front of

207fort orange elementary with a county port orange councilman who was elected as well and he couldn't understand why so many of the school buses were empty he said that's a lot of waste of money you should cut cut some of those off and and i thought you know that's a good idea then i realized of course when i asked about it that's is it state or federal law that we have to pick up every student so that bus route has to pick has to have a seat available for any individual on that route just in case that person decides to ride the bus so when you see 40 seats there might be 40 students on that route who have the ability and have the right to ride that bus but maybe only five do and

208that's why five might be on a bus so and that's what a lot of the general public doesn't understand of course i didn't when i was first elected it's it's very important that we also noted the difference i've been involved in three different specific situations with community members over cypress creek indian river elementary and silver sands one lady i spoke to a marvelous marvelous woman in the neighborhood across from silver sands and she wanted us to build another lane onto the road so because it was two two lanes and it is i go down herbert street a lot two lanes and we should build another lane on the side so cars can move over in order to go in and i said man that's not our property but she said that is your those are

209your cars going in i said no those aren't our cars either and then she said well let him go through the the campus and i said well we can't do that because of campus security we can't have cars all around the track around the gymnasium and all those seem very good ideas but because of regulation security and it's the cities or the county that's responsible for the building of roads and i do agree with miss burnett and also also ms haynes who mentioned we do have to work with cities and counties because i'm still trying to get a traffic light in front of new smyrna beach high school so and a lot of other government agencies don't want to really participate because they think everything is our job even though it's on their property but

210i do want to do a shout out to port orange police department every time i'm near a school during when school is going in and it doesn't matter if it's high school middle school or elementary school there is a motorcycle policeman a cop pardon me an officer a police officer sitting in a car nearby i don't see that in a lot of other communities but i see it in port orange so shout out to whoever who's doing that because they are really on the job they're just not sitting there you know looking at their phones they're actually participating and i have yet to see anyone not active some communities just do it for their elementary schools but i have noticed port orange does it for all their schools so thank you thank you very much

211to them we we also in the traffic patterns we we have a lot of fronts of schools that have lawn areas and that's a lot of sometimes wasted space i do know mr russell when he was superintendent changed the front parking at indian river elementary and got rid of the the grassy areas in the front added some tar and made three rows instead of just two going around the front and enabled 40 some more cars to get on campus so there's just been some wonderful ideas and if there's any a year last year and this year thinking outside the box i know we're all up to the the task because i have seen some wonderful programs come through that i never would have thought of and so sometimes out of that the greatest challenges come

212the greatest successes so i want to congratulate our operations department for a lot of the work they've already done it is the campus advisor on our campuses especially in the high schools and on the um i guess do do middle schools have campus advisors i thought they did all secondary schools do a lot of times they are overlooked in their job duties and people don't seem to appreciate campus advisors but i have yet to be on a secondary campus whose camp campus advisors are are lackadaisical being at a high school for 26 years they were the students first person that contacted before they even contacted a guidance counselor they knew who what was who what was going on and and everything else um they are our there are whisperers i think of our students so

213i want to shout out to our campus advisors who do who are unsung heroes as well and shout out to a young man who i had in class who we made a deal he could sit in the back if he didn't fall asleep he stayed awake and we had a bargain the whole year and he is now a campus advisor and he too is a whisperer and i'm so proud of this young man i don't want to say his name i don't have permission to but it's neat to see the progress the growing up those who are so anti-education you had a little five ten years on them and they are just such wonderful wonderful adults so those kids that are showing a lot of aggression right now are maybe troubled or frustrated much like

214a lot of us adults are they're only maybe they can't express it at home a lot of them are expressing at schools which is i think why that anti-bullying program of miss miss roland i didn't want to call her by first name miss roland and her director i think it's extremely important that as they become more successful some of this aggression start to ebb and i'd like to keep an eye on those statistics as well i do know that the frustration of teachers and and myself is one a referral is is not addressed and that's what i was somewhat concerned with when in when it comes to a lot of the the averages and the percentages and we have to reduce so much like in your evaluation it was the repeat um not just all

