001system principles and principles but some of our lowest paid employees in blush county schools are sitting in non-bargaining campus advisors our nurses our usa you know level ones or 1a our technical support that's out there in the field and they're working a lot of them 12 months and the thing of it is you know my thought because we were asked individually to give our thoughts on what to do for non-bargaining because i've brought it up saying when are we going to address this our thought was to take the lowest level and bring them up so i just want everybody to understand there are differences but yet they're not and so if you take a ten dollar an hour um per hour employee we're only talking about 50 cents at five percent right so they're going
002from ten dollars which they got bumped to on september 1st to 10.50 minus no longevity and no retention and so i just thought that needed to be stated that i personally feel very comfortable about this because the group that already is making the largest salaries and i've had some people in that group you know say well how come we're only getting a two percent well when you're already making 40 or 50 an hour and you're getting two percent that's significant but i mean some of those people as we well know are you know seventy thousand dollars and up or well over the hundred thousand dollars because this group truly encompasses from our lowest end to our highest end employees and so that's why you know i'm in support of this tonight to try to bring
003our lowest level employees up knowing that they're not getting those additional pieces so thank you thank you for that thank you mr club all right anybody else so i do have some questions on levels one two three um as far as average pay what are we looking at and who are the folks who are in level one two three and i ask us because i don't know yeah i'm sorry i would actually have to to look that up to to do that and we could do that if we needed to um i will say um just an example of some folks that are in level one two three um there's typically our um some of our i hate to say lower lower skilled is not appropriate but lower paid clerical folks thank you entry-level clerical
004folks that are working at the and that's technical thank you so for example we also looked at interpreters that as you said we're making pretty low relative to our minimum wage so we would definitely need to look at bringing some of those folks up our levels thank you sorry our leveled employees are would be more like the admin secretaries the technical employees which are the ones that i think you're thinking of are the ones like our lpns our even our rns our edep workers um those are our technical employees and they're not level but they are on um tiers so sorry no thank you so what we're saying is for some of these folks who are non-bargaining and mind you for the afscme contract that didn't get approved we took it to 11 an hour
005for the substitutes we took them to 13.50 an hour we don't know what the outcome will be of the upcoming impasse hearing but i'm concerned that giving someone a 50 cent raise when they're making 10 11 10 between 10 and 11 12 an hour oh hello wow hello hello are you still recording cool so giving folks a 50 cent raise or 75 cent raise is not going to i mean as you know we're fighting the market right now and so as we are looking at our groups you know this is a group that only has us to advocate for them they don't have a union they don't have representation in that way jamie you brought up a good point about the retention bonuses because you know here we are saying okay this group that has
006the representation was able to achieve coming to terms with retention bonuses yet we're not on the table today to provide that to this group of folks um i will say this is our this was our sort of first jab at this um who would be employees levels four through eight those would be include our folks in i think you can pull that up too um of our analysts and our um mid-range folks that are not considered administrative we consider level nine and above to be administrative but as as folks that are our specialty area folks um that could be trades people in programming and that sort of thing they're non-bargaining and so again we don't have on the table anything additional to say to these folks you know especially in the trades where we know
007these folks can go work anywhere right now but they're choosing to work with us i don't see anything here for that and then as far as the administrators go you know typically and correctly if i'm wrong it's been the history that the administrators have received the same uh rate increase as what's settled on with the teachers correct is that am i remembering that correctly yes that that's typically correct what what the real issue this year is that we've raised the minimum for all of our groups and that really throws the percentages off when you go to calculate out percentages there's a bit wide range of percentages for instance our teachers who were at the 44 335 level got a much larger percentage raise than our teachers who made more than 47 five so there's a
008there's not a consistent percentage across the board but typically it falls just below what the teachers get or there have been years where there haven't been raises awarded to not to administrate there have been several years and so you know again even for those folks you know my i take the same concern if we were willing to on the instructional arm of it have that and on the ask me original did we have anything in there that was also for retention bonus even if it was a dollar were there any things in there there were and so again all these folks have to advocate for them is us and so i'm concerned that not only are we not you know we we know that equitable is very difficult to be especially in these times but
009we're we're not even close to equal and again you know this came on as an agenda item and it's our first jab at it um and i think and i appreciate jamie um bringing it up for the last few months you know but in this group we also have our school nurses correct yes and so as you know i mean let's be real nurses can go work anywhere right now and so how do you know where where we are looking at these groups as percentages i have a hard time thinking that you know when we look at our school nurses that we need to retain that can go work either at a nursing home that can go work at a doctor i mean everybody i mean how do we keep them here and as i
010looked at the support information that you provided during the hr report you know we're going to lose people and and and we can't afford to lose them you know and so um those are my concerns and and i don't i'm one of five i am not in favor of of this and i will not support this i think it is on equal it's just forget equitable equitable we we can pay we can't pay people what they're worth let's be real we know that um but i i do have that concern in that we really um [Music] you know even if we were fair just as the other groups had that longevity and had all of that i'd be i'd be curious to see what that looked like um and again i hadn't thought of it
011dr fritz i apologize because i hadn't thought of it until miss haines asked a question and so that is my those are my thoughts all right so next speaker will be miss haynes okay so i want to add something to this um as far as the administrative piece goes there were some times when administrators from the assistant principal level and up did not receive a race so there is a history that that has happened that they did not get the same raise as other groups there's also a history piece where they took a two percent cut one year so it's not always been fair and and our before the bell and our extended day workers in case everyone in this room you know doesn't remember when we did go into the pandemic which i was
012surprised when i found out those those people were let go so they were a group that was not even paid during the pandemic piece because what was said was they're not servicing kids and that's where they generate the funding and so some of them came out and worked to help hand out technology and they were an extra pair of hands to help hand out food and all that so that they earned some money so what we did during the pandemic was wonderful because we managed to keep paying everyone but that is a group that was left behind and that's that group that falls in the one to three and when i say i'm supporting this what i'm supporting is i'm supporting that there's a difference in percentages for people because i support that the lowest
013level get the highest percentage because as i said we're talking about a 50 cent you know raise for some of these people which is not very much um but i too agree with you that's why i wanted clarification on you know was non-bargaining getting any of these other pieces in part especially that lower group because the questions come up well why would you give one group five percent and then another group the three percent another group two percent well i had to look at the overall salary i had to look at how many days do those individuals work because our administrators work not assistant principals but principals and and district administrators like cabinet members and and you know coordinators and things like that they work 12 months so that salary is much larger but like
014our before the bell and extended day people really what they fall into is really just about a nine month calendar because they're only working a few hours a day that they're either there first thing in the morning or at the end and so what i'm supporting is a higher increase for our lowest employees but i too am open you know since they're not getting any of these things if the board wants to look further into them receiving that i have no problem with that thank you thank you mr persis thank you mr chair uh thank you miss haynes for your comments and uh chairs comments as well as we as we know this is a diverse group of em employees so we we gotta understand that uh i think from what your comments were uh
015we all seem to be in agreement with level nine and up getting the two percent is that what it's scheduled for now uh two percent yes sir um you know i am i'm fine with with that but uh i i sense there's some discomfort with the rest of it from levels one through eight and i think we ought to give the superintendent another chance to go back and talk it over with the hr and finance people and see if they can come back with something that's perhaps a little more palatable to for for all of us and i and i understand dr fritz you did try to do that and i know it's difficult because it's such a wide group of employees but i am sensitive to the [Music] lowest employees pay and that whatever
016that scale is if the lowest employee pay is per hour um currently um then you know i would like i wouldn't like to see this group make any less i can i can just say i can just say that now as far as the bonus stuff and all that other it gets kind of complicated then but um mr chair my my feeling is uh i'm fine with going ahead with level nine and and above but i think levels one through eight we ought to just table it and give the superintendent time to come back and uh readdress it thank you miss cochran i tend to agree with mr and also we are going back to the table in may correct no there's no table you mean uh negotiations don't we start all over our cycle
017all over again with our we do we start but uh we haven't defined that yet and i think it was going to depend on legislature and budget and everything but yes ma'am yeah and i do know the big um the big elephant in the room is the legislation and what kind of funding we're going to be receiving this year because that is that's the number one question yes we do have esther funds but esther funds are temporary and we cannot give consistent raises based on money we may not have three years from now i really don't want to put our district in a financial peril but i do agree with mr mr persis i think it'd be a good idea to go ahead and approve levels 9 and above and then go back and kind
018of work things a little bit for levels one through eight to help the lower paid people i agree thank you miss cuthbert anybody else for clarification and so i'm of the opinion like i said i think we need to this is just me i think we need to look at all three because if we're giving longevity bonuses to everybody else i think we should also look at our i don't care how long you've been here because anybody can go anywhere they want to go to go work and so i'm of the opinion and again this was our first stab at this and you know unlike normal process with bargaining where uh the bargaining units bargain with the district back and forth and it takes months and months and months you know the thought that we
019could get this just boom like that you know and and these employees only have us and so i'm in favor with personally tabling the whole entire item to reconsider and look at our numbers however we have names miss burnett thank you i tend to agree with you mr clone i think that we should table it all and and do them all together and look at it again and maybe we can have a um a meeting where we can all get together and discuss this so we're a shade meeting or whatever we're going to call it so that we can have a better idea of what's available but i think i think it's fair to to do it all at once not um part at a time thank you miss bernard's hands so the only final
020thing um i'd like to say is in going back and looking at all of this which i'm you know i'm open to looking at the whole thing and maybe an executive session so that we can ask some more questions because this was this was very quick and it was done just individually with us but the one thing that i just want to make sure of we do know that the lowest paid employees in this group went up to the 10 an hour on september 1st because that was the law and that's what we had to do we know that if someone in this group during this year already changed positions you know they were an assistant principal and now they're a principal we know that their salary increased and i'm not looking at that i
021just want to make sure that there's not been any other raises already given out during this fiscal year so one of the things i think i'd like to see is i'd like to see where everybody was at last year for what they're making and where we're at this year for what they're making because i also feel if i had some idea of where they're at on the pay scale and what we're talking about that would help me to be able to better understand you know based on when mrs sneed meets with us and tells us how much money there is or isn't because as mrs cuthbert said we have to be able to sustain this we can't just use federal dollars to do this you know over the next two years and then we don't
022we haven't built this into our general budget in order to sustain it so that's my final statement thank you all right nobody else in the queue do we have a motion all right i make oh wait that's right thank you thank you for keeping me honest i asked her to please make sure to yell and wave in case thank you thank you thank you we normally do that after the motion but it's okay in the short come on up you have three minutes thank you for being here welcome good evening i'm glad to hear the board bringing up a lot of the same questions that i had when i was looking at this uh i'm glad to hear that you are interested in tabling the conversation i'm concerned myself i think that we definitely need
023to be looking at our professional technical and school-based people in a totally different way i i wouldn't even be looking at them in terms of percentages i'd like to see you know dollars for them since they're hourly employees where my concern lies is with the district administration line if you were to look at our actuals for 2019 and 2020 we spent 24 or 23.4 million and then we ended up budgeting it down to 22.4 million but we actually came in on that line item for the 2020-2021 year at 25.9 million which is 3.5 million more than what we budgeted so that whole line item to me is something that i have a huge concern with i've also put a public records request in which i have not received the information yet and i had a
024meeting with our cfo a little while ago about it i i really would like to see our new organizational chart versus our old organizational chart specifically the superintendent's cabinet so that we can look at where we are salary wise versus where we were in the past it's my understanding that we're spending about a million dollars more in that area and i think they're great people i'm not i don't want to you know hurt anybody but we need to be responsible about how we spend money and keep it in our schools if i were to put money more i personally i would like to see it be most attractive for people at administration levels to want to stay in our schools as school-based administration because they're closest to our children i can say that over the
025years as a parent i'm a little sick and tired of seeing people feel like the only way for them to make more money is to get out of our schools and get up into this building i would really like to see our board focus on that and miss haynes thank you very much for bringing up the fact that if somebody has received any kind of a raise that we are taking that against into consideration thank you very much thank you so much mr short all right do we have a motion i'd like to make a motion that we not move forward on item 15.02 but instead we table it for further discussion by the board in an executive session motion's been made by ms haynes do we have a second a second all right motion's
026been made by miss haine seconded by mrs burnett uh mr doran uh oh wait carl's on the speaker next go ahead carl thank you mr chair i i was going to say a couple of things one i didn't i didn't think we could go into an executive session yeah for purposes mr dorner yes thank you for those in the audience executive session is one of those rare instances when the school board can meet outside of the sunshine they actually meet in private with no public participation and that is allowed in the context of bargaining units and negotiating um but where you have non-bargaining unit and there isn't any other party oh um you know it's just the district and you basically you would not be allowed to meet in executive session or outside the sunshine
