School Board Workshop: May 12, 2026

001Good afternoon. It's Tuesday, May 12th. This is a school board workshop and the time is 1:00 p.m. Sergeant-at-Arms, has the front lobby been attended to? >> Yes. >> Thank you, Chief. There are 13 items on the agenda today. Construction change order reports for March 20, 2026. Construction projects bimonthly update the RSM audit results safe start initiative update job descriptions for Myers Beach update SDLC rightize and efficiency initiative code of ethics the district strategic priorities academic updates for year 27 district priorities enrollment and capacity update the FSBA board of directors even numbered your districts update. Then we have public comment and go to the order comments and other business per board protocol. Each board member should aim for four minutes for initial comments and two minutes for their followup for a total of 10 minutes during

002this meeting. First on the agenda is construction change order reports for 2026 by Scott Rickmbbacher and Melissa Rivera. Good afternoon board members. Good afternoon Superintendent Carlin. Good afternoon Equire Dodig. This is your March 2026 change order reporting as required by statute. You'll see the front change order sheet. You'll see a change order in the amount of $7.8 million for direct material purchases. The amount from those savings returned back to the districts is $447,946.666 and that's in the tax savings by doing direct material. You'll see non-direct change orders in the amount of $221,398 that was returned project savings. I'll go in a little more in depth on the second sheet if you have questions. And you'll see contingency adjustments across projects for $689,364. If you switch to the backup sheet showing you where all the expenditures

003occurred, you will see that predominantly the direct material purchase uh projects are the Alva High School, formerly known as NNN, and also Beayshore Elementary School, which are both currently under construction. So, we're doing all of those direct material purchases to gain the tax savings for those projects. The pure change orders you will see were actually for the uh Franklin Park elementary portable staging campus. This was unused funds returned back to the district coffers following audit and also owns Kimble for Estero High School ROC tower that was built. It was the unused funds within that project after the audit process being brought back to the district as well for a total of $221,398. has mentioned below you will see a multitude of contingency adjustments. These are for unforeseen conditions going along with projects. You'll see that

004um Gulf Point Construction for Bonita Springs Elementary, $162,000. RD Johnson East Zone portable relocation, not the staging school. This is where we put 16 portables out at uh five campus locations for student capacity over the year. That was for $189,000. Owen Ames Kimble Ster High School ROTC tower uh $24,000. Uh Owen Ames Kimble, Cypress Lake Middle School, $69,000. Owen Kimble for Cypress Lake Middle School, another $9,000. Uh and the rest are all for Cypress Lake Middle School 65,45,000 and $119,000 for a total of $689,364. and I can answer any questions you have on these. The descriptions associated with all of those I think is pretty pretty obvious, but if you need a greater indepth explanation, I can provide that for you. >> Superintendent Carlin, any comments? >> I do not. We look forward to your

005discussion. Thank you. >> Okay. Any discussion with board members? >> Miss Jordan, >> thank you. Um I know it's not on here, but someone sent that so reminded me today about the steel. are we using the steel that we have from the other projects in in these projects that we are doing so that way we are not losing that money and it's not just sitting over on canal. >> I can answer it quickly. Um we've used them in the ROC towers both at Eststerero and at Cypress Lake. We've used it in the central energy plant at Cypress Lake High School and uh one other project I believe Gwaver hips we use some in. We're at a point now where it's costing us more to utilize that steel, prepare it for use because it's been sitting

006out in the yard for a couple of years than it it's cheaper to purchase new and employ it. So, we are are in operations talking and deciding what potentially we might be able to do with that steel. We have not come to a final conclusion as to what we can do with it. >> Well, thank you. Thank you for that because that is to me that's money just sitting there as well. I mean to you as well all of us. So whatever wherever we can use it we definitely need to be utilizing it within the perimeters that we have >> and we have a lot of it was utilized for the gym at Riverdale High School but we've reached that point where the degradation of the steel sitting out in the open >> is overcoming

007the cost of purchasing new. So we have some we have some things we have to look at and what could be the best value for the district to do with this deal. Recycle it and possibly >> Okay. Any other comments >> to piggyback off that? So can you give me ideas and options of what now you're trying to figure out what to do with the the balance of this deal? Um like what other what are our options? >> I can simplistically give you a couple of things. Um number one, anytime you got to handle it, it costs you money. It's sitting in our Canal Street yard on the asphalt. So, preferably, my personal opinion would be the best motive here would be to recycle it. Recycle it with someone who potentially would cover the cost

008of picking it up to take it to the recycler. Again, one potential option. Um, we've had a vendor come and and offer to purchase that. Now, I haven't gotten a price. I've brought it forward and I'm waiting for some decisions to see if that vendor would provide enough value that would benefit the district versus taking it to a recycle plant. So again, that's all being that's just stating. Nothing has come to fruition yet. We're still communicating about it. >> Thank you. So would that be something that the board would ever know about unless we have to ask or would like would you come back and tell us by the way the steel we sold it for blah blah blah. I mean, is that that's the question to the superintendent? >> If I may, um I

009I know what we're talking about here is change orders and things like that. I'd be happy to have an offline conversation with you about that. Um you know, we're we're obviously not trying to hide anything. I think Mr. Rickenbucker's been super transparent today to talk about the reality of the situation, you know, and um that's something that I've heard him say. They're still under discussions. They're still talking about what the potential is. Um and so we will certainly circle back with you and let you know what what has happened. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you very much. Moving right along. Next we have the construction projects by monthly update. Mr. Ricobacher. >> Yes, sir. Uh first up, Beayshore K8. As you can see, our development order was approved and we received it on April 17th

010of 2026. So that's a big home run for us on that particular project. All of the dates remain the same. You'll see pictures in the next slide, but one I'm going to give you some things that occur in between the time we uh put this into board docks into real time date. Uh right now the project is dried in all of the trailers to support the metriculation until the building is opened in October are installed and the parking lots are beginning to be paved at that school with the first lift of asphalt. And you can see some of the questions and this is the logo that is cast into the concrete. This is a concept that started at Gateway High School. You'll see the music and the sports figurines. It doesn't really cost anything to

011have this done, but it adds a little pizzazz, I think, to our facilities. Any questions? Mr. President, I just want to say I sort of check out that site every morning. I take my grandson to school. the construction. They have done an excellent job of working around all the traffic and everything else during this construction during the school year. I'm really impressed how little it has disturbed anything. The vendors know they got to get there before a certain time so the drop they won't bother the >> the you know the drop off and and the same thing when the pickup you know so they they really have coordinated all that. I'm sure it's between our staff and the construction. >> Correct. I I'll pass those accolades on to my staff. They work really hard at

012this site and also the Bonita Spring site. Both are what I call shoehorn sites and it's a tight fit and >> knock on wood. Um things seem to be going really well out there and on schedule and on time and on budget. So >> um so thank you for this. I would say if this is something while in the future if we're doing anything with our schools we're able to do signage like this. For me this is like free signage. that's built into the building. Maybe not since it's there's no additional cost. >> If it's something we can consider moving forward, I think that'd be great. >> Sure. It's uh they can pretty much do anything in the concrete panel casting. So, whatever you all feel is deemed appropriate for this, we can certainly make

013that happen. >> Next slide. >> Okay. I Yeah, I have a Go ahead. >> Oh, go ahead. No, I'm sorry. >> No, I had a comment. You had talked about the uh you brought up Bonita Springs being a tight tight fit and as you know we had some issues with cycling up there and that's been corrected. The folks are doing a great job. But more importantly, I was at a community meeting last week and one of the council members was there and he was telling the group how impressed he was with the quality of the construction and the appearance of the brick uh and what you've done on the front of that school. So, we're moving right along with a total different mindset in Bonita as far as uh replacing that school. So, great job

014so far. Of course, you got to bring the thing to closure sooner or later, but you're moving right along and uh everyone's impressed with what you're doing. Thank you. I'll pass that to my staff. They appreciate hearing that. Thank you. >> Next slide up. BBB, which is the new prek8. Formerly, it was considered the innovation school and we changed the development of that. Uh currently Southwest uh water management permit was received on April 15, 2026 and our our ERP which is our environmental resource permit. That's the biggie. That's where I know what my exposure is and once I get that I can then go on to the bidding process. We receive that on May 1st of 2026. So we're out on the street. We're out to bid. So we'll be bringing that forward hopefully get

015a little jump on the gun on that particular project. Uh we are anticipating a September October bringing to the board of total project costs. Anything we can get in advance of that to get the project moving forward saves us time and obviously helps the future principles that will run this get in a little bit quicker too. Um permanent drawings are complete. They've gone out for a public bid this May. The DO was approved April 17th. And the pictures I is just a no just a artist rendering of what it potentially could look like >> once it's gone. Mr. Rickenbacher, I think I just wanted to direct to our chair. Um, there was a question. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. >> Thank you, Mr. Rickenbacher. Just a a general question.

016Obviously, this used to be the innovation school and not necessarily looking for answer now. Is there still any of the legacy features of potentially what that was going to be from the design in that school or is it pretty much just going to be like uh Hector? The initial design for cost savings and fiduciary responsibility was stripped down to remove much of the innovation. The way the design and the footprint are remain, but we've repurposed many faces or many spaces to accommodate a traditional prek8 similar to Hector format within the building. >> Okay. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. >> Thank you. >> Next up, Bonita Springs Elementary School rebuild. Um, not much to respond other than we're we're moving forward. We're getting that done. I will tell you that inside you're going to see pictures

017of the exterior, but inside the new building, interior finishes of all trades are going in. That's sheetrock, paint, flooring, um, ceiling, HVAC equipment, electrical. So, we're on board for a first phase move in. Um, we're right on schedule and getting the portables out of there this June so that the next phase can continue in there. So, uh, we're right on target. And if you see the pictures and you look up, that's that brick facade, Mr. Ribble you were speaking to. And you'll see the interior. This is a stairwell picture of the stairwell where the sheetrock's going in. And we're starting to do all the mechanical work and finish trades in there. Yeah. But the brick really did came out nice. I agree with you. It looks it's phenomenal. Any questions on that? Okay. Kal Technical

018College. I understand many of you have been out there for a site visit with Charlie Piece, the principal of that campus. um in that school. We're getting ready to open that up. They're starting to get all of their uh large equipment to be delivered to there and installed inside the like auto mechanics bays and and the welding bays and so forth. Um interior finishes are going on. The HVAC is ready. We have power out there. So, we'll be starting the the HVAC so a lot of the uh flooring and so forth can actually be applied throughout the areas that are not shop areas. So, pretty impressive. It's coming along. Any questions? Yeah. Any questions? Project. Okay. Next is cycle. We do have one thing I will tell you. City of Cape Coral. Um and we're

019working it within the project budget for Cape Tech. The original Hector Cafaretta at the time when that was built, we could only provide fire suppression in that campus off the uh re the reuse line, which is irrigation line. in the development order that we're working through with them, they have requested that now since they have portable water out in that site that we're going to have to switch that campus over to portable uh water. It's about $50,000 plus or minus, but we understand that when that will be absorbed in the total project cost that the board has already approved. So, just Cypress Lake Middle School rebuild um as I spoke earlier, we'll be pulling those portables out in uh October. So, we're preparing for that move. Interior finishes are ongoing. A building HBAC is connected

020to the new C plant and is being started up as we speak. Exterior and interior painting is ongoing and ceilings and floors have been started in all portions of the new building. And I think you'll see those pictures on the back end of the color schemes that was picked by the principal with accent walls and so forth and what the outside panels and the painting scheme is on the outside to make that building pop. So we're right on queue on that with budget as well. Any questions? >> Um just back real quick to Cape Tech. Um with the mention of UEP for the additional 50, is that part of the current UE plan that's happening now in >> No, no, this has nothing to do with their UE plan. This is when Hector Cafaretta had

021built it >> 2005, right? >> They did not have a big domestic water line out there, but they had reuse. So they allowed us to tie our our fire protection for the building off of the reuse water. >> Now that we're in there, we're redeveloping the site. It's their opportunity to get the site switched over to the domestic water system. >> So they may have gone through that area with their UEP program a few years back or so. And now since we've opened it up by doing work at the site, they want us to properly connect onto the domestic water system to ensure the proper flow for fighting fires and so forth. Okay. Okay, I hope that answered your question. >> Yeah, I'm good. Thank you. >> Cypress Lake High. We're moving on to Hector

022Caparetta. Uh Hector Caparetta, I don't know if you all were in attendance or or under or knew that they had a teacher recruitment fair on site and got a lot of rave reviews from a lot of people on what the school and the campus looked like. Principal out there, Miss Dr. Kurts did a great job. I'm understanding um right now we are in theou uh going on the 19th to the city of Cape Coral for a magistrate review hearing. This is on what we have what I'm terming and we've used on other sites a betterment plan for the landscaping. Obviously we want to minimalize what we do on our sites. Um a lot of people don't realize that landscaping the maintenance as such isn't a capital issue. It's a general fund issue. And with the

023general fund being so strained as it is today, we can't expend these kind of funds long term in the future to maintain thousands and thousands of bushes and trees. So, we're coming up, we're going to sit with them. We've put in a deviation request. Um, we're going to be in a presentation on the 19th and we're hoping to get some relief from our partners at the city of Cape Coral that we not be treated like a commercial developer, but we as a public entity. So, we're we're hopeful. We've had a lot of people working with us on that end that uh we'll make some headway and and save some some money for the school district. Um currently right now interior finishes are ongoing. We're paving the parking lots, all the site work. We have permission

024from the city of Cape Coral to do all the perimeter sidewalk pouring and all of the sidewalks that go with the infrastructure that we put in from Embers Parkway to the school site. So now we're covering those up with sidewalks over where that pipe went in for the utilities. And the air is running and finishes are going great guns. And there's a look at the school. You can see we've already got the brown paper down to protect those areas. We're starting to take substantial completion for some of the buildings so we can start loading furniture in there. Any questions? >> Yeah, I know they want a lot more landscaping than we do. Does that pose any kind of a security risk case. Uh I would think >> yes it does and um you know we

025we started this back we had a partnership with Lee County very successful partnership and we called it a betterment plan. We had the leader of the SWAT team with the sheriff write letters. We had our own at that time Mr. Parfett was our chief of police here in the district uh provide a letter and we were successful to work with Lee County staff in making those reductions in the planning. Um, even the buffers with adjacent neighborhoods, developments, um, next door, we don't want hiding spaces following parkland. They want clear visibility from the building all the way through to the fence line to know when things are approaching. Um, and they can say, "Well, you could plant bushes and maintain them to keep them down low. We don't have the money to do that." Um, if

026you go to some of our schools, we we're just we can't afford we don't have the staff to maintain landscaping. So, we're kind of throwing money out the window in my personal opinion. Um, so we're trying that same approach here. Uh, we did do a PowerPoint. We we've done it at Gateway High. We've done it at the New Lambs building. We've done it at a Man of Sier. We've done it at Franklin Parks. Uh, we've done it at um Cypress Lake Middle School. So, we're hoping we can get some relief in the west zone as well from those partners to help us, you know, reduce that that development need based on a commercial development process. All right. Thank you. Appreciate you. >> And picking it back piggyback. Can you um I know Cape Coral, the

027city of Cape Coral is requiring us to have how many trees? Um because I think that just kind of puts it in perspective what their expectations. >> Off the top of my head, um 1,400 trees and about the same in bushes. So a tree every 10 ft and a bush every two all the way around, not including all of the plantings on the inboard property. What happens with us is their planting schedule and I'll be quick. I don't want to put you to sleep. Their planting schedule is based upon uh unpaved areas and places which don't have a building footprint. Well, schools obviously have big playground open playground areas. So, by default, we are being penalized for these open planting areas. If we were to pave the entire school, I might only be putting 100

028trees and bushes out there. But so we believe that it needs a fresh set of eyes on it and understanding that we're a little bit different than a than a big box store or something else. >> Yeah. Thank you. And not to mention that we do not put in a sprinkler system to even keep those alive. And right now if those plants were there and those trees, I can tell you they'd be dead right now. Thank you. >> I don't disagree. That's it. Okay. Next uh question is I'm going to speak to Green Metal which we formerly known as L Elementary which is on a co-site with OO Middle which has not been named yet. Um currently we were projecting where we were going to get our ERP approval and fish and wildlife approval which

029allows for the South Florida Water Management release of the permit. We are on schedule with June which is our original target date similar to Alva High School. Uh we just received notice a couple days, not necessarily bad notice at this point, but there's major lawsuits going on right now with um the Army Corps of Engineers in regards to fish and wildlife permits. So, what we've been told is Fish and Wildlife will not release any of their ERPs to Southwest Florida so we can get that release and start until they can do the research to see if our projects are in part of this lawsuit or named in the lawsuit. We should know, this just occurred yesterday when I heard, I should know in a day or two whether the school district projects are in that

030or not. If they're not in that, then we're golden. We had one comment from FWC. We worked through that comment with them. They're accepting of it. So, we're kind of hopeful I'm not in that suit and that I'll get the permit in time for June. So, we're right on schedule and we put this thing out for bid and get going. Any questions? Okay. And no. Uh, the blue the blue balls >> front the story has a question. >> They will not be they're not in the project. That's just part of an artist rendering. Uh, Scott, if so, if we don't get that, um, they just stay at in the portables. No. Is >> that correct? >> No, we're we're going to get it. >> Okay. >> I have to find out the ramific There's workarounds

031potentially. We don't even know if we're going to need to do a workaround. The big question determines riskreward. Do I feel beneficial in June to go and put this out on the street and get the bids with the belief that that permit will be released in that time? We we took that same measure at Alva High School and it worked. And I have a whole team of people and professionals that we have to digest. If we're not in this lawsuit, then we have nothing to work worry about. We're right on schedule. If we are, then I have to create a plan B and figure that out. But the kids will not be trapped in those portals. This is something where between our legislative folks and Mr. Dodig and others, we we'll get through this one

032way or another. Just I'm just giving you early advanced notice of a little hiccup. Uh middle school OO, you obviously know that all the site work is being done underneath this project at that dual site and all of the same issues that I just spoke about on Green Meadows Elementary apply here. We're in the process right now of with Lee County Utilities and adjacent property developments sharing the cost of bringing our water and the force man to that property. So, we're in the process right now. They're the first ones out there coming in to permit. We will be providing some funding with that vendor so that we he can upsize that pipe and allow us to connect on that as well. And we're working through Lee County on that to that end. Any questions? And

033that's just uh obviously an artist rendering of OO school potentially. The colors will be picked by picked by the principal once they're on board. Elementary school M. Uh we had a L Lee County DOT pre-MOM meeting held on April 21st 26. The DO is currently under review with Lee County. And again, we we feel confident that this one's going to maintain its project schedule and be opened in the year that it needs, which is June 29th. So we're right on board with M Elementary as well. Any questions? >> Thank you. >> And that's just a this is a new hybrid. If you haven't seen that, this is the main entry. This is a new architect that came on board in the process. It's a hybrid of schools that they have built, but also encompasses the

034layout of the buildings that are in our prototypes for administration to manage. So, a little bit different of an exterior facade, but the interior should reflect very much what we do in our prototypes in terms of manageability by administrators. Okay. Alba High School. um stripping the site. Casting beds are already being poured for the pre-cast panels. Um we're going to town, you can see by the DMP, we're spending millions of dollars on uh direct material purchases for underground utilities, piping, uh even some uh long lead aluminum fabrication and miscellaneous steel. Um FG we're right in the point now where um Esquire Dodig has been reviewing some of our work with FGUA that's the water supply and sewer supply company developing the agreement for the shared utilities and us bringing that forward creating the pump and

035station. Uh we're really close to bringing that both to the FGUA board for review and ratification and then ultimately to this school board for review and ratification. So we're right there. It's been going back and forth between the lawyers and and we feel really good about that. Uh FGA has been good enough as a partner to already issue our offsite permits to start putting that pipe work in in order to maintain schedule and bring those utilities on time into the project. So that was a a big kudos and thank you to them for that partnership. And you can see this is just a picture of the site. You went out there and it's it's stripped. uh cash embeds are out there and you'll see a lot of activity happening out there in the next month

036and a half. And following up is the monthly uh project listing. I'm sorry I can't read that either, so I have a bigger cheat sheet with me. We have uh 32 projects on schedule. Seven projects are in the permitting process. We have 13 projects that are in the closeout and auditing process. That's both auditing internal and external for a total of 52 projects that we're currently tracking. We have no projects that are behind schedule at this time. Are there any questions on any information provided in that sheet? >> Any questions, Miss Jordan? >> I didn't see Island Coast Kitchen. That's not >> that's um that would be maintenance andor the new PMP uh program management possibly. That is not a construction. >> Oh, when so there the rebuild of that kitchen would not it's m

037considered maintenance not this >> at at this point in time I do not have a kitchen rebuild. It may be part of the um facility modification conversations has not reached my department. It may have reached me I I can't speak to that. >> Okay. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Thanks Scott and thank you for adding addresses. I think it helps with people that aren't in that area to understand where all of our schools being built. I think that's incredibly helpful. So, thank you. Um, so a question I have asked um, and I've actually spoken with our auditing team at RSM about this and I'm sure some of you on the board have already um, you know, ask the same questions. But when it comes to our procurement process with our buildings, our new schools,

