School Board Briefing Meeting April 19, 2016

001e e got ni e e e good afternoon today is Tuesday April 19th 2016 and I will call this briefing meeting to order um by way of introduction to the first presentation I just want to say that I pulled out some memos that I had sent to my colleagues on the board in 2011 and 12 and some notes from a Florida school boards Association meeting um on restorative justice that uh we had an opportunity to see about three years ago when we saw a presentation from Judge Steven tesy so for me and for some members of our board this is a very exciting day a long time in coming and without further Ado I'll introduce Dr bohatch Mr Simmons and Miss Edward welcome thank you good afternoon board members uh Dr Atkins Mr Martin uh

002first off I'd like to recognize the uh committee members before we get started first up uh Larry agular from the Q Quality of Life Center Larry you want to go and wait to everybody you know Larry oh there you are Larry Larry was key throughout the process and if if you're ever having a down day and you want to bring a smile to your face call the queer okay in the background you're going to hear kids screaming and hollering and uh Larry saiding I'll be right with you let go of my leg put me down all of that good stuff and uh something out a kindergarten cop or something but thanks for your time Larry was at every meeting and he was on time and which is good for Larry and uh appreciate your participation

003Rob dodig um where you at Rob sitting up here Rob was at every meeting and uh was key Lynn Edward thanks for your participation kept me on task and actually reminded me all of the deficiencies I had with regards to conducting a meeting in a proper fashion so Lynn was Lynn was excellent Jeff eses assistant principal Jeff was really the Superstar of the project and uh silly me for not involving an assistant principal in years past uh on the ground hitting it every day he was awesome so Jeff thanks for your participation Captain Mike Miller are you here Mike Mike m he might be busy but Mike was part of the process as well Mark MOA Chief of Staff Carlos Negron mtss Sandy pavela where you at Sandy rushing from class to come to all

004the committee meetings and and and Sandy was instrumental and bringing bring bringing a perspective it was Sly sly needed with regards to RJ Ron Skyler I didn't see Ron walk in okay Clayton Simmons over here great job in fact Clayton mentioned to Dr Spyro and myself and Mr dodig that more got accomplished when we had to step out of meetings so when the district folks stepped out the school folks took over so thanks for your participation Jess Spyro April Thompson uh Jackie Turner from ESC and Kim Vera from golf so thank you guys it was interesting it was fun and look forward to uh next year okay next up stakeholder input we got a lot of input this year in fact we went on the road uh Rob dodic Jeff SP myself visited M middle

005and elementary schools and we heard loud and clear from the students one common thread was relationships you know they talked about relationships with teachers they talked about relationships with their principles and it was really impressive Rob was especially great with the uh the middle school kids he he seemed at ease he reminded me he had a middle school daughter at home home so that's why but he took over and uh it was definitely great the kids were the kids were incredible so getting out there was certainly worthwhile um they also talked about protecting the classroom that was real important to them removing disruptive children from the learning environment so next up the school board student advisory committee met with them twice Rob and I did for three hours the the kids were impressive and somebody

006brought a talking stick to the second meeting and uh seemed like the kids were wrestling over the sck they really everybody wanted to talk and the kids were amazing in the ideas they came up with so that was a lot of fun as well teachers were surveyed we sent the parent link out got over 4,000 responses on the parent link yeah 4,000 responses some of the common themes from the uh the parents they really wanted to see alternatives to suspension community service they talked about and and they and also conferencing with teachers and uh school counselors as well OSS for violence and drugs okay they they really the parents really wanted to see OSS not being eliminated for those most serious offenses so I got that from the parents met with Mark and Donna from

007tal tal leadership Jamie Michael here's Donna walking in now appreciate your time meeting with you and then uh Jamie from spal the life group I I I be remissive I didn't mention the life group over four years ago they came forward and really wanted to see a change with regards to how we serve as students you know alternatively and uh met with them every year every year reverends Glover faram and May so I'm sure there's a smile on their face to see what's coming down the road for Lee County schools and principles and superintendent cabinet so next slide okay some of the goals the committee wanted to come up with first off relationships like I mentioned earlier it's all about relationships we heard it loud and clear from the kids giving flexibility to teachers and