027uh to discuss it it's just a matter of talking about it you can defer it i'm not saying you have to vote tonight but you would any any conversations you have about this will have to be in the public yeah thank you miss burnett and can i just tell you mr person yeah thank you mr chair yeah my other comment was the reason why i was advocating uh for the uh the level nines and above was because i really didn't hear anyone say anything that they wanted to give them less than that and i don't think anyone's in the position to give them more than that um so and and if and if in fact a month from now we're gonna come back and agree to give them two percent i was just trying to
028give them the money a little bit earlier that's all uh but uh but i understand if it's the board's will that you want to you know table the whole the whole the whole thing uh i i just think this is this process is is going to be challenging and for the superintendent to come up with something that at least three of us like that's going to be quite quite the task but um i just want to explain my my rationale for wanting to move forward but i'll support the motion as uh as was stated thank you mr purses miss burnett thank you mr dorn for clarifying um the executive session um and and i understand your point and all by all means i want everybody to get their raise let's be honest i sure want
029everybody to be happy but i want everybody to be treated fairly as well and so is it possible that we can add this to the workshop on march 8th we have a pretty big workshop that day if i can move um i can't move the embryo project i need to keep that because we have some external players that are going to be a part of that workshop i can move the cte workshop we'll do that and we'll make this the second item yeah thank you very much that's a great idea all right and any other comments ms haynes so then i'd like to change my motion to state that we table this item 15.02 for this evening and it be moved to our workshop on march the 8th so that we can have open discussion
030about it i'd like to make a request that prior to that the district have an opportunity to work on something and possibly you know share it in our individual meetings or something so that they can have some feedback and we're not going to take more time past march 8th thank you and so the motion has been amended by mrs haynes to miss cuthbert i do have a question will the district have enough time in the two weeks to come up with new numbers and have time for discussion uh we we can come up with a draft um it's a pretty short timeline because we worked really hard to get to this this time because last time if you remember the last board meeting was requested that we get it yeah we will do our our
031very best to have it ready uh for discussion so that we can present at the workshop um it's pretty important that we actually do because there is only one board meeting in march and i'd hate for our folks to wait till april so we'll make it a priority and this is um also retro correct yes ma'am it would be retro thank you thank you mr president mr chair i think the superintendent just answered my question but we're going to have it on the workshop and then we're also going to put it on the school board meeting that same day that's the plan that would be the plan great thank you thank you very good so we have an amen amended motion by miss jamie haynes do we have a second a second motion's been made
032by ms hayne seconded by miss burnett do we have any further discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye all those opposed say nay motion passes thank you so much next up we have public participation for items concerning general interest and so we will go ahead okay thank you so much all right first up ms karen weinrich please come up next to miss one next after ms weinreich will be miss valerie jessup thank you welcome good evening i'm coming here tonight to speak on behalf of my students who are be are over tested so i had emailed the board members earlier this week about all the tests so i brought some visuals so i brought the test that my second graders had to take in just math and science in the month of january
033and february so i have we had our topic check 9 we had topic check 10 topic check 11 i gave that yesterday we have a science topic check and then i have this 17 question um progress monitoring test this test is given to seven eight year olds and it covers what they learn from december 6th through february 21st so it's basically giving these kids a midterm and it's it is involves tears it takes an hour some of our children who receive esd services may take longer than that because they they do get their accommodations so when i was looking at this i pulled up the assessment calendar and um and by the way this doesn't include the ela test because i only teach the math and science so in this timeframe they also do take
034three unit tests for ela so i was looking at this and i was looking at fifth grade and fifth grade from april 4th to april 29th they take five topic tests one a week and i know this is close to fsa time i'm not sure of all the fsa dates since i'm not an fsa teacher but that's right before the fsa then i looked at kindergarten i was a kindergarten teacher for many years love teaching kindergarten but i see that the kindergarten teachers give eight ela tests throughout the year and 14 math topic checks now i realize those are shorter than the ones that i give but typically in kindergarten these are given you usually have to pull the kids one on one so the issue here is not that we're opposed to testing because
035i'm certainly i need to know where my children are the time it's taking and with those of us in second grade our children cannot yet complete the bubble sheets so that means they give a test i have to sit there and input everything in a school city so when i give this big test next week i have 36 children i teach i have to bubble in 17 bubbles on the computer for every one of those kids my time could be spent in much better ways so i'm just asking to look at this testing calendar and we we need relief from the testing thank you miss valerie jessup welcome hello thank you members of the board when i was in grade school i came up in volusia county schools and i actually work at the school
036that i attended in elementary seeing the love and passion in the teachers is what made me want to become part of volusia county schools for i've been at the school for a little over four years and i have seen sparks here and there but mostly i see it overworked underpaid staff in it deeply saddens me to know this is what the kids are going to grow up and see if the county focused on retention and less on additional guidelines and additional paperwork morale would be higher and giving our kids the glimmer i saw when i was growing up and a better future for educators so it's not much time but i'm finished thank you thank you so much for coming mr shane's story it's mr story you're correct mr clone thank you good afternoon mr
037clown ladies and gentlemen the board dr fritz um what the hell happened why can't we get along parents mad at teachers teachers not a parents teacher not a board members met a superintendent you wonder why our kids aren't getting along in school watch the school board meeting all right watch the school board meeting you're upset about what's going on your kids school go to the school that's simple they're volunteer opportunities ask ask about the pta meetings ask how many parents are actually there in most schools hardly any my wife works a full-time job and she goes to the school or she goes to pta meetings she spends her time there even though she's also in the junior league and several other volunteer organizations because we care about education we care about making a difference in
038our community you come out here and you you rail against teachers and rail against everybody else but you don't have the introspection to take a look and see and see what's going on in your own life like i said you guys can come volunteer you can come help us out if you don't want to be a teacher ask yourself why why do you think why do you think we struggle with it or do you think there's so many vacancies i bet you those kids will start behaving if their mom and dad came into school and kept an eye on them every once in a while you know last school board being somebody came in here and spoke about you know if if my child comes out that they have to tell me okay maybe ask
039the question why do they feel more comfortable telling the teacher than you if they're if you're their parent you want to you want to incorporate these narrow-minded and myopic viewpoints of what your own reality is the conservation of the own of what occurs in your house but the reality is there's a whole world out there that your kids are going to have to deal with not just the way they were raised but the way that other people were raised and they need to learn how to deal with that because otherwise this keeps happening we keep fighting against each other instead of coming together i understand politics has a role in education but it shouldn't be the role it's playing right now it's destroying our kids kids are fighting over things they didn't use to fight
040over it's destroying our community parents are fighting with each other and people that are trying to help them we're not trying to hurt your kids we're not we don't have enough time to teach basic concepts like math and science and reading we're not here to indoctrinate your children we don't have the time we don't have the capacity i left school the other night at 7 30 because i had to make phone calls i get off at four okay you guys want to make a difference come to school thank you mr story next up we have dr jerry pikett welcome dr pikett good evening [Applause] board chairman members of the board community groups business partners superintendent of schools i come before the board once again to express my urgent concerns as related to the educational inequalities
041and discrimination of minorities as related to volusia county schools leadership and instructional faculty as i have stated for public record the superintendent's personnel policies discriminate the rights for one to apply compete and earn a position for hire as the most experienced and best candidate for promotion including litigation superintendent with hiring practices in mind you created a new process of appointing leaders particularly principals and assistant principals points mentioned were two rounds of interviews and a team made up of parents teachers staff and community with the top three candidates going to the superintendent so here are my questions once again did you meet or discuss with any committee or organization related to the one candidate you interviewed for the campbell middle school principalship or turner elementary school principal ship mr williams on the record was a finalist
042but the selected principal had never served as a school principal long street elementary school principalship current principal did not apply for the job but was listed in the top three and got the job the current mainland high school principal interviewed for the job but was not selected as a finalist you superintendent made him a finalist and appointed him the job with the starting salary of 102 000 following the above pattern newly appointed riverview special school principal 98 4 with no experience compared with experience volusia county schools proven principles salaries 94.5 92.2 93.1 83.1 82 87.6 91.7 and 88.8 so superintendent please defend your position on the above discrimination based on gender and race raise the above salaries of these proven schools principles immediately that's what i consider to be fair next there's an ese administrator
043at campbell middle school currently serving unfairly assessed by the district this unfair assessment is due to the county not following set procedures and it needs closure the superintendent's upcoming evaluation should be assessed exactly the same way as this administrator finally this is very important our bus drivers they're deserving our paraprofessions they are deserving pay them pay them now more for the people thank you thank you dr pikett next up we have jessica hatton welcome miss hatton good evening i am speaking tonight to address your item 17.02 on your agenda the decision to extend dr fritz's man we're going to hear those uh a little later if that's the item you're here for i can add you to the list that would be absolutely fine yeah we'll bring it over here next up is carol sawyer
044uh welcome ms sawyer welcome dr fritz chairman cologne school board members after looking at mr west's support vacancies on page three of his update it's nice to know that we do not have any vacancies for bus operators or attendants if this is true why am i driving two or three routes every day this is the life the typical day in the life of your bus operators in attendance good morning dispatch this is route a and i'm covering ralph b's high school and two stops from route seas middle school plus my entire round ldta to any bus that can help me pick up some stops in the area of b please come back and let me know dispatch will you send out a connect ed for my middle school i'm running 30 minutes late good afternoon
045dispatch this is route a and i'm covering ralph b's elementary school along with my entire realm dispatch this is route a and i am covering my middle school this afternoon and then returning to the middle school and doing a second run taking out ralph b's middle school good afternoon dispatch this is route a and i'm covering route b's elementary school and route seas middle school along with my entire rail we're asking parents that approach us at the bus stops if they would like a job last week i sent out a challenge to the board members tonight i'm sending out a challenge to our superintendent along with his cabinet members and any other but non-bargaining employee why not get your cdl and help us drive these bus routes until we can hire enough bus operators to
046transport our students we have our first volunteer dr phillips i read an article of a superintendent in kentucky that ends many of his days by driving a school bus because of the shortage of the bus operators in his district quoting him he said the sordid the shortage prompted an all hands on deck approach for all his employees maybe we should consider allowing retired bus operators to drive as a sub at their current rate of pay people retire for all different kind of reasons and many of them would drive as a sub at their current pay however when you retire your hourly wage drops to the subpay of 13 dollars per hour with the shortage of bus operators that we have right now allowing retired bus operators to sub at their latest pay rate may just
047help us cover all our bus routes finally on behalf of all of our bus operators and bus attendants i would like to thank all of our schools and the many organizations too many to name that showed their appreciation to us last week and into this week thank you for all the little gifts and the notes that made us smile thank you miss sawyer next up jenny diaz welcome ms diaz good evening last time meeting i had the chance to share with you the difficulties we are encountering every day to perform our job and how we are still waiting on a much desert race today i feel compelled to speak on behalf of the students our kids the system is failing them their rights cannot be undermined and it's happening every day when they have to
048wait 20-30 minutes or more to be picked up on the streets alone with dangerous traffic under any weather conditions and a lot of times hungry those are unnecessary risks and not against to their safety we have worried and angry parents calling to the office waiting for answers as a citizen and as a parent this is unacceptable as a driver this is sad and frustrating because i'm doing everything in my power to help out doing my route and covering extra routes at the same time and it's just not me some other drivers too with overcrowded buses and sometimes kids standing up leading to arguments between them just for a place to sit and at the same time putting us at risk or losing our cdl license for not complying with the regulations we have some buses
049with students with special needs that require an attendant to help assure the care and safety of these children but for the lack of them this responsibility is also on the drivers generating even more stress you are worried about the money you pay us and you are spending more money in overtime in training people that lives after they found out how hard is the job for the money we make we don't know for for how long can we continue working like this all we hear is over stress overworked unhappy and poorly paid people personally i love my job i love the kids i bid on one route and that's the one i want to continue doing not two or three more i feel tired and like some and like some other drivers i'm starting to have
050health issues this situation needs to change the school district has the responsibility to improve and exceed their services making sure every precaution is taken to assure the safety of the students sorry it's also important to mention that in your head that is in your hands to look out for the well-being of drivers and attendants that are constantly verbal and physical abuse from some parents and students we need disciplinary actions to be taken to stop these unconceivable behaviors we are human beings too and we deserve to be treated with respect in conclusion better rates more support and more respect can open the possibility of hiring new employees and maintain the current ones finally i want to thank the support of my colleagues thank you diaz next up we have cynthia rivera welcome miss rivera thank you
051good evening everyone um all of you have the privileged position of this meeting it is to take decision but to be honest i understand your job because us as a bus driver and bus attendant have to take decisions every month for example i'm asking you to hold me shoes which bill should i pay this month should i pay my water bill should i do my grocery list those are her decision that some of my co-workers have to take every day every month i saw them have two or three jobs to try to make it until the end of the month and some of them have already passed 70 years us as a bus driver as you know we are doing two on three routes in one overloading the buses goings against the low the federal
