OCPS | 2025-06-24 School Board Meeting

001Welcome to the Orange County School Board's regular meeting scheduled for Tuesday, June 24th, 2025. Thank you so much for being with us tonight. It's always fun to see chairs filled in the boardroom. Chair Jacobs and member Ferrant. Oh, no. I'm sorry. Chair Jacobs is joining us telephonically. Is that correct, Chair Jacobs? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. and we have Member Salamanca, member Douglas, member Vanos, member Gallo, and member Felder with us here tonight. As a reminder, board members will not be engaging in outside electronic or digital communication during the meeting so we can focus on the matters immediately before us. To my fellow board members, district staff, and members of the public, when speaking, please make sure that your microphone is turned on and speak directly into it so that our YouTube TV and Orange

002TV viewers can hear clearly. Again, thank you so much for participating in or attending tonight's meeting. We're going to begin tonight with a moment of silence and followed by the pledge of allegiance. Madam Chair, just for information, member Ferrant is on the line as well. Okay, Member Ferrant, good evening. Good evening. Okay, there we go. Thank you so much for that. We're going to start with a moment of silence and then the pledge. Now for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Dr. Vasquez. Are there any changes to the agenda tonight? No, there are no changes to the agenda. Okay, I'll entertain a motion to

003adopt the agenda as posted. So moved by member Vanos. Second by member Gallo. All those in favor, please say I. I. Chair Jacobs, member Ferrant. I. Sorry. I Thank you. That's okay. now is the fun part of our meeting. We get to have our recognition. this evening we have a real blessing and it isn't every day that we get to have this kind of recognition. So, when we can, we are excited to do it. I'd like to call up to the front of the room Bridgewater Middle School assistant principal Toby Hurst. I'd also like to acknowledge Bridgewater principal Amy Clabar Clayber and SAFE coordinator Carmen Madison who came in support of Mr. Hurst. Could the two of you please stand for us? Thank you for being here. And I don't believe we have the student

004here, do we? No. but let let's just share what this is all about. You guys will love to hear this. So, we're going to grab a picture in a minute, but first I want you to hear what Mr. Madison did. No, I'm sorry. Mr. Hurst, my apologies. okay. So, it was a morning It was a morning on the week before the last day of school, and the students at Bridgewwater Middle School had gathered in the cafeteria for breakfast. A young man, Timothy Cass Cassell, burst through the doors just outside, desperately trying to get air into his lungs and pointing to his throat. His friends came out right behind him, yelling, "He's choking. He's choking." He had been eating donut holes, and it was clear that one had become lodged in his throat. Without hesitation, assistant

005principal Toby Hurst sprang into action. He wrapped his arms around the boy and began to administer the Heimlick maneuver. It all happened very quickly. Mr. Hurst was undeterred, repeatedly asking the student, "Can you breathe? Can you breathe?" while continuing the life-saving procedure. Meanwhile, other staff members hearing the commotion came running from their posts. Someone radioed to the school nurse and the deputy. Other staff members quickly directed students away from the scene to ensure they weren't frightened. Then, in less than a minute, Mr. Hurst got the donut hole dislodged. There was a collective sigh of relief. The school nurse who had sprinted across the campus arrived just as Timothy started to cough and catch catch his breath. Mr. Hurst, ever the professional, continued to check on the boy to make sure that he was truly okay.

006He also took the time to assess the boy's friends, making sure that they weren't too upset by what they witnessed. The nurse took the student to the clinic for further assessment and called his parents. It was a very scary moment, but Mr. rehearsse quick thinking and decisive action were nothing short of excellent. In the words of Miss Madison, I am incredibly proud of him. He's a great man and I am so glad he was there that day. That day, Timothy went home but returned to school the next day. It was a sight that filled everyone with immense joy and relief. On behalf of the school board, Mr. Hurst. I'd really like to thank all you and all the many staff members whose quick response helped keep that helped keep Timothy safe and ease the fears

007of all the other students. It's so nice to We always talk about our educators being heroes and you really are, but it's another whole concept when you really are a hero that saves a life. So, thank you so much for having the wit to do it and to step in and just not hesitate. We appreciate you. Let's give him a round of applause. Thank you so much. Yeah, let's get a picture. You want Bridgewater staff? Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. You very emotional. Thank you. Principal. That's the boat. See how I did that. We're not sitting down. Come up. Thank you. Thank you again. Thank you. Good stuff. I'm going to now turn it over to Dr. Vasquez for a very special recognition. Thank you, Madame Vice Chair. we want

008to wholeheartedly congratulate our friend and colleague, Angie Gallo. She was sworn in as the newly elected president of the Florida School Boards Association almost two weeks ago. As an FSBA executive officer for the 2526 school year, board member Galla will help share best practices with schoolboard members in districts large and small around the state. She will also have a powerful voice, and if you've watched any of our meetings, you know she already has one in advocating for public schools at the state level. As many of you know, board member Gallo got her start working with legislative leaders as a recess mom. I do remember those days. So, she is wellprepared for this role and will be a great asset for the roughly 2.8 8 million public school students in the state of Florida. She is

009a consensus builder and is excellent at getting to the heart of issues. We appreciate your longtime commitment to FSBA, to OCPS, and to shaping policy statewide. Congratulations, Angie. On behalf of the entire board, we are so proud of you. We know that you are going to do an amazing job. I think that was evident by our presence at the meeting with you being sworn in. I think we even shed some tears over your daughter. Angie's daughter introduced her and gave a beautiful speech about her mother and her mother's passion for education and it was just it was wonderful. So, we are so incredibly proud of you and so excited that you get to represent Orange County at the state level as the president. So, can I say something? Yes, you sure can. Thank you. thank

010you. That was truly heartfelt and it meant so much to me. my daughter did give when I was being sworn in and we were talking about what it entailed and I was trying to get it on my family's calendars because that's like hering cattle. cuz we're all so busy in different places and she says,"Well, what are you going to do?" I'm like, "Well, you know, someone usually introduces me." And she goes, "Can I introduce you? Can I can I give the speech?" And I said, "Absolutely. For one, she's my daughter. For two, she's a really, really good speech writer. Go East River High School. That's where she graduated." and she did a phenomenal job. And I teased her because it's she took she stole the show like everybody after I gave a speech after that.

011No one commented on what I felt was a fabulous speech. But all I heard was like, "Oh my gosh, your daughter." I was in tears. Your daughter, your daughter. And I kept telling her, I'm like, "You stole the show." And she just she got a big kick out of that. But she really did. Like not one person come up to me came up to me and commented on my speech. But everybody did on hers. I used to actually, fun fact, have her write my speeches for graduation cuz she's so good and she does it so quick. But in all sincerity, it's going to be the honor of my lifetime to represent FSBA, to represent Orange County. I follow in such great footsteps. Joey Kadel had this position before me. Linda Gardner had it before her.

012And there's was I think a gentleman even before them that is hails from Orange County that was also FSBA president. So I have big shoes to fill and I'm excited to be on this journey. So thank you. Thank you. general counsel, someone else want to speak? Yeah. Chair Jacobs would like to speak. Chair Jacobs. Yes. Thank you. Member Gallow, I would say I'm proud, but more than proud. I'm just so grateful that you stepped up to the to the challenge and the plate and I can't think of anybody I can't think of anybody in the state who will be as effective as you will be. So, we're proud, excited, and maybe even a little relieved because if anybody can have a powerful voice and powerful influence in all the matters that relate to the state,

013it would be you. So, thank you again. Well said, chair. Thank you, Dr. Vasquez. Do we have any newly appointed administrators tonight? Oh, I'm so sorry. Member Salamanca. Listen, this is rare, so you better take it while I can. yeah, I wasn't expecting Sorry. I act Please record this. I was at this beautiful ceremony and I will say, member Gallo had an incredible speech about what is at stake in today's education, what is her priority and her vision. And so for those that can I'm sure it's somewhere online can find it. It is a beautiful speech. I was very proud. I am very proud that she's representing OCPS. she works so hard all the time. I mean she's up and down from Tallahassee to Orlando all the time and Tampa and travel all over. So,

014it we don't see it up here when we're all these meetings how much work goes behind the scenes, but you really go above and beyond, for this district and for education on the future of Latin Florida. So, you do I was proud of you and your speech and you know, you're you're going to do great. It was a very good speech. She also talked about how public schools really have to be innovative and how we have to rethink how we educate and how that's going to take so much collaboration in the future. So I'm it's the right person for the job. Dr. Vasquez, newly appointed administrators this evening. Yes, we do have three. And I'm going to apologize because Well, so I'm gonna I know I'm going to mess up your last name. I'm so

015sorry. Can you Is it Canal? Cano. All right. Was Canio? and I've had the privilege of knowing you for so many years. I remember when you were an assistant principal out at Lake Nona, just starting out. is currently the assistant principal at Horizon's High School, but she is going to be the new principal of Hospital Homebound Esteem Academy and Transition School. Thank you, Dr. Vasquez. There are many people to whom I owe much gratitude for their support and guidance. Among them is you, our dedicated leader, Superintendent Dr. Vasquez, our esteemed board, Miss Anne Douglas, our deputy superintendent, Dr. Armrewster and Dr. Williams, Miss Ivory and Dr. Gazunite. Thank you for trusting me to serve the staff, community, and students of transition esteem academy and hospital homebound. I would also like to take this opportunity to