008administrators with regards to consequences for the code so really we thought that was real important every kid is different every situation is different currently as the code is written throughout the code it's really and I call it the deli modood I remember when I was a principal oftentimes I'd walk into a student affairs office and kids would' be stack in stacked in there and you'd hear the assistant principal second offense two days ISS next first offense one day ISS next and and really not getting having any discussion with students with regards to the root causes for their misbehavior so we really want to give the folks the administrators and the assistant principles the flex ability to be creative to help students so we look forward to sharing that with sharing that with you and then

009two of the focus areas and the DSP Focus Area 3 and focus Area 1 reducing OSS and ultimately uh kids are are in school are going to improve and improving student achievement all right next slide okay the initial work of the committee was really to identify or to re redefine or reclassify the number of level three offenses in the code of conduct so as the code of conduct exists today more than half half of the offenses listed in the code are level three offenses firsttime offense okay more than half of the offenses are level three so through the work of the committee we redefined the level 3es and reduced the level 3es by 50% and uh eliminated three of the categories um no show discipline which Clayton was passionate about I don't if he wants

010to talk about it later but you know he he said he would become infuriated walking into the timeout room and he'd ask kids why are you in timeout and they'd say because I missed a detention because I missed the Saturday school and so that's something that it's not acceptable if you don't show for discipline we're going to get on the phone we're going to get parents involved we're going to work it we're going to work it we're going to work it the easiest thing to do is to kick a kid out of school or send them home so stay tuned we're really going to put a lot of emphasis on training for APS with regards to working parents get them in get them in get them in okay parking lot we eliminated that's pretty much

011um when kids sign up for um their parking stickers they sign an agreement that lists all the rules and expectations and treny we don't want to punish kids who aren't coming to school we want to figure out a way to get them to school okay next slide okay first up you're going to look at the level three offenses these are the most serious offenses as defined by the state of Florida I'm not going to read them tell you but some of them I'll mention some battery drug sale distribution sexual assault sexual battery weapons so these are the most serious cessor offenses and same everything stays the same a student uh commits a level three offense the principal conducts they do process school-based hearing principal makes a recommendation for the Success Academy principal has the option

012Success Academy OSS expulsion they have that they have that um ability to recommend any of those those choices right there so level threes most serious what's going to change is that we're going to keep the students there at the Academy longer okay currently as an now we're looking at 45 day stay uh recidivism upwards of 40% you hear it from principles you hear from the folks at ALC it's the same kids over and over and over and over again you know and thanks to the commitment from Dr Atkins we're going to provide services at the Success Academy for students the wraparound Services full-time social worker full-time psychologist full-time Behavior Specialists where we can get to the root cause as to why they're misbehaving and why they're acting up so level threes stay the same due

013process principal makes a recommendation sends the packet down to me we look it over and we move the kids over to the academy okay next slide that's what it's going to look like in the code of conduct that was an example you know for the principal's First Defense there's battery First Defense level three they're going to have to complete a uh you know prevention course while they're there and hopefully the new principal no not hopefully the new principle is going to come up with uh strategies related to uh helping kids for the defense that there there all right next next slide some bullets on the Success Academy okay a lot of work behind this this is a vision that has become reality thanks to the superintendent uh um it's going to be good for kids

014basically uh most serious cessors kids are going to stay there longer kids are going to get treatment rooc required for every student entry level Roc so kids are going to earn uniforms uh fact Colonel Madigan was so excited when Dr Spyro and I approached him he said yeah yeah yeah this is great for kids currently conducting a national search to find the right fit to work with that risk students so um individual academic and behavior plans for students you know currently as it exist now kids come in wholesale there's an orientation they read rules they send kids to class the goal now is every kid's going to have a plan related to behavior and related to academics a transition plan you know Dr spiring over there a couple months ago or six weeks ago we