052motor carrier safety administration the florida dot regulation no student should be standing up sitting on the aisle or hanging from the seat because they have to see three percent this mean that they are as risk also the most important tool that gave me my job my cdl driver license class b we want you to try to understand our position having two or three jobs it is unhealthy but we have to do it i've been there already i used to have two jobs to pay for my bachelor's degree and this is my last semester to become a teacher but that doesn't mean that i'm leaving them behind because we deserve better pay and benefit and if you take the two percent to numbers we are talking about 30 cents to 40 cents and that doesn't help
053at all and it is true we can go to another job and get paid better but that's what doesn't going to solve your problem you're going to have just more open bus operator and attendant position wasting money in trainings for a few new bus that one of when they say so what is going on here they live last but not least i'm going to tell you something in the most respectful and professional way of course i know you work hard for the improving those positions but i challenge you to live one day of your life with my salary you're not gonna make it until then the on the end of the day in my case and that's the case of some of my co-workers it wouldn't be because of my husband i'm not gonna make
054it until the end of the month i just want you to work together let's do it together because together we are strong thank you thank you mr brown next up mr mark irwin welcome mr irwin hello mr fritz mr colon board members i don't have anything written down or anything like that it's just uh basically i wanted to address the referral systems that we have going on right now with uh with the children's behaviors and that kind of thing the reason being is you know the schools were as bus drivers were trying to utilize this system but we're writing referrals and our area managers and lead driver trainers are trying to address these these issues but for some reason or another the schools are not really so much cooperating with us on it because we
055have these buses so crowded and the new regulations that were handed down from doj and and i understand the department of justice's thing but i also understand we have to have some kind of safety and regulation and the children need to be a little better behaved on these buses because a lot of us just like myself we don't have an attendant but we still have a lot of ese kids on the buses and we have to deal with these things and one thing in particular here just yesterday i had and i won't get into specifics but i have one child that i wrote referrals for because the child does have some issues and another child that is very well behaved and they're across from each other because i have to that's the way that seat
056has to be done on the bus because of all the kids well these kids had an altercation and i wound up i had to have ems you know it's that bad i'd have ems come out to the bus and have wind up having two of my kids removed by ems one for the problem and the other for a medical issue that was kind of brought on because of the situation at hand and so long story short i had those two kids removed from the bus by paramedics and they had to be taken to the hospital so the school then today we wrote the referrals we sent them in to school then today wound up telling me there's not a whole lot they can do they wound up doing like a one day in in school
057suspension thing for this one child and they said there's not a whole lot they can do because this child is ese well and that's okay but we need to be a little more maybe a little more work more with the drivers and the attendants so that we can get things done and we can get a safe environment for these kids to be transported home because you know and this all hits home to us because we see this every day and we're dealing with it on a daily basis and if we had more people if we had more cooperation from the schools and we could do more with what we've got to work with but the way it is we really don't have much to work with so we're doing all of what we can so
058that said i really appreciate you guys thank you mr irwin next up ms elizabeth albert welcome miss albert thank you good evening chair colon members of the board dr fritz members of the audience have been thinking about my comments today for a long time and i kept coming back to the same thing in this culture teachers and staff are sub are suffocating under the weight of the decisions that are being made in volusia county schools once upon a time we were a team perhaps even a family but we have eroded into something that is almost irrecognizable we're living in volatile uncertain and complex times and now is the time for our leaders to lead with their humanity their compassion and their grace however we seem to be moving in a direction where outcomes matter more
059than people where the voices of those doing the work of educating our children go unheard so the actions of the district show that the numbers matter more than the people and i'd like to remind you that we are in the people business these decisions or choices are causing our teachers and staff to leave volusia county schools as of last wednesday there were 147 leaves of absences and i imagine at this point in time there are plenty more and as i try to turn the page on this thing it's not going i can tell you that there were 126 instructional leave of absences and there were 21 support leaves of absences so what that's saying to us is that people are choosing to go without a paycheck instead of work in volusia county schools i want
060you to think about that for a minute because that's a very powerful statement i'd rather not get paid than come to work we don't want that you don't want that right it impacts all of us so as the board i believe that it is your duty and obligation to make decisions that benefit the children in our school all educational decisions should be made from the lens of the classroom and the work site the priority of the board must be the students and the staff dig into the data look at the number of vacancies look at the leaves of absences and those who have decided to walk away from volusia county schools all together it's on board dogs you can see it i wonder how often you get those numbers and how frequently they're updated then
061i would like you to ask yourself honestly are we better off now or do we need to revisit our decisions thank you thank you miss albert next up we have martha morrison martha morrison all right next up we have george morales george morales there's people up mr cologne there's people out in the waiting area katie can we check and see if those folks are out there martha morrison george morales jenny diaz mark irwin and cynthia rivera martha morrison george morales cynthia rivera hello my guess is your name is george no you're good come on in you're good welcome better late than never right we're waiting on you everybody welcome okay i gotta make a short and sweet like life [Laughter] okay uh i believe they are asking for 16 an hour okay now you think
062about it is if you work 70 hours every two weeks you might get two thousand dollars a month right but with two thousand dollars a month you think about mortgage that you gotta pay you gotta pay water property taxes light sewer is that enough i don't think it's enough right but see i'm thinking of some other things i say wait a minute i'm married my wife cannot work i don't get no help from my wife because she cannot work but what about health insurance they are keeping of my money for health insurance i taking home every two weeks and now with 240 every two weeks the gas for my truck or i gotta pay light or food or gas to go to work every two weeks again i don't think it's enough i'm happy to
063do this job and we got a lot of good people a lot of good workers because our 30 years in cleveland ohio and i deal with bad drivers good drivers people who don't care about the equipment all i see over here in this department is good drivers people who care about the kids and about the equipment all we need is the help from somebody to give us a hand appreciate the job that we do and another thing i find out is kissimmee bus drivers the health insurance for family they are paying how come we got to pay so much money for health insurance for family health insurance just think about that please we need help and you people are the only one who can give us a hand because we care about this job and
064the kids thank you very much for your time thank you mr morales next up cynthia rivera martha morrison all right that will close public comment we will take a 10 minute break and return back we will return back at 30 7 30. you all right one one minute one minute all right we're going to move on to agenda item 17.01 items from the board member superintendent board attorney discussion announcement or approval typically we do that at the end what do you all think if we move that to the end of the meeting i didn't think about that before is there any objection to that okay so we will move board comments to the end next up it will be 17.02 discussion regarding the extension of the superintendent's employment contract mr doran thank you mr chairman
065we have an item on the agenda today to discuss and potentially resolve the extension of the superintendent's contract uh just to get the board kind of all on the same page and i would just go back to his original contract he was hired on december 2nd of 2019 and his contract is for three years which takes him through december 1 of 2022. this being february of 2022 [Music] um mr chairman you found it appropriate to put put the item on the agenda for uh discussion uh there has been someone asked me well if it's discussion does that mean we can't vote whatever no the answer to that is simple it's your this is the board's opportunity to address this issue you can discuss it and not take any action or if somebody makes a motion
066and it's seconded then you would have to you know discuss it and resolve that motion uh it's it's just an opportunity to bring up this issue and you all collectively try and decide you know what what you're gonna do so uh with that i turned it back over to you unless there's any questions i have any questions ms copper good evening mr chairman i move that we the school board renew dr fritz's contract for a period of three years thank you motion's been made by mrs cuffbert uh do we have a second yeah i i'd second i'm i'm wondering um is is three the magic number i mean does it say in his existing contract that if we renew it it needs to be three or it could be ten or five or whatever there's
067no magic number she's she's saying three three well three was the three was the first con contract i'm i'm good with that second okay motion's been properly made by miss cuthbert and seconded by mr persis and so do we want to have discussion or would we like public comment first public comment public comment any objection to that all right so we are going to move to public comment first up mrs miss daisy grimes welcome miss grant hello sir how are you and good afternoon to the distinguished board members and our superintendent uh usually you see me on the other side but i can be a little more vocal but i've been directed to be very nice tonight so i am going to follow suit first allow me to thank you each of you for your
068public service and also dr fritz for uh a job that is i don't care what you do it's never going to be right you're never going to be perfect i am here representing the volusia county africa african american leadership council which comprises of 72 african-american organization presidents we met last week to discuss this issue met in detail but i have to tell you what our experience has been with dr fritz it has not been easy all the time for dr ritz because we are a very very vocal energetic group of people and we tend to be very honest and forefront we can say that we have enjoyed this working experience he has been in the hot seat many many times with us uh sometimes i think he purposely says that his uh speaker went off
069when he's tired of hearing me raise a little bit of h but what we do know is that we are at the table and we are enjoying that experience we say to you tonight super board members we feel that it would be unfair to make a decision about his continuing contract without doing a proper evaluation how can you justify whatever decision you make if you have not evaluated him we think to be fair with dr fritz do a 360 evaluation and from that evaluation you should be able to get the data that you need to make a position and a vote that will be with integrity and not done by political persuasion from anyone thank you so much and let's continue serving the students of volusia county not being intimidated by if you're going to
070get elected again but if you're going to serve the students here in volusia county thank you so very much thank you next up miss sheryl taffy welcome miss taffen good evening i'm here to ask the school board members not to renew superintendent fritz's contract superintendent frisk has not been listening to all voices within the school community during a march 2021 school board meeting after hearing parents concerns against the issue the board did not vote on a resolution declaring march 26 to 22 22-26 as lbgtq plus health awareness week superintendent fritz without the vote of the board decided to move forward the lbgtq subject by placing it on the following meeting agenda as a recognition item before anyone starts the name calling this isn't about me wanting or not wanting a special week designated this is
071about superintendent fritz ignoring the concerns of the parents and going around the elected school board members mr fritz again on full display verbally insulted parents when he said it was bad parenting referring to those who won't get vaccinated don't get vaccinated or won't wear mask berating parents about how they are making decisions in raising of their children is not acceptable from the school board superintendent as a result of this action it reduced his ability to build relationships reduce the confidence in the community that they had for him and put his trustworthiness into question and because of the publicity it received and knowledge of it among students faculty and the community it has weakened the superintendent's effectiveness effectiveness in the district as you can see my concern has to do with the relationships between the parents
072and the community with this i am asking that you do not renew superintendent fritz's contract thank you next up heather vargas welcome ms vargas i am confused by the very fact that this is a discussion of 2500 superintendents in the nation we have one of the top 19 superintendents to watch right here in volusia county and somehow there's a question about whether we're going to extend his contract he stepped into a district with significant issues following the abrupt dismissal of the prior superintendent then came the chaos of coven four months later during that time he's drawn excellent district employees from previous positions i appreciate the discussion that's happened here about hiring and retaining employees and i understand that people are concerned but this isn't a unique issue to the school board i run a law
073firm it's hard to find employees and you have a limited budget to work with and mcdonald's is paying 17 an hour so i don't know how you have the employees you do have so i'm impressed so that's good on all of you when dr fritz got here he developed a really impressive five-part strategic plan he's been working the process and he's been making progress as we can see from the graduation rates the number of certifications coming out of the high schools if we stop now and take a new direction again we're going to interfere with this proc progress futures has provided a letter to each of you expressing support for consistency in leadership and the ongoing implementation of this strategic plan the business community needs a good school system to keep and retain talent we
074need consistency a strong strategic plan that is being worked with follow-up and accountability we have that and it's something that we can promote to improve our talent pool for you all and for all of us and to attract new businesses to the community if there are concerns that need to be addressed let's do it no one's perfect but we picked dr fritz for a reason he's being recognized for a reason so let this good man continue to do his good job and let's just get out of his way thank you thank you jessica hatton could you repeat if i had the opportunity i would be changing my speech right now jessica hadn't okay but i am speaking tonight to address item 1702 on your agenda the decision to extend dr fritz's contract before making your
075decision i ask that you go back a few years before dr frist was hired and compare the climate of our school district now verse how it was then i know dr fritz is numbers person so compare how many job vacancies there were at this time of the year now compared to then how many teachers are out on a leave of absence now compared to then the stress levels of teachers now compared to then the number of nurse vacancies in our schools now compared to them the vacancies of school bus drivers now compared to them i ask you to speak to the seasoned teachers the teachers that are tenured and not afraid of repercussions if they speak their minds they were here before dr fritz ask them if they are happier now or then speak to
076the principals ask them if their jobs are easier now compared to them please don't be swayed by the fact that dr fritz was selected as 2021 superintendent watch to watch i was also nominated for who's who dr fritz will tell you that our graduation rates graduation rates are up but district tells us that the stress levels and vacancies are due to covet that will not balance the scale one cannot be so high while the other is so low at every board meeting speakers come before you to inform you of the problems that we are having in this week's daytona west observer mrs haynes acknowledged the problem of teacher salaries she said and i quote that is the district's ability to raise salaries is limited because of the way the state constrains school district budgets so