016extend my deep gratitude to the dedicated and fearless principles who have served as my mentors over the years. Bill Floyd, Dr. Larry Fox, Laura Buussy, Andrew Jackson, who's here tonight, and Jose Martinez. Each one showing deep patience and grace towards me and teaching me invaluable lessons as I've learned and grown over the past 15 years in OCPS. I would also like to thank my colleagues, the many assistant principles who I've had the privilege of working alongside for the past 11 years and met several of whom are here tonight, some of them as principles. I share the excitement of this endeavor with my beautiful family, my biggest blessings, my children, Kais and Farah, my encouraging husband, Muhammad, the original support crew, my parents, Pam and Adam, and the best cheerleaders on earth, my four sisters, Sura,

017Nafisi, Shelley, and Elani. Thank you all for your support, guidance, and love. and to the staff, students, and community of esteem hospital homebound in transition. I am honored and look forward to working alongside you to serve and support our students. Next, Justin Michael McDonald is the instructional coach at Blankner K8 and he is now going to be the assistant principal at Blankner. Thank you. Well, first I'd like to thank the members of the board and Dr. Vasquez and Dr. Arm Brewster. I really appreciate the opportunity to serve the students in the community at Blankner. I'd like to thank the K to8 leadership, Dr. Fritzler who's been fantastic. Mr. Lesley. I just I really appreciate them and their their help along this process. a couple other quick thank yous I want to say is, my wonderful

018wife, Gabriella, who's also an OCPS employee. she knows the sacrifice that it takes to, to to be great at these positions and, and she's really supported me along the way, every step of my process, and I really appreciate her. my young daughter, she's two and a half. She doesn't know that she's going to support me in this process yet. but she's proud of Dada and I'm I'm really thankful for her. a couple people that are here. former principal of mine, Jennifer Schaefer, you know, she really believed in me and started me along this process. and she gave me that support, that unwavering support that I needed to really find myself as a leader. And then finally, my current principal who I've had the opportunity to work with for the last 5 years at Endeavor elementary

019school and now at at Blankner, Mr. Derek Napens, his mentorship and friendship and just support have meant the world to me and it's it's really helped me to, to to be ready to make this next step. So, I'm just really thankful for the opportunity to to serve Blankner and the families in the community there. Thank you. Bianca Ramos Vak is the staffing specialist at East River High School and she's going to be the new assistant principal at Sunlaze Elementary. thank you so much to the members of the school board, especially Miss Alamanka. I can't wait to keep working working with you. Dr. Vasquez, Dr. Arm Brewster, Dr. Jones, and the staff for this opportunity. I can't believe I'm here. This is a dream come true. So, to first and foremost to my East River family.

020thank you so much for everything. this is going to be hard, but I'm so excited for this journey that I'm coming on. To my fearless leader and mentor, Principal Becky Watson. thank you so much for your support, guidance, and your time to help me grow and craft my skills as an educational leader. I owe you. to my kids, Alex, Jaden, Ariana, and my baby boy, Christian, who miraculously is really quiet right now. he's here. I hope that not only I make you proud, but inspire you to keep working towards your dreams. thank you to my husband, Ricky Vasquez, who literally waited to marry me while I finished my masters in Virginia to move here to Florida. So, your support and love means everything to me. to my parents who are also here tonight, there's no

021way I would be here without you both. With your love and support, I can conquer anything. thank you to my new principal, Glenna White. assistant principal, Dr. Tara Wilson, and principal leader Rob McClo. I cannot wait to work with you all, as well as the staff, faculty, and community at Sunlaze Elementary. I'm so excited to be a Stingray. Congratulations to all of you. just one piece of advice. I'd probably try and get a vacation in the next week if you can because we start rolling for the new school year July 1st. But congratulations. We're thrilled that you're joining the OCPS family as administrators. Wonderful. Why don't we have you come up and we're going to get a picture and I think we'll do a picture first just with them, right? And then we bring everyone

022up. Okay, perfect. Oh, good stuff. at this time, we would love to have you stay, of course, if you'd love to, but you are more than welcome to go and enjoy the rest of your evening. Thank you again for being here. Thank you guys. Congratulations. Yes, she does. This is in high school. We in elementary school. We're passing the message. That's rotten. Excuse me. we're gonna continue our meeting, board members. at this time, I'd like to call on Clinton McCracken, president of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association. Thank you. Good evening, board members and Dr. Vasquez. Integrity is the cornerstone of any relationship. Without it, trust collapses, progress stalls, and people lose faith in the very system meant to serve them. Unfortunately, that is exactly where we are right now. Recently, CTA shared a graphic

023to clarify an issue for members of our bargaining unit. The information was discussed in advance with district personnel with mutual understanding, including that CTA would be sharing the information with teachers. Madam Chair, and yes, hold on, hold on, hold on. I believe we're getting ready to go into information that's regarding a pending grievance. I'm not mentioning any specifics. I'm talking about being called the liar. That's a my understanding. It's about the grievance. That's I'm not talking about specifics of anything in that grievance. I'm talking about what happened in sharing with principles saying that CTA has not told the truth and this board deserves to know it. I'll leave it up to you, Madam Chair. I believe this about a pending grievance. I'm going to look at my board members. Yeah, go ahead, Mr. McCracken. Thank

024you. The information was discussed in advance with district personnel with mutual understanding, including that CTA would be sharing the information with teachers. And yet, less than 24 hours later, the district sent an email to principles with an exact opposite position from what we discussed and that our graphic misrepresented the truth, calling our union's integrity into question. As soon as I saw that email, I called to explain that it directly contradicted what district staff had said multiple times in multiple meetings. I requested a retraction because the message suggested we made something up and we did not. We communicated a shared understanding just as we said we would and no retraction has been sent. When the district accuses CTA of spreading a lie, you are accusing me of lying. I have not lied. I will not sit

025quietly while my integrity or this union's integrity is publicly undermined. Dr. Vasquez, you recently told me that teachers trust CTA, but not the district, and you are correct. And it is actions like this that sabotage trust and make progress impossible. What makes this especially disappointing is that this past month I coordinated a collaborative op-ed with union presidents from Hillsboro to Valuchia representing over 70,000 educators. We stood together to call for a reinvestment in public education, calling on state and local leaders to prioritize honesty, collaboration, and support for teachers shaping our students lives. That work is built on trust. It's built on a belief that we can move forward together. But right now, your actions are undermining that effort. This school board has demanded better. You've heard them speak at length about the need to reset

026the relationship with this union, about the need to rebuild trust. This is not the way for the district to accomplish that. We ask educators to act with integrity. We teach students to be honest. You cannot demand what you do not practice. And if this is the model of leadership in OCPS, then it's not just the relationship that's broken. It's the moral compass guiding your decisions. Thank you, Mr. McCracken. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see that. Superintendent. Press the button. thank you, Madam Vice Chair. we will certainly look into the allegations that Mr. McCracken has made. My understanding, and I will delve deeper into it. I've been told that the meetings were not recorded, so there isn't a recording that there was. I'm sorry. I don't think we'd have an issue with the meetings being recorded.

027but we will look into what was stated. What I have heard was that the information and the concern was being routed to the deputy superintendent that there was no decision made at the meeting that where this was discussed. But I don't know that for a fact. So we will look into it. and then we'll share that with the board and we'll share with Mr. McCracken as well. Thank you. okay, we're going to move on to 2.04 celebrations observations. All proclamations were adopted by vote of the board during the August 27th, 2024 board meeting as designated celebrations and observations. The list will remain on the agenda for the rest of the school year. 2025 2.05, I'm sorry, strategic plan, which is going to cover the 2025 stakeholder survey results. Dr. Vasquez, thank you so much. as

028you know, we are closing out our strategic plan. It officially sunsets June 30th, 2025 and we're launching our new strategic plan July 1st. Part of the metrics used to evaluate how we are doing involves a stakeholder feedback survey that is given to certain students by level and Dr. border will share the grade levels, our teachers, our staff, and our parents. And so this is an opportunity for us to share with the board, the results of that survey. And so I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Border. Good evening, Chair Jacobs, Vice Chair Bird, members of the board, Superintendent Vasquez. look forward to sharing the results from our spring 2025 stakeholder survey with you this evening. before I begin, just want to take us back a little bit. not long ago, we had an outsource

029survey that was at significant cost. we've moved that survey inhouse and I want to recognize the outstanding work of senior administrator Bethany Blair and our senior manager Michelle Negron who have done an incredible job moving the survey inhouse which is certainly not just a significant cost savings but also has become mainstreamed and efficient for us and as Dr. Vasquez says that said the 2025 strategic plan was ending. And so you'll also see in the new survey that was developed last year and utilized this year and the fall and the spring. It allows us to get results in the fall and the spring. So then schools and departments can utilize that over the course of a year versus just at the end of a year before the next year. It also has opportunities for departments and

030schools to take deeper dives within the survey, which is something we'll talk about a little bit this evening. and in addition to that, they're connected with thought exchanges for the adults, which also allows individuals to provide additional context for their information. So, appreciate your time tonight to share those outcomes with you. We're going to review our survey response rate, our key performance indicator results, which are tied to our current strategic plan and how we are doing relative to those established goals. We're going to look at our net promoter score and satisfaction data. We're across all stakeholder groups. We're also going to talk about the thought exchange and the information gathered. And then we're going to provide some key takeaways and considerations. So let us begin by reviewing our response rates for our stakeholder survey. So