015met with some kids and there was a little girl there was so angry she was mad her principal she was mad at her school and we're looking at each other and saying what are we doing you know we're going to send her back to the school without any repair you know she's going to go back and and probably going to get in trouble again so we really want to look at a transition plan where principles check in with students while they're there once a month visit the campus you know pump fist how's it going let me look at your progress ress look forward to you coming back to school because kids still need to feel connected to their home school so we don't want to lose that connection between the principles and and the students

016over at the Success Academy and then right next door is fmtc you know what a perfect opportunity to expose students to career opportunities while they're at the Academy okay stay tuned on that U new principal will be named shortly and uh the principal is going to hit the ground running we got a lot of work to do in preparation for next year all right level two behaviors this where it gets a little I don't want to say tricky but this is where some of the major changes are going to occur um what's going to occur here is that if a student commits a level two offense the administrator is going to be able to pick from that plan or that menu if you want to call it for lack of a better word um let's

017say the student commits um or is gets charged with disruptive behavior assistant principal can charge a student could be a Saturday school could be a a am could be a lunch detention could be OSS internal suspension um Community Services back in the code of conduct so we're going to include that there as well repeated repeated behaviors level two behaviors can be recommended for the Success Academy so if we have a student who you know the principal's done everything they can do you know we've done this we've done this there's a behavior plan plan in place you know they've really exhausted all of their strategies to change the behavior principles can now um make a recommendation for the the Success Academy it's going to be a more formal process than exists now all right next slide

018all right that's the uh that's what it looks like in in the Cod AIT level two giving admin the uh the options all right go to the next slide this is the SAR committee so principles that want to recommend students that have committed level two offenses now have to make a presentation before a committee more of a formal process going to meet weekly and the committe is going to consist of myself uh assistant director for School counseling Lori Brooks uh assistant director of school social workers renice Monroe uh representative from ESC Sue grow from Health Services mtss DJJ rep and then a principal rep okay and hard questions are going to be asked at this committee meeting so if a student's coming forward um let's say for disruptive behavior he's got 18 absences it could

019be that rise is going to say what has my social work I've been doing how has my social work been in involved or you know Sue is going to be there from a health you know representing Health Services I noticed the students on medication is he taking his meds um we're going to dig down and find out what is going on with this child prior to making a recommendation you know Lori looking at credits I notice he's a year and a half behind what's the plan what are you all doing and the committee is ultimately going to make the recommendation with regards to do we put the kid back in school and provide or make recommendations for services at the school or does this student truly need services at the success Academy 90 or 180

020days so really it's a more formal process of getting kids placed there and we're really going to dig down and dig deep to see really what's going on with these children okay next slide level one behaviors um once again they're listed the assistant principal or principal they can look at uh the menu with regards to what type of consequences they want for the for the students and next slide that's what it's going to look like in the code and I believe that's it we'll go ahead this time and open it up for questions thank you very much board members any questions or comments Mrs doer well I want to uh thank you as a board member that I know you have had a lot to do with this I know that you have been you

021know talking about this since you've been on the board and I appreciate all of your work and as I looked over this I saw that you have tried to capture all of the input that everybody has has put forward and you know I think that this is something that will not only benefit students but I think it will also benefit um our classrooms and I certainly I would I mean I want nothing but success for the Success Academy um and I certainly hope that it will be successful and students will see it not as a holding place so to speak but they will see it as an opportunity for growth they will see it as an opportunity for for gaining skills that they may not have communication skills with their peers um you know just