077i asked how many times has our superintendent gone to tallahassee to fight for the money for our district teachers i ask you to please talk to the teachers principals nurses bus drivers school cafe workers ask them if they are happier now or then it is only after having all the information will you be able to make the decision that will bring volusia county schools back to being one of the best school districts to work for thank you next up len marciano welcome mr marciano thank you uh good afternoon or good evening at this point mr chair members of the school board my name is len marinasio i'm a futures board member i'm a past president of futures um the current outgoing or the immediate uh outgoing chair of the daytona regional chamber um and i
078bring that to your attention just to let you know i've been involved in volusia county schools for for a number of years i was actually one of uh appointed by the board back for the first sales tax committee the oversight committee of citizens so i've been volunteering with the school system over 20 years now i've worked with every superintendent going back quite some ways and uh and dr fritz is by far the best i've seen um i've actually was with him in tallahassee a couple weeks ago fighting for money for the school system and i know that he was there the week before and probably was there the week after um i want to kind of reiterate what what ms vargas had said uh you know in addition to the numbers that we've seen the
079the improvements that we've seen the plan that he's put together uh that i think we all want to see to its end as a district we really need to be consistent in the choices we make in the leaders that we put forward and we give them the opportunity to follow through to to see if what they've planned will come to fruition the plans he has are great the interaction with the business community is great the interaction with the higher education system in this community is fantastic in my opinion he deserves a chance to see it through to prove to you that what he has told you he can do he can do and that's what i'd ask you to give him the opportunity to do thank you very much thank you next up jennifer kelly
080welcome miss kelly thank you um good evening i've already emailed each of the board members my personal opinion reason not to extend the superintendent's contract so tonight i'm going to read for you a letter from an anonymous teacher dear board members recently i left volusia county schools after 21 years of teaching it was one of the hardest decisions i've ever made so why did i leave volusia county schools to throw a throw away my one undergraduate degree and to my master's degree all in education under the new leadership of volusia county schools the new policies that were made challenged my ethics morals and values that i hold dear to my heart as a professional educator the straw that finally broke my back was when i was no longer able to do my job which was
081to teach you see the new policies created by the new administration forced me to choose between following the policies that i knew were not what was in the best interest of children or being insubordinate and going against such policies because i knew in my heart what was best for my students not one person i spoke to agreed with the new policies however everyone just went along with what they knew was wrong just like clogs in a wheel towing the line to keep their job their benefits and their pension unlike some of my colleagues i spoke up i wrote emails to the board i spoke to the head of the department and everyone in the chain of command below them it felt like i was screaming into a windmill leaving the feeling drained and broken from
082not being able to get some of my policies to change but at least i can say i tried everything before i left want to know the specific straw that broke my back i was forced to give district tests on specific dates i was forced to shove content down my students throats to rush through the curriculum map in order to make testing deadlines it didn't matter if i was teaching advanced classes regular track classes or support classes with children with special needs nope everyone must test this day i watch the facial expressions of my students as i pass back their failing tests i watch their disappointed faces and witness their self-esteems take a downward plunge it was those moments when i realized i am not helping my students i'm actually hurting them teaching doesn't work like
083that teachers know their own students best teachers should be allowed to have an autonomy to make their own decisions for what's best for their students i no longer could take part in hurting children i could no longer be responsible for lowering their self-esteem i no longer could be a part of the reason why they hated school the joy of simply teaching my content that i loved because painstaking draining and exhaustive i spent more time trying to come up with lessons that could wow my students with to execute those lessons to a class of students who felt like failures my god how horrible is it to actually stand in front of my class and not be able to inspire my students anymore so i quit i can't even begin to explain the amount of burden that
084was released off my shoulder since that day board members i ask you not to renew the superintendent's contract since i believe he has been one of the worst things to happen to volusia county schools we need a leader who understands how children learn listens to teachers suggestions and ideas embraces constructive criticism rather than getting angry we need a leader who doesn't have any ego that interferes with doing what's best for students we need a leader who ultimately does not make policies to harm our children from anonymous thank you mr kelly next up rebecca sorry good evening welcome ms harley um board members as you consider this contract renewal i want you to think about how communication has been between you and the superintendent when it comes to making decisions i want you to consider the
085organizational chart particularly the times when there was an operational decision that was not even brought before you nor were you made aware of several times i contacted you with an issue you had been left in the dark as it was a decision made alone by the superintendent one specific example i'll give is when the advent health sports clinical came and they gave their presentation asking for permission for the event and also specifically for the ekg screening this went to a vote that you voted in unanimously but when the advertisement went out for this clinic it was found that advent was also peddling the pfizer shop for the kids at no point was this part of their presentation and something this controversial would have definitely been a topic of concern if they had been transparent and
086that may have affected your vote as you know i contacted you and you did not know of this edition when i contacted the presenter from advent they were unkind on the phone and they stated the districts had approved this eventually i found out it was okayed by the superintendent something that originally required a vote approval for you resulted in a major change to the event passed without your knowledge or consent that makes you look bad and it makes you have to take the heat from you your constituents and that wasn't fair for you later however we did hear of our superintendent's true feelings towards the parents who choose not to mask or vaccinate their children calling it bad parenting and this broke trust with many parents this also made children aware of the superintendent's feelings
087and i don't know about you but i never knew of my superintendent's feelings growing up in public school and i grew up in bush county school after a long string of grievances the 2021 school year we're happy to start the 21 school year with mask choice hopefully going back to normal however the rug was pulled out from under us only a few weeks into school with the superintendent knowing full well it's now against the law to make a mass policy stated he would support the mandate condoning the lawlessness for me that was the straw that broke the camel's back i could no longer trust the school system or entrust my children to be in their care while in school having disregard for the law and disregard for parental rights not only this but many other
088concerns that we've uncovered since we've been now paying attention in september i pulled my children from polish county school and i now homeschool them i know many others have chosen this path following the tumultuous drama we never experienced have from school and like i said i'm a graduate from spruce creek high school i grew up in it but if one thing is true parents will always choose for the safety of their children and i never planned on homeschooling my children but even to make that decision but maybe in some way that i should thank you for opening my eyes as it became the only reasonable option for my family there was a breaking of trust in our schools between the parents and the district so please consider this as you make your decision thank you
089miss sorry next up crystal mcclure welcome ms cook mclaren thank you good evening i've worked in this district for over 15 years i am a hard-working educator who loves my kids and loves or looks forward to seeing them every single day i'm well educated hold three degrees and have been distinguished on my evaluation the past six years felucia is my home my heart and is where i want my kids to grow up that being said this year is the first year in my career i've ever considered moving districts and leaving volusia when dr fritz came here he spoke at big game and honestly i believed he was here to create good positive change but after a year of his reign of terror it was just just too much i as a leader in this district
090have seen many times him talk down to others especially women he brought an entire team of disrespectful and inept individuals who are busy posing on twitter and pushing out volusia's best leaders instead of doing his actual job which would be to retain our teachers hire the best new teachers and find substitutes instead of allowing students to sit in a gym day after day not learning while he pushes to blame others school board members if you don't believe the statements i am making please do your research and look at the numbers look at how many administrators have left since he started here look how many teachers have left since he started look how many support staff paraprofessionals bus drivers etc that have left since he started request the raw data without allowing anyone to manipulate it
091as he does all of his school board presentations open your eyes and please do what's best for the employees and students of volusia county schools this was from a teacher who did not feel comfortable coming tonight i also do not support renewing his contract for all the reasons that were stated and i'll spare you um restating them thank you next up we have ms faro hossini welcome miss housini good evening thank you mr chairman i very much appreciate this opportunity good evening everyone thank you for your time and thank you for serving our students those of you who know me i very strongly believe in public school system i made sure that my daughters all went to public school system and i've been very active in um in trying to be a good parent uh
092when when they were in school um i started footballing soap because we actually saw children who were homeless which i had no idea before i actually saw them in in my kids classes that was in 2007. so you know fast forward to 2021 and now food brings hope is in over you know we have over 46 programs in 30 schools in volusia county and some in flagler and we serve 1500 students i have worked with various amazing superintendents they all have been hard-working and great superintendents i've never worked with the superintendent as visionary with a wonderful solid plan to take our district and our schools to the next level as dr fritz i'm sitting here telling you that i i go to 30 different schools i work with many many many principals i see many
093bus drivers and they all are very appreciative of dr fritz it's amazing that i hear how unhappy those who sent letters that are not here are and i'm sure they are if you look at our employees at ici homes i promise you're going to find a few who are not happy with the leadership of ici i'm sure any of you who run your business or law firms if you go to staff there's always ted somebody who's not happy but all in all i'm here to tell you that if you're looking at the visionary somebody that you hired majority of you were here when you hired him now give him the chance to take us forward keep changing superintendents who do you think is going to apply for a job that the superintendent gets keeps getting
094fired every two years he is the man who's going to take us to the next level please provide him the opportunity to have enough time to carry the vision that you guys hired him to do i very much appreciate your time i strongly support dr fritz's contract be extended please thank you thank you mr cena next we have sydney smith sydney smith all right next we have sean smith welcome to smith city's item was a different topic so it was placed and she'll get you guys that information later i'm here to address dr britt's contract no doubt it's been a really difficult time to lead this district but the problem that i have is that i've never observed a leader i understand many plaque many factors play into your request for an extension but i'd
095like to reflect on the reasons why i strongly oppose this idea your lack of communication skills between my husband and i which by the way has been a volusia county teacher for 20 years have emailed you a couple dozen times but i've only received one reply and i believe that was because you understood the magnitude of crt videos that were being shown in the school and violating the law i'm still dumbfounded about how this was an oversight with the current lack of distress from parents you lack humility your actions demonstrate an individual who meets your agenda and act based on what you want with no regard for others input or opinion last year after the motion died for the lgbtq awareness week you turned around and made it a resolution of recognition i apologize another
096example is after your public rant calling those who chose to make health decisions for our children bad parents we all make mistakes and we say things in the heat of the moment had you owned that right away i believe many of us here and out there would have felt differently about your integrity and said it confirmed a lack thereof when you took so long to apologize your lac you lack respect this includes barricades set up outdoors no access tend to the overflow area and porta-potties outdoor at these meetings in addition several administrators and teachers have many concerns but too many feel intimidated to speak out out of fear of retaliation we've heard that over and over again from letters tonight for people who didn't want to be here this is not a leadership quality i
097reviewed your evaluation criteria and the majority of these standards focus on student achievement here are a few points that are i feel are worth addressing almost two years ago student schools were shut down and we had no state testing which meant no scores for that year last year assessments were given but there was no accountability for the scores nor school grades so you've had a lot of leniency in your contract since you've been here and it has involved little accountability however this is the current situation from the scores last spring 51 percent of lucia county students failed the 10th grade reading at fsa that's over half of our kids 51 62 of volusia county students failed the algebra eoc which is a graduation requirement 62 percent did not pass the most disturbing is that 47
098of third grade students scored a one or two on the ela fsa this is almost a half of all our third grade students so there has been an emphasis placed on volusia county graduation rates but these numbers don't align with the data they're below the statewide average as well as our neighboring districts districts and you chose to come work for us in volusia county so there's no room for pointing things thank you miss elizabeth albert welcome miss albert thank you thank you chair colon members of the board dr fritz members of the audience so wasn't intending to come back up but can you imagine my surprise when i read the agenda several times and this was an item that was put on for discussion yet now magically it's turned into a board action item just
099another example of how we are moving with last minute changes on the agenda misrepresenting an item and perhaps even at some extent a sunshine law violation i'm going to look into that one and see if in fact there's any room there because my goodness wouldn't we have learned our lesson from actions similar to this from the past we've done this twice in the recent past and it never went over well but here we are again here we are again the practice is rejected again so just another example of how the public comes the public looks at what's put out and and we're pulling the rug out from underneath of them so it just is again a lack of transparency it continues to break trust and i just can't imagine how you might think your employees
100and the other members of the public who are watching interpret these actions but just a couple points of clarification in the few moments that i have remaining there have been no words used like firing there has been no sharing of the word termination we are simply talking about what we're going to do when a contract expires and where i come from if you are running a business and you have a contract with a vendor or someone and you choose not to renew it that's a standard practice of business when you run a business you're beholden to the people that you're running that business for your customers your shareholders whomever and if you choose not to renew somebody's contract you've satisfied the obligation that you agreed to initially and you move on and i think in