031for our accreditation, we are expected to have 60% of our staff complete our annual survey in the spring, 40% of our students and 20% of our families. we're happy to report that we met all of those response rates and we're very appreciative to all of our stakeholders for providing us the feedback. Staff response rate was 69%. Our secondary students, we survey students in grades 6 through 12 was 55%. And our family response rate was 27%. Let's take a closer look at how we performed across the key performance indicator results in our 2025 strategic plan. First, we're going to look at student resiliency. There's two areas of student resiliency that are both rated on a fivepoint liyker scale and the numbers are the percentages of respondents who were either confident or very confident meaning they rated

032a four out of four or a five. The first topic is for teachers regarding the district's student resiliency training and we had a 61% response rate as confident or very confident in the spring. The second question asked teachers about their abilities to support student resiliency and their confidence in those skill sets. And our teachers reported an 84% confidence rate in spring of 2025. Our next key performance indicator is our secondary student sense of belonging. Among all secondary students, 71% responded favorably to the average of all four questions, which was the same as the fall. Our next key performance indicator is our secondary students perception of school climate. And in the spring of 2025, our overall for all students was 68% favorable. Middle school is 67, high school is 68. Next, let's transition to the next

033key performance indicator which is our net promoter score which is in our current strategic plan. So, let's first by begin reviewing on how net promoter score is calculated. This is a 0 through 10 rating question. Those who respond with a nine or 10 are categorized as promoters or those who are enthusiastic about the district, school or department. Those that respond seven or eight are considered passives. So they do not count into the net promoter score calculation. And those who respond with a six or lower are considered detractors in the net promoter score. You calculate the net promoter score. We subtract the detractors from the promoters and that is the NPS score. According to independent school management, 0 to 20 is interpreted as a good net promoter score. 21 to 49 is great and above 50

034is excellent. So let's look at how we did. So the results for staff were had a net promoter score of 12 which is falls into the good category for families was 49 which is considered great and the spring student net promoter score which I'm going to show you momentarily has improved by five points over the end of last year is currently at a negative 28. So let's look at the next chart which depicts the net promoter score over time. While there are four bars there, that represents three years of data. As a reminder, this year we now survey twice a year in the fall and the spring, which is why you have a fourth bar. So, you can see students ended last year at -33 with our secondary students and currently at a - 28.

035Staff is currently at 13. We ended last year at 17. We were at 10 in the fall and that moved up three over the course of the year. And you can see family at 49 has really remained consistent over the four administrations of the survey. So let's take a look at satisfaction. we added a satisfaction question in the development of the survey as we looked at at what lied ahead beyond OCPS 2025 and the current plan is to sunset net promoter score with the current strategic plan and satisfaction would become a key performance in a part of the measures of success feeding our key performance indicators in OCPS 2030. So this question was rated on a fivepoint liyker scale. The numbers here are the percentage of students again or the respondents who reported they were

036somewhat or extremely satisfied which is considered percent favorable. Our secondary students had a 62% favorable rate. Staff was 78% and families was 86%. To complement our traditional stakeholder survey, we also engaged participants through thought exchanges. This platform allowed us to gather open-ended feedback and understand the priorities and perspectives of all of our stakeholders. Let's take a brief look at what we heard in our families exchange. Over 9,400 participants shared nearly 7,000 thoughts. Key themes included a strong desire for more transparent and timely communication from schools, greater support relative to special education services, and continued opportunities for parental involvement. Staff were also invited to participate in the optional thought exchange to share ways to improve satisfaction at their work locations. Nearly 2,900 thoughts were shared and the following themes emerged. For school-based staff, priorities included pay,

037autonomy, and access to professional development. For central office staff, the top themes were also pay along with flexibility and professional growth opportunities. Survey results were shared with school and district leaders through interactive dashboards which empower our district leaders to explore their data and identify opportunities for improvement helping to drive informed meaningful action. You'll see on the screen now, this is a PowerBI dashboard that includes all the fall and spring quantitative results and filters for individuals to narrow the results to only what they would like to focus on. For example, a principal leader can look up the net promoter score group results for just the families in their cadre. On another page, a principal can look up their students secondary sense of belonging results for their English language learners. The qualitative results from the thought exchange

038are also accessible through interactive dashboards. Here you see a dashboard from thought exchange which allows schools and district leaders to explore feedback specific to specific to their individual school or department. In addition to viewing participant thoughts, the platform offers AI generated summaries and suggested talking points which help our leaders effectively communicate the findings with their teams. Now, let's take a look at our key takeaways and considerations. We gathered insights from over 127,000 stakeholders. All of our groups met their required response targets for accreditation with very little change in response rates from fall to spring. And staff reported more positive perceptions in the spring as compared to the fall. Secondary students reported high levels of sense of belonging with 71% favorable and school climate 68% favorable, showing solid engagement and perception of the school environment. The

039teachers indicated that they felt confident in the district's resiliency training and more assured in their own skills supporting student resiliency. Looking ahead, we've identified a few areas for consideration. We can further share the family results which convey an 86% satisfaction rate among our current families. We're going to add part-time and returning retirees in the future to the survey so they have the opportunity to share their experiences like all of our all of our staff members do. And we'll include survey information on the Let's Talk chatbot and add survey links on all staff and student websites as measures to further increase participation rates. Vice Chair Bird, Chair Jacobs, and members of the board, appreciate the time to share the results of our spring 2025 stakeholder survey, and I'll turn the presentation back to Dr. Vasquez, and

040I look forward to the conversation. thank you, Dr. Border. while there are certainly some areas where we saw some improvement, there are still areas that we need to work on, especially around the student experience, the student voice. That's an area that we continue to see struggle as they perceive that their experience either in middle or in high school is less than favorable. we are looking forward to the board's comments, questions and conversation around this topic especially as we are closing out this one and opening up our new one July 1. Thank you Dr. Vasquez. Member Gallo. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a couple of questions. on page eight, when we look at the student the student perceptions of the school climate, we see and we all agree that this is an area that we

041need to focus on. But you see that in the fall, especially in grades 6 through 8 where 71% says yes, I'm, you know, I'm so excited to be here and then it drops to spring and 67. I mean, I was a mother of middle schoolers, so I can kind of make the connection that you're excited at the beginning of the year, especially if you're a sixth grader. By the end of it, you may be terrified. so I could see that. I know. when we did our one-on-one, I asked you about K through 8s. Can you tell us like when we extrapolate the K through8s and don't look at traditional middle schools if that score goes up? Thanks, Miss Galler, for the question. So, yes, I'll answer your question and then if the board doesn't mind,

042I'd like to add some pieces to this because this has been an ongoing discussion at cabinet. So the K8 results are higher than the traditional middle schools. However, the drop that you're talking about, we also see that in the K8s. So keep in mind these are different students. So this is the first first time we've administered this survey. So it's sixth graders who now still have two more years of middle school and it's eighth graders that are now moving on to high school. But if you just look at the entry level survey result for a middle schooler in the fall compared to an eighth grader in the spring, there was a 14 point drop that we saw there which has been a significant conversation at cabinet. Something that we're focused on. I believe the board's

043new strategic plan OCPS 2030 is going to drive our focus in that area as we look to continue to be the top choice for our families in Orange County. Some of the things that we have done already the superintendent asked us to conduct a survey with our families at the end of the year. Fifth grade families, sixth grade families, we asked juxttopose questions. So in other words, the fifth grade question was through the lens of perception. The sixth grade question was through the lens of what did you experience? And that provided information that we've shared with middle school leadership. Dr. Vasquez has actually asked us to meet with all the middle school principles coming up and she's actually attending that meeting as well. so we gleaned some information for that. There's some opportunities potentially for

044us to consider getting in front of our fifth grade families sooner to try to demystify some of the things that might they might be concerned about. There was also some exciting news in there in that the thoughts that individuals had regarding the individual attention they were going to get went up significantly for the sixth grade families. So that was pleasing to see. The amount of communication the families thought they were going to get leaving elementary school compared to what the sixth grade families reported went up. So those were two positive signs. there's certainly areas for us to look at when it comes to the perception of the school safety and and what the student is experiencing there. So that has happened. and so we look forward to continuing to have these conversations within our next

045strategic plan and also within the survey and how we're going to continue to to talk to address this trend that we see. Thank you. And when I was in back in the day when I went to school it and I told Dr. Border this it was K through 6th and then it was junior high which was 7th and 9th and then it was high school which was 10th through 12th. And I'm wondering like I just I've it's always bothered me that our sixth graders which in my mind are babies are in middle school which is typically a rough period of time. And I'm, you know, as we're looking at our enrollment and we're looking at changing things up, I'm hoping that we can have a conversation about what would that look like? What would it

046look like if we had a K through six and then a junior high? I know it's it that would be maybe difficult, not the K through six, but certainly the junior high to kind of pilot because there's sports and a lot of other things we would have to look into with the junior high because they'd be able to compete. But I'm just wondering if it would make sense to give that give an extra year to those those kids and have a K a pre-K through six and then a junior high and then a high school. Just something that we can think about. is would it be possible for us to get the list of survey questions that were asked? Absolutely. Mala will share those with the board. Okay. because that will provide context to some

047of of the scores that we're we're looking at. And we'll send the we'll send the survey questions. We'll also send those that fifth sixth grade survey that we did so you can see the juxtapose questions as well. That's great. And then the NPS I'm I'm I'm hoping you can help me out. I'm a little confused because when you look at the like the individual scores about perception of school climate, it's you know it's it's above 50. it's like high. but then when you go down to the net promoter score, it's it's bad. It's like in a negative. So I can you like it's negative -28 needs improvement for students. So was this a different set of questions we asked to get the MPS score? Like why is there such a discrepancy between those two numbers?