038um I would really love to know or have a conversation maybe on our one-on- ones on how our committees are chosen. are they the same people over and over because I I' I've seen a lot of the same names on communities and I think it's a fresh perspective to get um ideas from other community members that are in this you know whether it be construction or um you know anybody that wants to join the committees and we and we don't have that committee anymore which is okay but um I do know that we have a procurement committee that goes through the point system etc. So, I would love to just have that conversation, maybe it's on a in a one-on-one about how the people in that committee are chosen and do we cycle through, do

039we have new people come in and give new perspectives on new ideas because um if we are going to continue to evolve and be innovative in our buildings, I think we've got a lot of talented and gifted people in the community that would love to weigh in on that. So, that is um my other that is my other statement. And then um I will have a conversation I guess offline about some of our constructive services that me being out to so many schools in the last 6 months, we're at that point of some like TLC needing to be given and I know we've had those conversations, Dr. Carlin, um you and I in our one-on- ones, but just to really start to push in on some of these schools that that need some tender loving

040care that are 50, 60-y old buildings. So um and that's all. Thank you and I'll hand Dr. Carlin. >> And if I may, thank you very much, Miss Fleming for the the comments and for the entire board to uh be aware of. Um first of all, thank you for the comments about procurement and I know several board members have mentioned that to me as well. We have started that inquiry. Um and so that is information I will be happy to get for for you at your next oneonone. So we'll make sure that occurs and I know our staff is making a note of that as well. Um and then as to the capital plan and the maintenance plan, um that is absolutely on our COO's mind. Uh he and I have had recent conversations about

041that. Um how are we working toward uh the improvements that need to happen at our buildings which are have been actually for years not just this year for years rapidly um aging and so we do need a game plan for that. I know that our COO is working diligently on that um as well as looking at our construction plan in general. due to our um one-year trend where we are trending down in terms of our number of students. So that conversation has also been uh rapidly happening. Um again we are not knee-jerk uh reactors. Uh as leaders we know we have one piece of data that says we are down in enrollment this year. So we want to make sure as leaders we're always looking at a you know 5 to 10year trend. Um, so

042when we're gathering that information, we'll be sure to keep you in the loop on that and provide that uh briefing for you as soon as we have it available. >> Okay. Any other comments? >> If I can just go ahead >> add on. I just wanted to give I'm I'm so glad you brought that up because I just wanted to give Mr. Neely, Mr. Cook a kudos. Um I being out to buildings, we are starting to see a more of a rapid incline on how things are getting done finally instead of waiting weeks and weeks. I'm hearing from principles that things are getting done in a more repious and and and and quicker way. So, I just want to say thank you for the hard work that's being done behind the scenes that people just

043don't know about. Thanks, >> um, so through the chair, through the superintendent. I know last month during our workshop, I specifically asked to to add procurement to our workshop. So, is that going to come in June? >> I'm happy to do it. As you know, I I missed the last workshop, so my my sincere apologies, but we'll be happy to bring that to you. Um, I can talk with you offline and we'll figure out when the right time is for that to happen through the chair. Thank you. >> Okay. >> I just said one thing to assist Mr. Renbacher. The requirement in Cape Coral currently is 1,378 trees and 3,396 shrubs for calfetta. >> Okay, Mr. Pes, >> I was I think it was close on the trees. I was a little light on the

044bushes. You >> were close. >> Throw me a bone, Rob. Come on. or they're smaller. They, you know, um I know some districts say we have about 100 schools and for they rate them for the major projects, not not for the I need a new toilet or something like that, but for the major projects to be redone from one to 100 and there's a list out there so everybody sort of knows where they are or sometimes, you know, something really goes bad and they get moved up on the list. But, uh, do we have anything like that or do we just sort of >> I I'm not prepared to speak to that. I know operations has a facility modification program that they rolled out to all of the schools. >> I I I will say

045um through the chair, if I may, uh, Mr. Persons and team, we'll be happy to get um the the right staff to be able to answer those questions. Mr. Rickenbacher primarily is our construction manager, our director. So, we'll make sure we get that full briefing as Mrs. uh, Fleming requested. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. >> Thank you. You guys have a good day. >> Right along. >> Next, we have the RSM audit results by Matthew Blondelle and Weiss Campbell. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. appreciate your time today. I'm pretty sure we've had pretty extensive conversations, but just as a reminder for the public, my name is Weiss Campbell. I'm the manager that drives the projects that we deliver as the board's outsourced internal auditor. Uh today, we're going to give you a quick

046update on the status of our internal audit plan. Uh tell you where we've been, what we've been able to accomplish, but also what you can expect in the coming months. Um we'll walk through one of the reports today with you and obviously field any questions that you might have as we deliver those results. uh and we'll finish by giving you an update on the status of our follow-up testing. So, just to jump right into it, uh the report that you'll see first that's listed is contract administration that was presented through the audit committee in April, April 20th. Uh that is the report we'll walk you through at a high level today. I have Jack Hughes here who delivered that report um through the audit committee. So, he'll he'll walk us through that. The sensitive data

047protection is a sensitive report. We did report that through the audit committee um and we will be we're working right now to get that scheduled to deliver through the board in a close session in June. So we're still working on that date. Uh but but very pleased to have those two project projects completed. The third project that you'll see on the list here is budgeting. So that is actually in our reporting phase. So our expectation is that that will deliver in June along with our fisc year 27 risk assessment. So we've completed a number of those conversations with each of the board members as well as excuse me relevant members of management. So we're closing some of those conversations this week. Um we have a conversation scheduled with Dr. Carlin where um we'll kind of

048wrap up our initial thoughts and then like I said we will bring that report in June uh first through the audit committee where we'll look to get direction from them on what recommendations they have based on those inherently high-risisk areas that we've discussed and identified and then uh those recommendations will be brought through the board of course um as we look towards the fiscal year 27 audit plan. So with that what I will do is I will have Jack briefly walk through the contract administration results. When he is done, I will give you a quick update on the status of follow-up testing and of course any questions you have throughout, don't hesitate. >> Perfect. Well, good afternoon everyone. The objective of this review was to look at a selection of vendor contracts and evaluate compliance

049with the requirements they're listed within. So we looked at the completeness and accuracy of source documentation including all original contract documents, amendments, change orders as applicable. We took a selection of vendor invoices and said is the district getting the services that were contracted for. Right? Are we getting bang for our buck? Is the vendor performing as expected? And what source documentation exists to substantiate and measure objectively that performance? And so we did that across a selection of four different contracts. Ultimately we had, if we go to the next slide, I believe we had three total observations across those four contractual agreement reviews. You'll see the bottom two there with no reportable observations. Uh on our review of Kelly Services, we had one moderate risk observation related to reporting and monitoring. What we saw is the

050language included within the agreement was not necessarily specific to identify quantifiable performance metrics, service level expectations that could be measured against. And while our conversations with management indicated, and I think it's included within our report as well, that the service provided by Kelly has been wonderful and it has helped fill a significant gap in the district's operations. Being able to objectively uh quantify that performance is a potential enhancement to that contracted language and we call out the risk there as part of that observation. >> Any questions related to that contract review and observation >> questions? Seeing none, >> our second uh of the two contracts with which we had reportable observations was for Salion Health. The first, and you'll see it listed as a high-risisk observation, is the background screening documentation. The contract itself had

051a requirement for that vendor to provide background screening of its employees, of its contracted services uh to the district ahead of any of those services being provided. What we noted when we were looking at source documentations is that the vendor had failed to do so. Upon request for those background screening uh documents, they were able to be provided and we were able to cross-check the dates and verify that at the time of service being provided, all of those individuals were in fact background checked and uh and screened appropriately, but those documents had not been provided in the terms as specified by the contract. We've recommended enhancing oversight over those key vendor expectations, making sure that there's a system of controls in place to manage that vendor and those requirements going forward. Management has agreed and

052has worked to develop standard operating procedures to define that process and a checklist to verify that those items are being completed again ahead of any services being rendered to children. The second of the two observations then is uh certificates of insurance. Upon request, the vendor did not have the vendor did not provide a certificate of insurance for a particular period under review. Uh the district did not have a copy of the most updated certificate of insurance in file. Upon request with that vendor, we were able to obtain it. we were able to get those documents updated and that there and verify that there was no lapse in coverage over that time. It was a question of documents being requested and obtained by the district in their files. So we know and understand that management is

053working to enhance their standard operating procedures around monitoring the exper of those documents and are developing a system of controls to verify and check on an ongoing basis that we have everything that we need to administer those contracts. And that wraps up our observations. >> Um, thank you. Um, through the chair to the superintendent. I'm sorry. I just want to back up a little bit to your statement earlier about Kelly Services being a being at the rating that it's at here and your proposed um recommendation. Dr. Carlin, can you talk a little bit about the what Kelly Services really does for our district and and the ease it has made the central office? We you know, we often talked whenever we were going to consider doing this in the first place, I think it was

054two years ago. I think we're in round maybe year probably going into round year three that um we aren't professional substitute um company and that they are taking that role away from us and that's what their lane is. So can you just talk a little bit about that just so we don't alarm anyone and on on obviously we've had a lot of success with Kelly Services even though this rating is what it is and I know what your recommendation was. Do you want to >> Sure I'd be happy to. Yes. Um and Mr. Dodic actually to my right uh served uh at some point as our um as our division head for HR. So it was uh actually under his uh administration in HR when this occurred. Um I think I was actually retired at

055the time when this uh came into being. But what I understand and since I've taken the seat, what I've noted from our principles and from our schools is that there's a much higher fill rate um for our substitute teachers having run schools for 18 years. I can tell you one of the uh most uh stressful times of my morning was making sure that we had enough substitute teachers in the building and many many times I can tell you during my times as an assistant principal and a principal the answer was sorry we don't have enough subs and so our morning became very frenetic running around jumbling classes trying to figure out who was going to cover which periods they were going to cover who wasn't available and then inevitably somebody during the day would have

056a sick child on top of that. So really what it created was a real sense of chaos for our schools. Um and again having run them for many years I can personally attest to that. What I have heard personally from principles and u knowing many of them uh for many many years what we have seen is a dramatic 180 on that uh where when there is a teacher that is out uh the substitutes are readily available. Uh they are able to come in. our guest teachers uh do a great job and uh we're just very very excited about the work that they do for us because we really do not hear from our principles including this former principal um that we have a dramatic number of unfilled vacancies because I can tell you the beginning

057of the school day is very busy in and of itself. What we don't need to do is add additional stress to our our principles and to our teachers. Um so so with that said uh we certainly look at um this finding as very impactful to us. I did hear the key words that I needed to hear. The background screenings did occur. So that is extremely important um in my mind. And it sounds like we've got some work for um some SOPs and that's why Dr. Cuben McCoy stands at the ready to work with our team. Uh any of the audit findings, you know, she is right on it. She meets with the team immediately after we're uh they're available to us and then she goes to work on those. So, thank you. >> I can

058just add um what they're saying because I I was not happy to see this either, but they simply want they being RSM wants in our contract what we are asking um Kelly to do, which is every day have a 90% fill rate >> and it's not in our contract, but I can tell you that is happening every day. So, um there is a distinction there between what an auditor wants and what's happening on the ground every day. So, Thank you, Mr. Deick. I just wanted to make sure that the public knew the benefit of what this what these services really really have on the on the district. So, thank you both for clarifying Ellie >> and through the chair to the board attorney. That contract is a piggyback contract. So, could that be the reason

059why it's not in there? >> Yes. And I'm wondering, you've heard that before. Yes, we talked about that in the audit meeting. Yes, that we piggybacked on Orange County's contract at the time, right? >> And theirs did not have a threshold in it, so that's why it didn't appear in our contract. That's correct. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay, move right along. >> Thank you. And I just want to make one last comment that one thing our reports aren't intended to do or designed to do is highlight a lot of the great things that are happening. But hopefully what the public should take from this is having audited four contracts here, this is great results. These are great results. To see two not have any observations is certainly not common, right? It's just it's

060a difficult difficult audits to perform. And I will take a moment to say thank you Jennifer and her team for their assistance in coordinating, you know, with four four audits or four contracts, excuse me. We have four different end users. That's a lot of collaboration. That's a lot of assistance that we needed on the district side to move this project forward and make sure that we met our timeline. So, thank you, Jennifer. This is just uh just to let you know that we have uh submitted our sensitive data protection through the audit committee. It is of course confidential in nature due to um the nature of the content in the report. So this will be brought through the board at the next workshop. We're in the process of scheduling that. Our last item is our

061follow-up dashboard. So very very positive results here. Would love to highlight some of the things that have changed since our last discussion. We have since closed four of our internal audit reports. So you'll notice here the purchasing halfsent pecards and asset management reports are all closed now. Meaning all observations have um been or all management responses associated with these reports have been addressed reviewed through our internal audit process and closed. So I think that's a great story. Two more additional projects listed here. The contract compliance and the fleet operations are both pending IIIA validation meaning that management has indicated that those are ready for us to test. So just based on the timing of when we deliver this status update, we have not cleared those yet, but our hope is the next time we come

062forward uh to you that you'll be able to see some progress there and those will be closed as well. Two additional reports uh the facilities maintenance and ESC services, those ETCs have not passed. So just just to make make sure everyone's aware there as part of that original report, there were estimated completion dates that were established. Those have not arrived yet. Once those ETCs have passed, we will go back and do testing. Um but we're still giving management the time that they um indicated in the original port that report that they need uh to get those items remediated. So those are still in the same status which is which is for from our purpose a good thing because that shows they're on target. The only two items that did experience uh an ETC push and

063again ETC is estimated time to complete um were the employee timekeeping and capital planning report. So you will see that in the yellow column on the far right. Um and those two reports u were largely those changes in the ETC's were largely driven by some turnover that exist that that took place in those two departments. Um from our lens right you would love to know love to see that turnover not impact these timelines but we know just having done these at so many school districts that that's going to have a significant impact on timeline. There's a transition of of roles and responsibilities that's occurring and usually these are not top of mind when you're taking on those new responsibilities. That being said, we feel very confident that those ETCs that have been updated um are

064good dates and we're working with Dr. Cupid McCoyy's team in ensuring that the next time we come back and look at those um that we can see some progress. So hopefully we'll see some progress on those next time we meet. But overall very very positive progress here. I would say this is probably one of the best positions we've been in from a follow-up perspective. >> Okay, Superintendent Carlin. Um, first of all, just thank you very very much and uh I want to echo your accolades for Dr. Coopin McCoy and her team uh really staying on top of this and thank you all for helping us get better. Uh we really value the partnership with RSM. We appreciate when you give us the push because we want to continue to get better and you're helping us

065get better. So with that said, we look forward to the discussion with the board. >> Miss Elli, >> real quick. So thank you actually Dr. Cuba McCoy, thank you too for you you and your team. Y'all really helped out a lot and especially with the audit committee um meetings that we have and we don't have that many but um we just had one in um April but one of the questions that came up in our 101s and then I wanted to have you have you reiterate what you said to me regarding uh having a board auditor and how um how that would help you facilitate some of the requests and so forth. Not that the team is doing that's not it would just be better for us and if you could explain that for for

066me please. >> Yeah to clarify as as the as RSM as the board's outsourced internal auditor one of the things that's critical for us is to have a great collaboration of working arrangements with the district leadership right because that only makes our job easier. Our goal is to provide timely reports that are comprehensive and objective. And in order to do that, we need team members like Jennifer and Lisa Beige who allow us um accessibility to some of the process owners um who are very busy, right? They have their own competing priorities. So having someone on the ground here um such as Jennifer and Lisa to help facilitate those conversations makes our audit process easier. It takes a little bit of the friction out of the process and allows us to bring better, more comprehensive reports.

067So absolutely would agree with your sentiment. >> Thank you. >> Any other comments? Okay. Thank you very much. Great support. >> Okay. Next, we have the Safe Start Initiative Update presented by David Nulan. Good afternoon board members, superintendent Dr. Denise Carlin and our board of attorney Rob Dodig. Today's presentation is an update on our safe start initiative. So going back a little bit uh talking about you know why do we do this? What was our purpose behind it? We talked about safety, efficiency, instructional time and community response. So one of the first things we talked about was safety with our buses. We want to increase the access for kids that get to school in the morning to a good breakfast, get their day started. Um this also would help decrease negative student behavior and also

068decrease disruption in our learning environment. um getting students off to a great start at the beginning of their day with all those things just reduces stress doesn't disrupt the instructional time. So, it's a win-win for everybody. Uh the next thing we talked about was increasing stability for routes and drivers. Uh we we know way it was before prior to going to safeguard initiative there was driver fatigue. Uh we wanted to also decrease bus accidents, uh late arrivals, reduce traffic violations. We all drive around Lee County. We know what it's like and the what was done before with prior to going the safe initiative was really unrealistic expectations to expect drivers to get from A to B across county based on the stops to make it on time. So we had to make it adjusted that

069a way with the three going from a four tier to a three tier that we can make it actually make it realistic and the bus drivers can uh arrive at schools pick up kids on time as well in a safe way. Also want to improve overall safety in general. So improving on safety and security. Um getting getting students to home on time, picking them up on time at the bus stop. Uh any delays whether it be AM or PM just causes undue stress around families. We want to make sure families know that we were we are paying attention to them and we're trying to make sure that with their busy schedule, we want to make sure that they know kids are getting uh safely to school on time and getting home on time as well.

070So efficiency we want to we get by doing this we want to make sure we review all the routes uh based on all the four sites all the locations and make sure that the routes being reviewed on a regular basis our stops being unattended those are some of the things we can remove um our buses u basically the way they're assigned with routes um sometimes doesn't make sense you have to realign the routes to make sense where from where they're going to uh when they drop off to the next stop that it makes more sense how it was for and also school site design for buses. This is very important too because this can also create delays. So every school site specific on how it's designed. We have some school sites that have up to

07139 buses. They go to one location and maybe sometimes the buses all can't fit on the ramp. So you have them in stages coming on to the property. Doesn't mean they're not they're late. They're actually on time but they can't get on property. These are all things we were looking at uh with our where's the bus uh programmers. again going that goes into operating systems as well. Um looking at our current operating systems and currently looking at where we want to go in the future, hoping to have a better routing system. We're currently working with the governor's team now applying for appropriations to apply look at a better system um where they're not manually writing out roads, a better routing system. And then of course our specialized programs, these are all things we look at

072just better efficiency going from McKenna Vento Foster ESC. these programs that we do, um, how can we do them better? Even look at gated communities, the things that we look at every single day for safety. These are all things that need to be taken in consideration to help our improve our AM and PM arrivals. So, one of the things too we looked at was instructional time. Um, by doing this, when we adjusted from the four tier to the three tier last year, so this year, what that gave us was for a whole year, it gave us 42 hours of more instructional time per year. So you think about that's a lot of more time that kids have now in classrooms in front of and for instructional time just to improve. That was one of our

073goals as well. So that's been very successful. Community response is important too. We want to make sure the community knows that we're we're listening to empathetic to what they're telling us. We're responding back to feedback. And this goes back and we first look at the safe start initiative to make sure that we're responding to some of the concerns of again buses being late uh whether they're picking up children at the bus stop late in the morning or arriving late in the evening. We don't want kids to be getting dropped off in the dark. So all these things were things we're responding to and listening to when we designed the safe start initiative going from a four tier to a three tier. Um we understand that families have challenges. You know when both mother and father

074both are working they have a tight schedule. So these are all the things we we talked about and discussed amongst all of us in the group u to design this new three tier safe start initiative. So one of the things that we looked at um one of our goals obviously was we wanted to go from uh obviously increase our AM arrival and PM pickup on time. One of the things that we didn't realize at first um was when we started this program last year, looked at the the we're in the fourth tier, we had 47,000 riders, bus riders per day or um on the average. This year it's it's at 61,416 riders. So that's a 31% increase in wrership over the year. So, not only do we able to we're able to achieve our goals.