022just a gam I see so many opportunities at that school um I don't want to lose sight I know that there's a lot of angst out there um among a lot of teachers um they're they're fearful that they're not going to be supported in the regular schools and I want to kind of put that to rest I've heard from several that have said that they are concerned that you know that we're eliminating discipline no we're not eliminating discipline but instead I look at this as we are tightening things up and we are trying to make it more flexible for the principles to make good sound decisions that are in the best interest of the children and I I'm just going to say one little story there was a situation that tied a principal's hands that

023I was involved in many years ago and we cannot do that we as a board cannot have policies that tie the hands of principles principles have to have the flexibility because it's their students they know the students and there's a there's a Code but they need to have that flexibility to be able to make a decision and I think this the changes that are being made here will give them that opportunity so I look forward to us putting putting it in place thank you Mrs doer Mrs Morgan uh yeah um first of all I love the wraparound Services I am curious about because I thought in judge tusk's plan that they also they also involved the family and um uh the police um and I'm particularly curious when you put together the academic and behavior

024plan why you wouldn't include the family at that point and also when they're transitioning to the home school why you wouldn't include the family and perhaps the SRO because the SRO May in fact be an advocate for that child back in the school so that was great suggestion I'll share that with the principal I think that's I think family has to be a part of this for sure okay um and then I guess the other question I had level two behaviors breaking and entering forgery larsy robbery trespassing vandalism aren't they crimes or are they well it depends okay it depends every every situation is different um a battery could occur and DOA got you going to jump up here and help me but a battery could occur on campus and law enforcement is not involved

025okay okay a battery simply student goes up hits another student it's a level three offense now if the victim's parent want to go ahead and press charges that's on them that's totally Rob I hope you're not in in agreement but that's totally up to the the parent and the victim but traditionally and Clayton you want to speak to that as a principle we we don't generally involve law enforcement unless we have to okay you know I didn't know whether there was a line drawn in statute where you were obligated to bring law enfor there sometimes there is if there if uh the battery occurs in the presence of law enforcement okay you know that kind of thing right there so thank you yes ma'am Mrs L Rivier um I I too want to let everyone

026know I see Mr Skylar's just has made it in and all of you who have been part of this process I really do appreciate it um what I see is that you're pulling together a concept that you're really looking into the child Proverbs has the has the verse that says train up a child in the way they should go and in the in the Hebrew of the way it means according to their nature and so if we discipline and we guide our students according to how they are innately we're going to see a lot more success instead of just a pat piece so I really do appreciate that component um and when I think about the Success Academy I look at it as a way for I Envision those students going through a metamorphosis um

027and that I my goal and my hope and my desire for those students would be that as they are going through that we're seeing them begin to shine and beginning to find something about themselves that they really do see that value and worth that will help them um move forward and I appreciate the fact that it's no longer the 45 day turnaround because the kids would come to me in middle school and they'd say I can't wait to go back and they would purposely um and and it totally defeats the purpose of what we want to do in the education of our students and I agree um with Miss Morgan with the concept of making sure family is as much involved along the way as possible I know for some of our students that may

028not happen um but I would highly encourage the more we can get families involved then maybe along the way we're helping with those parenting skills for the younger students that come along but thank you again um for your work and your vision and your your dream to do something that's good for our students in the long term Mr tver yeah well I'd just like to add thank you for for all the work it it seems that a lot of times when they make a mistake and it's just a mistake it seems Seems like it's the end of the road and and the goal should really be to reset you know to give them another chance to get them back on track and and I think this is more what it's like and you know I

029I appreciate the efforts to realize that you know it's just kids are going to do that are going to step out and we need to recognize that find out what we need to do for corrective to get them back on the path and get them started back down the road again so I appreciate it thank you okay so as I was reading through the code of conduct um it a couple of questions came to my mind but I'm going to start by saying thank you very much thank you for involving um all the stakeholders and I know that when we met with our student advisory committee um some of the words I heard from them I heard from you today about relationships about flexibility about training for the people who are are uh administering the