101this very boardroom not too long ago we talked about moving on from some other people's contracts so i don't know why this is all of a sudden such a great big deal but i'll leave you with this thought it's nice to bring friends to speak on one's behalf it's nice to have references we all enjoy that great to have a cheering squad behind you but the voices of the employees should matter the most the people who do the work of educating the children and running our school schools in this district should weigh the heaviest upon your decision because when they're all gone there will not be a volusia county schools please think about that thank you miss albert all right any other comments thoughts feelings or concerns i will say and and i'm gonna go
102ahead that i believe this to have been a discussion because my question was i needed direction a yellow card i might have missed it nancy kiefer sorry come on up sorry about that not not all an intended oversight i'm sure but thank you for allowing me to speak this evening uh chairman uh school board members dr fritz my name is nancy kiefer and i'm the president and ceo of the daytona regional chamber i did send you an email earlier earlier and hope you had the opportunity to read that it was an email sent on behalf of our chairman of the board kelly parsons quiet tech and myself we are here to strongly support the extension of dr fritz's contract we have had a great opportunity to work with dr fritz in our business community and
103he has been incredibly accessible and has sure been a cheerleader for the school system all of the conversations that we have had with dr fritz and all of his conversations have been through the lens of what's right for students and how can we assure that students are set up on a pathway to success i'm not going to go over the numbers ms vargas already talked about those but i can share with you that while dr fritz may be the front person for volusia county schools he is always graciously recognized the team that surrounds him from you the school board members his his administrators principals teachers and he speaks with great pride about the students i can share with you that as a ceo of the chamber the last two years have been the most challenging
104of any 34 years that i've been in this industry leading through a pandemic presents many challenges with emotions running high stresses on the parents students business owners have been amplified for the school system to show success during these trying times takes bold leadership and we believe that dr fritz has been and continues to be the right leader for our region we need his vision we need consistency in this very important community leadership position i've listened to the conversation about workforce issues they are not specific to the school system i hear them every single day in my job across industry i hear about just dissatisfied employees no matter what the jobs are these are trying times and emotions are very very um amplified i want to share a personal statement from our chairperson kelly parsons quiet
105tech who is out of town as a mother of two elementary students in the public school system there is a marked difference in the opportunities for all children to succeed in communication with parents as a whole since dr fritz has been at the helm so on behalf of our board of directors we ask that you support the extension of dr fritz's contract so we can continue the positive momentum we are experiencing in the growth of our region thank you thank you and again i'm sorry so i'm gonna go ahead and you know so when i requested from the board to get direction the idea was to have a discussion and i agreed and and i was a bit confused prior to us going with this because i said wait a second this is a under
106items the way we posted this on the agenda was under items from the board and so i consulted with mr doran and you know arguably i've been critical of just this where we post something on the agenda and i'll take ownership of not having realized what this conversation would become and so we did not advertise it to the public as as an agenda item that we were going to be yes or knowing if that was the case it would have been under the board action items which typically come with public comment and so as you notice we actually had to inject the public comment because the conversation changed and while it is permissible for mr doran again i was very critical of it in several occasions when this has happened as much as i hate
107kicking the can down the road i believe for the sake of the public this is my opinion and there is a motion on the floor and i will respect that motion but i do believe we need to advertise this as a board action item so that the public is aware that we are making a decision um my initial request of my colleagues were i need direction we are [Music] months away from the expiration of that contract and so i needed direction as to what where everybody was not thinking that we would be taking a vote because if that's the case it would have been under a board action item and it would have been advertised accordingly so again i will for that reason alone i will not support this motion because i believe that even
108though it is permissible it is not the right thing i was critical of it when it happened before i was critical of it during times when it was not publicly and that's the point of the agenda it's to have it out there so that the public can know what we're doing and my goal was to have a discussion to know where everybody was to get some direction on what to do but i don't believe that we advertised it and while again mr doran i appreciate your feedback that it is permissible i don't believe it's the right thing to do and i've been critical of it in the past and i'll continue to be critical of it because i think it's important that the public know what we're doing that's the whole point of it and
109again this was advertised under 17.02 items from the board superintendent discussion announcement or approval it wasn't something that we were going to necessarily be voting on so that's where i am is anybody else have any other comments i do mr purses yeah thank you mr chair i want to thank all the people too that apparently came here ready to speak so and from the emails i got it looked like people were aware that action was going to be taken and that's why they were here to speak if we were going to just discuss the item they wouldn't be allowed to speak remember they only speak on board action items so if we were having a discussion only all these people tonight would have been i think a little upset that they didn't get a chance
110to speak when they were under the impression rightly or wrongly that some action was going to happen tonight and that's why they were here and obviously very prepared to speak and i appreciate everyone coming plus from the emails there was a lot of other people that thought some action was going to happen tonight i mean if people didn't think any action was going to happen tonight they they wouldn't be here we wouldn't receive all the emails so i just want to make you wear that the other thing was this didn't just come up yesterday or the day before you announced this i think a couple of weeks ago so wasn't it addressed at the agenda conference it was and so again and i'll take ownership the fact that it is not under a board action
111item because what i requested and got a consensus for was to have a discussion to get some direction as the chair on what next steps seeing as we were months away from that contract and so i will again okay i will accept that ownership okay because i wanted to make sure i wanted to make sure that you were there because you were there when the agenda was created correct and so i mean arguably we've all reviewed the agenda and again this was under the discussion uh which again sends the message that we are going to do just that and it actually is listed as a discussion for extension of the superintendent's contract yeah and so it is not under a board action item and when i saw the cards my question this evening was so
112do the cards go under the regular public participation because this arguably is not a board action item and we elected to or i elected to listen to those together with the conversation for the sake of context so again as much as i you know what i requested the consensus of the board was to have a discussion and that's why it was listed as such may i ask ted a question sure mr doran the um since you and i were together when we created the initial contract with dr fritz in no november of 2019 i guess it was i i forgot i don't have the contract memorized but is there some kind of clause in there or something that uh we need to discuss this contract within three months of its expiration or did we put
113anything in there like that no there's nothing in there like that so that this could be brought up at any at any time it could it could um i you know uh i mean i i started the process by saying you can just discuss it right or you can take action on it i hear the chairman's interpretation of the language and the reference to the fact that this happened once before but it but it didn't really because the time you're referring to there was nothing on the agenda nothing no mention of anything and during board comments somebody made a motion to extend mr russell's contract which was legal but i fully appreciate there was no notice to the public that that might come up but there's no requirement legally that it be noticed that way
114but it is encouraged by the attorney general's office and it is a good practice but this is noticed um that's there's it's not analogous at all to anything that's happened in the past but he has you know every right to view it the way he's viewing it i'm not saying there's anything wrong with that per se but but it's i you know from uh from a public uh you know announcement standpoint uh etc you know discussion action there's nothing magical about board action items as far as you know a category uh that is in the context of where the superintendent's making a recommendation and he is he needs a vote up or down on it and so that's why we call it board action item this does not meet that definition but it also clearly
115meets the definition of discuss and take action if you choose to so it's you know a board to board decision on what to do yeah um but i feel very comfortable with the amount of notice that's out there i mean i think it's you know underscored by the fact that we have people here we do uh very impressive across the board from all walks of life so to speak in the in the district so anyway that answers your question yeah i i just feel like if if there was nobody here and nobody hadn't sent an e-mail and then we took some action that maybe some people wanted to weigh in on then i would have thought oh we're trying to circumvent the public or something like that or we could be we could be accused
116of that but by evidence of so many people being here in the emails that we got i think the general public believed that something we were going to talk about it and we were going to make a decision i mean you discuss and you decide i mean i think that's to be the give and take and uh so i feel your your discomfort with it but i i don't think you should feel uncomfortable by it because i think i think people would have been more upset if we didn't allow them to speak tonight because they all thought something was we that we were going to vote on something tonight so i that's why i i feel comfortable with going with going forward and you know the funny thing is about superintendents jobs or city managers
117or county managers basically their contract is every two weeks i mean let's be honest they have a two-week contract because the board the board can vote to terminate them any time contractor or no contract and the only guarantee that they have is under state statute and mr doran what is it now 120 days uh 20 weeks 20 weeks so they get 20 weeks of severance pay so i mean you know that you know so i i'm not i'm not really having a lot of angst about extending a contract uh one lady miss grimes the first speaker she said uh why don't why don't you just wait until you do your evaluation and then you can decide what to do which is fine you know we're going to do our evaluation our time frame for evaluations
118is the in july i think we moved it so we'd have it finished before the start of the school year so we all agreed that that's when we would do it but we could decide tonight to you know extend the contract and then if for some reason at any meeting three of us are not satisfied with dr fritz for whatever reason right someone can make a motion and it's for termination i mean i mean that's horrible's the sound but that's the way this business is and four of us know about that so i think i think we're such a i think we're we are a good board and i think we have a great strategic plan and i think we have put a lot of effort into that plan i think the superintendent has involving
119stakeholders from everywhere to create the plan and and then to just like say no we we don't like the plan we like the plan but we're going to give him a little chance here and you know when i think back of it we hired him ted said starting december 2nd of 19 and he was here three months school shut down in march he was shut down in may for cancer came back february of 21 this is his first school year starting in august and be able to finish it so he hasn't even finished his first school year so it's like golly you have to give him at least three more years he's only he's only kind of been here like half of the three years so uh you know for all the success and the
120way the way i think we're moving forward uh you know that's why i said and i asked you right off the bat why you said three you could have said two you could have said four i mean i don't know but i guess you'd pick three because the original contract was three he deserves three more so that that's that's all i'm saying thank you mr president i'm just trying to explain it i'm reminded of a time when you and i were on an island and it was the ortona osceola and this it was listed under discussion and i remember you saying guys this isn't even posted as if we were making a decision i remember because you and i were on an island we were by ourselves and remember nobody called in and that was
121the evidence remember i said nobody because you're closing a school and nobody from the school is weighing in on it correct and so again that it's the same scenario because it is listed and i i recall the conversation because like i said you and i were the only ones on an island at that time and we were both concerned with the fact that guys we did not tell folks we were doing this and it's the same it was the same exact situation and and so again i'll i'll own that next miss cupper thank you mr chair i came onto the board in november of 2014. um we had our conference our you know our reorganizational meeting we all the following week we went off to our floor school board association and i'm the only one
122on the board right now who was who was in that experience we went off to went off to our floor school board association meeting we came back it is the first meeting in december i'm sitting right there and the board member sitting here first meeting demanded margaret smith's resignation i was shocked first board meeting and all chaos broke loose it was all prepared packets were passed out notations were made accusations were made it was it was complete chaos within two weeks dr smith was gone i suggested that mr russell step up he was a deputy superintendent he didn't really want it but he agreed to serve the district and the students to help us and we were all very grateful did he have a doctorate no had he been a superintendent before no he brought
123us as far as we he could we continued and i've been in volusia county schools since 1986. we have never really been able to meet the salaries of our neighboring districts because of the funding the district cost differential we have never had a prof uh some ex except for dr smith that i can remember that i worked under maybe dr serrat was was in when i was here i've never had anyone to have worked with with dr fritz's expertise and his experience and his passion for education comes from an educational family as i do being a teacher is one of the best occupations anyone can have and of course and that's just being in education and i don't mean to discount bus drivers paris or you know learning specialists or deputy superintendents then in may
124of 2019 i'm sitting there and the board members sitting here without any during board comments once mr russell's resignation made the decision without us knowing it brought complete chaos to the board took us all by surprise then we went through and then i argued at the next board meeting how dangerous that was and i did not summon so much support mr russell he could take care of himself i supported his position and what his job is he is the the head of the most the largest in group of employees in this county and the lowest paid our county manager makes a heck of a lot more than dr fritz and handles much much less many less fewer employees i mean nobody complains i i there are a lot of county workers i know are not
125happy with mr reckenwald i mean i haven't been i've been arguing with him about a traffic light for a long time and finally finally that's coming to fruition but i had dr fritz's back back up i had dr shanoff's support and because of that it's coming through and thank goodness for miss doster and the planning department much we have moved forward in many respects we were very successful and thanks to our public our tax payers our voters in this county who supported us in the half cent sales tax we would not have a new person elementary or chisholm or george marks or deltona middle or beachside elementary or the additions that start or even the renovations that new smyrna middle if we did not have that half cent sales tax he's been a champion of