075So, you see these increases. We went from the morning time at 83%. Uh, with the increased volume of 31% increased volume, now we're at the average of 98%. So, I give you example like last week we were at 99 99% across the board all AM arrivals. So, we were still improving even even beyond this presentation. Um, PM pickup we were at 60% now on average we're at 88%. So, we're still making improvements. We're not done yet. We're far, you know, we want to get all the way. So, we're going to keep improving, working on these things. But I think it was uh with the increase in volume, um it it was a big challenge, but but I think with our stronger again routing efficiency, better communication, improve our driver consistency, we're able to make our

076make these goals and keep improving even with the increase in writership. So the overall improvement, we didn't just improve percentages, we improved capacity and performance at the same time, which is one of the hardest things you can do in transportation. So again, like I mentioned, we this is something uh we didn't account for. If you look at the numbers, we've increased our ridership by 14,000 or over 14,000 uh more riders from this year to last year, which is is a big that's a big increase in one year. and where do we go from here? Um, where's the bus program? So, we're going to continue to work with our programmers. Where's the bus to really we, as I mentioned before, we adjust based on school design. We have to make those adjustments to geo fences to

077make sure that we're successful. Um, again, ongoing reviewing routes. That's ongoing thing. We have to keep doing that. It's got be got to be consistent because even now we see things we can change and improve on daily. Uh, we are looking at gated communities. We're doing a comparison to the 10 top school districts. We have all their information. So, currently right now, we're working on a study um on on those communities and how we can look at those to make sure kids are still safe, but also make it more factual based, not opinion based on what we're any decisions that we make moving forward. And center programs, these are things we're also working on uh with our drivers through the bus patrol program. the revenue it allows us by state statute we can apply some

078of our funding to help increase incentives to our drivers and to for safety when it comes to buses. So right now we are working on several ideas for incentive programs we want to institute and have in practice before the fall. Again, this also shows driver support and the drivers, you know, we talked about all this before of giving them unrealistic expectations. Um, before now it's more realistic where we, you know, we feel we can they can make the their goals of getting from A to B realistically, but not causing stress where they have to feel like they have to, you know, get there and they can't get there. They get frustrated. Again, this can cause accidents. This can cause u traffic violations and we don't want that. We want our kids safe. So we have

079to give them these realistic expectations. Uh dealing with leak county infrastructure, our traffic is something we have to take in cons consideration every year. And then obviously looked into newer advanced technologies. Those are things we're always going to look at that that would apply or fits our district. So not everything fits every single district the same way. So we have to continue to look at what fits our district, what's best for us. And I'll stand by for any questions. Superintendent comments. >> Thank you very much. Uh first of all, just uh enormous accolades to uh Chief Dave Nulan. Uh I I think he has been an absolute gamecher in the world of transportation. Uh you know, you've heard the story many times when I came into office and you know, uh Mr. Ribble and Mr.

080Chaviano joined me and I know our board was very committed to this across the board is making sure that children are to school on time. the most important thing because children cannot learn in a classroom when they're not in school. It's really just very intuitive. Uh met with Mr. Nulan very early on. We talked about this and the results speak for themselves. I don't have to even say much more other than mic drop moment, Mr. Nulan. Um really amazing. Are we at 100%. No, we're not. But the amount of improvement that has happened including 14 plus thousand more students improvements has have still occurred. So just huge accolades to you Mr. McKenna and to the entire team that has been working diligently on this. Huge kudos to Dr. Shaker, Dr. Savage and and loads of

081folks that have making made this a priority to get children to school on time and to pick them up on time. Um just just really want to just emphasize that how important that is. uh as we journey to becoming a school district and as we continue to prove student achievement. So, thank you for that. >> Thank you, >> Miss Fischer. You had a comment? >> Uh yes, thank you, Chair. Uh just like Superintendent Carlin said, kudos to uh Chief and uh your team on this. Definitely, especially from constituent level. I' I've definitely seen a lot of major changes, improvement. Uh two kind of comments, questions. I think this may be more of a Superintendent Carlin if I can go through the chair to Superintendent Carlin. One of the things when it came to adding time

082in the instructional day, I know there was a big focus, obviously we talked about high school and um making that a strong driver. Are we still considering in the future perhaps looking at anything within our primary grades? >> Yeah, I would I would love to add it across the board uh that the greatest challenge is the enormous amount of money that it requires. Um so one of the things we've looked at is maximizing the amount of time that we have. And I tell a very famous story, cabinet's heard it ad nauseium, but teachers make a difference, right? And so I worked with a teacher at one point who said, "You know, Dr. Harland, I get the same amount of time as other teachers to teach, but I add two two and a half additional hours

083to my week." And I looked at her and I said, "How does that happen?" She said, "When the children are dropped off at 7:30 in the morning, instruction starts in my classroom. That's the breakfast time normally in in um in elementary schools." And she took advantage of every moment. So when she had her first initial wave of kids, 10 children that walked in the door, instruction started. It wasn't like go put your bag up, go do this, go socialize. She would check in with each child. Did you do your reading last night? Okay, I've got a question for you about your your book. H how about mathematics? Did you study your your timetables last night? She started instruction. So, she was able to eek out two and a half hours. The reason I bring that

084forward is our schools and our leaders have opportunities to maximize the time that they receive. So, could we look at that? We we always look at that. Um we'll certainly bring a proposal forward. We'll show you what those dollars look like, but it is an enormous cost. Um, however, we can also be innovative and think about the different ways that we teach children because children are on our campuses many times up to a half hour early each day. So, we have to start thinking a little bit differently. Um, so we'll talk more about that as we move forward. >> Thank you, Superintendent. I had one more. Um, looking obviously at the the ridership is up uh a lot and I'm super impressed obviously how much the efficiency has increased with that. Uh, as we build

085more schools out in the east zone, I hope this board considers in the next few years probably to revisit especially elementary proximity a little bit. I know the east was one of the ones that we weren't able to maybe um, narrow the focus as much because lack of schools out there. So, I hope we as a board and district consider that in the next upcoming years. Thank you. >> Okay, Mr. Videlli. And I just want to thank you as well. So it must be a day to thank Chief Newan. But um we had a bus issue at Cross Creek and I um had parents coming to me and u normally in the past this would have been a process that they kept getting denied and not listened to and it would went on for months.

086you nipped it in the bud right away and addressed the parents when that when it when it came to you. And I just want to appreciate that and you know and tell you thank you because it uh was the process was very um expedited and this was a kindergarten parent and a first grader parent and it was just two in Cross Creek. But um they felt like it was the change being changed by the school was unsafe for that th those children and I just want to >> thank you for your eyes looking at that and saying I agree with the parents. So thank you. Thank you, Jordan. >> I'm going to say thank you as well. However, no. Well, you know, we are I feel like you and I are speaking all the time

087regarding different properties. And I think that's something too that the community has to understand, too. You we try and you try as much as you can, but there are certain areas that we really don't have any control over as a district. And I just want to make sure that uh people understand that because I know that you are always available and I know that there's plenty of residents that are constantly calling and and letting us know, but there are certain things that we are unable to do for them because of the situation or the roadway. So, I just wanted to put that out there, too, that you know, even though this looks great, maybe we can encourage more people to ride the bus and less cars to come in as well. I don't know how

088we advertise that one, but thanks for everything that you do. >> No, thank you, Miss Shio, and Miss Fleming. >> Yeah. So, yeah, kudos because we're going to go down the board with your your uh thank yous today, but um a couple things. So, one, because I did reach out in regards to crossing guards because that comes up quite often, too. Um, and so just an understanding with that that that's not something we have to work through. Um, I guess I would say another entity for to kind of get that reviewed and kind of go through that process. That's not something we fully control. So, to kind of put that out there as well. Um, but the second thing I think which was kind of eye opening on slide seven was the writership. But I

089personally am a pickup drop off parent. I do it for elementary and I do it for middle school. And I see, and I'm specifically talking about the west zone because that's where I live. Um, outside of all the construction even happening on the north end with a new light on Tropicana, they're putting one lanes every time I turn around. So, there's like more detours when I'm trying to get to school. But outside of that and the amount of students that we're getting, when these buses are trying to get on campus, depending on where the schools are located, they're not only fighting traffic, but they're fighting the parent line, >> depending which parent line at the school. My my daughter's elementary school has two different parent lines. And then you have the middle school next door

090with their own parent line. Um, so they are like maneuvering those beautiful big yellow buses around all of these lines. And then in the afternoon, you have your, you know, your walkers. I'm going to call them and I'm doing this. Um, because then you have a different row of parents that are picking up their walkers to not have to wait in line. I get it. >> But, right. So, that all is something to to really consider and take into play when we're talking about the delays and kids also getting home. There's multiple factors that cause those delays outside of traffic, outside of parent lines, outside of all the construction. Um, some people just aren't following the rules. Um, and that's just kind of the name of the game. So, I would just say like maybe

091pay attention when we're driving by these schools. Um, because I always call and have comments about like what's going on? Why are all these lines? Why are kids like kids are literally playing Frogger crossing the street when they shouldn't be? um because parents are dropping them off across the street and these kids are running across traffic and I'm like dear God. Um so it's just there's a lot of different things that go into play. So I think I use the word grace a lot on this DAS. There has to be a little bit of grace because there's so many other facets than just the it's not there on time or whatever the case may be. There's a lot of different things happening throughout the district and in our schools. Again, I have parents that are

092driving up to school and waiting an hour and a half before school is even let out. And I'm like, gas is expensive and that car is idling. I was like, I don't understand it. But to each their own. So, there's a lot of different factors. So, kudos to the improvements that were made with the change going from four to three, with the increase of students, with having to go with transportation and getting the backup for transportation cuz people get sick. Um, it's amazing. and to give kudos to our transportation and to those people that are running it on the inside. You guys are just truly amazing and I don't know how you do it. Um because I sat inside of West Zone and I was just in awe of the chat, the conversations and they

093knew where everything was without having to look at anything and I was just like this is so impressive but scary. Um so I just again grace but thank you. I know there obviously there's always room for improvement but there's more to it. So thank you. >> Thank you. Okay, Miss Fling. >> Thanks. I'll make it quick. Um, thank you. Yes, Chief Nulan, we're very grateful that you are with the Lee County School District. I think you probably don't hear that enough, but um I and you're right. Um, board member Shaveaniano hit the nail on the head. Our board our bus drivers are unsung heroes. You know, they're getting up at 2:00 in the morning, leaving their own families um and coming at back very late. So, um I thank a bus driver anytime I I

094meet one. Um, one of the things I wanted to say though is I really applaud you and the team that as you've gone through this new incentive that we started this year that you haven't sat on your heels and waited for next year to make improvements, you're making improvements along the way. And so, thank you for doing that. That's um that's being very proactive and that's how we win. Um, we have a an opportunity though as a board with um being able to start having really hard conversations with our county commissioners and our um I know our governor was going to be talking about um Department of Transportation just last week and infrastructure here in Lee County and that it's a real thing. And I think that I'm sure you've done a case I'm sure

095you've done a traffic study and and there are certain times of the year that I can get around easier and I'm certain our buses can get around easier and these are conversations I think we need to start having with our county commissioners. I I think they're amazing. So, um I know that they will sit and have a conversation with you, Dr. Carlin, because they respect you so much and just starting to really dig in and talk about infrastructure and what that looks like for our bus departments. And um Mr. Mr. Riddle talks often about his experience with um your UPS former experience and just talk really topping into like let's go talk to some of the people that know how to transport things the best and we've talked about it so much but I don't

096know if those conversations have been had. We've mentioned it so many times over the last two to three years. So um but thank you and I and I look forward to a much easier ride this next year. >> Thank you. Okay, Mr. persons. >> I know the proximity zones have helped tremendously. >> You know, we start with the elementary, all of a sudden the bus times got better. Added the middle school, it got better. >> The high school always bothered me because, you know, we always think of the one child getting on way on the other side of Bonita because the proximity is so large. He was going by Media High School, then by Astero High School, then by South High School, and we gave him a bus ride all the way to uh Dumbar,

097I believe it was. Problem with it wasn't so much the early morning because we just sent the bus driver out there super early to pick him up like a little bit before 4:00, I think. Was it 3 something? >> 3:45. Yeah. >> Yeah. 3:45. But the problem is >> when they in the afternoon they get the high school for him to go all the way back to there. He can't get back in time to do the next route. It's just too big a route. So uh hopefully it'll the uh afternoon times will greatly improve. And I'm sure there's because we have less high schools. I'm sure the routes it's not just that one bus, but it's probably a little bit all the way across the board. So, I'm looking forward to see how that impacts

098it next year. So, I'm glad y'all did that and uh I'm supportive of it. And again, thank you like everybody else. Thank you. >> Appreciate it. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I just wanted to add one more thing. Uh thank you uh Miss Flemings for bringing that up because I know that I I think that's it's on all of us to speak to our representatives. I know that I have personally been speaking to all the uh county commissioners with uh Mr. Nulan and um and even at the state level because many of our streets belong to both. So we we have to be that advocate for our residents and our community as well because it we don't own the streets. So we have to try to find a way to in order to to

099help make it easier for our bus drivers, for our families so that they are safe because we do know that some of those roads are not safe at all. So, um, I just wanted to add that because I do believe it's upon all of us to do that as well as Thank you, Dr. Carlin. So, thank you. >> Okay. I was going to bring this comment up tonight in my closing comments, but I'm going to do it now. And Chief Nulan knows where I'm going with this. Anybody watched Wink News on Thursday evening at 4 and 6. You saw they did a special on a stero high school and the infamous River Ranch Road where we've had a lot of accidents and a lot of uh children put in danger over the years. Uh as

100you know last year we had made some improvements to that road by putting a ballards in there along the road which slowed it down and at no cost to the district. the village paid for it, accepted a responsibility, and now they're going to move uh forward after uh Chief Nuland did study over there on crosswalks that are needed and some other safe things like a bike bike bike lanes and sidewalks. So, uh they did a nice story on that. I don't know. Do you ever get go back to look at it when I saw your Friday morning with >> I have to watch it yet. >> You need to show that to your bride because she'll be impressed that she married the right guy because it was really really impressive. and uh and my wife

101was really appreciative for all you did to help the village move that along. So, and including the the uh county commissioner David Malik was p a piece of it and our manager uh uh Mr. Turner. So, uh a lot of win-wins again, but this was a second phase of that. So, now you can move on to Pinewoods Elementary School where we have where we have another challenge. So, we'll save that for for next the next meeting. >> Okay, that's all I have uh on this one topic. Although I am going to weigh in on the job descriptions because it fits right into what he's talking about here today. So moving right along, let's get into the job description with Dr. Shannon Johnson. Good afternoon board members, Superintendent Carlin and board attorney Dodig. I'm here to

102talk about the job descriptions. Really, it's the phase 2 architecture review for transportation. So, um piggybacking on uh Dave Nulan and his work um he has also helped with this work and um we have discussed these with you previously. Just want to know if there's any other discussion. >> Okay. Comments >> if I if I may. Um, just to just to start out, if I could have uh Dr. Johnston, can you talk a little bit about for the public, just so the public understands, what does it mean to conduct a phase 2 review? Is this only being done with transportation or is there a larger body of work that is occurring that is should be cyclical in a in a school district? >> So, you are correct. This is a larger body of work that

103we are doing with every department in the district and it's really the the primary goal of this review is to modernize the department's organizational structure. Many of these job descriptions haven't been reviewed for years and years, in some cases decades. And so we're really uh the goal of this is to modernize to um set definite career pathways for our employees and also to standardize the qualification so the job description actually matches the work that they're doing. Um part of the uh the the continuous improvement cycle. So we're kind of catching up right now, but this will become an annual review. uh we'll be bringing this forward for every department and it it truly is not budgetary. So um the although there is a fiscal impact because it has to do with um salary structures and

104um pay grades and salary schedules but the process is about how we are classifying the functions and roles. That's this is different than job descriptions we've brought before. This is truly a phase 2 review and architecture. It's not a request for new funding um or an expansion of the the total departmental headcount that is already budgetarily approved. So, we've worked with budget um with this as well. Um and and they are in agreement that um this is only based on their approved budget right now. Um we're not asking for any more money to make this happen. So that's an important distinction that I just want to make sure that we we uh made and and for the board's um I guess edification when I was in HR uh gosh about a decade ago um we

105were reviewing job descriptions much like HR is doing and uh we encountered a job description for the principal ship and I kind of giggled at it when I read it because it had been developed I think in 1989 and uh that was not the job that I had just left. Uh when I read it, I went, "Wow, boy, the principal ship has changed." Um and so that was work we embarked on. We changed we updated the job description for principal, even assistant principal. You would have gotten a good giggle and maybe I'll find an old copy of it. Um it had not it was not even close to what the jobs were. So this is a an annual uh activity that HR divisions should be doing. This is something we should have done for years

106and years and years going back and having a regular review. This is what our best-in-class um organizations do is they take a look at job descriptions. They're no longer appropriate. They update them. They upgrade them. And that's that's um a point of clarification I wanted to make. And let me just make sure I understood this, Dr. Johnston. So, when we make these updates to these job descriptions, we are not requesting today through any approvals additional dollars. We're not saying to the board, we need $4 million to be able to do this. This is an upgrade of the job descriptions to ensure that we have appropriate job descriptions and and uh updated job descriptions so that we can actually move forward um and make sure that they are relevant to today's work. Correct. Is that correct?

107>> That's correct. This is um the the phase 2 architecture review. It's about the structure um and it is based on their current approved budget. >> So we are not asking for additional money to put this into place. >> Okay. You're next. Thank you. >> Okay, Mr. Shanelli, >> thank you so much. Um, so I actually have pulled this item for this evening, so I thought I'd bring it up, talk about some of it now, and that way um, I can explain where I'm coming from. For me, it's not I appreciate the work that's been done here, and I'm not devaluing it at all. In fact, I believe that this is necessary work that that was done and it's part of the phase two from the Evergreen study if I'm not mistaken. So, I know

108that transportation probably needs some work. However, for me, it's 10 new job descriptions, 16 revisions, and then only sunsetting seven. So, with and that's 10 new job descriptions with new pay increases and promotions and raises. And for me, it's about the timing of this regarding what the certain the budget cuts and then that we've asked our schools to to cut budget or their budgets. And so I just am not going to support this at right at this moment in time until I see other things happening um within our schools and there those budgets settle down and the the teachers and staff everyone has jobs and because there's I've received way too many phone calls um not way too many because there's a but there's a lot of people that are being moved not uh non-renewed

109not even surplused and I'm concerned concern for the and I want to I don't believe this sends the right message. It's not the right look at this time and for me I'm like I said I won't support it this evening but um I most certainly would support it probably down the road um once things have settled down but uh I think that I don't I haven't seen the what transportation has cut their budget. In fact, you're telling me the budget staying the same. So I would like before I could even approve something like this, I would have to see more of other departments doing the same thing is that we've asked our schools to do. And so I just want to be really clear about that where I'm coming from. This is strictly budget because

110as a as a board member that is pretty much my only lane is budget, the budget and this does impact the budget. It will in 27 the 26 27 school year. So it it does impact it financially. So, thank you. >> Okay, I guess no one else has the comment, so I'm going to give mine. As I mentioned earlier, I looked at this. I was applauding the district for taking this approach. We never ever ever ever ever want to cut back on safety and driver training. Our biggest liability is traffic accidents. We see people running to the back of our buses. Liability, not so much in that accident, but how about when we make a left turn and we hit somebody on a motorcycle or another vehicle, and now we have major liability. So, I

111applaud the district for doing this. I can tell you many of these job descriptions fit the job I used to have uh when I was in in HR at UPS in my early days. Driver trainings. We have driver trainings in every one of our locations. Several of them that get dispatched every day. Safety trainers. We ride with a driver once a year every year for the full workday from punch to punch to make sure he or she is following all the safe work. the five seeing habits as we teach people and the 10 commentary drill points. I'm not going to bore you what each and every one of those are, but I can still recite them and I have a birthday today and I'm a little older. So, uh, safety is a big deal. I

112applaud the district for doing this. As our attorney knows, there's going to be a big return on our investment if we're successful getting our people to drive safer than they presently are. I rest my case and let's move on to the next uh thing on the agenda, which is for buyer speech. We're really looking forward to hearing his presentation. Superintendent. >> Oh, did you have a >> Did you I thought there >> No, he No, he didn't. I checked. I checked. That's why I did closing comments. Did you want to out Did you want to outdo me or No, I didn't think so. Go ahead. >> I did want to follow up after your comments. So, I just think we need to be looking at this as much as we do anything. This is essentially

113revising the authority. It doesn't mean those people are being hired. It's no different than we have a contract that gives us spending authority up to a million dollars. Doesn't mean we're going to spend. I think we need to recalibrate and look at it from that way. Thank you. >> Interesting. Okay, moving on. Let's move the fourth mind speech. >> Dr. >> Thank you and happy birthday. >> Thank you so much. Good afternoon, uh, board members. Dr. Carlin, Mr. Dodig, uh, very pleased to be with you today. Ken Savage here, deputy superintendent, and very pleased to be able to bring you the Fort Myers Beach Elementary School update. This is kind of a non-traditional item uh, that we have before you today as a board. Um so just to to kind of give some basic context

114of this um you know as as you all may be aware uh we were in a conflict resolution process with the town of Fort Myers Beach uh that we decided to suspend after the first kind of formal engagement that we had uh to really give the administrations a chance to work uh to try to get us to a point where perhaps there would be an attempt to get a a a resolution that both sides could be very thrilled with. Um, and that's that's that's hard sometimes when you start out and folks are kind of in two different spots, but through a lot of ongoing engagement, you start to try to move closer and closer until you get to a middle ground where you think um there's very little separation between the two sides. Um, but

115at in order to do that, we had to do a bunch of things. We had to first address a number of misconceptions um because I think when a lot of there's a lot of emotion um from a lot of different people have a lot of different interest in this particular topic. So sometimes that can turn into things that are are you know misunderstandings that folks don't always understand out in our community when people talk about these things and those become difficult talking points for us have to navigate through. Um and so we we had plenty of opportunity to get through all those things as well as just an acknowledgement that the school board ultimately has the complete and sole authority to settle this based on the type of terms that that we are uh bringing