048So thanks for that question, Miss Galla. So a lot of what I will share is infer in inferential and probably subjective depending on on who you're asking. So there are different questions. So the net promoter score question is asking a student would you refer your school to a family or friend member? And so we suspect that's probably a high bar for a middle school student to rate a nine or 10 in saying that they would recommend school, which it may be concerns they have at school. It also may be adolescence and they're not going to recommend school to to anybody even if they're pleased. sometimes I would look at the results. I mean, I, you know, I have a fourth grader now who's not taken the survey yet, but I have two daughters who have

049had a great experience in OCPS, and I often wondered, you know, what did they respond to on the surveys? I can tell you they had great experiences, but I don't know that either one of them would have given a nine or 10 rating. you know, just as their father, I know how they critique me. So, you know, it's it's NPS is a high bar and it's an often a bar that you don't necessarily see in public education. that's more, you know, business related. but I do think it has some good information for us. But the satisfaction question to me is more straightforward. Are you satisfied with right your school? And it's a one through five. And so I personally think that the scores we got this year because you know in the past we've seen

050sense of belonging and school climate in the 30s, right? And so now this is the question that we're asking our students and I think that attributes to different results that I personally think match the feelings I saw from students as a middle school and high school principal. I think the 60s and 70s more accurately reflect that than what we had seen in the 30s. Yeah, that makes sense because I know I mean even adults if you were to ask them very few adults would give an eight or a nine. I mean, you have one or two bad experiences, you're either going to be in the passive column or you're going to give it like a six because nine and 10's hard to attain, right? I mean, that's like near perfect. Some people seven or eight,

051you know, would be a great score, but then they're they're they're not even included in that calculation. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you for explaining that. and then I know we talked about this school communication because I asked you was it, you know, was it, you know, it's kind of like Goldilocks. Was it enough? Was it too much? Because I don't think we differentiated when we asked that question about communication because I do have heard some frustration with parents that have multiple students in multiple different schools and the amount of communication they receive via email, texts, calls, and all that is sometimes overwhelming. So I would just maybe next year if we could just add like is it too much because we want we want our communication to be effective and sometimes when you overload

052somebody it's not effective because it's too much and they're not they're not listening. Thanks Miss Gallow and I appreciated you asking that. We dug deeper into the thought exchange results after that. And one of the things that we saw with that was the timeliness of the communication. Okay. But we also I know as a parent schools are communicating all the time. So, I also think that and we can rephrase the question for sure with what you're asking, but I also think it's parents wanting even more advanced notice. Okay. But that's kind of a double-edged, right? Because, you know, you communicate two, three weeks in advance of an event, then you're, you know, if you don't continue to follow that up, then people forget. But then also the communication we're doing we often hear too. It's

053it's too much. so we'll we'll look at the question on that in the future and see how we can dill deeper to get get something that's better for us. I think thank you. I appreciate that. And then on page 16 I see that the third most common thing listed from our teachers outside pay and autonomy is professional development. So, I was just curious was how did we word that? Like, did we did we ask about the quality of the PD? I know that we have other metrics that we're using to to look at how effective our professional development is. And so, I don't like when we do this, do we overlay it with some other metrics that we already have? So I guess my question was for professional development. Was it that they liked it,

054they didn't like it, or they wanted more authentic professional development? What was their position? No. So the trend on this and appreciate that, Miss Galla, we took a closer look at that too. They want they wanted more of it, but what they specifically wanted was they were talking about quality of PD and then also topics that they were interested in learning more about. So that those were the two themes and the thought because the thoughts were open-ended but when we dug deeper in those were the two highest level parts of that professional development. Great. I think this is awesome. I think that there's so much valuable information that we can glean from this to help us be a better district to help us support our teachers and our students more effectively. so I appreciate you

055and your team's work on this. Thank you. Thanks MS Gallo. Thank you member Gallo. Member Felder. Thank you. First of all, thank you so much and some of the same things that we talked about when you met with me. you know, and I'm going to say this and I don't I'm not trying to give you any more work, but I would love to look at the data as it relates to demographics like economic positions of families and people. I believe that some of it would be changed. It may not be. And also I am and I know this is probably something that I don't know maybe can't be changed but I'm a strong proponent that it should be 6th 7th and 8th 9th through 12th but I know I'm now almost kind of happy with

056the K through eight. That's is probably as close as we can get because when you think about when I was in sixth grade I was 10. I started school at five. So imagine a 10-year-old in school with a kid that's 16 in eighth grade. that that gap is really really huge. But again, we're under the opices of the state and how they decided to set up our school. Also, as member Gallo said, if we did have like that separate like middle junior high, then sports would be competitive. a lot of things you know and give students give children a chance to grow up and there's certain things in terms of the rating I mean you know we talked about the fact when you reach there's no cure for adolescence and puberty I mean I don't

057know what happens but somehow you know there are a lot of things they're going through a lot of hormonal changes and everything could be great but then to them because of what's happening with them no you know then it changes but I appreciate this kind of work coming together this kind of survey to help as member Gallo said trying to give us some type of view on where we are. But again and I as I share with you I'd love to see if there is a difference when you look at it the demographics and where certain certain students are where they live and so forth to see what the change would be. And in terms of the professional development because I was a teacher I remember I enjoyed a professional development that I felt was

058relevant. I'm being very transparent and when I was not told I had to go. but the ones that and then also I was fortunate enough to have principles who allowed teachers I volunteered to do some professional development. because I did Lisa Del Pet's book teaching other people's children because folk had you know interesting kind of dichotomy with teachers working with children from areas they had no understanding about and so we did that professional development. So I believe in choosing those professional development if you could maybe like you say you asked the teachers and they told you they liked the ones that they were interested in you could kind of get more input so they don't see it as a made to do was one more thing I got lesson plans you know one more thing

059but I think it is necessary because you need to to grow you need to see where you are lacking you need to see and be reminded of the good job that you're doing that you're on point. So, I think that's that's very important. So, thank you for the work. and I we need this kind of thought exchange. I hope we continue it. But I don't know what we could do superintendent about the changing of 6 through 8 or whatever or 9 through 12 or whatever. I just I just never never could adjust myself with that split. I just think that a kid that's 10 years old will have a little bit more in common with a kid 13 than a kid 16. So that's just my my thought. Thanks, Miss Felder. Appreciate it. Thank you,

060Member Felder. so I'm queued up next and thank you Dr. Border. you know, I always really enjoy these conversations with you and your team. I'm just curious when for the middle school numbers. and you don't have to answer this specifically, but have we I know you said K8s were a little bit higher, but still negative in that middle school. I mean, still a little lower in that middle school range. What about our magnet middle school like Howard Middle School? I'd like to know that and I'd also like to know maybe if we have another middle school that has a strong magnet program. I because what this kind of I agree I don't know what the answer is with the middle school and we had this conversation. I mean I had two daughters that at the

061end of the year 8th grade we literally every day dropping off we were counting down the days because they that's how much they did not like middle school. So, I don't know how we make that better, but I would like to know if those kids thought any feel, you know, a little more content about middle school or if they enjoyed it a little more being, you know, having those experiences. because there are I think some things we can explore some out of the box thinking and you know more projectbased learning maybe even career exploration happening in middle school. You know what if we broke the kids up in teams when they were in middle school and they each got to explore a different career every nine weeks and all the academics were focused around certain

062careers. I mean, wouldn't that be great if we could get kids kind of on a careerish path when they started high school and they've already explored all these careers in middle school? I mean, those are kinds of things that I think would be exciting. and you know, we see things like I know in my high school that has the Junior Achievement 3D program, the results from those kids that are involved in those projectbased entrepreneurship programs, their engagement, their attendance is amazing. Their engagement in school, their is really good. I mean, they get great results because they're excited to be there and they're working on something. They have a project they're working on every day. So, I think that there's definitely room for exploration with middle school and I don't think and as I told you,

063I don't think you would ever hear any complaints from anyone saying no, we don't we don't want to see changes in middle school. I think everybody would be perfectly welcoming to any kind of new changes to explore that. But the other thing I wanted to say was I totally agree with member Felder. I would love to see economic factors and demographics when we're looking at their sense of belonging and their sense of the culture. And the reason I say that is because of my own personal experience with my daughter at a school that had a lot of children with severe economic challenges. My experience with that was that they weren't participating in any any of the extracurriculars because a they had to work after school or they didn't have the money. they couldn't afford prom