126that half cent sales tax when i sat down and i asked on our one-on-one and i interviewed dr fritz because we had to go through a very extensive expensive search for superintendent i remember sitting here and asking i to write sitting across his vice chair i said what happens when this superintendent brings in his own people and she said that's his right as the employee he's the employer of all of our people we five he has five bosses plus he has to account for all the parents all the citizens as well as the staff every single one especially the children number one are the children but when i asked him i sat down and i asked about four or five basic questions this is what my thought was from a teacher's point of view being
127on the board for about four years we need our custodians back because we need the pride back in our classrooms to be taken care of the custodians have come back we've got a pilot program he has plans to expand it i said we need we need more assistance at the middle school level our students are very vulnerable and they're very confused and they act out without thinking especially grades six seven and eight he said i agree we need to redo middle school middle school redesign middle school reconfiguration six periods he's doing that for next year and it's not just a pilot program he's establishing a lot of criteria and professional development now because i participated last december and jack would i don't remember his last name and jack's presentation at new smyrna high school there
128is a plan there for that i also asked about the jobs the jobs we have in the vacancies he said there's an and i said we have to work with our unions our unions are a key communicative important part of our being we're very union organized i said i've always been a union member i belong to you retired he said he's always worked well with unions and he promised to work with unions he meets regularly or has the designate to meet with the unions but what every other week once a month i i meet once a month they meet once a week with rachel okay and we also needed direction we had no real strategic plan he put one into place we were all part of it we all did our little stickies on the
129on the wall we engaged when we had to do the mandates it's a very confusing time a lot of very opposite opposite polar uh agreements and we all know that volusia counties in part of that 12 county because of my vote one week the next meeting we had my vote changed and the lbgtq i need to come i need to clarify that i was chair last year that came up the board didn't care for it i'm the one who asked the superintendent to put it as of recognition for the next board meeting he did that because i was the chair so please don't blame him because he did it upon my direction which i could do that i can place items as chair on the agenda it has been a very tumultuous couple of years
130for anybody to be a new teacher a new ceo a new president of a chamber or a law firm or running for office being on a board i mean my goodness miss burnett being brand new on the board in the middle of this pandemic it is traumatic for everyone everyone one thing we need now more than anything is stability and quite a few people said that to have another changeover or to not give this man who's worked so hard the reassurance that he has a job next december third is ludicrous superintendents are very rare these days i am quite sure orange county has called his home i'm quite sure pinellas i think pinellas is looking for a superintendent they're after him and i i can almost be for certain quite a few of his staff
131his cabinet members will follow him so what i said three what almost three years ago two and a half years ago what i saw with the instability of mr russell coming in being calling out being fired and i'm not calling names i'm not going i'm not going back there please understand the board voted and i voted as well with regret to let mr russell go but he went to a better place he loved being a principal at flagler but i'm not about to let another superintendent who works so hard for this district be raped over the coals we will rake him over the coals or elevate him during his evaluation but in nine months his contract is up and for us to have enough time if you vote not to have him as many people
132came to this day and said not to renew his contract we need the time to search for another one and i i don't know who anyone in his his or her right mind would come here when in the last what eight years we've had three superintendents we've had uh dr valgaben came in and served i remember ida saying one thing this county needs is a succession plan he put a succession plan in that's in the organizational chart he put it in place we had someone to step in thankfully a competent individual who would not take pay for that elevated position until after all the negotiations were finished and teachers received their pay he had that succession plan in place that takes initiative i worked very closely with dr fritz as chair you know i was
133elected and you all know what difficult year it has been for me which is why i'm not running for re-election but that year we had to work very closely i worked closely with dr belgium dr fritz came back mr doran and i had a very uh conference with him in january does this man have swagger yes he does and why shouldn't he why shouldn't he have the passion for a man who started out as a paraprofessional who has a daughter who needs additional support whose wife is willing to be separated from her husband during the week so he can do his job why shouldn't we give him a chance i don't understand the attacks does he have a difference of opinion than many of our parents yes i do none of us anyone who walks
134across our thresholds are entitled to a free public education without judgment to the way they look the way how tall they are whether they wear glasses or not whether they can put one foot in front of the other where they can add or subtract at the age of 15. it doesn't matter we accept them all we didn't have a safety and security department he put chief newman bless her heart in control our schools are now getting new cameras as chair i've voiced my concerns because so many of our schools didn't have digital cameras there's a plate that's being funded dr phillips came on board we now have one-to-one technology dr started with mr aiken but dr shanoff came on board we now have a white fleet that has i mean our drivers were driving around
135in 20 25 year old vehicles that's unsafe they are now mostly new correct dr shannon they're all they're brand new so we're talking about we just cannot look at one issue we can't afford that we're not allowed to we have to look at the big picture and that's what dr fritz has to do he visits schools every friday am i in fear of him sure you know um any anybody i mean when i met mrs vargas a long time ago she was the parent of a really fantastic young man in the aider program at spruce creek high school but that day it was wonderful to see the support our parents come to our schools we love them i want stability in this county we desperately need it we need to be able to walk in
136and depend on one person if you all decide as a board one year that's fine i don't mind i just threw a number out there three's a good number if you want to vote on two that's fine but i was so afraid because i've been burnt twice and i'm not going to be burnt a third time i'm not going to have and i have no idea what you're going to say because we're in the sunshine i just didn't know what was going to happen tonight and that's why i jumped on this there were no pre-plans there's nothing no subterfuge no nothing and it only comes because i sat here and i saw two qualified people leave and we always when when when we could give tenure when the legislature allowed us to give tenure we
137always gave a teacher three years before we gave tenure he has not had his three years not really so he needs direction that is the respect you give a superintendent any ceo any president we should respect the position he deserves our respect he deserves a time if we do not care for his position we don't agree he has he deserves to hear about it this is the end of february we need to make up our minds in a month in order to get going if we choose to let him go but you know something he can leave any time he could say well i don't have to stay here until december first or second orange county's hiring they're gonna miss jenkins dr jenkins is retiring in december i'm out of here because orange county is
138much closer to osceola where his home is so i i apologize uh no you're good i'm mister president uh mr chairman however don't do that i'm just i stay quiet the last two times i'm not staying quiet this time thank you thank you miss burnett thank you um so new to me um i was not here when when dr fritz was hired i was not here and experienced the other experiences you had as well i do agree with mrs grimes and that is one thing that i came tonight with and mrs grimes and i did not speak about this but i do believe in order for me as a leader whenever i do anything at my job we give a proper evaluation and that i feel is due before i make any vote i also
139believe and when i talked to people tonight and they were talking about this i said i don't think we're voting tonight because to me it was a discussion item and and when i did come on the board and i told mr dornis the first meeting i had i will not vote on something that's not properly vetted to vote i will not vote on an item that has not been on the agenda for a vote so that is where i stand i think we need to do an evaluation and i don't think it's right to vote tonight thank you thank you miss hayne thank you mr clone so one of the things that i've done um because we were going to have a discussion about this and that's what i was anticipating tonight because i looked
140to see where it was and it wasn't even under an actionable item and i went back through the entire contract and i was coming to talk about some of the ways that the contract is written because i also think that needs to be considered so when i read the contract you anticipate or i anticipated that there would be under section four some type of a plan you know for like when we reach the end or like in preparation of reaching the end of the contract because it is state-specific because that's the way it was written in mr persis i know that you were on the team for doing the contract but there's nothing there so when you go into section 9 which then really lays out you know the parts on using the state statutes
141and saying you know like when because the florida statutes are very clear about like termination for cause when there is a cause because there's items where you know people can do something wrong right and it gets you there then you go into the section about termination without a cause but it also talks about during the term of the agreement or any extension or the board fails to renew this agreement without having given the minimum notices provided in paragraph 4.1 so i went straight back to 4.1 and there is no language there so and there's other things because you know but we're in a situation tonight that i wasn't expecting to be in and when we say well people came and talked so we had 12 people come forward and speak this evening and i actually
142don't think 12 people is very representative of the when you think of the number of students that we have in volusia county the number of employees we have in volusia county the number of parents guardians you know that are behind each of those students i think 12 people you know who maybe pay attention saw this and said well maybe we need to come and speak and and you know we always allow public input at the end of the evening for anyone that has anything they want to talk about but i don't think that's totally representative and i don't think we were clear on the agenda because of where it's placed and where it says a discussion and having gone through all of the school board trainings and learned what is acceptable and isn't acceptable and
143what you should or should not do you know i stand also with even with what mrs burnett said that why are we you know putting forth to vote on something tonight when we've got issues with a contract in the way it was written if we want to be honest and you know and talk about there's not there's not a plan in there i mean i anticipated when mr clone brought this up about a discussion that's why i immediately went back to the contract and i thought well does it say three months out six months out that's right you know what does it say well it's left out of there it tells you to go back to 4.1 and follow the plan but there is no plan in 4.1 so which you know basically says because
144there's no plan it could be the day before now is that i mean i've never done that to anyone i mean we ask people to give a notice when they're going to leave themselves so we wrote a contract and didn't put that piece you know in there and if i'm wrong mr doran you can tell me but i have it pulled up in front of me but i don't i don't feel confident and comfortable making a vote this evening with it not being listed that it was going to be a consent item i mean if you push me to vote i mean if that's where we're at and i have to make a vote i'm also going to struggle with that because let's think about this when he came on board we gave one goal
145i mean we and all of us were here other than mrs burnett when we gave the one goal and that goal was accomplished but that goal was accomplished if you look to that side of the room and you think about every principal and assistant principal out there and all of the district staff that's not even represented here tonight and you look at us and you look at a you know a company that was hired it was everybody working together on that and the work still continued during the pandemic and everything and as i said when we started talking in in july and this past july and august it was like okay we'll evaluate him well there was no criteria i mean we never had a chance because he went out is that his fault absolutely
146not but we we we didn't have a chance until this past august july and august to actually create the document in which to evaluate him by and that was you know we each submitted to mr doran our thoughts on that and mrs cuthbert and mr doran put it together and then brought it to us to discuss in an open forum which is what we have to do in a workshop where we've debated back and forth on different pieces and parts and we put that document together there's been no evaluation yet i mean there truly hasn't been an evaluation but what i also want to say is this i never think we can ever discredit the people that are working for us i always felt when um i had employees working for me in my final
147role prior to coming onto the board that their thoughts of the working conditions their thoughts of what was working or what was not were very important because they're the people that are on the front lines every day doing the work so yes as with anything you might always have someone that's unhappy but i actually don't it's kind of like when we did that emergency meeting and i won't talk about the topic i did a running tally that night of even the emergency meeting but i don't think 12 voices represents our district i agree with miss grimes we haven't done an evaluation yet i think in a value we have an evaluation tool that we all agreed upon but i am i've got to say every time i seem to read a contract or a contract
148that i have questions about i am disheartened that there's parts not in that contract that should have been covered so if i may mr clone i'd like to add something you have the floor man at the last school board training in december when we were there i learned something new that i did not know and i'm not the only one that learned that um at least two of my colleagues were there i was a little surprised when i learned it because both of you have chaired before and i would have thought you possibly had already learned this but in part of the chair and being a vice chair training they talked about even school board attorneys and the school board attorney's contracts what i basically learned sitting in that training is this most school boards
149their attorneys are on an annual contract and it's my understanding that years ago our school board attorney was on an annual contract and at some point it got switched and i know we were all kind of taken back and surprised in june when we were just a few days out from learning that mr doran's contract was going to end and it popped up all of a sudden on the school board thing and statements were made well we should have known and you know that's why i feel there's a need for a a a document that anyone that comes in here has something to follow and know what's happening but besides being the annual you know or not it was shared with us in that training that school board attorneys and i i mean we asked
150in that room i mean we sat there and i think we're surprised they're also evaluated and to the best of my knowledge in the time that i've been here there's never been an evaluation done on our school board attorney and if you guys didn't learn that when you set through chairmanship you know i don't know if they've changed it or something but that's what they told us and i was surprised by that also and so i i kind of connect with school board members from 20 to 24 other districts we just kind of formed a group during this pandemic time and we keep each other updated on what's happening and so i asked that question just simply you know do you evaluate your school board attorney and they said yes and so i think that's
151something also that we need to take a look at because i've never had employees that didn't receive some form of evaluation but where i stand tonight is this was listed as a discussion and i came prepared to discuss and talk about you know because there's nothing laid out there to follow it appears that you know and i hear what you're saying but i also don't think 12 is representative of everyone thank you thank you miss cuthbert you need six months to hire new superintendent um our valuation is scheduled for july it's not enough time either we have to move the evaluation within the next couple of months but then graduation rates aren't in testing scores aren't in we don't even and we might not even know what the legislature has made decisions upon and the