116forward today. So um unlike other situations like when we're in litigation for example, if we were in a litigation environment, the school district would have an opportunity to have a closed session meeting where you as a board would be able to talk about the litigation and you'd be able to give settlement authority and then uh we would go and we would try to settle that case and that's what we would do with the legal coverage. However, in a case where you're negotiating um but you you aren't in litigation, all of this happens in the sunshine, which makes it a little bit of like an interesting dance is, you know, we do what we can do. Um but you all ultimately are the ones with the vested authority for your assets that if you have any

117interest in sending those assets in in any other direction, that that is your sole decision to make. Uh and so today what we've prepared is this workshop for you all to have some discussion around a draft proposal that is in the form of an interlocal agreement. This was drafted by outside council for us uh an expert in the property space who really understands kind of where the principled agreement where as we worked with the town administration to get to a point. We then uh consulted with the legal outside legal to basically draft a um uh the form the format of this agreement comes in this interlocal because it's two uh governmental entities. We're able to have this type of agreement in place and this helps to identify for both sides what we would expect on

118both sides and again this is coming directly from you all. So this is not coming from the town. This is from our piece as a formal offer, but it comes in that form. If the board comes to an agreement today during your discussion uh based on the feedback that you have that you'd like to make a proposal, we also have set aside as place on the action agenda for the an agreement to be transmitted to the town. This requires a vote. You will not be voting here today as a board. Nothing that you do here today in this meeting is binding. But if you were to come to agreement of the terms, we would then bring that agreement to the action item and then you all would have a formal vote. At that point, if

119you vote on it, it does become binding from our side that we would then be transmitting that to the town as an offer, a formal offer that we are making in an attempt to uh resolve this matter. So, just want to give that that piece of update first. Now, I'm just going to address some of the very public misconceptions that have occurred. Um the first is a very important aspect of the need for a school versus the desire for a school. These things are often conflated. Being in government and a governmental entity, the school district is not in the business of building schools because we want to build them. Um unlike private schools that can build wherever they can get the approval to do so, we actually have to demonstrate that we already have a

120present need for students. It can't be because we think students will move in an area. we think more students will arrive in an area that has to be done because there's already an an evidence in the form of data that a school is needed. That's why you will find often uh portables and areas is because you have to demonstrate that need to the state. Now, when we're in the rare situation of having CERT tax dollars that fund our schools, that's where we have more local discretion. Um, but prior to the certax, for example, we would have needed approval to build schools in areas and we would not have received approval to build a school such as uh Fort Myers Beach Elementary unless there was a documented need. So, we have up on the screen in

121front of you was the current regional capacity that's able to serve all the current enrollment. um and our long-term demographic reports of again we've presented on numerous times demonstrate the lack of a long-term need as well. But just to give you kind of the year-over-year um issue of the surrounding schools, Heights Elementary, for example, has experienced from last year in in February to this year in February a net decline um dropping their capacity from 83% to 77%. Rama C Page Elementary 82% to 76%. Tanglewood 92% to 80%. San Carlos Park Elementary 68% to 63%. The Santael School from 93% to 89% and Fort Myers Beach Elementary from 51% to 34%. Again, this isn't designed to put pick up on on just Fort Myers Beach and any aspect of that. We all understand that with them

122not being in their building, that would of course have an impact. What it's more designed to demonstrate is the overall regional trend that we are seeing in all of the surrounding schools. That is critical for us to acknowledge because that represents space. The reason that we're able to fit the entirety of the Fort Myers Beach Elementary presently in Heights Elementary is because we have ample room to do so. Um, and you'll notice that in the south region that is not that it is not an uncommon trend. You'll notice that all these schools are showing that they are substantially below capacity. Later today in our workshop, we're going to be talking about all the capacity trends we have in our district because not all of our regions look exactly like this. But clearly in this area

123which surrounds Fort Myers Beach, there is plenty of school capacity to serve all the available students that are there. Um, and that also extends far far into the future. So that was a critical piece. However, this in no way takes away from our desire for a school. The town deeply desires a school. Our community loves the history, the rich tradition of having a school on on the island. It's an incredible opportunity for our community. And so while this is just the hard reality around the objective data and capacity and enrollment that doesn't in any way diminish the desire for a school. But the difference is as a governmental entity in our particular case it's important for us to surface to you for to our board and to our community if ever the question is raised

124of why don't you build it and it's because we build because we need we don't build because we desire it. Next, another misconception was very common was that the district owes the town reimbursement dollars or some derivative of that particular arrangement that there's money that we are sitting on, money we that we have that we aren't giving, that we aren't sharing, that we should share, things to that extent. So, it's important to go back to Hurricane Ian because that's really where the lion share of this began. the the school district experienced a just over $270 million loss and that's represented in a rough order of magnitude which which includes both damage that was done as well as future mitigation projects um that are designed to offset any future losses and to rebound from that particular

125piece. So that's a significant burden that we experienced and that's just Hurricane Ian. excludes all the storm events that came after Hurricane Ian. To date, and this is just as of last week, we have received 170.49 million in payments from all sources. And these have dramatically slowed from the early days. This includes FEMA, the state lap funding, which again is a loan from the state government, as well as our insurance proceeds, among other sources. What that tells you is of the hund roughly $170 million of funds received that is a delta of roughly $100 million expressed a different way that is essentially 63% of the losses that we have documented we have received funding to offset those losses what that what that represents as a delta on the other end from a percentage is 37%.

126So we all know and I think any of us this is very equivalent to what we would experience if we had losses in our own uh world and personally outside of outside of this particular business environment. You would not build 63% of your roof and call it a day and leave the other 37% of your roof open. You would not build back 63% of a building. And we do not build back 63% of a school and stop there. What we have to do is look at all the revenues that we get, all the funds that we get from reimbursements and then we have to prioritize based on all the potential expenditures where we will spend money where we will prioritize to do it. When we did this and we did it very transparently as a

127district from the beginning and we have repeated this many many times. We we filed our FEMA 428 section C application which for us gave us the maximum amount of latitude to repurpose dollars in in accordance with trying to prioritize based on needs and so forth. The Hector Caparata project being one such project. Fort Myers Beach being one such project. All of this essentially allowed for us to have that ability and communicate to FEMA as we go through these pieces and as we go through these mitigation projects, how would we prioritize that reimbursement? What that does not mean was the last bullet you have here related to a FEMA award letter which confused many folks when we received a FEMA notice that said $1.4 million and then that became it made it sound as if there's

128a little bank account with Fort Myers Beach on it and that that's 11.4 million at least that's sitting there earmarked strictly for Fort Myers Beach. What it really is is an acknowledgement from FEMA years after the storm event that said yes we agree 11.4 $4 million worth of damage occurred there. However, we've of course spent long spent the money from the lap grant to essentially replace the building which we did completely replace those buildings as well as bulldo outlier buildings that were not subject to historical standard and we rebuilt it again. There were storms that happened. They then damaged through no one's fault those that building again and it experienced damage not from hurricane Ian but from subsequent storm events. So again, these things often get very muddy together, but the reality is that there

129is no FEMA $1.4 million check that was sent to us. The money that was sent was credited against the state lap loan. So when the state gave us the loan initially after the disaster to help fund these repairs and work that was done that money automatically and it's stated very clearly in the lap loan when it does that when FEMA dollars come in which they knew they would but didn't know exactly how much and didn't know when they would come that that would be credited against the lap loan. So there was no such money sitting in a bank account waiting for us to spend strictly on Fort Myers Beach. I understand it's a long way to explain all of this, but it's important we paint the complete picture for you so that there were it's

130clearly understood that there wasn't a pile of money that was sitting earmarked for one particular school that we had. All these things play into that. The third misconception we so often heard was well the town pays more in taxes uh than other parts of the county and so should they should get at least that proportionate share of the taxes that they pay. But the reality is that for us, and it's really again goes back to the idea that we are government. Public education is not a fee for service. It's not only school age families that pay for strictly their students to attend those schools. It is an investment in government infrastructure, no different than roads, public libraries, or law enforcement. It is an investment in our entire community for the community. And one of the

131things it most does is stabilize property values. So for property owners of all kinds, folks who have children and not is it creates a tremendous level of property stability. And so the tax dollars that we have not only stabilize that property, but they fund the future workforce, which the local school system provides. So when you want to go to the hospital and have a doctor or a nurse or police officers to come and help or trade workers that do the repairs in your home, you will know that these folks were trained here mostly locally that we are producing that workforce and that is a huge part of it. Not only that, but from a return on investment standpoint, what we know is that the research from the National Bureau of Economic Research indicates that for

132every dollar we spend on public schools, they can expect a $20 value for local home values. Additionally, beyond that, uh a $2 return for every dollar spent to reduce spending on criminal justice, public health, and social assistance. So, in fact, education is a huge investment for our community and not something that we earmark for very specific communities um in those specific ways. So moving gears away from the the misconceptions that are often kind of talked about in this and into the specific um elements of the proposal that is in front of you. So each of you have a document drafted by the outside legal council and it basically takes and legally all of the different terms that the two sides have been working to kind of move towards the direction that we've been moving and

133that basically is such these are really the key terms. Number one, we would we would propose that the board consider transferring the land parcels, which includes the current school building to the town. That's all of those parcels in there, all the adjoining parcels uh for the playground, for the the the land and so forth, the historical building, that all of that would be transferred to the town under this proposal. The transfer additional to this would be materials because their interest, their stated interest is that they would like to operate potentially a municipal charter school or third party charter. if they were to do so, this would help them reduce the operational expense. And so we've evaluated such materials as a school bus, um furniture, some technology, materials, all these things that would that would come

134in in handy for them to be able to operate a school that they would like to do and ways that we could try to help knowing that we do not have financial resources to be able to give them. These are things that that we obviously would would would certainly consider giving them and it's reflected in the agreement. Additionally to that, we would offer technical assistance. this is in their ability to apply for a charter. This is something that we would would help them do because obviously we want them to to qualify for as much funding as they possibly can. Often there's a significant component related to enrollment, but there are for new charters that pop up. Sometimes they're able to get capital additional capital dollars. Um there's just a number of different things and we

135would want to try to maximize whatever resources they could possibly get, not not as something above and beyond, but just something that's there to assist them in this stated desire that they have. Um, additionally for this, we made sure um to make sure that this is contingent, that there is they actually have to apply for a charter. So, you're not just trusting that we're just going to give the school and hope that the that the town will actually go through with what they said they want to do, but really making that uh legally as part of the agreement so that it's very clear that they are taking steps and getting uh the the successful. But we I'll tell you from all the meetings I've had with the with the town administration, they are deeply committed

136to this work. They really want it. they really believe that it will help them recover as a community, uh that it'll serve the students and families in there and that they have all sorts of strategies to try to maximize this. So, I believe it is fully a sincere effort, but we wouldn't be doing our diligence if we put a legal document in front of you that didn't have those uh legal protections as well um from uh both for both entities. And then last but not least, we think that while we aren't writing a check, while we aren't um repurposing dollars, because that's really what it would be, we would have to cut funding for some other initiative or project in order to dedicate additional dollars to this type of initiative. What we believe this does

137is we demonstrate what we think is very good fiscal stewardship. Um by offering this particular deal, we we create that this value could could estimate anywhere from 30 to $50 million of an investment in our municipal partner, the town of Fort Myers Beach, um and the families that it would indeed serve. We think it's a phenomenal thing to do, a great investment to make because here's at the end of the day for those who critique you because I guarantee you, you know, there's there will be folks who will say, "Why would you give this to Fort Myers Beach? Why don't you do what you would do with every other situation when there is no actual need for a school as is evidenced by the Castaldi report that the state approved and and and there's a

138there's a fair criticism in that to say, why don't you just do what you would do in all those other cases?" And what do we do in those other cases? We would essentially bulldoze what remains on the site and we would put it up for sale. We would we would then try to earn back whatever we could in a land sale and we'd repurpose that financial asset for any other need we have whether that's building a new school, whether that's technology projects, any other capital need that we have. Why we think this represents a better investment? Yes, it's true. It diminishes our ability to repurpose the these assets strictly for the rest of the district. What we do think it does is it demonstrates that we are doing what within our ability to to take

139one stewardship asset from a municipal entity and transfer that to another another municipal partner who also has the same obligation because at the end of the day this is not my money this is not Dr. Carl's money. This is not your individual members money. It is our taxpayers's money. You all as the board are the custodians for this and you are the stewards for this taxpayer asset. It is the community's asset. And when you transfer it to another part of our community, we do this all with a county. We've done land swaps. We are government. We're not here to make a profit. We're not here to turn a profit. We're only here to be good stewards. And we believe that this demonstrates that good stewardship without having to cut other meaningful school projects in order

140to do it. That's why we believe this represents a good offer, why um we've asked the outside attorney to craft an offer that we wanted you to get your discussion and why we now turn it over to you as a board to have whatever discussion you have based on the draft proposal that has been drafted by our outside council. and we stand ready for any questions you may have and to assist you in your deliberations on whether you'd like to put forward a proposal this evening on the board agenda action meeting and that's that's all I have for now turn it to Dr. Carlin and back to our board chair. >> Yeah, thank you very much and just a huge appreciation to Dr. Savage and to the town. We really appreciate the uh opportunity to

141collaborate to work back and forth together to have multiple meetings to have conversations. Just want to really appreciate the uh team from Fort Myers Beach that is uh here today. really appreciate that and we look forward to the conversation with the board. Thank you. >> Okay, Melissa, you had something. >> I think you answered it, but I just want to I'll just because I this is the first time I'm actually reading this. So, um you have provisions in here. I think it's in 31 section three. um where if after 3 years and there's no charter school that it it's reverts back to the district if they weren't able to have a robust charter school. Hopefully that's not going to be the case. I think that um be partnering with them and helping them um be

142successful would be hopeful and I would I would want to see that because we certainly don't want anyone to fail in the in a charter program. But I just wanted to make sure that they they don't have the opportunity to, you know, oh well, no charter school, so we're going to sell it and a big condo comes there. So that's I just want to verify that and just >> it's a it's a really great question. I think a very fair question probably one of the concerns that you all would have as kind of the stewards here. And so I'll I'll obviously always want to defer to SWAR legal council who's here for the board. But basically this reversionary interest appraisal section. So section three of the agreement really gets into the notice of what happens

143if things aren't going as according to plan. Whether that's there is a desire because they may very well just as we have property they may do their analysis and determine that for them the school maybe makes sense if they want to build a brand new construction maybe on a higher elevation and a different part of their land. This allows for that latitude for them to have that exploration but has potential remedies involved so that in case whether it's a um uh a fair market value, whether it's a a reversion, reverting back to our ownership, that all those things are accounted for in this agreement. So that way there's still some latitude, but there has to be engagement related to that. So they couldn't just say, "By the way, we're not building a school. We're going

144to sell it, build a giant condo, and it is what it is." I mean, obviously that's not something that we fully would expect to happen. I don't think they would have gone to all the lengths to do it, but I think from a stewardship standpoint, it's certainly something that you have to make sure you've had proper levels of notice and just timing. So, if they told us, "By the way, we've looked at the building. We don't really think we can do it here, but maybe over here we could do this." They just have there's just uh certain elements of notice that they have to put in this case it's a a there's a 60-day breach. we believe that what they're doing is in in breach of the spirit of the agreement that we would have

145that ability also to give them that notice. But again, I'll defer to Mr. Dodig. Obviously, he's the real attorney here. I'm just giving the the substantive side on my part. >> So, the first thing I want to make clear to the board is that this is a proposal that you would be voting on tonight. Nobody is doing anything until there's an agreement. Obviously, so the proposal has three bases for the property to revert back to the board. And number one would be that they never create a charter school. Number two would be after the town establishes a charter school, it fails. And the third would be a clear breach of the agreement, which is the town would go and build something that is not authorized on this agree in this agreement in the ILA on

146the property. So those would be the three bases for it to revert back to the district after three years. >> Okay, Mr. Persons. >> Yeah, I think this is a very well-crafted agreement proposal. I should say proposal. Um, it protects both uh the beach and and the uh school district. if the beach decides to invest a lot of money on it and it doesn't go the way they want to and they want to convert it to something else, they can pay us fair market value and you know that would be fine. I mean because that's what we would do if we did nothing. We'd bulldoze it down and sell it at fair market value. So we're protected and they're protected and I think if we could get a charter school there, I would be very

147much in favor of that. Uh some of the islands, you know, we we've talked about different charter schools. Uh the island schools, one uh and a city runs the one in Cape Coral, uh Oasis, which is they do a fantastic job. It's one of the highest rated schools. I don't want to give them a plug, but I think last year they had a 100% graduation rate in their high school. It's small, but still compared to our high schools, but it shows it can be done and done well. So, um, I myself I I'm ready to bring this forward anytime. Um, I don't know how the rest of the board feels, but I think it's everything's protected. I've read in there, Miss Jordan, >> I think this has been on for far too long. I am

148ready for it to be over with. Um, and you know, because of the kids, too. So where are the kids will stay where they're at for now until at such time that the beach figures out what's going to take place and then they can go back home. >> So that is a great question. So what is the implication for the current students and the current staff, right? So this is it's important to note that this really is strictly focused on the property. Um so that this the town of Fort Mars Beach has long a long runway to to kind of work through this process because while it may go fast, it could also slow down. you you have all those issues for as it pertains to the school that in terms of for where it

149is presently located, Heights Elementary, we're going to continue to operate uh that and and because there's nothing that would compel unless they were to do a conversion charter, for example, there's nothing that would compel a student or family to have to enroll at that time and it doesn't mean that staff would migrate over either. That's a whole separate piece. There will have to be a whole separate charter application whether that's municipal or otherwise. Um and so right now it is business as usual for us in terms of we'll continue to have the students operating at Heights Elementary uh where they have been we we believe very well served. Um that community is very close by that particular area. Um and just putting a plug in I think it's a great school. So just a great

150place for them to have in in the time period and uh that allows them the opportunity to work to it. Now for those families would want to choose to enroll at some point in which that comes online. They certainly could. They could even attract new families. they could do partnership with the work workforce out there if they're able to find all those things will happen at a future date in time. None of that negatively impacts the people at the present who are currently at our school and are currently under the Heights. Um and they're they're really uh operating out of the Heights campus and they'll continue to do that and that would include into next year because there's there's really no way for them to be able to get the charter even if they were

151to go as fast as possible up and running for like the start of August. That's just not it's not realistic. It's not it's just not a realistic possibility for them. Um but but this allows them to just kind of take that pressure off and they can just continue to have consistent services and programming uh up through that time. >> So would they continue I'm so sorry. So would would they continue being the beach school at Heights or would they just be Heights and then >> presently they are the beach school. They they are a separate they have a separate four-digit MSID. They have separate resources. I will say through the budget process that we've been that we're all aware of um you know that that is really I think put a big kind of light

152on that aspect that that you know is a very small they're they're a very small school so the actual amount of resources that they produce for the students that are there is very very small compared to some of these other schools and so I think just like everyone has felt all the district uh schools have felt a pinch related to just really o u making sure that their services match their enrollment Certainly they're no exception to that, but they've realized some savings by being coll-located at the uh campus of Heights. That's certainly allowed them to save significantly in terms of because you know they don't have to pay for cafeteria food staff. The Heights, you know, a lot of those students at Heights helped to generate an economy of scale that makes that Fort Myers

153Beach a better operation at our current site right now. >> Thank you, Miss Shiovana. >> Thank you. Um so yeah, I kind of read through this as fast as I could while we were while you were presenting your information. So just for for clarification, so should the proposal move forward, there's an effective date, they have three years from the effective date to have that charter. The only time the property would revert back is after a year if it were to shut down, then the property would come back. So coming from charter kind of that's the experience to the point they would be at the district until this school were to say open and then they would have to apply to obviously that whole process. They have a separate board. It's a whole different ballgame on

154that. So, I'm I'm hoping that um the town has met with the other municipals um particularly Oasis and the city of Cape Coral to see how they're doing out there and and and how they're getting it done um so they can be successful at the beach. So, again, this is something um I kind of came into a year and a half ago. So, I as well am uh ready to put this baby to bed um and get, you know, this on its way for for the students and for the families on Fort Myers Beach. um so they can continue to rebuild um and be whole on that island. So again, everything in here again makes sense with conveying and kind of reverting based on fair market and everything else. So it just makes sense um

155with what we have. So just excited to move forward. Thank you. >> Okay, >> one more. >> Go ahead. >> Okay. Um one other question. So I was trying to see if there was something in here. June 1st is hurricane season. I know. Shudder. Um, but is there something in here that gives them is if another catastrophic event happens? I mean, three years could come and go really fast before they could get a school up. >> Yes, there's a force majour clause included in there that would um basically put everything on hold until that situation would be resolved. Yes, that is in there. >> Okay, great. cuz I would want them to have that um you know that that power and I wouldn't want that time to >> them lose the time uh over >>