064tickets, they couldn't afford grab bash tickets and we had to do a lot of fundraising and to and provide a lot of that money. even then it's it was like a sense of it didn't it almost didn't feel like it mattered as much to them because they had all these other major problems going on in their lives, right? So, I think I would like to explore that a little more definitely. because my guess would be these children. that's a struggle to get them to embrace the culture of being a high school student and Friday night lights and all the fun things that make high school fun, right? So, yeah, I totally agree with that. I think that was a really good data point to bring up. Yep. Thanks, Miss Bird. Yeah, and we'll follow up

065with the board on the demographic information, Miss Felder, Miss Bird, and then also looking at traditional middle schools that have magnets and see if we can compare that to K8s and maybe middle schools that don't. But the PowerBI tool that I shared earlier really makes I mean it's we can do we can do that within that tool and in most of of what you're asking for. Wonderful. Thank you, Member Vanos. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for this presentation and for for this survey. I think the first thing I wanted to say is the net promoter score. So glad we're not using that anymore. It just doesn't really make sense to me. so kudos on that. also wanted to follow up on okay the students the overall perception of climate it's kind of showing the

06668 to 70ish range but you I think you said in response to another board member that it was previously like 33% in the last couple of years. So this is the first year of thanks for that question board member Vanos this is the first year of this survey. So in the prior survey there were multiple questions that were asked but only certain questions fed what was captured on our strategic plan. so you know I would consider there was it was confusing in a sense to follow which questions led into the key performance indicators but on those those those were the ratings I was referring to. If you look back to past strategic plan outcomes, they were in the 30 percentiles. And so this is showing something much different. And in this survey, every question counts

067the same for the overall results. So in sense of belonging and school climate, I believe there are four questions each that we're asking and they all equally count towards the results versus just in the past that was not the case. and then one thing that I neglected to mention earlier, Miss Vanos, your question kind of kind of made me think of that is currently this year and moving forward in the strategic plan. schools schools all have the opportunity to take a deeper dive after the fall survey. So if a principal said, I want to find out more about perception of school climate and culture. our team works with them in designing the questions and then of course we consult with with John's team as well because we want to make sure everything's aligned with with

068the questions we can ask but then you can take a deeper dive so you could ask more specific questions to get those trends. it's expected that our schools that are in the lower quartortile of those outcomes will conduct the deeper dive survey and that's what we did this year and the goal of that is that then in the spring survey we hope to see you know improved results as as part of taking action on the feedback that was received and then there's opportunities to collaborate with your students and staff and come up with solutions. I you know I'll I'll use Mr. Bixler as an example and then I copied his idea for the superintendent summit. it was Rob's idea and I said that's a great idea. We're going to do it too. But we took

069the results of our thought exchanges that we did with our teams and then at the superintendent summit we had our teams give us feedback on okay here's what we heard. What are your suggestions for how we could improve on these topics? And my experience was the staff loved that. And so we've actually we're taking that back and looking at there was some great ideas, some things that we could maybe easily implement and we're talking about how to do that moving forward for next year and those are the kind of things that can be done with the data in the fall as well with the deeper dive surveys. Okay, thank you for that answer. So did some of the schools who were in that bottom 25% in terms of perception, did they do the deeper dives?

070They Yes, they did the deeper dives. Yes, they did. And I apologize if you explained this, but and did that result in an increase? We'll we'll look we'll look at the results of the schools who specifically did the deeper dive and then see extrapolate and see what their results were in the spring. But I appreciate that's a great question. Okay. Thank you. And then were there any issues that stood out in those deeper dives about students who were not did not perceive the school climate to be as positive? We can we'll follow up on you with you with you on that board member Vanos and get back to you on trends that we saw. a lot of times those trends might have been more specific to certain schools because we work with the schools on

071the design of those deeper dive surveys. So some schools may have wanted to ask more in certain areas than others. There are some questions that were probably pretty consistent across the school, but some had specific things they wanted to ask about because, you know, they had a perception or a feeling that might be what the students were talking about. So, comparing the results by school on the deeper dive might be yeah, a little challenging, but we but we'll look at the trends. Yeah, that's what would be perfect. Just curious if there are trends across as we try to, you know, figure out what the secret to middle school is. it would be And I appreciate there's no cure for adolescence. I am feeling that right now. So I appreciate that comment. so thank you for

072that. And then I let me see I think I just had one more note. Oh I had two two more things. one was in the staff when you were looking at the staff. it looked like it was sort of skewed away from staff in the schools and more towards staff in I don't know what they called it, central office or something. Do you know can't remember which slide it was on? Oh yeah, this one. So yeah, so I guess I just had a question about that. So when you say school, staff and instructional, that's all of our educators and teachers. So out of correct only 12, 1200, 1300 responded. So this was the thought exchange, which was optional. So when you take the survey, it says there will be an optional thought exchange. And so

073then afterwards, you have the opportunity to share thoughts as part of the thought exchange after completing the survey. And so for school staff, you're correct. It was just under 1300 participants. central office staff was 1,700 participants. Okay, I appreciate that. Just wanted to just wanted to get clarity on that. and then the last thing I'll just kind of kind of echo what well just share what has been said about the middle school and do we change the years and do we group different students together? I mean one thing and I think we it makes sense to explore different things if we can but I mean one thing that I would be interested to know is you know is the I guess I would be interested to look at the surveys of students coming from K8s

074going to 9th versus students going from a traditional middle school to 9th because I guess what I'm thinking is like transitions just going to happen. are we just sort of delaying it, you know, by doing a K8, but we just we see a bigger jump in the ninth grade year. So, I would be kind of interested in in in survey questions surrounding that and kind of when is that best, you know, do you know when is that best time to kind of make that jump? Thank you, Miss Vanos. We will look at that. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Member Salamanca. thank you. a lot of my questions have been asked already but one of the things I hadn't and here we talked about this was in the upcoming plan you know how do

075we capture that student perception because the student NPS we had talked about that goes away and kind of that's where we're getting some of the harsh numbers in and then satisfaction the numbers look very different. So how you asked the question captures a very different percentage and number and so I was curious kind of how staff is thinking about how do we make sure we really are capturing that student experience. So thanks Miss Alamoker for that question. So a couple pieces the satisfaction question of course which like you said is very different but we will be able to do the deeper dive surveys at the schools. So we you know the schools where the satisfaction level is trending lower we'll be able to look at that closer. in addition to that though, the superintendent is

076taking her, student town halls next year to the middle schools. And so, we will have those groups meetings with students at the middle schools, which the high schools this year provided great insight for, superintendent and leadership team, which were have already made some plans for next year and are currently still as chiefs working on additional recommendations to share with the superintendent on that feedback. So that'll be another avenue next year is the student the superintendent town halls shifting to the middle schools and then the high school principles continuing with the student town halls that Dr. Vasquez launched this year. does that answer your question? I could talk more about thought exchanges. I think it's more like it's related to the strategic plan though like how that's going to show up. I get how we're still

077getting that feedback from a strategic plan. What is that number that we're tracking to kind of hold ourselves accountable? So, thanks for that question, Miss Alamoka. The board will actually weigh in on some of that on August 12th is our plan to come to the board and that will be a lengthy presentation that night, but we will be closing out OCPS 2025, but we'll also be sharing the data outcomes from this year officially and then we're going to be getting the board's feedback on the five KPIs for the annual goals and the five-year target. But then beneath that, Miss Al Salamanca, we'll be getting the board's feedback for the annual goals for the measures of success. And everything that you've seen tonight except for net promoter score is this. The plan is that those will

078still be branches, measures of success feeding into key performance indicators. Several of them will feed into remaining the top choice for families. Mhm. Some of them will feed into our recruitment and retention of staff. So those five over our overarching KPIs, a couple of them have several of these elements that you saw tonight, but all these elements of one way are tied into the upcoming strategic plan. Got it. and the other thing was on on middle school. I think when I visit my middle schools, I try to meet with the SJA and not all of them have SJAs, but the ones that do and and get a sense of kind of the students who are, you know, above average trying to do more school engagement stuff and get some feedback and have that. I think

079one of the hard things with middle school is that students are still kind of building that self-awareness on like how to give feedback and like analyzing their own experience, right? I think you're in elementary school and it's kind of you take the world as it is and like school is what school is and middle school is probably the first time where school feels a little bit more of like I have options. I have choices. I have things to get myself involved. So, they're finding themselves. So, it's really actually difficult to get information from middle school students. I've had that from my visits. but from the ones that I am able to kind of get some of that information. I think some of the parts that they're really struggling with is in high school there's like

080direction, right? You're in high school, you know, at the end of it you're going into the real world, whether it's college or not college. And so there's like something you're working towards. Middle school feels like this limbo for these students where they're like, I'm not I'm not sure why I'm learning what I'm learning. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing these three years. Some middle schools have a lot more extracurricular and clubs and some don't. And so the student body experience is also very different. And so I'm sure we'll hear some of that. But I think it does come down to how do we have the students start kind of turning from the elementary of we teach you and you're like an intake of information versus like you start having some autonomy on

081this. And I think that switch is very different for the students and middle school eventually they figure it out by eighth grade and some of them but it is hard to get that information from middle school. So I'm I'm excited that the district is kind of turning a focus to how do we improve that middle school experience because I do think it feels a little bit more limbo on the students. I think there would be more excited to have more career oriented pathway opportunities even in middle school to like get more exposure. so it just feels like there's more context of why they're studying what they're studying. I personally remember middle school it's like a blur and I went to fantastic middle school. I went to to Conway and Avalon Middle. So I had Judy