152department of education has to interpret then a lot of the new laws the legislative laws that the legislature has put into place do you not or think anything at all if we were going to discuss this did you not think about whether or not you thought about extending his contract if we were going to discuss it and we are discussing it it's a very hard discussion i must say are we going to or not i'm trying to find out do you have the intention because nobody said it i've said it because i put it in the form of emotion because i refuse to be blindsided like i was twice before and there was no evaluation done on those two superintendents before they were let go they didn't get you know proper protocol procedure who's to
153say that dr fritz would get one so i'd like to establish some kind of stability if we extend it for one year and if at least we agree in the presence of all of these people in the public and everybody's listening in whether you're one voice or twelve or a thousand or a hundred fifty thousand or 150 million doesn't matter every voice counts i listen to every voice whether it's pro or con doesn't matter i listen every time i have no public participation every meeting i've had i go back and i refer to them each and every one is important to me because they the people who came tonight are representative of the people who work under them who they associate with i'm a district representative specifically the people district 3 voted me in and
154depended upon me to make rational decisions i represent all the students and the families in volusia county we are all county elected officials we should come to the desk prepared to decide to discuss do we want to extend contract or not can we have that discussion and if you table this you're putting this off until next board meeting when we have bargaining non-bargaining discuss we have an impasse hearing and then we don't meet until april april and we have been given the budget schedule from april on from our cfo mr snead very wisely giving us ahead a lot of stuff this is what we have to discuss because budgets now have to be created so when are we going to discuss this i know i would like to extend his contract he deserves the respect
155of his position and the work he's done to know that he's wanted wanted and desired in volusia county we five employed him we trusted him to come to volusia county and serve our students our faculties his staff he made a lot of changes yes did i agree with them no and i've i've mentioned him i've been unhappy things have worked out things get used to stuff but i was a little leery i've been everybody but we all come from different positions we change we have metamorphosis we bloom from the work that i've seen and the people he's put into place it's the first time we have a head of technology who knows really a whole lot about technology and it's just not this one is mr griffin too we have dr shanoff head of operations
156former principal middle elementary and high school who has a doctorate in operations we're very very fortunate maybe because it's in our backyard we don't quite realize it but let's make that decision do we or do we not want to we cannot keep avoiding this discussion and this has been the frustration that i had even as a chair this time in the chair before couldn't get people to come and make decisions let's make a decision we that we can i can table or we can table i can rescind the the motion that's okay but i want some kind of confidence some kind of assurance from this board that we plan at least to extend his contract so he knows he's got a job and he doesn't need to start looking because now's the time to look
157people superintendents to know so they can be hired when a school year begins and that's coming up september or the following september so can i ask that mr chair you certainly can i would like to know from each and every one of you are we in favor of extending his contract now i understand what miss burnett has said i understand perfectly what miss grimes has said but we don't have an evaluation instrument right now i mean if if you as the chair want to go and see mr doran again and and revise this one that's fine set it up but an evaluation is in valuations doesn't mean we're going to fire the person right it doesn't mean are we going to rehire the person i mean for every evaluation a teacher has an administrator has
158does that mean they're on the chopping block everybody's you know kind of a little queasy when that time comes i was always queasy that's why i never gave up my tenure that's why you just don't you don't do that but he has no tenure we have tenure we have four years to be elected but he has no tenure our administrators have no tenure they can be dismissed without cause any time correct so when you get into administration that's those are the chances you take now if you want to move up the evaluation you do so but we have to have a different data selection because we don't have the data from the school year if you want to do it based on last year um you know that's kind of iffy right now but these
159decisions have to be made and the sooner the better okay thank you thank you mr persons yeah i know that we could just talk about this all night long and i know that's not what we all want to do and i know the public doesn't want us to do it i just think we're in a very awkward place we really are and we really shouldn't be in it and i mean it's i remember when this came up i said well if we were going to have this discussion and if we're going to have another discussion it needs to be at a workshop setting not not this and like we do so many things have the workshop and then have it on the agenda that same afternoon like we're going to do something we just talked
160talked about in in march uh uh with the non-non-bargaining have the workshop and then do it uh miss grimes doesn't know doesn't know our e our evaluation schedule i mean her her thinking's in the right place it kind of makes you would think it would make sense but that's only if if you're really thinking ahead of when the contract ends when the evaluation period is you know those things don't always line up ours does not so you have to ask yourself you know what's going to change is your opinion going to change about anything in four months i mean march april may june that's what you're talking about in fra really march april may school year ends in may so three months i mean i i don't know is student achievement gonna do something or
161is the is the strategic plan gonna flop or is all these amazing all these amazing accomplishments accomplishments gonna tank in three months i don't think so so we're we're going to be we're going to be evaluating the same person on the same merits that you're looking at now i mean i don't see what's could possibly happen here in the next three three months but anyway getting back to kind of like the pickle that we're in uh if i feel sorry for dr fritz right now because he he probably thought something was going to happen so all that stress leading up to this meeting and i don't know for maybe for a week or two weeks i don't i don't know but it's stressful it's stressful and then to have the board just kick it down
162the road because well it was labeled as one thing but it really was another thing and i don't know i i would think he'd want some peace of mind just somebody say hey do i have three four or five votes here that want me to can continue on we don't want to take the wind out of his sails i mean he's pushing it hard he's pushing it hard but if he leaves this meeting with a with a with a no confidence vote i mean how would you feel remember today we talked about putting yourself in the other person's shoes what what if you were sitting there and having to go through all this and only to leave the meeting knowing i got i got to go through all this again you know it's it doesn't
163seem right i mean it just doesn't seem right yeah we can make a decision and maybe some members of the public could criticize and say oh i didn't know that was going to happen well then that's on us but i would rather take that heat personally then have to just go through this all over again put him through all through this again and everybody else out here who came out and you know you think any of these people are going to change their mind in three months i'm guessing not so we're here it's what is it now 10 o'clock it's only 906. 906. i mean golly we've invested so much time in this let's accomplish something and not just let it go thank you mr ms haynes do you have anything you'd like to say
164before i speak because you've been quiet because i've been quiet again for me it's you know to answer your question carl i don't know because i i don't know that who in the public would have reached out and i don't think that we made it clear on the agenda again i was critical about it several times and ensuring that we posted what we were planning on doing um before i brought it up it wasn't a surprise thing i consulted with our attorney because of the time frame that you described and how long it takes to if we were to opt not to how long it takes to start the process to figure out what we were to do so to answer your question for me would it be different i don't know because i don't
165you know and i appreciate everyone who has come out who has reached out but again i was critical about it before and again you and i sat on an island we were all by ourselves over there okay for this same situation um you know for me you know and again i i as far as a vocals i i will not support it just because of the merit of the way it was put on the agenda and there is an actual motion on the floor and i will respect that but for me it's not about the last three years it's about the next three years and whether or not i feel our district is heading in the direction that's going to take us from good to great so to answer your question carl do i know
166today where i'm at i don't i don't because again and i'll own that i wish you had suggested a workshop that day i wish i would have too because that what you're saying makes absolute sense um and and again for the sake of the public and you know i i believe that the you know the right thing to do is to properly notice it and like you said miss cuthbert let's face the music once it's properly noticed we'll face the music you know this is this is no hold on this is you know i did some reading yesterday ed week had a whole study on superintendencies you know and yes it sucks to be right here right now there's a reason why contracts have an end to it okay this contract said at the end
167of three years we're going to have to sit here and look at each other and have this very uncomfortable conversation that's what it says unfortunately everything's been not normal there are people in this room who have been in our seats before and as i think about what was said about the evaluation i thought to myself as mrs grimes brought it up and and and everybody i said wow that's a good idea i don't know contractually how that works because the contract does specify an evaluation and uh at a certain time period so i think that that would have to be an amended situation but to tell you that i came into this room knowing what i was going to do the answer is no i listened to every single person who spoke i paid attention
168to what they said i listened to each one that's sitting around this table and yes i agree miss cupper we do need to face the music you're absolutely right but i think we need to face it with proper notice and you know dr fritz is going to do the work that dr fritz does there's no question about that i mean this is this is part of being a superintendent it sucks because you are at the mercy and like i said i did a lot of reading yesterday you are at the mercy of the board you're at the mercy of elections you're at the mercy of new board members coming in you're at the the average length of a superintendent's contract do you know what it is in the united states three years and i'll tell
169you there's a re i thought about this and there's a saying in spanish you know you can have someone stay at your house and you love having there but after about three weeks it's not the same as it was at the beginning and that's unfair to you because the reality is that that's just human nature you love having your brother sister stay over but after about the third week you're like i can't even go to the kitchen and and so you know that that's the nature of being a superintendent and and and always being as you described always being two weeks away from not having a job that i can't even imagine so to answer the question for reuben and i'm only one of five it's would it change down the road would it change
170next week i couldn't tell you yes or no i couldn't tell you where i am right now because i'm not quite sure and again as i listen to what everybody said contrary to belief i don't come in here with a pre conceived notion i listened to what each and every one of us had to say linda i appreciate everything you just said even though it was about me i love it because it's the passion it's why we're here we're all here for the same reason so again i am my vote is not should the motion not be pulled my vote is not to make it a vote of no confidence as much as it is to say we need to properly notice it and then face the music where everybody knows what we're doing and
171to make that decision because i was critical about it the times that it happened before and and you know one of the things i have is i can go to sleep at night knowing i did the right thing and i personally don't believe that us taking a vote after having it marked as a discussion is the right thing and so for that reason i won't support it and again i would if we need to add a workshop to march let's do it i am open to it yes spring break is there you know we're not on the same calendar as the rest of the world uh this is truly a you know if we need to add another you tell me when march is really rough for me but i will make it work if
172that is the desire of the board to put this on a workshop but the reason why it was brought up and again in consultation with our attorney is because should the board decide we don't want to extend the contract and mind you i'm talking about what happens on december 1st or whenever the date is that's what we're talking about we're not saying in any way shape or form you know that we are going to or have any desire to discontinue his current contract and so that's where i stand and again just for the purposes of having it properly noticed and giving the public a chance to speak to us all who's to say who's going to call you and tell you this that or the other we don't know that's my position at this time
173thank you miss haynes miss cuthbert wanted to speak scott i just no one no one has answered my question do you have confidence in this that's part of the discussion that you're asking for the discussion is do we have confidence in our superintendent as a human being is a person who is leading our district who we fought very hard to hire do we or do we not have confidence in him thank you miss haynes okay mrs cuthbert i'll answer your question so i sat here in that november of 2019 and four of us were here four of us went through looking at 40 some applications we each selected three individuals to sit on the committee to represent going through those applications along with members from all of the different organizations across the county and that
174was a very large group of people there they narrowed it down they narrowed it down to seven then we had open discussion and we narrowed it down to three and then we invited those three individuals to come and see volusia county and tour volusia county and we put them through a group interview each one of them then we put them each through an individual interview and just based on things that i've heard since that time i think we all had the same group interview with each of the three candidates that we were looking at but we all had it appears very different individual interviews with the candidates some of us had great one-on-ones some of us didn't have great one-on-ones with different people i too sat at that reception and watched and i too agree
175with what you said happened at that reception because the one that you said didn't have his wife there with him nope she was sitting at the table with me not being introduced and i paid attention to that when we came into the board room to vote in order to decide who out of the three we were going to select mrs wright using a lot of wisdom posed to each of us if you remember a question that night and asked us to select which of the three statements that she made we felt were the most important statements in selecting i didn't know until after she was off the board that actually she had a whole different viewpoint than what we had and actually i think when we came in that night we were kind of split
176with our viewpoints i felt very strongly that night and i actually made the motion i made the motion for who i felt should come and be our superintendent i felt dr fritz's group interview was the very best interview out of the three because i ranked the three interviews out of the individual interviews he was actually my second choice if you went with individual but overall because of the group interview he was my first and so i made the motion you seconded that night do you remember and we moved forward and then mr persis and mr doran worked with dr fritz and his attorney on this contract and if you remember when the contract came up i had questions but it was like trying to read all of it and understand it and i'm being honest
177i told you tonight i missed that there was not any date or time frame given in section number four which i that's why i went back to it because i thought surely it's got to say six months out you'll do this or you'll do that but it doesn't say that it tells you to refer back to it but there's also other parts of the contract that i look back on that i was kind of opposed to the night that we had to vote on the contract and and mr purses i remember what you saying oh you know well this is different because it's a ceo position so you don't treat it like you treat every other position you don't treat it like you would treat a teacher position or a para position and just a