156a catastrophic event. Thank you. >> You're welcome, Mr. Fish. You have any comments? >> Yes, sir. Thank you, chair. Um thank you to the team for putting this together. Um question through the chair to uh Dr. Savage. How much land is being transferred that we own on Fort Myers Beach? >> Be all of our parcels that we have. Just wanted to make sure that was on the record. So, um, appreciate that, sir. I've been, uh, ever since the school after we built it has been, uh, destroyed unfortunately a second time been very direct about my thoughts on it. You know, that our heart goes out to the, uh, the town of Fort Myers Beach. But I did not feel it was, you know, in our best interest sustainable to put another school out there or

157to rebuild that one. I I definitely appreciate the conversation we had of our friends. I know we have Mayor Allers in the audience. Um, Council Member Mlan, Dr. Kohler, and Council Member King in the back. So, um, if I missed anyone else, my apologies. So, um, and the thing to me is I think this I support this going forward, I think this is probably the best of both worlds. One of the big things we have to remember is, and for the public is in order for them to go forward, it is much cheaper and easier to build a charter school because they do not have to comply with certain regulations that we as a county do, for example, SREF. So, they could build it faster and cheaper. And I think that's one thing that would

158benefit them as well as we look at it. So, um I think this is especially with the reversionary interest in this, I think this is the best way to go. Um the only thing I would bring up just on notice and I mentioned this to attorney Dodig was under the fair market value section of it. We do have to be aware of the fair market value of let's say if this is zoned I'm guessing institutional. There's difference in institutional zoning versus let's say that was a commercial residential. Just so we have that on the record. Thank you. Okay. So, uh, I'm going to give my comment. I totally support this. I I thank the manager, Will McKenna. I know he's been taking a lot of criticism for not disclosing the negotiations. As uh, it's the

159same as Dr. Savage, but when you're negotiating, you can't make air your your laundry out exactly what you're doing. I thought they did a great job. The document was available to us confidentially if we wanted to sit down with Mr. Dodic. We all were aware of that. As of Monday, I read the document front and backwards. It looks good to me. I'm fine. I'm fine with it. I I do want to bring up there's a great model here in Lee County, and that's Boca Grand. If you have any doubts of how this could work successfully, get in your car, drive out to Boca Grand and take a tour and and spend some time with the principal out there and some of the leaders in that community. They've done a great job making this a team

160effort. They have 68 students enrolled in their school right now. And it's not the Taj Mahal, but it's a very very nice structure, nice building. It's in great shape, and the town uh raises a lot of money to support the school each and every year to offset the cost of tuition. So, do we have consensus to bring this to to our meeting tonight? >> Mr. Quest. >> Go ahead. >> Just just had a quick question. I also forgot to recognize council uh member link. My apologies, but um I agree. I took the same tour with you with the island school. I think that's a great example. So, but I'm ready to go forward as well. >> Mr. Dodie, what's the process of moving this forward? >> I think you just asked the question. So, I'm

161seeing nods of heads that >> yes, >> we will place the agenda item is already on tonight's agenda. We will add the document um for the public to review. >> Okay. I got a firmer. Do you have a comment? >> Yeah, real quick. So, I had pulled this item for this evening only for conversation and and and waiting to see how today would go. Um I do support it as well. Um, I do think we should have a a quick conversation and if the board's in agreement with me, I will still pull it just for conversation for the community to have a an understanding that because some people will not see this today or have time to see this prior to and I think we should have a quick conversation just reiterating kind of what

162we just talked about, but I think we could do it a much quicker um this evening if that's the majority of the I see a couple. So, >> well, if I could just intervene, I don't think it's appropriate for >> for you to ask whether you should pull the item or not. >> No, but I I want people to understand why. I understand and I >> because there wasn't this is the only conversation that we've had as a board and I think that's important for the community because I think it's important if the community comes tonight and and does something I don't know crazy um then what hap you know we might change our mind. >> Then we can just simply tell them why don't you look at the video. The nice thing is you

163can I can go in my office in 10 minutes and watch this whole meeting. It's wonderful technology. >> Why we want to bring this up and drag this thing on again tonight. >> I'm not trying to drag it >> to me is I I'm just one I'm just one one voice, but I don't see a need to pull it tonight. But >> so I think the superintendent has the direction to place it on the agenda tonight. >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Okay. Moving right along. Congratulations for Myers Beach. you going to get your agenda item tonight and hopefully we'll get this thing moved along. Okay, next is number seven SDLC right size and efficient efficiency initiative by Mr. Savage once again. >> Well, hello uh board members. Well, um happy

164to be here again and Dr. Carlin and Mr. Dodig. So, this is uh my pleasure to introduce the uh right sizing and efficiency initiative. Um I think this is really important particularly on the heels of the recent budget uh issues that we've been talking about um related to our schools. This is not a new thing for the school district of Lee County under Dr. Carone's leadership but really has been kind of a hallmark of her leadership is to really take a look at fiscal responsibility and that really started from day one in office. Um but we're going to highlight just as some background that it actually started even before uh Dr. Dr. Carl was sworn into office back in June of 2024 when Dr. Berner was leaving u and eventually ended up in in Duvall

165um and I was actually here as the interim. One of the things that we did initially was an academic transformation which was a $3 million reinvestment of the central office. Um, we had a number of positions and again for anyone who wants to go back and look, we actually have that June uh board uh workshop that was there along with the support of documentation of kind of what got us to that $3 million reinvestment. That was followed up in March of 2025. This was again just a few months into Dr. Carlin's leadership where she ordered 5% reductions across all of our divisional areas within the central office. Um and that amounted to $15.9 million which then went to effect for this year. Um because when you're going through those those pieces, you're actually building it

166into the following year budget. So that began then in July 1. Additionally to the $15.9 million reinvestment, there was also a $1 million leadership reorganization which resulted in a significant reduction of the positions director and above at the central office. Uh and again, the net total savings for the district through all of that work was a million dollars. That then brings us to the present of May 2026 where we have a 6.5 million proposed district office reinvestment. Again, all of these things right now are still they're moving targets because the the budget that we're planning in is is actually going into effect this July 1. So, these are all things that do have some movement. uh to illustrate that the $35 million school budget right sizing that included uh $35 million of above allocation to

167our schools that was right-sized. Again, this is not to be uh confused with cuts. This wasn't $35 million of cuts that were schools. It was actually just taking all above formula allocation. So every dollar beyond what a school actually earned based on the weighted FTE, the projected weighted FTE for that school amounted to $35 million. So it wasn't that we went in and just cut the schools. It was strictly a different allocation. This new method of allocating is actually the aligns with the state model for how we allocate in our schools. But to even give you a sense of the $35 million that it says it was right sizing when schools went through their full um budget realignment and proposed their new budgets and then they went through and made their bridge fund requests hot

168off the presses. We know that in totality we funded about 90% of the bridge fund requests and that 90% of bridge fund requests amounted to roughly $5 million. So in fact, it's actually about $30 million of school um budget right sizing that occurred uh for this particular piece. So what this has really done to highlight is that while we have that $30 million of our schools, which the vast majority of our personnel of our resources are in our schools from this central office over the last since uh June of 2024, we have invested $26.4 million into the uh into our general funds. And so that's a huge opportunity for us to really kind of acknowledge this is not just a one-time thing. This has been an ongoing body of work. And yet today I'm here

169to present to you because it continues. Um what we want to do is acknowledge not just the the way that we have tried to repurpose dollars to make more competitive salaries, which again we've had record over the last 5 years record increases to salaries. Um it's a great thing to do, but in order to pay for that, unless you're getting record record levels of new revenues, you have to be willing to look at all those positions. And that's precisely the work we've done. However, we want our community to know that we try to do so as transparently as possible. So, all districts of course share their budget documents. Every every budget is out there. It's something that all the school districts do. And so, anyone in our community ever wants to see our budgets, that

170has always been there. But some of the things that that our district has done, one thing I just want to highlight and put a plug in is the sales tax dashboard, which again occurred after the sales tax referendum went into place. There is the ability and it's updated every night for anyone in our community to understand exactly where the sales tax dollars have gone. They can see individual projects. It even goes down to the individual school level. But something that we put in under Dr. Carone's leadership working with our CFO is to actually give insight into every single school and department budget. Again, this is unprecedented, not something that we'd ever done before. And it's been there, but people don't always know and they don't know where to go. So, I've actually put the hyperlink

171in our in the presentation here and just to kind of skip over to it for just a second just so I can give visibility into this. This is it's on our website, very easy to get to, right? But but I've already taken us there and it's at the fiscal transparency here. All you have to do is click right here under this little dropdown and it takes you to every department and every school in the district. Now, that's a great way for people to go into those individual pieces. They can look so they can pull anyone. You can see these ones, the adult education program, Allen Park Elementary, um, all the way down to every single one of our departments. And so you have the opportunity to say if you want to look at any of

172them, you can pull them up. Um, and it's something we're very proud of because these are all the departmental areas. So you can see all the different budgets we have. They want to know the personnel. They want to know that is a huge opportunity for us to be able to show that transparency. And again, I'm not aware of other districts that do this, but it's something that we're very proud of. And again, under Dr. Carl's leadership, that's something we've done. So with that said, back to our our slideshow. Let's talk about what the right sizing body of work that we're now engaged in. First off, we're going to be doing a department by department review. And this is something where we're going to be benchmarking all the the analysis of the spending, the staffing, and

173our structure against all of our peer districts. This is something we think is very important from a visibility standpoint because we think that it helps people understand why does a certain department have the headcount that it does? Why does a a a department have the level of spend that they do? Having that type of benchmarking we think gives great visibility and transparency to that piece, but also helps us in our right sizing work. It helps us know are is our payroll department too small or too big. How would you know if you don't have that type of benchmarking? Furthermore, there will be analysis of spans of control, role clarity, potentially looking for duplicated effort as well as any opportunities to work across departments to to generate efficiency. These are critical things. you know, smaller organizations,

174if you've ever worked with really small organizations, you know, you might have one person who does five different functions. In a larger, more bureaucratic organization, you might have five separate performing areas. It's very important that we analyze for all those opportunities. Additionally, we're going to always automation sounds like a buzzword, but in reality, there's tons of opportunity for automation. Um and so what we have to do is not just have automation opportunities but actually sequence and prioritize them so that the areas because automation can sometimes be a very long runway type of activity. It's not something that happens very quickly. And so in order to do that you have to prioritize that and give visibility to why we have prioritized certain areas for automation beyond others. Additionally something that's very important to us is to

175develop minimum current and optimal organizational models. the challenge in a very lean type of environment and you know we're very proud in Florida to be a state that does not have an income tax to fund education that that that that we are truly um from a standpoint we get great outcomes in the state of Florida in terms of our educational outputs but we actually put a lot less dollars in compared to other states and that's something that folks often take shots at us for as a state but the reality is the benefit is to our taxpayers we try we try to maximize our fiscal stewardship by showing that every penny we get we try to spend to the maximum benefit. So in spite of some states having a lot more money in education than we

176do, our outcomes are very competitive with many other states. And so that's something that we look at as a strategic opportunity. And that way whenever we ask our taxpayers for more dollars, they are more than happy to do it because they recognize the stewardship that we've represented. In order to do that at the small scale, we need to have insight into what are the departments actually producing. And so we need to have some insight into that for what we're paying for. What is that standard? To give you a good example, let's use SRRO's. SRO is something that we currently have a standard where our high schools, our middle schools, our elementary schools. How many SROs do you have per building? How many should you have? Is it based on enrollment? That is a standard that

177that is so that anyone could objectively look at and say, how safe is safe enough? And that's an objective standard that has to be evaluated. That same type of thinking has to occur for every single departmental area so that we understand exactly where our money is going and what it looks like in terms of performance. Next, we'll to go along with that, we define per departmental performance standards and metrics to kind of help guide that type of conversation. And then last but not least in terms of review, we really want to make sure we're highlighting any alignments or discrepancies between the way we resource uh with the way we actually allocate our resources and the type of priorities we say we have as a district. The one of the best things in budgeting is if

178you want to know what you value, look at your budget and it tells you your priorities. That's the truth serum in budgeting. And so it's very important that we are able to tell that story not just to our our community but even to ourselves so that we understand where are we over or under prioritizing and that's a critical piece that we expect to achieve through this work. So what are some tangibles? While those are highle things what are some tangible ways that we'll know that we've arrived. One is we're going to have a diagnostic and benchmarking report. It's very critical that we have that diagnostic to give us some basic insights as well as that benchmarking report that I referenced earlier so that you understand where we stack up and how we stack up related

179to others particularly of likeiz districts. Secondly, we'll have multiple scenarios. We're not just going to bring a one-sizefits-all scenario of this is what we need to do and this is the one way we're going to do it. We're going to provide scenarios so that we're giving visibility into the type of tradeoffs that we have for these different scenarios because in some cases there isn't a right or wrong. There's pros and cons. There's benefits from one particular model over another model. And so that's a critical part of a right sizing work that we expect. The the other two things that we expect are some board ready deliverables both both presentations as well as documentation progress reporting and an implementation roadmap. So once we know where we want to go, what is our roadmap to implement it?

180And so that's really outlined in our timeline and next steps. Today is our public board briefing. This is our opportunity to let not only our board know in this public forum, but also to let our community and organization understand we are committed to this body of work. But to our second bullet, we're not going to do it alone. We recognize that while we while we did what we did with our 5% reductions, while we've asked our chiefs to find ways to create efficiency, we also know that sometimes having an objective third party is very helpful because they see it with different eyes. And so we we are looking at some different third parties, but we anticipate bringing a third party recommendation forward to the board for your your vote uh in June uh to to

181basically select our a third party that we want to assist us in this process. We know there's other districts that have actually been going through this process. You know, just to highlight for one, Broward, for example, right now is is published, you know, the anticipated loss of over a thousand staff personnel as they've gone through some of their type of work. Um and and we've we've actually consulted with several different folks to basically engage and and try to get some understanding. And one of the pieces of feedback we received from one of our partners was we've never seen another district actually do this proactively. What happens is they usually get called when it's too late. When districts have not been able to make balance their budget where they're either in financial emergency or they're experiencing

182dramatic reductions and now they need someone to come into the rescue. They were actually very surprised that we were being proactive and engage with this and it did. They just wanted us to know that that was something that they were very surprised to see, but they thought it it represented uh really our commitment to fiscal responsibility. So, we would anticipate fully ready bringing a third party a third party recommendation to you all at the June meeting. Additionally, after assuming that we were to find that party and commence in June uh with that body of work with the formal third party, uh we would also have monthly board member updates so that you all are aware individually how it's going. uh that's something we would commit to as well as quarterly uh progress updates for the

183public uh and for our board collectively so that the board could have collective discussion and the public could also be briefed on how things are going now just for the sake of impacting personnel and things like that. They may be sensitive to what information they would want to bring forward at the public meeting. Um but we just want to keep visibility into this so that we understand it's not something that's happening all behind closed doors but something that we want to continue to work through. Our target is by February of 2027, we would have final implementation of any formal right sizing recommendations. That's not to preclude us of making recommendations as we go along. If there are recommendations that seem just like lowhanging fruit or very obvious things that we should do, we would of

184course bring that to the board. Um, but by February, we see that as kind of the last opportunity prior to the the next year budget to make any of those additional rights sizing recommendations. And then what we foresee after that time is an ongoing review for efficiency dashboards to keep a mindset of fiscal responsibility. Not as a one-time event or not as a quarterly activity, but as an ongoing method of leadership that we are constantly looking for more efficiency and effectiveness, trying to generate more value for our taxpayers. And we want more dashboards like what we already have, but more even real time. We'd love to gain more insight so that our public feels even more confidence to see how is the money being spent, where is it, and so forth. That's something that we

185know many districts have a long way to go, but for us, we really want to make that commitment and having those type of dashboards for you as board members and for our public. Um, so that said, that's a lot. Um, but I wanted to make sure that we had an opportunity now for board member questions and comments, but first I'll defer to the superintendent Carl if she has anything to share. >> Thank you very much, Dr. uh Savage and we appreciate um the overview of our right sizing. So the uh school board and I just for the public have had numerous conversations about fiscal responsibility and um we can look at uh school districts all over the the state uh where they are closing schools where where you know vast uh reductions have occurred and

186teaching staff and others and and so one of the things that was very important to me coming in as your new superintendent was really to take a look at our district office first. Having served in schools for 22 years, I know that um they are they are basically our our core. They are the reason we are in existence. They serve the children. We support the work that they do to support the children. So, it was very important to me that we started at the district office and as you heard from Dr. Savage, we made um significant reductions so that we could reinvest in things like teacher salaries and some of the other things that we talked about, all of us have talked about on the campaign trail. What is most important to us? Are we

187done? No. And I think that's really at the cornerstone of today's presentation. This is work that is not a oneanddone. Fiscal responsibility and right sizing has to be a dynamic process. It must be ongoing. So, we continue to do that work. I think uh I want to acknowledge the importance of a third party coming in because here's something that I found in my uh almost 60 years on this earth. Uh sometimes it's hard to see what you can't see. And so sometimes it's great to have a fresh set of eyes on the scene that can come in and that can use comparative data. I hear a lot, I heard this as a teacher, I heard it as a principal, now I hear it as a a person who works in the district office. Wipe out

188the district office. District office too big. We don't need them. Well, last time I checked, people like to be paid. Uh we have a legal department. We need to make sure that we're compliant. Uh obviously we have financials. We have other other functions in this district office that actually are very critical to the operation of our schools. I would say schools could not operate without many of our departments. So I want to just kind of allay fears here in this office to to let you know we value your work. All of us value your work, the board and myself. So it's very important to say that out loud. Having said that, are there things we can do better? The answer is yes. And the same is true in our schools. So, we're going to continue

189along this journey of looking at every taxpayer dollar and making sure that they are being used in the most appropriate way. And I will not rest until I till I do that for you. My commitment to you as our school board, as my partners, is to make sure we bring you a balanced budget. I I raised my hand right in this pit and said I would follow all laws and that I would make sure that I follow my duties as a superintendent and I know you take your duties as well as the school board very very um near and dear to your heart. So we will continue to do this work. We will continue to work toward bringing you a balanced budget and uh we will continue to find efficiencies in this school district. So

190with that we look forward to your comments and your discussion. >> Okay, board comments. Okay. I have a I looks like there's no hands up, so I I have a comment. Debbie, did you want to say something? >> I have a lot of comments. >> Oh, okay. Go ahead. I'll follow you then. >> Okay. Um I I would have really Thank you for that presentation, but I would have loved to have that beforehand so that I could have digested that. It is really hard for me when we see things for the first time when we're sitting up here and then trying to take it all in and then speak on what we're looking at. Um, so that's just a little maybe everyone else doesn't feel that way, but to me, I would like to have

191that. I did try to go on the dashboard. It took me a minute to find it, so it's not easil easily uh accessible to to locate the one that you showed on this slide. And um the one that you showed on page whatever page three it took me like I had to go come back and forth to locate lo locate that slide. But I guess my questions would be how will these uh reductions directly or indirectly impact student achievement, school separation and classroom support? We are we've been told that um out in it's been said many times that there's a 3% and I know we had this conversation actually this morning uh 3% was being cut into the schools. Well, when you really look at it, it's not 3% that were asking the schools to

192cut. they were some were 17% some were 22% some were 16 some were maybe three or four so it it just went all across the board when you look at the numbers of what that looks like so my concern is that you know and I know that we keep saying you know make sure we have a teacher in every classroom a qualified teacher in every classroom that to make sure that all of our kids because we want to be an a district but when we lose support And I I'm just trying to figure out how that all works. I listen to the community all the time because I'm constantly out there and I just I I don't have any answers for them. I I just don't. So when I'm hearing that and I know that

193we just talked about the uh balanced budget, are we you know how do we ensure that this process is about strategic efficiency rather than simply balancing a budget on the backs of employees and schools. So I I just think that there is so much into this and I understand the business aspect. I understand how you save and if you don't have the the funds that you need to cut, you need to tighten up. But I think with this transparency, we need to make sure that we're transparent, completely transparent, not after the fact, but before the fact because now we're coming out and saying we are going to be out and speak to the public. We are going to make sure that we are um informed of what is taking place. That is something that probably

194we should have been having that conversation all along. So there's just so much and I I have lots of questions so I will just forward those over to you later. >> Yeah, that would be helpful. I think I think just to make sure this is clear. So we're introducing this is the beginning of a new body of work as well, right? So what we gave as the prior context was just those are all things that have already transpired. What we're doing is previewing the work that's ahead. And so it it's I think that's what you're asking for is is that idea of let's let's kind of explain what we're doing. And that's what the attempt of today was was to essentially introduce to everyone this body of work where we're going well and you've heard

195the department by department review that is coming. That's what this is. All the past things that have done the schoolbased budgeting that's all all of those elements those are not part of this. This what comes forward. What we're kicking off today is the department by department review and that is in and of itself that's the only thing these other pieces were just trying to give some color around the idea that the right sizing work it it we have been engaged in fiscal responsibility work since a for for quite a while now and so I think sometimes people see them as all independent things and they get them all mixed together so we really wanted to try to highlight that's why this slide was designed to kind of outline to people this is some of the

196things that we have done that were right sizing efforts starting back in June of 24 moving through March of last year and April of last year up through May of the present. It's only now that we get to the school-based piece. Everything that preceded that were things that occurred here. >> Correct. And I understand that because I'm looking at this, it says all department and school budgets. So I understand that you're looking at what's going forward and going we have that person now who's going to be going to a department to each department to look to see how do we maximize how do we do this how do we do that and do we have the right amount of people right sizing that's the word of the year right sizing um so I just want

197to make sure that this does affect this does affect the schools right now because we are we've just asked them to do all their budgets for the upcoming year which we know that that has just taken place. So how do we make sure because it is upon us even though we're board members you know we're not operations but it is upon us to make sure that we are making sure that each child is receiving what they need in order to learn and that that that's never going to fall. We just need to make sure that and I just had made sure I had to say that. Okay, Miss Shiovano, >> thank you. um a little bit in agreement as far as getting the information ahead of time just because it is quite a bit of

198information, but I know we had issues with board docs um for the last week or so. But I think the only the feedback for now that I have at least in regards to to this budget piece and and sharing this information for ease of access, um it isn't easy to find because it's under a support tab that isn't on a main tab. Um, so I think my feedback would be to put it under the budget tab and our district tab to make it easier to access. Um, because there isn't a clear support tab to get to this. So it is unless you know where this is, it's buried. Um, so ease of use. um putting it under those two big tabs that we have on the front and you know bringing some kind of hero

199image on the front end um to call attention to it I think would help um in terms of getting that information out there to the public so they can find it. Um and then in regards to just the overall um messaging I think when I started a year and a half ago on this diet Dr. Carlin really good >> to her point >> right sized the ship when she came in and basically put her cabinet on notice and everyone had to reapply for their jobs. Um that's what happened and changes were made. Um and and the schools were left out of that conversation the first year in that cut. So I mean it's never easy. It is never easy to have to look at how you're going to make adjustments. It's not easy at home.