082Frank was my principal. like great middle school, but it was still a bit of a blur of like you don't really know what's going on in middle school and it's just an awkward phase. so I'm I'm excited for that. I'm excited to hear I know after the superintendent had the first year town hall meetings, the board got like a list of feedback and things that were trends. I'm excited to hear what the high school trends are. I don't know if we're going to get that in the context of the next lengthy lengthy presentation, but I I think those trends are really valuable. because you kind of just hear the same stuff over and over again in a lot of the town hall meetings. And so it's it's great as a schoolboard member to to attend

083those. so I think we'll we'll get into the nitty-gritty. I'm excited for the new strategic plan. And I think we were really thoughtful about defining those KPIs in a way that we can measure more accurately because there's some of these numbers that I have always struggled with on the meaning and how they can be measured differently on on satisfaction. So thank you for your work on this and and the work on improving it for the next iteration of the strategic plan. Thanks Miss Salamaka and Miss Bird if I if I could. One thing I neglected to mention board and board member Salamanca is the next strategic plan that you've developed. it allows us to be agile and nimble. So, because we have five KPIs now instead of 18, but then we have the measures of

084success underneath the KPIs, those are really more like 12 to 18month strategic initiatives, business plans. So we'll be able to evaluate how we're doing and then we can change measures of success as our dynamics change and necessitate for us. And so I think that's one of the exciting things about the new plan that will give us that ability to adapt over the next five years. So thanks for the comments, board member Salamanca. Wonderful. Thank you. member Douglas, I do appreciate this survey. Thank you so much. has been well done especially when you have the queen of thought and exchange with you Miss Negrron who knows really about all this. Thank you so much. So much information and it also allow us to have a glimpse of what parents and family think about our schools and

085I think this is very important because that's so proud of our community what they think about our school in the community. So, thank you so much. And when I see 86% I think your parents really families, you know, agree and appreciate our schools, that's that's fantastic. I'm also excited to see that the CTE is not in the negative. That's the only one in a positive minor plus one point. So, that's wonderful. So that's mean the community accepted CTE schools really well and the kids inside also enjoy being there. So that's that's another great information that we can take from this. I just I think I know what it means but I just want you to spell it out for me on page 16. what do you think when they think about flexibility and autonomy from

086staff, school staff and instructional? Thanks Miss Douglas for that for that question. So we were actually discussing this earlier today. So Michelle, you want to share what you found? Thank you. Thanks Miss Douglas. Thank you Miss Douglas for the question. when we surveyed our staff, autonomy was one of the top top themes in our insights and educators emphasized the importance of being trusted as professionals with greater flexibility in how they teach. So when we see with autonomy and now we go to flexibility now we're going into our central office staff and the difference is employees highlighted the need for flexible work arrangements to support work life balance. So that would be the difference between autonomy in our school staff and flexibility in our central office staff. You're welcome. Thanks for clarifying things. Thanks Michelle. Is

087that it? Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, Miss Douglas. Appreciate it. Thank you, Dr. Border. I'm assuming this next marathon meeting is that like a planning session, not a five o'clock board meeting. Okay, good. Here. Thank you, Dr. Border. We appreciate you and your team's thoughtful work on this. It's super helpful for us as we, you know, always are navigating our next steps. Right. Thanks, Vice Cher. members of the board. Appreciate it. Okay, we are on to public hearings. Mr. Pomerini, do we have anybody that's here to speak on any of the items under public hearing on the agenda? No, Madam Chair. Okay. They've seen there's no member of the public who wishes to provide public comment. We're going to move on to public hearing 3.01. I'm going to turn it over to

088Dr. Vasquez. thank you, Madame Chair. as the board has been engaged in several work sessions related to policy JIC, the code of student conduct. we bring it to the board today for approval just for the public's information. We've had three work sessions on the policy and proposed changes based on feedback. April the 1st, May the 6th, and June the 10th. Notification was made to both CTA and OESPA on the 28th of May. we published it on the 1st of June. Our rule development workshop was on the 17th of June. And again, we bring it to the board today for final approval. Thank you, Dr. Vasquez. It doesn't look like there's any board members who want to discuss it. So, I'll ask for a motion to approve to approve policy JIC, code of student conduct. So,

089moved by member Gallow, seconded by member Douglas. All those in favor, please say I. I. Chair Jacobs, I thank you. Member Ferrant I. There you go. All approved. 4.01. Mr. Pomerini, do we have anyone that has come to speak to the school board on any of the items on the consent agenda? No, Madam Chair. Okay. Seeing as there there are no members of the public who wish to speak on the consent agenda, I am asking for a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. So moved. Member Gallo, seconded by member Vanos. All those in favor, please say I. I. Chair Jacobs. I. Thank you. Member Ferrant. I. Wonderful. Thank you. Sorry. okay. And we don't have anything under non-consent. I don't believe. Correct. Right. Okay. Next, we are going to hear from Dr. Vasquez.

090thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Hard to believe we are officially closing out the 2425 school year with this board meeting. our next board meeting will be the first one of the new school year. lots to be thankful for. and one of those being the incredible work from our teachers, our support staff, and our administrators in ensuring our students were able to receive what they needed as they process through their academic school year. While we do not have official results, our team has worked on the numbers and we have seen gains across the board, ELA, mathematics at all levels. We are projected to be able to maintain our district school grade of an A. I also want to thank the board for their support throughout the year. there were some things that we tweaked and some

091areas of focus and you were instrumental in providing that vision so that at the end of the day our students really were the beneficiary of those changes. I do want to announce that OCVS, Orange County Virtual School has received a recognition of franchise district of the year from FLVS as you know our OCVS program is incredible. Many of families may not know that even though it is virtual and I see Sandy nodding her head, they actually provide opportunities for students to come in and get face-to-face assistance if they need it. and so we are so thankful to the entire staff to their principal who really have grown the program. pre- pandemic, I think there were a couple of hundred students and that's grown now into the thousands. And we continue to promote that as an

092option for families who may want that as a either a full-time option or a part-time option. But we are incredibly thankful to them and all that they're doing. and what a great recognition because it they have a very high bar. So, congrats to OCVS and I think when the school year starts, we probably want to bring them here and do a more formal recognition. additionally, I want to share that we have received the budget from the state. And while I will highlight that thanks to the support from our community and reaching out to Tallahassee, not just from our district, from across the state, they were able to recognize that funding for our advanced courses was truly needed for our students and so they have maintained that funding. However, the rest of the story is not

093as bright and so I just wanted to share so our community is aware that we are projected our full-time equivalent for next year. that's the funding that we that determines our funding per student is 230,961 which is an increase of just slightly above 3,300. That increase is primarily in the area of school choice through the charters and the family empowerment scholarship. there is a decrease of 3,000 FTEEs for our traditional schools. our base student allocation is $5,372 and a whopping 60. and that's an increase of $4162 or.78%. so when we are looking at the next year our funding the declining enrollment and some individuals may not be aware that the money for the family empowerment scholarships we it's not even a pass through. So at the end of the year that money whether it's used

094or or not it goes right back to them. So that is money that is showing that's on our books but it's really not our money. as we are looking to implement the board's priority which is salaries we have cut at the district level. Those departments have done a 2% cut. We've looked in reduction at some of the programming that we have in place. But what we received from the state is about $6.7 million. That's ours when you take out the amount for the charters, which is 65%. So, we will we're tweaking the numbers to see where we land, but I did want individuals to know that what we received from the state really was not what we were expecting. There's definitely a decrease in funding and as I have stated before, as the board has

095stated before, everyone here is in favor of choice. All that we ask is that it's not funded on the backs of public schools because we're expected to continue to provide all those supports and services with less money. so that is my report. Thank you, Superintendent, for that dismal report there at the end. but I really do appreciate you sharing that out because I think the more that we can share out this information the better. you know, at our state of the schools, I had several business people come up to me and say that they had no idea that the state has spent already $4 billion on the voucher program. Chair Jacobs shared that during the state of schools that the amount is up to $4 billion. and I think the big the big piece is

096education and just educating the public on it. And when you know our public schools are given an increase of.78% in funding when the CPI, I believe this year is 3%. you know I just I don't know there I just don't know what to say about it. and when we the only way I mean look at what happened with our advanced studies when the public showed up when people wrote their representatives when they demanded that the representatives can continue to fully fund advanced studies. It happened when the public goes and advocates. Nothing in up in Tallahassee is going to change with the funding unless we let the public know what's happening and the public, if you value your public schools, goes up there and fights for it. So, I appreciate you sharing that out, Dr. Vasquez,

097and I'm sure we will be continuing to share the disappointment in the funding for sure. next we have the report from general counsel, Mr. Palm Marini. just very briefly, a couple things. back a couple weeks ago, we I attended the Florida School Board Attorneys Association June conference, and you all know Brian Moore from the Florida Association District School Superintendent. He did his annual go through the legislation. we will obviously be dealing with things coming out of that. if there's any policy revisions that are necessary coming out of that, we'll go ahead and make them, but that's something that, we went through in painstaking detail. it's going to be some fun things that we have to deal with. I put fun in quotation marks. So, that's number one. Number two, this is I just need direction