178few minutes ago when you were talking you talked about you know everybody knowing do you realize because when tenure went away all of our employees are under single year contracts as teachers also and they're not guaranteed from one year to the next i mean they can be let go with no reason but you're asking me where i stand tonight so if you want me to tell you what i would say in the discussion piece i i don't think we should vote i'll be honest with you but here's where i stand tonight i've collected a lot of information and a lot of data as i've been out at schools i've listened actively i listen tonight i listen all the time just like you do and i have filled in the short time i've been on this
179board multiple notebooks of public input that i also go back and refer to and i tally where people are when we're when there's controversy or there's a difference of opinions i tallied that emergency meeting that went one way it didn't go with the way the people spoke that night because it was about 80 percent on one side and 20 on the other and it was voted in favor of the 20 percent not the 80 percent i'm out at schools and i know that i kind of have a unique perspective that maybe everyone doesn't have both of you worked at schools and you know a lot of people but i spent 36 years but i didn't stay at one spot and trust me i think it's wonderful that you did and what you did there you
180left a lasting impression but i worked in positions where i even as i moved up i hired teachers from across the district for summer programs and i visited all their rooms and got to know them so i hear from people all over the district and if you want to know where i stand tonight i have to look at where are we going where have we been what is working and what is not and i'm not prepared to extend his contract thank you miss cuthbert um she had me go first all right so board there has been a motion made with a proper second any further discussion mr chair it seems as though mr carl persis and i are the only ones who are willing to go forward with this at this time so i personally
181i will rescind the motion trusting you that you will put something in place so that we can have an evaluation so that we can give this gentleman fair notice because it's very hard to come to work when you don't know if you're going to be asked to come to work the next day and i think it's only fair to him for all of us to express our opinions in the public what we think about his job and whether or not we would like for him to continue that i've stated i think mr persis has stated it miss haynes has stated it i you said you don't know i have not heard from miss burnett but that's entirely that's her decision but i think it only deserving of a superintendent because if you don't have the
182support of your board it's time to make plans and i i i don't know how how we're going to do better to be perfectly honest because the decisions have to be made are heart rendering you're not going to make everybody happy especially in this political climate we cannot afford to address one minority here one minority there one minority here when we address all children from all walks of life all persuasions and um it's it's very difficult to do that so i think we need if if we don't meet until march 8th hopefully we'll give us some direction in the meantime about you know talking with mr uh dr fritz on the agenda conference what's coming so we can prepare so we can do the research like miss um haynes was able to do her research
183we may want to dig a little bit further and talk to more people but probably put it out there because i it's not it's not fair to the public or to us especially to dr fritz for for this board not to happen have some kind of idea to move forward i think it's very unfair thank you sir thank you and you have my word that we will work on that thank you i will work with mr doran and dr fritz um miss burnett yes thank you um and and i appreciate you working to put something on the books so that we can get together and workshop it um you you would like to know my opinion i will tell you that i can't give you one tonight i've listened to everybody i've listened to the
184community i've listened to the business people schools are not about business only and they're about school or they're about our students and our staff and i've been listening and i cannot give you a fair opinion tonight i thank you for your response though thank you thank you mr purses yeah so uh are you thinking april um i'm just trying to get some kind of time frame when this is going to be brought up again and so i mean like the workshop in april whenever that first meeting is i don't know when it is but i mean because we want to workshop it right so it's going to have to be so do we want to shoot for april or do we want to set up a date in march because if the crux of it
185is the evaluation that's not until july correct unless you're by contract unless something changes and and so i mean do you mind if i make a suggestion i don't think we need to have mr purses is done well yeah i'm just i just want to know the plan before i leave here tonight because whatever the plan was supposed to be tonight it didn't go as planned i guess so well it did because we're having a discussion so we're there we're close oh you're waiting for me i i i'm just looking asking somebody to look at the calendar you pulled out your phone ready to go spring break is the week of march 13th that's the third week in march normally we meet the fourth week in march the fourth tuesday is the 22nd of march
186why don't we have a workshop set up for the 22nd i'm good with that and it's nothing but dr fritz correct i am good with that would the workshop be in the evening since that's when the board meeting would be i don't care what it is for the record workshops are bored discussion there's no public comments even if we do it in the evening or in the after hours that the public can attend however there won't be any public comment during the workshop and it will later then come forward as a vote once we have some sort of idea of where we are i'm just again we just want to clarify again okay so what would we be doing at this workshop that we haven't just talked about right now i mean if there's not
187going to be any evaluation what new data are you going to have in a month public input more input okay well good that's good so but can we make a commitment to make a decision at the workshop a consensus and not have a and not have it go let's have another workshop because we can you know i mean i would have to come back on the board agenda as an action item then you can set that up for april right now we could set that up right okay and and you're going to be okay with making a decision without an evaluation well i don't see i don't know that we can do an evaluation without amending the contract because he does have i'm asking that what i'm saying is it's it's contractual right but no
188i i follow you um you're going to have to uh right okay and that's no different than to me it is different tonight okay one more month of input okay i get it i get it okay i get it i get it i'm good it's hands okay so i'm a little confused because first she said let's do a workshop followed immediately by a meeting so that we would vote following the workshop so if we're going to set up a workshop on tuesday march 22nd and and i do understand you know because she right with uh mrs burnett because we're adding one more day um can we not i mean how long do we need to workshop it and could we not go straight into a meeting following that i mean do we really want to
189workshop it in march and then not come back to vote on it till april i'm okay with a single topic on a formal meeting i'm trying to understand that would bring closure that night one way or the other fantastic yeah so then you got to have a time certain like five o'clock workshop i mean we typically start the board meetings at 4 30 i would be fine with 4 30 workshop is that good for you dr first okay so you're saying 4 30 workshop on the 22nd are we then we're going to have a workshop two three hours and then have a meeting i don't think it needs to be two three hours oh so it would be 4 30 to 6 30 with a board meeting at 7. sounds good single topic mr doran
190you're good for the date yes the 22nd of march 22nd of march yes uh aaron you got that thank you what time would the board meeting start i did seven yeah and this would be the only topic that would be the only topic on the board meeting so it would basically be the pledge and then we would go straight to public input and then a vote at the end correct it's one month all right well dr fritz first of all i want to apologize i know you've uh probably emotionally been through a whole lot because again it was in there as a discussion and not a board action item and so i again not having caught that i i want to apologize to you because i can't even imagine what it's like to be in
191your shoes um and so i do want to publicly apologize to you for that because again i i did not realize that so um thank you all right anything else on that topic very good we will move on to board comments and we will start with mr purses thank you mr chair it's been a long a long day that is for sure dr fritz we we do hear from about discipline on the buses and getting the support from the schools and so forth and i know how difficult that can be um in fact i talked with rodney about that because he was in an assistant principal and the last thing you want at the end of the day when you're the assistant principal to see that yellow bus come come back to your school because
192of a behavior issue i also can empathize with the bus drivers and the issues that they have to deal with too i don't know perhaps a word from you to the principals aps at the school we will certainly make that a topic of discussion next week we have principal meetings on the first and the third we will put that down and actually uh shot that the staff to add to it yeah yeah it's a tough one it's a tough one all the way around but i i i just think any support that you might be able to give to the bus drivers out there yeah thank you that's it mr chair all right miss cufford um i've said plenty thanks thank you uh mr dorn nothing miss burnett oh yes thank you um actually listening
193to um i i i met with some of the some of the teachers yesterday and we were talking about the president's day holiday and um while while i know the calendar was made a year and a half ago um i think that maybe sometimes when we we don't think of every every possible way it affects um many people and so there was some concern that um there was a lot of absenteeism yesterday so maybe we could look at the absenteeism for yesterday versus what it would have been on a friday or today and i know that the calendar has already been made for next year where presidents day is also a school day normal school day and by all means i don't mean to discredit anyone on the calendar committee but is it something that
194we should look at so that you know so we don't have this problem next year i guess basically i think it does it does warrant some additional information going forward um again i know they work very hard on that calendar and i know the calendar has been out a year and a half but it did come up as a surprise to many so just thought we could take care of that and and i agree with you the buses you know i feel bad they're they're in a bad position and it it one uh miss sawyer even brought up possible bus subs um i i don't know how that works with contracts um but if they were bus operators in the past maybe there's something that we could retire yeah like like bringing back retired teachers
195the subs can we bring back bus drivers the subs i think you can bring them back but they want to get paid at the rate that they left not as a substitute bus driver but they're also not submitting they're also not getting benefits so i mean i don't know that's it's just something i thought was a great idea to explore i thought so too yeah i also think the president's day you know one thing you know one thing we never thought of and that was that all the daycares are closed so all the parents had no place you know and we have many clothes schools open it was yeah just the most anyway thank you so much so with that being said dr fritz's is okay if i asked miss hazel to come up thank
196you you're the best uh board members i have uh recently spoken with miss hazel regarding the calendar and it's interesting that you brought that up because the supervisor of election has once again approached us about the possibility of using schools for the election once again they are finding that finding these sites to have the elections and for those who don't know any public building is at the disposal of the supervisor of election should they want to use them for the elections that's just the way the law is written and so i had asked miss hazel um just randomly i guess not randomly but purposefully what is it even possible based on the calendar that was already established and made and uh it's my understanding the calendar committee may need to reconvene and so with that
197request and i heard too do we have three on that one we have three the possibility at looking at uh president's day for next year and also um and dr fritz if you know i i want to stay as far away from this as i can if staff can reach out to the supervisor of election and see what their needs are and see if we can well not if we can but how we can accommodate them and what that would take logistically i know last time we did it we didn't anticipate all of the expenses that we would incur in uh having them there but i think we may be able to make a more educated you know we were in the middle of a pandemic so the answer was always yes but make a
198more educated so miss hazel all right well calendar is actually set by policy so that i believe it's 417 but might be 423 don't quote me on that calendar committee is selected by the board and also we get teacher representation from view so very soon i will be contacting you all to get your representatives for the calendar committee there are other people that attend calendar committee just for to give input as far as like when grading periods end and those kinds of things but they're not voting members i facilitate the committee but i don't vote don't and just take notes i can tell you um that one point of clarification i'll need if i'm going to i will be contacting you to get the committee set for two years out so it this committee that
199we're forming will actually be for the following year that we create a calendar the calendar for next year is already set there are one of two ways we can do this because policy does not state one way or the other whether we reconvene the original calendar committee that sets that or we use the new calendar committee and just wrap that work into to revisit so i can do either one of those things get the original calendar committee together or just form a new one and re-look at the calendar ms brunette to be fair to the to the group we'll then reconvene that calendar committee and i'll be reaching out to you for membership in the next calendar committee as well great thank you miss haines okay so you know where i stand on the whole
200president's day piece um my thought is maybe we just add a day in because i do understand the april piece right before testing because it's a long time like i mean i understood because i remember bringing this question up when the calendar came to us and i asked why are we you know doing this and i think people just weren't tuned in to what was happening but we went with what the committee recommended and i too agree with you know what mr person said about the buses and everything but beyond the buses i still think hearing people speak even tonight like even in the earlier part of public input i think there's still some confusion with this whole department of justice peace that we're under and are we holding students accountable or not and i've
201already spoken about this previously we're seeing more and more on social media of parents writing about their children being bullied and they're not being consequences or their children being hurt i mean there's nothing harder to look at to me then all of a sudden you see a social media post and a child's been hurt and those parents and grandparents are who the guardian whoever it is they're angry and i mean we can understand that you know our children are our most prized possession and if someone harms them in some way that's the most difficult thing to deal with and i'm going to say it and i've said it we claim we have a zero tolerance for bullying but yet you know we i think we've made progress because at first we were always removing the
202victim and it was like we were victimizing the victim and so now we're doing our best to keep the person that's been bullied on a campus and remove the other we we've gotta we've got to take a stand i mean it is out of control some and and and middle schools seem to be the worst but there's some things going on at our high schools too and i think it all goes back to what we really should be doing in primary you know when they enter is teaching them how to be kind to each other how to agree to disagree and still show respect and i think that's a big part of what the lessons need to be at our elementary schools because we know we know if we build a strong academic foundation as
203they move on through middle and high school they're successful if we haven't left gaps in holes and i think that's what we need to focus on at the elementary level and that's part of what i said to our legislators when i was up in tallahassee is if you really want to know what we should be doing as part of the social emotional learning piece or whatever we need to have teachers on those committees that are in those classrooms and our school counselors on those committees making those decisions not lawmakers just making the decision of what to put out and tell us what we have to follow when it's not really designed or age-appropriate for kids and so i'd like if at all possible for there to be some clarification for our administrators again so that
204everybody's on the same page so that we can help to bring an end to children being harmed by other students thank you thank you dr fritz all right would that be