200Um it's just it's not a fun exercise. No one looks forward to doing this. Um because at the end of the day, there are people involved. Um, so I think when it comes to this, I think a lot of it goes around to the communication portion as well and how fast we're getting this information out um to our to our teachers, those that are impacted. And again, I stress this all the time to the community to get ahead of the miscommunication and the misinformation that is put out there. We just need to do a better job and I think I will beat that drum until my very last day sitting in this seat. Um, one of the drums. Um, we just need to do a better job um, of sharing that information. As a parent,

201I get the emails and I get the text message and I get the peach jar. Like I know there's a thousand different ways that the district sends information out, but also as a parent on top of everything else that we are juggling, it is a lot, right? So it's where is their priority and focus and nine times out of 10 it's not what we're doing here at the district office, right? They're running their kids to sports. They're trying to make dinner. They're trying to pick up and drop off. Like we are the last until something happens and then we have their attention, right? So again, going back to the communication, I understand the concerns with the information because again, I had to read the contract very fast when we were or the proposal uh very

202fast when we received it. Um but a lot of it's just communication and information and just making sure that you know we're all on the same page with our community and that we can answer the questions when they're given to us. Um because we are the first line of defense here. Um we do get the questions. Um, and I want to be able to provide those answers or at least get them as fast as possible. So, um, I appreciate the work. I know again this is not fun work. Money is never fun unless you know you hit the lotto. Congratulations. But, um, it's never fun to have to look at a budget and start making adjustments. Um, so I understand um, all that takes place and and I do again grace. Um, but thank you

203and hopefully we can just do a better job of getting this out there so it's a little bit easier to find. >> Go ahead. Go ahead >> on that. Thank you. >> Okay, you're up. >> I'll be quick. First of all, thank you for this. I think this is a start. So, um, of how we're going to communicate on right sizing and, um, efficiency. Uh I have a lot of questions but I think that's going to as things roll I'll be able to understand things a lot better. Um the main question I have is what is the status of the hassent sales tax? Um what are we planning on doing that? That conversation hasn't happened and I would like to know where we stand with that for 2028 because we have to act sooner than

204later. I would say we're probably not that probably is not scope of this meeting but I would say today during the workshop you will get a chance to kind of see the enrollment piece of that because that was preceding the sales tax conversation was we also wanted to provide the board an update on enrollment uh enrollment trends so that you all are aware of that number as well because that obviously is a huge driver. It's been a huge issue with the budget and it's obviously a huge issue from a capacity standpoint. So I know that we uh today later today in this workshop you will have a presentation on that. Um but but but certainly in the future we'll be able to do more. We also do adopt our capital plan coming up. So I

205think um that that's an aspect as well. Plus I think the June meeting we have an ISOC update as well I believe. >> Thank you. >> No problem. >> Okay. Moving right along here. Are you making >> armor? Go ahead. >> Uh on the budget you know I come more of a business background. Several of us do. I mean you don't have a whole lot of choices. You either got to cut expenses or raise revenue. I know we're looking at lots of ways to maximize our revenue uh from state and federal government. We've done pretty well there. Uh we're just getting started with the federal government. There's a lot of silos of money out there hopefully we can get into which would help. Uh the only other way to raise revenue is to raise taxes

206and I don't think people want to see their taxes raised. Right now we're talking about eliminating or reducing taxes. So that makes it tough. The half cent sales tax, Melissa, you know, we'll probably have a new board possibly. I mean, we could. I'm not saying probably. That's a terrible way to put it. We possibly could have a new board is the way I meant to say it. And I think that should be like in the first or second meeting in November to discuss whether they want to go forward and put that. >> Gotcha. That doesn't mean we can't have a workshop before then, but I don't think it should come before and we we put some other things off last time >> because we were going to have new people on the board. So, I

207think that's sort of a a wise thing to do. So, everybody should have a >> Thank you. >> for the next four years. >> Uh but anyway, good job. Uh we're at a I know we are at a starting at a zero line budget which is something we have really not done before. I think most the principles looked at their budget and said, "Okay, I have this many teachers. I know I'm going to have that many next year, and maybe I can squeeze an extra AP or an extra teacher here, an extra reading coach here, whatever." And this time they have to really look and say, "Okay, it's got to match the revenue," which is what we get from the state. And then if they're a little bit short like they were, I think they

208were like five million short and we gave them some rich money. But we can only reach into our reserves for so long. That's like being a private person reaching into your savings account. It gets down to a certain point that there isn't one. In our case, we really shouldn't ever let it get below 10% our reserves because all sorts of bad things start to happen. Then if we have to borrow money, it's more money. the disaster hits like a an aan or something. I mean, we get in real real trouble there. So, I think we're going in the right direction. I know it's it's a little bit painful, but we have to do it. Thank you. >> Thank you. There's been um quite a few good comments on this topic and I'm not going to

209get in the weeds, but um to Miss Shaviano's point, she was talking about, you know, parents and they're worried about getting to to sports con, you know, conflicts with schedules and and yes, let's make it accessible and easy. And I think that communication is the key. Um but being proactive rather than reactive, that's how we're going to win. getting our message out instead of letting somebody else tell our story first. >> Um, and not only are our students, parents and families, you know, going at full throttle these days, but our teachers are too. And our teachers are parents >> and our teachers have kids in this district. And I think it's really important that we make sure that our people on the front line are getting the message before the public does because our teachers

210are also out in the community and they are being questioned by parents and families and they want to have an answer. Um they want to be able to be educated on what that is. And as a, you know, as a teacher myself, I was, you know, I I mean, this was always very cloudy because I just was had my head down and doing my job and being with my students, then going home and taking care of my families and then, you know, grading papers till 10:00 at night. So, um, I applaud you for bringing that up. And then, um, as far as revenue, um, Mr. Persons, you're right. I've said this multiple times. If we want to bring more revenue into this district, then we have to be the best product out there. And that

211is a challenge for this for us for I am a very competitive person and I want to be the top dog. I want this district to be the winner. I want this district to be where everyone wants their children to be. And that's really important that we when we're making those decisions, how are we doing it? How are we how are we treating our own people? How are we creating a positive morale from all the way down to our schools, our cafeterias, our front, you know, our our sweet gatekeepers and all the way into the administration here. Um, and I I think when we can start to partner with our families and have them support our teachers and our teachers supporting our families, we're going to start to win big. Um, this has been a

212painful couple of weeks. I don't think that I I mean I think everybody up here can probably say the same thing. And um I I but I I ran on the fact that I was going to be fiscally responsible with tax dollars, your tax dollars or our tax dollars, too. Um and so these are very hard decisions. It's been the perfect storm. Losing COVID money, um population, you know, a a smidge of a population decrease. Um you know, and inflation going up. You know, it costs a lot of money to run buses now and it costs a lot of money. Everything's up. Our food is up. We're gonna we're gonna hopefully vote tonight to pass a food contract because then we need permission to pass the food contract because food's more expensive and that's just

213the world we're living in. But I I feel like if we can get those conversations out there, then the public is going to start to understand. Um, and I I don't want to rattle on, but I I just needed to make those points. Um, I know our teachers are working really hard and our administrators and then the only request I would have is um I know we need to get through the month of May, but I would love to know um how many teachers are going on surplus and how many of our administrators are also going on surplus including our you know like our APs and our deans if that can be you know provided to us at some point in time. Thank you. we we would be happy through the chair. We'd be happy

214to provide that information and I do want to just contextualize that. Um so having been a teacher who did lose her job um very early on when I was first in the school district um it's not a great feeling. Just isn't. Um I was teaching on the last day thinking, "Oh my gosh, this is going to be my last day in the school district and I had student loans up to my eyeballs." Um so this is not a new phenomena for the school district county. I just want to share that we have been on the lucky end of this for many many years where we've been growing rapidly because our neighbors across the alley and up north have been doing the work we're doing right now for years. Okay. And the school district has been

215at this point before >> for my turn. So I want to build on a comment here. This this this right sizing efforts happens every every day in corporate America. If you have a company and you haven't done it, at some point in time, you're gonna you're gonna have to right size. And I can for you folks that have your MBA, you know, the famous every every university teaches the course of widgets. And if you're in the product in the business of making widgets and no one's buying your widgets, you got to figure out how you're going to address your inventory. And that's what that's what this case is. Now, the one thing we haven't talked about today is attrition. I think we come out with this gloom and doom. The sky is falling. Everyone's going

216to be losing their job. I haven't heard anybody tell me how many of these folks are retiring. How many folks are getting married and moving back home where they came from because they went to school down here and on and on. There's all kinds of things. How many folks are medically unfit anymore? God bless if that's a situation. if they have a problem medically and they can't teach. But we need to take a look at all these numbers because say that number is 50 and and we're going to have and we're not going to have space for for 85 teachers. Well, we really have to be concerned about 35 and not 85. So, we have to take a look. I I really am impressed with the timeline and next steps because I can tell you

217right after the Olympics in 96 is the first time UPS ever rightsized and it was an absolute disaster. We hired the Atlanta Atlanta consultant group to do it and we had people oh the sky is falling and then guess what happened three years later because of attrition. Now we're hiring all these people again and we lost especially in sales when you have a salesperson that worked there for 30 40 years and they take the buyout and you got to fill that position with new people that don't have a clue about selling that's a problem. So I applaud that we're going to be taking a look at a a third party vendor. I just caution you to make sure that we get the right vetted thirdparty vendor so that we do this uh systematically and we

218can address some of these concerns. But I think you have a great example of and I think a lot of our educators that maybe were told last week they might not have a job. I think you have a great example of empathy there that yeah there is hope at the end of the tunnel. Let's wait a couple weeks and see how things play out. That's all I have. Any other comments in closing on this topic? Okay. Thank you. Move right along. We'll go to Mr. Dodie for ethics. >> Well, Mr. Chair, because of the lateness of the hour and because it's your birthday, I'm going to give you the gift of my 20 minutes back and we'll do my presentation at another time. >> Oh my goodness. >> Happy birthday. >> I'll forgo the cake

219then and I'll accept your gift. Okay, let's move on to number nine. District teaching priorities academic updates for F for the year 27 by Dr. Nathan Shaker, Megan D. Roso and Melissa Zemer. >> Okay, buddy. I'll watch your I'll watch your computer. >> I can play, too. >> You're good to go. >> I I got an idea. Why don't we get tonight till we get to Fort Myers Beach? Then you can go. >> You don't like that idea? No. I thought we were buddies. Good afternoon, superintendent. Good afternoon, board. Um, Mr. Dodic, thank you for the gift of time. It has left us with one less member who's just going to be a minute late because she was planning on a little bit of a break. Um, >> filibustered. I'm sorry. So today we are

220going to talk about some of the updates for next year for academic year FY27. Um we want to bring uh some items to your attention. There are some changes that are going to be made uh by way of uh communication with our school principles by our departments down here. Um it is some uh modernization some some ways that we're going to try to bring some new curriculum and some new concepts forward. uh and you may hear about them in your travels throughout the district. So, we want you to get a good bit of information. There's going to be one exciting piece that we are going to look for some feedback from you all on towards the end and uh we will uh get rolling here. Miss Seamer will get us started. >> Good afternoon, board

221and superintendent. So, we are here today as Dr. Shaker just said to provide academic updates for fiscal year 27. We have several goals today. First, we'll discuss refining our management of instructional resources. We'll discuss exactly what those instructional resources are. We'll introduce you to new resource frameworks and we'll talk about how the teachers will be able to leverage those frameworks and support instructional planning. We'll also look for feedback on grade reported guiding and share the student progression plan. First, let's review our instructional resources for FY27. It's important to note that these resources or the proposed changes were first introduced to our regional superintendent. After we've met with our regional superintendents, we shared with principal leads. We then uh came back to the table, discussed, refined our process and procedure and then finally shared with principles

222on April 5th. So now we have to discuss why the shift. It's important to note that the primary drivers for the shifts are really three-fold. First, the need to align resources with state approved ELA. Second, we're responding directly to teacher feedback gathered through our instructional coaches. And finally, a comprehensive evaluation for our materials using state testing data and platform analytics revealed the urgent need to prioritize the task that most significantly impact student growth. This slide provides an we skipped there. This slide actually provides our K2 curricular resources. The most significant change you'll see is the refinement of our foundation and intervention literacy resources. We'll address data surrounding those decisions on subsequent slides. Please note, bless you, that the specific changes for 2627 have been identified with blue boxes. This slide provides an overview of new

223resources for grades 3 through 5. Again, the recommendation of the textbook committee has been identified with a blue box. And just like our prior two slides, these instructional resources are for grades 6 through 12 and new adopted resources pending board approval have been identified in blue boxes. Now let's discuss the data surrounding the decisions with um the implementation of UFly. So we are joining a massive shift across Florida. 72% of districts, 47 out of 48 out of 67 have already pivoted to UFly resources within their K12 reading plan. Of those district, 73 have already shown noticeable growth on grade three achievement. This isn't just a trend, it's a spective data. Lee County, as you can see on that slide, has a significant gap in our students who are performing at a level three or higher

224when compared to the state. This targeted intervention of the state approved adopted list of UFly will help ensure that our classroom practices are rooted in the most effective highfidelity instructional materials available. This shift is presented as an essential urgent response to the achievement gap and direct investment in our success of our K through2 students creating that strong foundation for literacy. So let's sorry so let's talk about um how we are going to be refining our management of our instructional materials for our teachers. We are addressing some instructional challenges right now. When our teachers sit down to plan, they really are faced with a an abundance of materials to look at. So help this is going to allow them to prioritize and choose the resources that are going to be the best for their students. Also

225this we are creating a better learning flow for our te our teachers and our students and organizing them in a more logical and a sequential ma manner to help um address student outcomes and then benchmark alignment. There is a high volume of content that right now our teachers have access to. So what we are trying to do is help really focus in on the most essential pieces of the benchmark so students are getting the instruction that they need. So the shift in the solution that we are providing is consolidating these resources into a singular framework that can help save teachers time and help improve those classroom results. Right now our teachers access their course content from multiple websites. For example, if I'm a third grade teacher, I'm going to the third grade literacy website. Then

226I'm going to the um elementary math website and then the elementary science website and I'm pl making my plans in these various places. We're condensing all of this into a singular access point for our teachers to allow them that opportunity to save some time and their planning processes. We are also streamlining the uh presentation of the resources to make their planning time more efficient. So now we'll discuss what the instruction and resource framework will look like moving forward. As Mr. Roso just said, our instructional guides that we currently have require teaches teachers to go to several different places and each of those places is organized in a slightly different manner. For that third grade teacher, it's quite a challenge. I have to look at something with a literacy mind then look at something else and

227read the same type of document that's organized in a different way. So the logical and sequential order is certainly something that we aim to refine. The way that we aim to refine that is really by updating our instruction and resource framework. These resource frameworks are benchmark focused. They provide spiral assessment blueprints to ensure that teachers have the opportunity to backwards design their instruction. We also provide technology considerations including AI prompting starters to support teachers as they plan for instruction. We also identify tier one support either in daily pacing guides or unit pacing guides. Either one of those resources can be leveraged for teachers. The new instructional resources really aim to ensure alignment between the new resources and what we currently know for our teachers. Pending board approval, all of the ELA resources for grades 3

228through 12 must be changed. So as a result of that change that's required because of the new resources we are phasing the implementation of instructional guides out and replacing them with instruction and resource frameworks. So again for the phased implementation in ELA for grades 3 through 12 and intensive reading those content areas will not have instructional guides. So the impact on the process is that uh will be detailed in the next slides and it's really important to note that the detailed process will greatly impact the necessity for these groups of teachers to plan collaboratively together and that collaborative planning really promotes those organic conversations and allows them to focus on student data. There are layers of support though embedded throughout for instructional planning for our teachers. Teachers will have access to all of the tools

229they need to plan and implement benchmark alignment for their students. The first layer of this plan is the instruction and resource framework. This framework overall provides an overview of easy to access material, curriculum briefs, available assessment resources, texts, etc. The unit planning guides provide a more indepth view with guidance for each of those resources where the daily planning guide provides a dayby-day guidance for successful instruction of the unit. That day-by-day guidance can be leveraged in a variety of ways, but really when we're thinking of career changers or teachers who are just getting started, that day-to-day guidance is going to be critical to support their planning. Thank you. So this is a piece that we've introduced this year. Curriculum champion training will begin actually next week in May. The goal of curriculum champion training is to

230build the knowledge base surrounding the new resources and instructional frameworks before the year end. As classroom teachers oursel, we recognize that the beginning of the year is very very busy. So, we wanted to provide the opportunity for our educators to learn the system, learn the instructional resources, and kind of get their feet wet before they come back in August. Champions will work with their administrative teams to determine how they can support their um school campus. As I mentioned before briefly, we have lesson planning and appropriate use of AI. And our goal with the use of AI is to really ensure that educators are supported as they plan for instruction. That grade level content in the framework does include AI prompting to support instructional planning. But the purpose of these prompts is to provide clear guidance

231to support not replace teachers as they plan for instruction. prompts have been created to align with the gradual release model of instruction. Ensuring that we have made sure that our teachers understand that they are still I do, we do, we do together and then giving them that independent practice opportunity and they also align with the Danielson model which is utilized for teacher evaluations. All right. So we are going to shift and discuss our student progression plan for next school year and the grade reporting guidance that we are working on within our departments. First is our student progression plan. The student progression plan and secondary course catalog contains two main sections. One is the uh legislative updates. This has all of the uh legislative updates that pertain to our students within the state of Florida and

232our responsibilities in providing them the education that they deserve. Also, our secondary course catalog, it's updated yearly to reflect the most recent offerings provided by the uh Florida Department of Education. Um and we eliminate any daggered courses that the state might deem that they we are no longer offering. Um, additionally, we make uh inclusions to the new courses that are being offered. For example, the fact college algebra course that is a new uh piece that was being piloted this year throughout the state. That'll be an option for our schools to implement next year within their progressions. All of the academic policies and courses are aligned to our Florida state statutes, the state board of education rules, and the Florida Department of Education updates. They also align to our state course code directory. And all of

233these t things are tied into how they are implemented within our focus scheduling system. This isn't just a single department's work. This is an interdep departmental collaboration. There were representatives um that were all part of the regional superintendents, the curriculum assistant directors and coordinators, ESSE and MTSS and student services, school counseling, career and technical education and graduation services all took part in the update of this document after culmination of about three months in this task force. So here are some of the biggest updates. Some of the comprehensive revisions that were made throughout the department or throughout the document is defining the criteria for reading deficiency. What we did here was make sure that we highlighted the Florida statute that this aligns with um and made it more clear for parents to understand what a reading

234deficiency means according to the state of Florida. We also removed the young parent education program which is now supported by the charter team within our elementary portion of our SP. We removed I ready and replaced it with curriculum progress monitoring materials as we continue to update and refine our assessment process um and system for our schools. We wanted to allow that flexibility for us to choose what is most appropriate at each grade level. And these pieces will be highlighted within our unified testing calendar. We also help to define the mid-year retention process. This mid-year retention process is outlined um in the promotion to grade four technical assistance paper that is released by the state. Um, and it provides uh criteria for and things to consider for schools when considering that mid-year promotion for our students