215of the the referrals but the repeat offenders and the repeat suspensions those are the students we really need to address because anybody can have a bad day but it's extremely important that we put those called the roland procedures into place it might just take care of a lot of other things but this we do have aggression and it's and it's such a shame that we have it but we also have to understand where it's coming from and why it's there and it takes and takes a great deal of strength to be kind it takes a great deal of strength to do kind and i think we as educators are such strong people we have been asked to do so very much for sometimes and it's been a joke for hundreds of years teachers don't make

216money we are tasked but it's sometimes it's it's those who are always challenged that make the the greatest strides so um education is not an easy profession these days i thought i would never ever see the day where an english teacher was in a critical shortage area but it certainly has come about i kind of knew this about 15 years ago i had a an intern i was a supervising instructor and i asked him he came all the way from orlando every day he wanted to do a student internship at new smyrna high and he was from south florida his father sold yachts for for a living and i said how long can you live on the proceeds of a one yacht he said he only had to sell one every other year and they

217were fine i said well he said i know my dad didn't want me to be a teacher but i love it he was an excellent excellent teacher i just wish he would have stayed in volusia county but he went home to palm palm beach so it's it's extremely important that we recruit all teachers but i asked him i i said how many english teachers are in your graduating class at ucf and he said 23 23 only english teachers and i said that's the whole year and he said yes so it's been falling off so maybe all the testing that is being done that english teachers are supposed to be responsible for the writing the reading maybe if if we get rid of these high stake tests tests maybe we will get back our science teachers

218so let me share real quick english teachers is bad but ucf is the second largest university in the country and four years ago i went over i got an opportunity because i used to teach her to go meet with the graduating seniors in the mathematics department so i thought you know what i'm going to walk in i'm going to offer everybody in the senior seminar class a job and a contract right there on the spot and i'm going to hire them and take them back to osceola county i walked into the classroom there were seven seven and i was happy to get to them i got two and so that's the second largest university when i one folks we can we can do everything and we can say we can do all the right strategies

219and i'm gonna tell you right now we're gonna do everything right we're still gonna be short for you to think otherwise i don't want you to sit up here and think that it's going to be different it can't be they're just not there you know people don't go into this profession for a variety of reasons and you know i i hope people want to come in i pray they want to come in mr west is doing virtual affairs in his teams continuously we're reaching around the country to try to bring people here that are passionate because you can get justice wrong by putting the wrong person in the classroom and we don't want to start doing that so i i will tell you that my team and i will do everything we will reiterate the

220things that we've already said what we've already said to schools there are you should not have coaches walking around if you have a vacancy they should be in classrooms do not hire at the district office for right now you can offer a position but they can't come here until their principal backfills their position because the work at the district still has to get done i know people don't always think that but it's got to get done and so we will do all of those things we will do everything that we possibly can where mr west was going with the sub and the benefits we're going to give every school every single school a permanent cell they're going to have one on their campus we're still going to have sub vacancies or we'll we can work

221at the subpay and we can try to fix that we still have positions that are not filled that's the reality and you you need to know it because you can't come to this table and expect it to be perfect because it will not be it will not be we will we will do everything we will continue and we will we will try mr west talked about a principal advisory council he reached out to principals today to bring him in so that we could start meeting with them to try to get their ideas so that they can be our ambassadors in the community uh dr balgovin and i met today to start working a plan with kelly so that when people get off at the daytona airport that there's a there's a qr code that they

222can learn about our job offerings when they go to the bus stations they can learn about our job offerings there's nothing we're not trying we're pushing out on facebook to try to advertise but you can't make people walk in your front door and so we're doing everything we possibly can and i think we're doing as good because i will tell you the presentation that i presented was on hr and staff fulfillment fulfillment at the superintendent's association and i'm going to tell you every single district in the state is suffering this right now so we'll you know we'll take any good idea that's out there if you have them send them through let's talk to mr west we'll take them we're not going to say no to any good idea you know we're for example here's

223an idea we've been doing job shares forever they're not always convenient we'll do them we will absolutely do them if there are two two people out there that want to split a job because of child care yes the answer is yes we'll do it so i i hear what you're saying i just wanted you to understand even four years ago because remember i said this started five years ago four years ago when i went to ucf second largest university there were seven people in the class that's all that's very true thank you very much dr fritz and to conclude i encourage everybody to get vaccinated wear a mask wash your hands and let's defeat covid in the delta variant everyone have a good evening thank you for joining us tonight we're adjourned