098from you all. you know, I sometimes when speakers come up and you know, I do things like, hey, this speaker signed up late or hey, this speaker may be addressing something that's pending. I want to make sure, my understanding is you all wanted me to identify that so you all can then make that decision. I just want to make sure that's still the direction cuz All right. I'm seeing affirmative nods. So, I just wanted to make sure. Okay. Yep. That's it. Thank you. Appreciate that. do we have any committee reports from any of the board members? No. Okay. any board member comments? Member member Vanos? Okay, thank you so much. first of all, just want to go back to something that, member Bird was talking about in terms of just engaging the public on advocacy

099for funding. my email has already been given out today during the work session, so I'm happy to. So, I'll reiterate again if if anyone in the public is interested in advocacy to please email me directly and let's work together to to to advocate for our kids and to advocate for funding at at the state level because it's really the only way it's really it's really the only way out. so, you can feel free to email me about that. Nothing else. No, I'm just kidding. I love the email. the other thing that I wanted to bring up is we had several people come during public comment and spoke really about their concern about the recent actions from the board of education and and one of the suggestions was to submit a letter to the joint administration

100procedures committee just to just to clarify, you know, what the law is and sort of what we're required to do. and I'm personally I'm not I'm not comfortable with, you know, with unelected people trying to sort of circumvent our policies and circumvent the law with respect to the book removals. I understand that not everyone here is on the same page and that's okay, but I want to bring it up because I would like to know whether it is worth our attorney looking into this and determining whether this is something that we should do to to have the clarity and to provide that not just for ourselves but also for our media specialists. you know, one of the one of the speakers who came up today was a student and I went up afterwards to talk

101to her and she told me that she volunteered in the media center this past year and that every day the media specialist was removing books and she was sharing that she didn't have access to all the books she needed for her research and she didn't have access to all of the books that she needed for some of her advanced classes. And you know, m maybe that's maybe they should be in there, like you know, maybe they're not appropriately pulled, but it's this again, it's just sort of this culture of fear I think that's that's pervading our media centers. And I just think that we could use clarity on it. but I would like to hear from others. I know that we might not all be on the same page, but I personally would appreciate some

102clarity. So, I would support looking into whether sending a letter is appropriate. Thank you, Member Vanos. Member Felder. Okay, I'm going to segue from that even though I agree with some of the things you said, Member Vanos, I'm wearing a piece from the Messiah tribe in Kenya. and I want to talk just a little bit about Junth. Why Junth? As an established holiday for school, it is a federal holiday. And as educational facilitators here, we must plant the seeds today. For unless we do, a loophole of LZ fair attitudes will perpetuate as just another holiday. And it is not just another holiday. I don't want us an educational entity to be responsible for the eraser of something that is so significant to American history. And the fact of it is resistance isn't a big deal.

103And it is a big deal. It is a big deal. Junth highlights the gap between rhetoric and reality. Frederick Douglas expressed it so well when he was asked to address the Massachusetts Congress in 1852 in his essay that was entitled, "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?" That's the last piece of lesson I was scheduled to teach when I ran for the board and I was elected in 2020. That was the assignment that I left my students. The speech was actually done on July 5th and it was done in New York where he addressed the Massachusetts Congress. If there is ever to be a reference for the importance of Junth, it is us this educational entity. We are the education facilitators to do this. It is a federal holiday and we are not

104in school during June 19th. So there's no need for having kids out because we're already out. However, we have employees that work for the district. On the 4th of July, nobody works because it's a it's a federal holiday. It's America's independence day. Junth, June 19th is independence. When finally the people in Galveston, Texas got the memo that the slaves were free in 1863. They got it by 1865. And I am an American. I was born on 136 in St. Nick in New York. I'm an American who happens to be black. June 19th represents the significance of a free America. That includes specifically us, me, black Americans. And I share this with you because we do recognize Junth. But my concern, fellow board members, is that at some point, I don't know how you do this,

105whether or not it has to be policies or what, but I think that in recognizing July 4th, we don't work. Nobody in the district works on July 4th. June 19th is a federal holiday like July 4th is a federal holiday. And I think there should be this building should be closed on June 19th. That was my comment board. Melissa, our chair. Thank you. And I support that emphatically. Thank you. Thank you, member Felder. I'm I'm queued up next. And we I feel like we discussed it last year and it didn't happen. So, we're going to we did discuss it last year, but I didn't comment. on it because I just I was trying to understand that we have so many holidays but because of what I know what I have read and researched about and

106the fact that nothing opens not banks not federal buildings schools we're not a school but this district shut down July 4th but I was teaching some school We had July summer school July 8th, but July 4th, nobody went to school because it's a federal holiday. Now June 19th, which is a federal holiday. And I did the research. It is left up to districts, school districts to make that decision. So I'm speaking to you because I'm imploring you as a member of this board. You need to pull your mic. That Thank you. as a member of this board that we should look at making this a federal holiday like we do July 4th. Thank you. Okay. So, we could she's requesting that we bring it up to discuss again. Actually, if I'm not mistaken, CTA brought

107it up last year as part of their request. and we did look at it and we looked at the cost. And so what we will do is that we will bring you the cost of adding that as a holiday and then recognizing what I continue to say. I know I sound like a broken record. There's one pot and so that one pot of money has to go for all of the dollars that we want to sign, but we will. We did it last year and it was CTA that brought it to the table. Yeah, that's what I thought. Thank you for refreshing me. the memory is not always that great. and then member Vanos also brought up the letter that for us to discuss. I don't know if there is consensus among the board to

108have general counsel look into it. I don't know if general counsel just wants to often you give us your response about things and your opinion about it even if we don't ask you. So do you have a general opinion on where we go on that? So very briefly, the joint administrative procedures committee, it's a committee of 14 state legislators, as I think I look at it, it's nine Republicans and six dem or five Democrats. 9 plus 5 14. Yes, I did the math right. Excuse me. Sorry about that. and its primary task is to look at whether or not rules that have been adopted are beyond the statutory authority that's been granted to the agency. So this is the state board's action is not rulemaking as that is in the law. Rule making is you

109go through like it's what we do here when we make policies. We have rule development workshops. we have final action by the board. So what they did during their meetings is not policym and rulem as defined under statute. So I have to look and see whether or not the objection that we would raise would be within the ambit of what the joint administrative procedures committee would do. I would need time to do that. Right. Okay. And so I would request that in and of itself. I do want to remind the board that state board under 10832 has supervisory authority and they get to determine Hold on, let me have it here in front of me. in order to assure compliance with law or state board rule, the state board of education shall have the authority

110to request and receive information data reports from district school districts. And then it says, "The Commissioner of Education may investigate allegations of non-compliance with law or state board rule and determine probable cause." And then the commissioner of education shall report to the state board of education any findings that a district school board is acting without statutory authority. the state board may order compliance within a specified time frame if they determine there's a non-compliance with law. If the state board of education determines that a district school board is unwilling or unable to comply with law or state board rule in a specified time, the state board shall have the authority to initiate any of the following actions, including but not limited to withholding of funds, withholding of grants. So just in looking at this, the state

111board, as you all know, I forwarded you an email today that of the letter from the commissioner of education and the commissioner of education clearly identified the 55 books as pornography materials harmful to minors. so in writing to the joint administrative procedures committee, I'm not necessarily sure they would have the authority to override the state board of education and its enforcement authority. Now, I want to research that before I come to a conclusion on that. So what I think I need is time to just make sure I get comfortable with all of the various facets of the joint administrative procedures committee's authority before rendering an opinion to you all on whether or not I think is a letter a letter is appropriate. Now that's just the legal determination. the political considerations of us writing a

112letter when the commissioner of education has written that letter to the to the Hillsboro County school board and superintendent saying that these things are clearly pornographic and materials harmful to minors. That is obviously within the ambit of this board from a political perspective. So what I'll be doing is giving you my legal analysis, but again that political decision is going to be up to you all. Thank you, General Counsel. We appreciate I appreciate that and you referenced the letter that you sent today and I think it's I think after you know the public comments that we had this afternoon I know that most of actually most of the people that spoke have left but I think it's important for this letter to be shared because I think that it I think it's very telling about

113kind of you know the atmosphere in which we are living and you know there was a lot of talk about you know serving or h I forget how it was exactly worded during public comment but you know working in fear that you know accusing us board members of working in fear. I think if anyone listened to our conversation when we reviewed the last two books and listened to how most of the board members up here fought to keep those books in our libraries because we knew how important they were for our marginalized students to have access to those books should know that we are not afraid to fight for things that are important. This is different and this is for me, I can only speak for myself, but for me that difficult decision that we

114made two weeks ago was about not about fear as much as about protecting this board, this board that fights for our marginalized students. because Mr. Pomearini, it is well within the power of the governor of the state of Florida to remove elected officials, which by the way we have already seen him do. So if a school board member gets removed from their seat, what happens, Mr. Pomearini? So the governor can suspend a school board member for misfeasants or malfeasants. malfeasants being violations of law. So if the governor suspends, you would have the ability to challenge that in a trial before the state senate. However, in the interim period, the governor would get to appoint persons to fill your seats. And I will use this I will use as the example. he did so down in