235that were retained in grade three due to a level one on state testing. In our middle school updates, we clarified the purpose and the use of intensive reading purp courses. We really wanted to make sure the purpose of those courses were clear that for students in grades six through eight who score a level one or two on the statewide ELA assessment, those intensive reading courses are really needed to prevent the necessary intervention for h them to help achieve that ongrade level requirement. Um, as the fast achievement descriptors identify, those students that are scoring a level one or two are likely or highly likely to need extra assistance for that coming school year. So, those classes help ensure they are getting the targeted support that they need. In high school, we did the same. we uh

236made sure that it was outlined who what that reading difficulty meant in that level one or two so that students were getting the interventions they need to meet those graduation requirements. Additionally, we also replaced the table that once existed with the Florida de department of education graduation requirements and we streamlined it to provide a direct link to the state's website which is updated on a regular basis and we're providing that direct link to provide to provide students and parents and families the most updated content for graduation requirements. Now, we'll address and seek feedback on a new process that's been developed. The grade reporting handbook has Thank you, Megan. Oh, never mind. Thank you. Now, um the grade reporting handbook is a result of that same collaborative team, multi-EP departments. So, this content reflects the work

237again of a three-month task force that included representative of business intelligence, curriculum, counseling, MTSS, technical education, and graduation services. This grade reporting handbook is a work in progress, and it is intended to provide purpose, clarity, and information surrounding our grading practices to help develop alignment across the district. Our principles received the grading handbook at our April principal meeting and have received a Google form to provide the task force with feedback. We will continue to respond to their feedback and make the necessary revision so that all student grades accurately reflect student progress in their grade level course or content area. One of the major components within this gradebook um overview is the use of assisted artificial intelligence as a assist assistive technology. So one of these elements is essential to communicate clearly with teachers. While it

238is encouraged that that AI is utilized to enhance instruction or provide instructional support to our teachers, it is important that we still adhere to our Florida statutes. Therefore, we clearly define the expectation to our schools and teachers that student grades are a reflection of the teacher's personal view of student work and assure that grades are an accurate representation and reflection of the students work on standardsbased content. We cannot overstate the importance the teacher's role in evaluating student progress so that they are able to apply the necessary differentiation to meet student needs. The teacher is the primary driver and primary force behind that grading. These screenshots also show some recommendations behind the gradebook criteria. Because focus provides teachers and teams with options on how to enter grades in the gradebook, the task force outlined recommendations for

239using category weights when entering a variety of curriculum based assessments and tasks. The teams also outlined some recommendations and frequency which grades are entered to ensure that students are family and families are receiving timely updates on their progress. And again, the task force created the reminder of student grades should not be generated by AI but assigned after a review of the student work from the teacher. Additionally, the task force reviewed our current comment codes and have suggested a shift to align with Florida's resiliency standards while also communicating the students progress and resiliency skill development. By making these updates to the comment codes and focus, we are able to track student progress and go growth and resiliency standards. Here's just a quick snapshot of the current comment codes that appear on our student report cards. And

240here is a sample of the revised comment codes. So, Florida is leading the approach that empowers students really to overcome any adversity through resilience. The resiliency standards were adopted in March of 2023. And as you can see, the comment codes remain similar to what was on the previously previous screen, but have been modified to align with those state adopted resiliency standards, including character, mentorship, and citizenship, personal responsibility, and critical thinking and problem solving. So, at this time, we welcome any questions and comments from the board. >> Thank you very much. Uh, just a quick appreciation for Dr. Shaker, Mr. Rosa and Miss Seamer, thank you very much. This is a lot of information um that we are sharing today. Obviously, this is the time of the year where we want to make sure that the

241board understands, you know, the work that we're doing relative to all of our instructional resources, making sure you understand, you know, a little bit more information about AI and really some of the big work that's been done about grading, student progression, what have you. So, we turn it over to you at this point. Look forward to your comments, your questions, and your discussion. >> Board member comments. Miss Persons, >> can we go back to slide 30 or page 30? >> I think that's where it was. >> Degree in heaven. >> Yeah. Okay. Um, it says it reports. I mean I understand the this academic scores but what are exactly are the guidelines integrate resiliency and character reporting to provide a holistic view that holistic view that's that's the thing that sort of throws me here

242of a child's development. >> I don't really know what that means. >> That's really um stemming from our comment codes that we currently utilize. They are they exist on the report cards that we have now. However, the state has adopted and I actually it was a couple years ago they adopted resiliency standards in 2023. So really the shift is taking what we currently utilize and aligning those categories to those resiliency standards set by the state. >> Okay. Anyone else? >> Miss Fischer. >> Thank you chair. I'm going to start off uh interesting presentation caveat. I have not taught the classroom like Dr. Carlin or board member Lang from Fleming when I ask this question. So can we go to slide 12 please on instructional guides 12. So two kind of questions. How would this change

243generally for a teacher from daytoday? And the second um one of the feedback I sometimes receive from teachers is they feel at least on the old instructional guys restricted by the how of their teaching. Not not the what and why but the how. >> So how can you We'll probably tag team this one. So, we hope it's okay. Um, so we too have identified that there is a great deal of information in the current instructional guides and oftentimes teachers may feel like they are a mustdo, not a can do. What the transition to the frameworks is really promoting is identifying the tools that the teacher can use, but not necessarily giving the scripting that they may be used to in the traditional instructional guides. So the shift is really to streamline their ability to plan

244across content areas in a way that's logical, sequential, but allows them to craft a lesson based on the the needs of the learners in their classroom. >> Thank you. That answers my question and I hope we can kind of get that out as one of the talking points as we move forward with this. Thank you. >> Okay. Anyone else? >> Okay, hearing none. Thank you very much. Next, we have the presentation on district priorities, enrollment, and capacity updates by Ed Matthews and Clayton Simmons. side bars. I know it should never be. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Ed Matthews. I have Clayton Simmons and also Dr. Savage here. We're going to be uh presenting to all of you uh school board Dr. Carllins, superintendent, as well as uh Mr. Dodic uh school board

245attorney there. In regards to our district priorities, enrollment and capacity update, we have a uh a very uh compact presentation for you. Uh we've had a lot of individuals uh make a team to put this together for you. I want to give them some recognition. We had Miss Kristen Stevens, Jamie Troder, Matt Chester, Joel Duzman, Andrea Bigger, Jose Quavvis, Phil Savage, and of course Sam Fields. So, we all met several times. We wanted to uh provide you uh the best information that we can in regards to a very fluid situation for our district. We want to be able to provide you a u a a sort of a 50,000 viewpoint uh story in regards to student enrollment. This presentation could go on for hours and hours if we really get into the the weeds in

246regards to it, but we want to give you a broad view as to where we stand now in regards to data from the state as well as from our school enrollment office. So, we have 13 slides for you. And in these 13 slides, we're going to review our enrollment compared to the other big 10 in the state of Florida. We're going to look at the fish capacity by zone uh in zones in regards to our east, south, and as well as west. We're going to look at our enrollment information. We're going to look at our withdrawal information. And then we're going to look at trends that we see with our withdrawal codes so that you can see a pattern of what's going on with our students as they they move away. And then we're going

247to look at in district transfers in regards to charter homeschool as well as private school. And then with all of that information, we're going to give you a conclusion on what the direction we want to take with student enrollment as we uh change with the times that that we're experiencing. Okay. So, first uh up on the screen there, you'll see that we have our enrollment by size based off the other 10 uh uh as you would call them the big 10 in the state of Florida. And with that, you can see that Miami Dade is a is the largest in the state of Florida. They have a population of 232,617 non-charter students and they have a population of 86,82 charter students. Okay, so that's the largest that you would see and that's on slide two.

248When you go down, you can see highlighted in blue Lee County where we have a student population of 87,17. that is in our uh prek through 12 and through the charter system we have 13,329. On the uh on the the third and fourth column there you'll see that we have them uh broken up into non-charter and charter in regards to the trend from the year prior to this to the uh the following year. And you can see that most of the schools have seen significant significant loss of students. Um however for the school district of Lee County we have mainly seen our significant loss of students here from 2425 going into 2526. Uh the the school district with the largest loss of students in this past uh year would be Miami Dade County uh school

249district where they had out of their regular population not their charter population but their regular they lost 15,288 students. that in comparison of ours of 1,946 is is a little bit of a difference there. Now, what you'll notice as well too is not only have we lost students in our regular programs, but we have also lost students in our charter schools as well, too. So, that'll tell more of the story as we go further into the presentation. >> All right. So, I want to talk to you a little bit about um our capacity within the district. And and when we're we're talking about capacity, capacity, we're going to look at it from our traditional enrollment zones. And we have three enrollment zones, which is west, east, and south. And we're going to look at fish

250capacity. And I want to be clear what fish capacity is. It's the actual number of student stations within the buildings and that is set by the state. So when you talk about fish capacity and you look at our zones, um south zone, we're sitting at about 86%. uh west zone is 94% and then you look at our east zone and you can see that right now we are at 102%. And that is you know why we are in the process of building schools out east because we as as enrollment comes in the majority of our students are are continuing to move out east. I do want to share with you that this is not including portables. We pulled portables out so you actually knew what the student stations were without the portables. So this is

251the actual number of seats that we have available in the east zone right >> now this uh slide right here I'm going to explain to you from left to right and the this goes these are the students that enroll through our enrollment office okay we do realize that there are a lot of students that could be in the community however if they have never come to us and have enrolled with us we We we do not have stats on them. So these are only the students that have enrolled with us. So when you go from the left, you can see that that's enrolled from another district. That's one of the 67 districts in the state of Florida. Uh then you see enrolled from out of state. Then you're going to see enrolled from out of

252country. And then you're going to see enrolled from private school followed by enrolling from home school. And then finally, all the way to the right, you're going to see firsttime enrollment, which would be your kindergarteners enrolling. And then you're going to see that we have that divided in a three-year trend where the blue is for 2324, the orange 2425, and the green is 2526. I'd like to give everyone on the board um as well as anybody in the audience to take a moment for about 20 seconds and just look this over and give you a little bit of think time before I I point out a few things from this bar graph. All right, this is awesome. I see everybody's highly engaged. That's good. So all the way on the right there, you'll see that

253we do have a little bit of a drop in our kindergarteners that are enrolling in our school district. So we do see a little bit of a drop there. However, going from right to left, going in reverse there, you'll notice that we are actually seeing an increase of students enrolling with us from home school. So that that's sort of an interesting piece of information. And you're also seeing an increase of students who are enrolling to the school district from private school. So, we are seeing an increase and we're going to go into that in greater detail about students who are coming back to us from private school or homeschool. However, when we go to the middle of the chart there and you're looking at enrolled from out of country, you can see that in 2324,

254we had 3,369 of our students from out of country who enrolled in the school district of Lee County. And then the following year, that dropped down to 2042. And now for this year, based off of April of 2026, we are at 475. So in the past three years, we've seen a drop of 86% of students who have enrolled in the school district of Lee County from out of the country. That is a pretty telling uh mark right there to give you an idea of where we're at as a district. You can also see that we are seeing a little bit of a drop in those coming from out of state into the district as well as and then you can sort of see a sort of a plateau there from a you know transient population

255that goes from district to district. All right. Well, we talked about where the students are coming from. Now, let's talk about where are they going. So, we're going to start from the left. And if you if you look at uh starting from the left, you can see that our our numbers of dropouts have dropped, which that's a very good thing. The number of students that are leaving um our standard population and going to GED has dropped to five. Non-attendance, those are students that just quit coming to school. That has also declined to eight. Whereabouts unknown, that means we can we cannot locate them. That number went slightly up to 47. Hope scholarships, those are students that um had an incident of bullying or harassment and chose another another option for education. That's stayed roughly the

256same. If you look at our parent empowerment scholarship, these are the students that are taking advantage of the state scholarship. That number has decreased from 94 to 61 for this year. Um home education that has actually gone down slightly. Uh private school has gone down slightly. um a public school from another Florida school district that's gone down significantly and um leaving to another district and then out of country that number has gone down as going out of state or out of country that number's gone down as well. But keep in mind that we had a smaller amount of students coming to us. So that might be um part of why we're seeing a a smaller amount of kids that are also leaving for out of country. So, I want to review with you two of

257our main withdrawal codes. We we couldn't put all the withdrawal codes on the bottom. It got it would get a little bit jumbled. So, we wanted to just give you two slides to give you a little bit more of an in-depth insight into some of the data, you know, from from a distance as to what we're seeing. And you can see that out of the 2000 or excuse me, let me take a step back here. Our leading withdrawal code is W3B, which means withdraw to a public school out of state or country. So when a student leaves us, okay, we, you know, through our social worker, uh, our school systems, we can identify they either they left the state or they left the country. 2,442 of those, okay, have have left this year. And out

258of that, 1,193 were born outside the United States of America. So that gives you like a little bit of a an idea maybe, you know, you can infer a little bit of what's going on there. And then when we go to our second leading withdrawal code, which is W3A, that is to a withdrawal to a public school in another Florida district. And that we can confirm because they've enrolled in another school in another district. That's that's why we have this code. out of the 1,785 that have transferred to another district, 630 of those were also born outside the United States as well, too. So, we see a little bit of a trend there in regards to uh some of the students that are leaving us. All right. So, I want to talk a little bit

259about the next three slides are going to be what's the movement between the district back and forth. And we're going to talk first um about charter schools. And you can see on this slide that we've had 933 students that have left us to go to a charter school and then we have 298 that have left charter schools and come back to us. Um that's that's 635 students. Now that number has decreased over the past 3 years. Um you know we're a choice district. We're all for four for choice but we we obviously want them to choose us. So you know our goal is to decrease that number as much as possible. On the next slide, you're going to see uh home education transfers. These are students that uh we had 938 students that left us

260to go to home school, but then we had 437 that came back to us during the year. Um again, that number that that disparity of 501 students is has been decreasing as we go through. And our goal is, you know, we want to be the uh the choice for parents. Um and that that's going to be our goal. And then the the final slide that we have with the movement between the district is we've had a thousand or 11 that have gone out of us to a private school and but 654 then return back to us and again that number is shrinking or getting closer together. So this slide right here on slide 11, I want to focus on our next steps moving forward because as we see this new trend in student enrollment, we

261want to be proactive uh based off the leadership of Superintendent Dr. Carlin as well as Deputy Superintendent Dr. Savage. We want to make sure that we are ahead on these um these challenges as we move forward. And again, we are a choice district. We believe in choice and we believe and value all the different opportunities, but we want to be the best value for all of our families so that they stay in the school district of Lee County. So what we're doing is or what has been done is Phil Savage and his business uh intelligence team have uh put together a enrollment dashboard and as I understand it we are the only school district in the state of Florida that has anything like this and we are identifying students in regards to what type of

262trends that we're seeing from our schools based off of our zones, socioeconomics, um the list goes on and on. what kind of shifts can we anticipate in regards to staffing, funding, uh things for our buildings? It can really allow us to make da uh data informed decisions. And ultimately, we want to make sure that we keep our enrollment stable across the district so that we can provide the best service for all of our students and families. So, this has really been a gamecher. We've just started to use this now and we will be using it more and more extensively as we move forward. That also goes into our next step as to what what is student enrollment. Student enrollment by practice or tradition I would say has been more of an intake service where students

263would come to us that somebody would be new to the area. We were constantly booming booming booming with population wanting to come here and we were doing everything that we could to allow to get to get the students into our uh from the enrollment office out to the schools. Well, now we see we have to be more of a customer service agency or department where we are really working with our families to provide the best opportunity for all of them to be successful. And there's going to be some give and take in regards to providing the best opportunity, the best fit for every family. So, we are going to be conducting exit interviews for all of our students if that is something that they choose to do. And with that exit interview, we want really

264want to understand what's driving the family to make that decision. We want to look at again different enrollment trends, whether it's by school zone, socioeconomics, and how we can improve as a district our overall experience for everybody. This we feel will allow us to to recapture more of those students who go back and forth from charter, homeschool, and um and virtual school back into the school district of Lee County. So, next, what proactive measures are we going to take to stabilize enrollment in our district? Uh, Mr. Matthews just talked a little bit about the first one. We're going to do the exit interviews. That will be a task from the student enrollment office. um and they will be very efficient and very dedicated to hunting these students down and finding out why why they left

265us and what we can do and and then make you know and figure out why that is and then we can make adjustments to to maybe make it a better better fit for them. Um school marketing I can tell you right now that that our our charter partners and the private schools they they are recruiting students. Um so we need to do the same. Our elementary schools are going to be visiting prek and VPK sites within their zones, distributing material and um talking to families and building relationships with them so that um hopefully they'll choose us as their option when they go to kindergarten. Digital pres presence. We got to expand our digital pre presence and do outreach. Uh more videos, social media reels, virtual tours of our schools showing what they have. That is

266in the works. Targeted outreach. We need to be focusing on those neighborhoods that have declining enrollment. Figuring why why that is and also what we can do to get more students to come into the system. Testimonials. Um you all know when you visit schools, students are the they sell the school more than anybody. So if we get our students and our parents to sell sell the school and put um testimonials on their web websites and come to us, that will sell our schools. Something that is new this year that we put already put in place is the personal contact. Um we have a waiver process in the district where if if a parent wants to move from a school to another school, they they put in a waiver and um all of our principles were

267provided the list of students that wanted a waiver to leave their school and they have made personal contacts with those parents to see what they can do to convince them to stay. Um, and I will tell you that we've had a number of success, a lot of success with that. We don't have the total data yet because we're still in the process. But every single one of those parents that put in a waiver, they will get a personal contact from the school district and and from the principal of the school. Uh, feeder visits. Um, again, you know, our charter partners and our and private schools, they they're they're recruiting from within our elementary school and middle schools. So, we need to do the same. Um, so if you're a middle school, you need to be

268visiting and building relationships with the elementary schools in your zone. Um, and showing the great things that you're doing and and convince them to come there. Same with our high schools, visiting those middle schools and showcasing what they have and building those relationships because the relationships is everything. uh signature programs instead of prior, you know, doing a general, you know, hey, this is what the district has to offer, we need to get into specifics about what each unique school has and and showcase that because every school is different and every parent has different needs. So, if we if we take those offerings that the school has and and make sure that that's out there and our parents can see it. Retention outreach, this is also going to be a task of of the student assignment

269office. If we find out that a parent is unhappy and wants to leave us, we're going we're going to reach out and we're going to find out why that is and we're going to do what we can to uh convince them to stay within the school district. So, we have a number of things that we've already started and then we will continue to build on what we're doing, you know, with the with the goal of, you know, us being the best choice or the number one choice for our parents. And finally, we are very uh excited to welcome any of the superintendent's comments as well as board discussion. >> Thank you, Mr. Matthews, uh Mr. um Simmons, and of course, uh Dr. Savage available um up there. We do appreciate that. So, as you can

270see, you know, we want to be parents number one choice, right? But the way to do that, it starts with having a high quality school district. We have a we have a great school district. We want to be number one. Number one. But not because of the accolade. You've heard me say that many times. We have children that graduate couple coming up in a couple of weeks and that's fantastic. And we're celebrating with them and that's going to be such a great time. We have students that will not graduate. And even though it's a handful and it's less than it's ever been, we have the highest graduation rate we've ever had in this school district. And I want to applaud our team for that. all the work that the schools do, all the work that

271our staff has done, but we're not going to be satisfied until we have a 100% of our students that graduate. I know how you feel about it and and I echo that. So, we're going to keep working, but until that time, we have to continue to improve our programs. That's why we bring you academic information. That's why we're going to have a presentation for you when we get our all of our scores in so you can see how far our children have come, but still the work to occur because we're not going to be there yet. We're not going to be I can tell you right now this year we're going to take a big step forward, but we're not going to be there yet. We will not rest in this district until we have

272every child walking across that stage. And it's not just a pipe dream. It can happen. It can happen. Somebody mentioned a charter school today. I think it was Mr. Person's if I'm not mistaken. Um about, you know, 100% graduation. Somebody probably told them it couldn't happen and they made it happen. We're going to make it happen in this school district. But I'm going to start as a parent. I want to choose the school district because of the great things they can do for my child. That they can partner with me with, you know, with our family and make great things happen. That's what every parent wants for their child. They want the best possible academic and extracurricular program for their child. That's what we want to make sure we're providing and we will not rest

273until we do that. So, thank you for the enrollment trends today and the information. Thank you for the proactive measures to help stabilize enrollment. But I will go um on record as saying when we are the best of the best, we won't have this issue. Parents will choose us, not because of our reputation or anything else, but because of the great things that happen in our schools, and that's what we want to see more of, and that's what we're committed to doing. So, with that in mind, uh we look forward to your conversation. >> Thank you. Um, so thank you for this because it's kind of nice to have the why behind the what, I think is kind of what Miss Felman has said in the past. But I want to reference slide nine and