115Broward County. I believe he removed five of their board members u and replaced them. he did so with the state attorney here in Orange and Oyola County. He did so in Tampa and Hillsboro County with the state attorney over there. the federal courts, those the two states attorneys challenged those removals in federal court under the first amendment violation of free speech rights. federal court said, "I may think that in fact free speech was violated here, but this is a state matter, so I don't have authority to reinstitute you to your seat." So, yes, this if the governor, let's just play this out to its logical conclusion. Obviously, we have the letter from the commissioner saying, "Thank you for your update regarding the pornographic materials in Hillsboro County's library." And then he says,"I am glad you've

116chosen to take the corrective action to protect the students of Hillsboro County from these materials harmful to minors." Materials harmful to minors obviously is the key phrase there because that is the one that is in the criminal statute that says you cannot give books that are harmful to minors. So to the extent that I think the governor sees this board keeping materials that the state board has identified as pornographic and harmful to minors, he could say that is malfeasants under the law and remove you and that would be then others would be appointed to your seats. That would be playing it out to its logical conclusion. Thank you. And I had that exact discussion with you that day before this decision was made. and before I made this decision. So with that in mind, I

117in my mind I was thinking, okay, well, I wouldn't put it past our I wouldn't put it past the leadership in this state to do something like that. this issue has become a comp a very political issue for people. And so, with that in mind, it was important for me to protect this school board that I think fights for children all the time. and protect it against a board that might not be as well, I shouldn't say. Yeah. probably would not be as willing to fight for the marginalized students as we have. So, that was where my head was at. It wasn't it wasn't out of fear of losing a paycheck. I can guarantee you that cuz my paycheck isn't all that. you know, it just isn't. So, it certainly wasn't that. so I just

118had to get say that and share that. And I appreciate you sharing some of the letter. the letter is very upsetting for sure and is definitely leading in fear and we have been leading in fear in this state for several years now. and the fear of the s the media specialists removing books every day. Well, you know, that all started when the law said that teachers could you lose their license. I mean, these are people's living. It's easy for everybody to say, well, you know, stand up, keep the books in, fight, fight. Well, these are people that are struggling to get food on the table. They're not going to risk their teaching license for for that. I mean, some will. I mean, some some absolutely probably will, but but I just feel like the problem

119is not here. The problem is in other places and this is another area where people if you're not happy and you don't like what's happening, go advocate for change and go vote when it's time to vote. Vote for the people that believe in the things you believe in and tell everyone else to vote. Go knock on doors for a campaign. Go become an advocate for public education or else this is what happens. So there's that. on a good note, I did want to congratulate member Felder for receiving her renewal of her certified board member for the Florida School Boards Association. Yes, we have several certified board members on our board and basically that just means that they've done extra trainings and do do delve deep into the, you know, knowledge base of what it takes

120to be a good schoolboard member and lead a school district. Yes. And we're doing master board training as well with Florida School Boards Association. So, congratulations, Member Felder. Thank you so much. And next up, we have Member Gallo. Thank you, Madam Chair. so just to circle back to a few things. First off, I know we're not supposed to be looking at our phones while we're up here, but my husband texted me and he said he loves Vicki and that he was off on Junth and I was working on Junth and he did not feel that was fair. I'm just saying it is a federal holiday. but in all seriousness, I know that we have to look at the cost analysis because there is summer school happening during that day, but if there is anything that

121we could do to respect the holiday, I think that would be fabulous. and then, back to the letter. and I know that we could have a broader conversation after John does some research whether it needs to be a board letter or maybe an individual letters from each board member who wants to participate. And I'm leaning towards that only because as a board member, I'm willing to put myself on the line if I feel it's important and I'll do so. But I don't want to put the district on the line for something that I believe in. And what we've seen in the past has been retaliatory in nature has come at a cost to the district. And I don't want the actions of the board or the decisions of the board to negatively impact the district

122standing with the department of education or our superintendent standing with the department of educ education. So, I think maybe we have a conversation and then decide if each of us we could do them separately or if those of us who agree could do it together and we'll make it very clear that this is not a board decision. This is not a district decision. but what I would like to know when you're doing your research, John, is if it's not the joint administrative committee that we would go to to ask for clarification, where would we go? Because and my next question would be did the board of education break the law that night? Because there was a bill 1539. It didn't pass through the legislature which falls under the powers of the legislature and then they

123took it amongst themselves to define what they believed to be inappropriate, what they believed to be pornography. There was no vote taken at their dis. They were just telling the superintendent one by one what needs to happen and at the end the chair threatening arrest if it didn't happen and I don't know what authority gives them to call the attorney general and say I want you to arrest these schoolboard members like I guess I want to find out who do we ask those questions to and how do we find out if the board of education broke any laws because they did not go through the rulemaking process. They weren't asked to go through the rulemaking process. None of that was asked by the legislature to the board of education to do. And while I get

124that we're all tired of spending so much time talking about books, this isn't just about books to me. This is about our democracy. This is about people and agencies being be being told to tow the line to do what they are required under law to do and not step over that line and I'm just curious did they step over the line and what recourse do we have like what who do we go to find out if they did or they didn't if it's not the joint administrative committee then who do we ask because this is a slippery slope and right now it's this one subject what happens happens down the road when it's another and then the next thing you know we've lost all autonomy to do to make any decisions that our constituents voted

125us in to do. Not to mention the sacrifices that we as a board make daily because as Melissa pointed out, we're not we're doing this because we truly want to make a difference and we want to make sure that all student voices are heard and teacher voices are heard. We ain't doing this for good times and money because there is none of that. And the amount of time we spend being a school board member, which I find to be a great honor and a privilege, takes up a lot of our time. And so I just that's where I'm having heartburn. I just, you know, we are constantly told to stay in our lane. Stay in our lane. And we try very hard to follow the law as given. We always do. But what's the recourse

126when we believe others didn't? Yes. So typically when there is a dispute about an interpretation of a law, there is a vehicle in chapter 86 of Florida statutes called declaratory judgment statute. So you would go in say I have a present bonafide dispute over an interpretation of a law or a contract or something like that and we are asking the court to interpret what it means, what the contract means, what the statute means in order to solve the dispute. I believe under the House Bill 7069 case where we sued to invalidate portions of the law that has been foreclosed to us. So I don't know of the way that you would that would be the prototypical way in in legal world that you would go to get a dispute like that solved. And I think

127it's been close to us. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's been close to us. So I would have to look administratively. I don't know. you couldn't I don't think you can follow declaratory action with the with the state board of education. I don't think that's something you can do. I'm not sure of the avenue that we have to vindicate our rights here. That this has been something for me as a school board attorney. You know, this board has the right under article 9 section 4B of the Florida Constitution to control, operate, and supervise public schools. But yet when we think our authority has been assured by the state board of education, we don't have standing to challenge that to vindicate our rights under the constitution. So this has been long concerning to me. I you

128know I think frankly in my view if the school board doesn't have standing to vindicate its own authority, who does? And that's my concern. So I will research that. As I sit here today, I'm not sure that there's an answer to that I can give you, but I will do my level best to find it. Thank you, Mr. Pomerini. And I appreciate that. it's unfortunate and the legislature should be upset like they took power. It's not they didn't just use their our power to make good decisions on behalf of our constituents. They did it in the legislature as well. like I feel like the entire legislative body should be concerned by the actions of the board of education. Thank you. Thank you, member Gallo. Mr. Pomerini, you're cued next. Was that for someone on the

129line? Yeah, that is for member Ferrant. Okay. Thank you, member Farant. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am, you know, I've just been listening to some of the comments and I was, listening to the public comment time. and I find it interesting that this board wants to sit and defend explicit, detailed sexual acts that are in library books that have been placed in our schools. again, if parents would like their students to have access to that type of adult content, they're more than welcome to access it. As one of the speakers said today, it's fully accessible on Amazon at the public library. but again, using our taxpayer money for books it that are explicit sexual content in nature should not be handed to someone else's child without a parent's full knowledge. but I really came on

130to say how excited I am about our schools that are really focusing on the core curriculum and math and English and all the different subjects. But I've been able to communicate with some of our the schools in district three and I'm super excited about the growth that is happening. I have one school that even reached out and let me know that they had an 11 point increase just in this past year and that is all because our educators and our principles and students are focused on education which is really what we are here for. So very proud of that, excited for what is to come in this new year and the 20 vision 2030. Thank you. Have a great summer. Thank you. member Vanos, I'll be quick. I did just want to respond to just

131the notion that, you know, if if people want a change that they can vote, they did vote and they voted for us. And I just I don't I don't know who is in a better position to ask for clarity than the school board. and so again, I just and I hear what member Gallow said, maybe it's better if we that you know, those people who want to send the letter can send the letter. but again, I just don't know who is who is in a better position than us to to at least send this letter and if and just get some clarity. And I think that's all that's all we want. None of us here want to not follow the law. we just want clarity. And you know we talk about the supervisory you know

132the oversight of the of the state board of education but if you actually you know the statute itself 108.32 you know specifically says that the state board of education shall oversee the performance of district school boards you know dot dot dot and be primarily responsible for compliance with law and state board rule. Well, there I don't see that there has been a rule that we're not complying with. Again, it's just a statement. And so, so that's my concern and that's why I think it's important to send the letter because there isn't a rule. There's just statements. And I want to understand what our obligation is to comply with statements made by unelected people who don't even seem to have this power that they're asserting. Thank you. Thank you, Member Vanos. I think general counsel understands

133the request. is there any more business before the board this evening? Seeing none, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Heat. Heat. Heat.