27410. So on slide nine, um, we're talking about the home education transfers. So from the difference of slide nine, it's about 501 students. And we look at slide 10, which is our private school transfers, it's a different about 447 students. So, when I look at that and we're talking about decrease in students, where are they going? Um, the funds follow the student, all of these things, I think of, we mentioned the PEP scholarship, we mentioned step up for students, which is our scholarships in our vouchers. That's dollars. Um, so if those students were leaving and not coming back, I did quick math. Miss Cox may or may not be proud of me. Um, but I'm averaging at the scholarship at about eight grand a student, that's about $7.5 million between those two slides. that's at

275the 8,000 for the scholarship. At the FEFP, which is just over 9,000, that's $8.7 million between those two slides. So, I think it's nice to have these numbers to be able to provide a little bit more clarification, but that's just like the rough numbers as I had a conversation yesterday with Miss Cox because every student is different. There are different needs and assessments and things that are done for each student and doesn't necessarily mean they're only getting that amount. they may get a little bit more depending on what they qualify for. So again, that's all dollars and what's happening. So I think this helps us paint a better picture of what's happening, where they're going, but also I think we need to tie in unfortunately that dollar amount because that is what funds our schools,

276right? So I think when we're having these conversations and we're saying yes, they're leaving and they're coming back. That's still dollars that are going to these private schools. that are still dollars that are happening with these homeschool vouchers. Um, and I fully believe in choice because I believe that every child is different and every single one of them learns different. And I have two girls and they are each on opposite ends of how they learn. Um, and it's on our parents to make that choice of what's best for them. So, I fully support it. I never want that messaging to be any different. I came I taught in charter. I believe in it. Um, but to the point we need to do a better job of highlighting what we do, but I think we need

277to put the dollar behind the message when we also talk about these of how much dollars is actually sitting out of our district when these changes occur. Because you look at it, you're like, okay, 500 kids here, you know, 400 kids here, that's 7.5 million. That's a significant number. Um, so again, I think I thank you for this. I would love to see more of this because this gives us better conversation. We I know we touched on this months ago with the vouchers and the dollars still out there that we have not gotten back. So, our district is still short that money, but we are still teaching these students. That's also important to highlight that we're still educating them and providing them the resources, but we haven't been compensated. And then we still have to

278make cuts. M >> again not fun >> but unless we have more revenue something needs to happen. So again I I greatly appreciate this work. I I would like to continue seeing this so we can I can continue kind of laying this communication piece from this DAS. Um it's important and I think we just need to again highlight the dollar amount on that. So thank you very much. >> Okay. >> Thank you chair. Um thank you uh Mr. Matthews and Mr. Simmons for this presentation. Definitely enlightening and I hope it helps out with some of the questions for the public. Going to piggyback a little bit off of what uh Mrs. uh Chaviano said as well as uh Mrs. Langford Fleming said before. So um as well as Dr. Carlin. As I said, I chose

279to put my kids in this district. I love this district. I know what the value it brings. Um can we go to slide 13, please? So getting back to the the messaging and just like uh Miss Langford Fleming and Dr. Carl, I know most of us were highly competitive. So and we like to win and make sure that you know we put our kids in the best spot. Part of it goes down to that signature programs we're talking about. I think we've through this district's history done a fantastic job when it comes to our art schools with that. You know, whether it's word of mouth, whether it's um online, you name it. Um we have produced that. I'd like to see, you know, with some of the amazing programs we have now and maybe some

280of the other program coming forward like, hey, this is if if I want my kid in STEM school, this is where we go. If I want them in, you know, to do culinary, they're here. Uh, science, aerospace, you name it. How do we sell that? And that's how we can, I think, bring back some of our, uh, students that we may have lost or that, you know, could end up leaving. So, I think that marketing message combined with whatever signature programming we have, and I know we're bringing forward some different things with that. I think that's one of the keys. How do we sell it and how do we show the results from that? So, thank you. >> Like Mr. Ribble said earlier, you know, if your widgets aren't selling, you have to figure out

281what you're doing. Our widgets are as good as anybody's widgets. I think they're even better. Okay. So, in that particular case, you have to go ahead and as Mr. Fischer said, "You're going to have to promote your product better." I would like I mean, I listen to the radio every morning, a local talk show station, and I hear a charter school every single morning advertising. >> Mhm. >> You know, it's a classical academy or whatever. I'm not going to give the exact name. And uh it just goes out to the general public. But listening to that a advertisement, the general public's going to say that's a really good school. They don't know anything else about it, but that's that's their perception, you know, but we've really have never advertised before. We did one little mailing

282and the public went bananas like, well, someone that doesn't have a kid got a mailing. Well, you got to change the perception. I mean, that's just the way of life. You have to advertise. Um, I do want to make a suggestion though. I would love to see similar to what Mr. Fischer said, a lot of advertisements have a product and a competitor's product and it has a whole bunch of columns that have checks by them. Ours have check check and there's only have like two checks, >> you know. We need to do something like that. I'd say start with our high schools, but where we put all the each advanced program, IB, Cambridge, ACE, dual enrollment, you know, and then go into all the different you can't put every single career and technical, but you

283can do the different silos there. And I think the visual of that would be amazing and and the JOTC. And I don't know if sports are that much different than our competitors right now, but if it is, you could also highlight that. But we offer so much more for them. And I just think that's something it would just be a nice visual. I'm looking at private school A versus private school I mean public school B, you know, and I know all our public schools don't have exactly the same. high schools have the same programs, but this would be a very quick, but almost all of ours have more than like one advanced course and dual enrollment and where the private schools don't. I just think if you saw that, I think a lot of parents

284might make it a little different choice. And that that's what you have to do because I'm I'm sold. I look at all the and we've been highlighting them greatly on our website lately, all the top graduates we have. I guarantee they could not have done any better in a private school. They're getting scholarships to Princeton and and MIT and everywhere else and scoring perfect scores and everything. You know, if they can do it in a public school >> that anyone can. And again, my favorite saying thanks to Mr. Dod here. Those four astronauts that went around the moon all public school graduates. So that's something to remember. They didn't go to a private school. That's all. Thank you for this. Uh I love uh what Miss Cheviano said regarding the numbers. I would love to

285see that as well because I was trying to calculate that at the same time and I wrote that down. So thank you for that. But I really love the proactive measures because I think it is so vital when we are speaking to parents to find out or the communities like why are you wanting to leave and that you know that says a lot. So for you to say that they're definitely doing the retention and reaching out to everyone with waiverss, I think that is so important and I believe that that would work because people will know that you actually care about why they're leaving and I think that will resonate that'll resonate with them. And then the other thing is I know they're going around and doing this. I see them like I'm in out

286in the community events and I will see them with a booth and trying to talk to parents and to leave and then I'll just step in and go, "Well, did you have any world champions yet?" And they're like, "Who is this person? Get her out of here." But so they are out in the community trying to, as you had spoke about, out there trying to speak to um every family member that they possibly can to move that needle for, you know, other uh schools. So, we definitely need to be uh aggressive as well. So, but thank you so much for this. This was really great. Appreciate it. >> Okay, any other comments? Okay, Mr. Videlli, >> thank you. Um I enjoyed this immensely. Um I I have a lot of questions, but I can ask

287you later. It's not that urgent. just on the logistics of the plan, the action plan, like what you're going to do, like I want to see it in motion now, like the retention and support and and how you're going to go about that. Um, one of the questions I was con concerned about was how do we um how do we make sure everybody's saying the same message? That's I guess when we're telling the story, >> our story needs to be the same and I find that we don't always do that or or somebody might find something more valuable and they that little nugget is what they is what they share. So I would love like that's why the action plan is is kind of important for us as a board member because >> so we

288can talk it as much as you're walking it and I know that >> the only thing that I would share is uh you know Dr. Carllin's given her vision of us being the number one uh school district in the state of Florida. And so any school that you go to is going to be the best school in the state of Florida. And we're going to do our best to make sure that we we we provide the staff and the services that makes it the best. And that goes against any charter, private, or homeschool entity. >> Thank you. Um, and one of the other questions I was curious on your numbers like and on the slides to and from when did you take those because I know there's a a couple different times a year that

289they do the accounting or your you know so what was this at the end of the year or was this at the be like how did y'all determine the numbers >> this the past month? >> Yeah, we pulled this at during the month of April along with the other withdrawal data that was >> so this was just pulled. >> This was just pulled. >> Thank you. Thank you. Um I think that was important to know. >> Now that that that that second or the first slide that you saw that had the state numbers that was pulled from the February FTE >> the beginning >> which is state data that comes from the state. >> It was just got >> Thank you. Thank you. >> But numbers let me correct that. It says February but the

290state actually just released that. That's why we use that that FTE from survey 3. >> Okay. Thank you. because I mean that's it's it's vital for us to really get an understanding and and the time of year >> and I I think I believe that Dr. Savage could go into this in greater detail. Um one of the challenges that we have with student enrollment is that the numbers are very fluid and and um if you talk to uh Sarah Cox our chief financial officer you know there's a lot of different data points that we go off of whether it's FTE survey and then we also have our enrollment data. So if you look at it, sometimes it doesn't match up, you know, apple to apple per se, but the but when you look at, you

291know, the trend and and what we're taking it off of each thing, it's the most current data that we can provide. >> Okay. Any other comments? >> Just to clarify on that, uh, because it is really important. They're not interchangeable. We say FT like this slide right alone. This came from February. But it's just really important for our members to just kind of see that far right column and just look at the overall declines from 2425 to 2526 and the significant numbers that you see. As much as we in Lee County are concerned and obviously it's it's almost 2,000 of a delta from the prior year. That happens to be one of the lowest numbers up there in terms of the decrease the net decrease. Pasco is the only one that had less of a

292decrease than we did from survey three a year ago to survey three now. That's pretty critical because it's obviously you see the impact in what we're doing here. But this is a pretty critical thing for us to have in line that we're not alone and that this is not a trend. But this is not FTE. This is enrollment. FTE is different. That's full-time equivalent that that corresponds to weighted FTE being the specific amount of students. So you might have a high school senior that's taking one class. they're not generating the same level of revenue for the district that a student who's fully enrolled um in a full day of classes and so forth. So all those things matter and so those numbers will not match. The advantage of these numbers is you can go to

293the state website and you can pull that data because all this is provided by districts and that's why it's so important we label them. This is a February survey 3 because that's hot off the press's data has just been validated and then the state releases it. So, if any person believes we're making up different numbers, all they have to do is go to the state website, look to know your schools, go under enrollment, pull the number up. They can look at individuals, they can see charters, they can see every individual school. It's all there, completely transparent. >> I agree. >> Okay. Any other comments? Okay, great presentation. I think two great takeaways from this, at least I got out of it, was uh Miss Shioano's comment about converting the numbers to cash, the dollar amount.

294that that that'll send a message for sure and I like Mr. Person's suggestion on the comparison of the different schools and the different offerings. Excellent points. Okay, moving right along. We're going to get into FSBA board of directors, the director and alternate director report by Mr. Persons. >> Well, basically all this is is that we need to select >> thought we did. >> We did that. I thought >> Yeah, we did. >> Was that >> We did not do this because >> Oh, we didn't. No, because >> that was a different That was the advocacy. >> Oh, okay. >> Yep. >> It's the time now. >> Okay. >> No, it was for advocacy. >> Yep. So, this one we have to uh select someone for those two spots. Mr. Fischer, >> I was going to

295say, especially on his birthday, I was seeing uh if Mr. Ribble would be interested, especially with his background with the Florida League of Cities. So, >> yes, I I'd be interested in doing that. Okay. >> And then we would need one more person to be an alternate. >> I would say um Mr. Persons as the alternate >> because it's usually the chair and >> I'm fine with that, but I wouldn't mind seeing someone brand new on there uh that hasn't done anything with the state. They can either Miss Fleming or Miss Shavaniano. One of those two I think would be >> because I'm already on the uh federal advocacy board, you know. So, >> till November. >> I know. But I'll probably be back on it though. It looks like >> maybe as chair. So,

296>> yeah, I'm fine with that. >> Jada. Okay. Miss Fleming, are there any other Mr. Ribble is our selection? Miss Jada Fleming is our alternate. >> Thank you. >> Okay, I'm fine with it. >> Okay. Okay. >> Okay. Moving right along, Mr. Do. >> Well, I was just going to say that goes on the agenda tonight, correct? >> Okay. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> All right. For uh public comment, sir. >> Yes. Okay. Schoolboard policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter on this meeting's agenda. If you completed a public comment card, please provide it to the staff, which I think you've already done. Public comment will be held at the podium in the center aisle and front. Please be advised that the board will not

297respond during public comment to remarks made by speakers. Poor board policy 0169.1. The time per speaker today is 3 minutes. You will find a countdown on the big screen in the front of the room. Once your time has elapsed, the microphone will automatically shut off. Please state your name when you approach the microphone. I will call your names five speakers at a time. Please follow staff's direction when lining up. Mr. Chair, there are five speakers that wish to address the board this afternoon. Dr. Kohler is the first speaker and then Mr. Mlan, John King, Mr. Co, Miss Cox, and Mayor Dan Allers are the remaining speakers. If you could just line up back by um Chief Nulan back there, sir. Thank you. Go ahead, Trace. You're good. Yep. >> Okay. Good afternoon, board chair, board

298members, superintendent, and board attorney. Um, my name is Dr. Tracy Kohler, and I'm a 30-year educator, most recently serving as the principal of Fort Myers Beach Elementary School, and now serving proudly as the deputy town manager for the town of Fort Myers Beach. I would like to thank Dr. Savage, Superintendent Carlin, and her leadership team, and of course, schoolboard members for the collaborative spirit demonstrated during today's discussion regarding the future of Fort Myers Beach Elementary School and the long-term recovery of our community. As someone who has served students and families of this island community firsthand, I understand how important a school is not only to the educational success, but also to the emotional, social, and economic recovery of Fort Myers Beach following Hurricane Ian. The continued presence of a school on the island remains deeply

299important to our residents, families, workforce, and future community vitality. We recognize that many important considerations remain to be worked through and as with any significant partnership, the path forward will require thoughtful review and discussion of the details. As this was the first opportunity we have had to hear about and discuss the proposed document that you have, we look forward to reviewing it further once it becomes available to us. We appreciate the continued dialogue and shared commitment to both the educ educational needs of our students and the long-term economic vitality of Fort Myers Beach. We remain optimistic about continuing these conversations in a productive manner as we work toward the establishment of our charter school that serves the families in the future of our island. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, John Mlan. Uh, good

300afternoon school board. Dr. Carlin, Dr. Savage, where did he go? I want to thank him. >> Thank you, Dr. Savage. Um, what Dr. Kohler said, I think I don't need to repeat any of that. Um, I feel very strongly and very much aligned uh to what her comments were. as a proud father of three highly successful public school educated doctor daughters who had all gone on to higher education at the post-graduate level at very prestigious schools. Um I like to brag a little bit about them because they are so incredibly successful and good people but they're the product of public schools. I personally would have loved to have seen a public school on Fort Myers Beach, but I think our community has got the will, the resources, the desire, and quite frankly, um, we've got

301a lot of very talented people on Fort Meyer Beach. And I just want to let you all know that we're very confident that we will be successful with your continued support. And as we move forward and understand all the details, I just want to thank you all for your collaborative nature and appreciate it. Thank you. Oh, once again, John Mlan, council member Fort Myers Beach. >> Thank you, sir. John King. John R. King, Council Member Fort Myers Beach. Uh, unlike myself, I'll try to be short. Thank you today for uh for your efforts um in the past and for us going forward. Uh Mr. Persons, I want to personally thank you and I know I've worked with you and and and uh talked to you and seen what you've shared. You've been a very strong

302advocate for the town of Fort Myers Beach and the Beach Elementary. Thank you for that. Uh we'll look forward to the opportunity. We look forward to more detail and um just again, thank you. Thank >> you. Miss Cox, Marge Cox. I'd have to be really tall to hit that. So, I'm Marge Cox and I just I'm always amazed at the amount of information at the board meetings, but I particularly wanted to say thank you to the academic team because in my mind the bottom line of what the school district about is academic success. And so, I just want to throw out an idea that maybe the top 10 students from every high school could be celebrated at a school board meeting. they have met academic success for years. To be able to make that achievement

303and to celebrate them in public, not just at their graduations, but at a school board meeting, I think could be a highlight for those kids. So, just a thought. Have a great end of the school year. >> Thank you, Mayor Allers. >> Good afternoon. Dan Allers, Maritana Fort Myers Beach. I know afternoon, evening, wherever we're at. Thank you to the board and Denise and and your staff for uh continuing to work through this. I as I sat here and was listening through this, I couldn't help but think this reminded me of of eighth grade dance when you had the snowball and you were dancing with someone that you just didn't feel comfortable with and you were just hoping for it to end. Feels like the song is almost over here. So, I say that tongue

304and cheek because I think we both agree that we've been dealing with this for a long time and we're certainly excited for it to see to see it come to an end. Um, you know, the devil's in the details, right? We haven't had a chance to look at this document yet. You just saw it sounds like on Monday yourself. So, it still isn't being shown to to be able to review it before your meeting tonight at 6. But some of the things I would ask if you could consider um certainly we want to get started right away. I think both of our goals are to get our kids back as soon as we possibly can. And if there's a way through the agreement to allow us to get access to start doing what we need

305to do on the property and the school itself, we have a lot of people standing in line willing to step up and help uh get us moving as soon as we can, but without being able to get on it obviously if we have to assume responsibility or or you know economic losses or anything like that. I'm certain we could have those discussions, but we would like to get started right away. The other thing I would like to really know is when does a threeyear clock start? Does it start at this the approval by the board hopefully tonight or does it start when we the interlocal agreement signed? Those kind of details like that. I think it's important to to get those out if it's going to be pulled tonight for discussion so that we we

306can understand a little bit better if we don't get to see it before it comes out tonight. But again, I always told every single one of you since this started that I look forward to the day to be able to stand up here and say thank you. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Public comment. Okay, that concludes public comment. Okay, moving right along. It is now 4:53, so it is our turn uh give our comments for the past 30 days. So, first up, Mr. Fiser. >> Thank you, Mr. Ribble. I think we're short on time, it looks like, because there's another thing. Um, just real quick, committee. Uh many of us uh I'm on the uh drugfree coalition now called Thrive and uh we had the Red Ribbon Awards. I know um uh chairpersons and

307Mr. Langford Fleming was there. Did a great job celebrating um uh students over there and their successes and making sure that they're you know drug and alcohol-f free. I thought it was a really good event. So appreciate that. And that's all I have. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. Mr. Giovan, >> I just want to thank the Fort Myers uh beach uh town for their collaboration as well and their patience. So, and the entire Fort Myers Beach community and I'm going to save the rest for this evening, but I since most of you are here, I wanted to say it personally and uh because we have a five o'clock. So, thank you. >> Okay, Mr. Jordan. >> Um I will hold it till later. Thank you. Okay, Miss Persons, >> same. I'll defer to tonight.

308>> Hey, Miss Fleming. >> Thank you. Um, I have some comments I'll leave for this evening, but I did want to mention um something that um I've had some conversations with um actually some of our media as well as um the superintendent about the um the way we're doing recognitions. Um, I I do feel like it's becoming very um, you know, uh, cumbersome. Um, not as flowy. I I prefer personally to be down in the pit with the people that are being recognized. I don't really care if I'm in the picture or not, but um, I don't know if that's something that we can talk about in our one-on- ones or if it has already been mentioned, but um, I feel like the flow was just much better. Um, and I just I feel like

309it's more personal. So, I will have the rest of my comments saved for this evening's board meeting. Thank you. Okay, Michelle. >> Yeah, I'll echo that. That's it's going to be a lot of recognitions today. So, if we can uh do something with that, that'd be great. Um, no, I'll reserve the rest of mine for I think I spoken up today. Thank you. >> Okay. I just have one quick comment since we're supposed to be uh reporting on our committee assignments. Mine's the ITF insurance task force. Not good news again. We're still 19 million in the rears on our benefit cost per month. So, really need to be taking a look at this. As you know, we gave our carrier uh AON notice that we're ending our contract with them. We have an RFP out

310for bid to come up with a new company. So, we'll hopefully uh we'll get that addressed here the next 60 or 90 days so we can start the year fresh with uh someone that's more conscious in spending our dollars on benefits. Okay, moving right along. Mr. Dodic, >> just quick. For years, I've advocated a separate meeting just for recognitions. Just floating that out there. That's all I have. >> Okay, Dr. Carlin, >> just to wrap up, thank you again to Mayor Allers and to the team for um from Fort Myers Beach, the leaders to come out uh this afternoon. We value your time. We know your time is precious and we appreciate your partnership with us. Huge appreciation Dr. Savage and to our entire team as well for your hard work and to our board

311for um listening carefully today and looking through the proposal. We look forward to your comments tonight. Thank you. Okay. As you know, tonight we have a future meeting here at 6:00. Hearing no business, I look for a motion to adjourn. The time is 456. You don't need a motion. Okay, we're journ