030discipline and um so one question I have is how I didn't see defined in here some answers to some questions I have like how are we involving our student services Personnel those counselors those social workers nurses the people who have training that's uh behavior intervention related that's one thing and then how um for instance with dress code or electronic mobile device devices how exactly are we going to ensure that people reading that code of conduct know how to apply that discipline um so that it's Equitable and I understand that there's a menu of choices for administrators some of which are still the same old thing the ISS the OSS so how are we going to encourage people to um Implement some of those interventions like the alternative to suspension and you know like the counseling

031component that gets to the root of the problem like you just said so I don't see that actually defined in this Revised Code of Conduct okay I guess I can start with the first question um when we sat down and created the budget for the Success Academy there's going to be two school counselors were uh allocated full-time social worker full-time psychologist so that that Personnel will be on site and a full-time nurse too I fail to mention so they're going to be full-time at the Academy so with regards to ETD it's good that you brought that up because and the committee talked about this at length and I'm sorry the pages aren't numbered because something to do with pagination and the final copy but if you look at ETD it's really there's one two three

032four different bullets for ETD the first bullet could be display or use second bullet unauthorized use or camera to record third bullet unauthorized taping or photographing A disruption on campus next bullet sexting or display of pornographic material so we've taken ETD and really broken It Up In from from less severe to more severe okay there's a few of those that fall into that category profanity is a good one for example you've got profanity you have student to student you could have um casual conversation student to student student to adult so the committee worked hard on that we were really really careful to make sure that the consquences fit the different levels of severity within those offenses does that answer that and let me if you don't mind let me weigh in just a little bit

033that may may be helpful um one of the things that that has to be layered into the implementation of of uh the new St student code of conduct is a training plan which he alluded to but then the other the other piece that we really haven't talked a lot about is the role that I that I really see us um where we're using the lead principle to to literally Drive best practices down to uh the school level school by school by School uh so that so that if you have programs like right now we have programs out there sporadically that are really working extremely well but there is no real opportunity to do visitation of those programs by by other School principles that's done in the a systematic fashion so if you if one of

034the things about this lead principle concept is that is the role of the lead principle to make sure that because if if we don't do this here's what happens at school a they are using um many alternatives to suspension very successfully School B uh because we don't have somebody doing the followup then you see the no-show discipline I I I do see that across the district where we don't exert the the because I I can tell you having done it you know it if you've been involved in this uh to get students to detention and Saturday schools and alternative schools that requires a lot of work but it's work that is worth it because it pays off in the long run but that has to be an expectation that we set as a district level

035which I'm already telling you is the expectation but now we have to drive it down uh to every school level and that's where the lead principal comes in thank you Dr Atkins I do want to say that one of the things that was brought up was the consistency Factor am amongst you know that that you may have a new AP at one school and or experienced AP at another school and one of the things that we built in is there has to be some consistent training from the top down where all of the assistant principles are in the same room together and hear the same material together and and that is part of the plan for the summer where where're we all as a group so that we all hear the consistent message of of

036what's the expectation of of the new procedure you know the way it was before we had a you know we had follow one go to one go to two go to three and then all of a sudden you would get you know for the third offense you'd get students that would be be in ISS for three days and none of us wanted to have kids missing class for an extended period of time so we wanted to have that that laundry list of options so that we're able to you know our ultim goal was to keep the kids in the classroom you know but also respecting that teacher that if you have a disruptive child that you know we're able to remove them because when we did the teacher survey I can tell you the the

037biggest concern was the disruptive students and the students using profanity to a teacher so we we didn't want to tie the hands of the principles that you could not discipline those kids so we could support the teachers in addition to helping the kids so I think that the the consistency we talked a lot about the consistency factor and I think that that just the training of all of us together so that we all hear the same message and I think that's already been planned right right and and I think that that's our goal is to keep kids in class and I think that um you know an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure so I'm looking more less at the Academy because I think that's an amazing uh program and I I

038know it's going to be successful just because of the interventions and everything that have been and the supports that have been built into it I'm looking at like level one and level two first of all setting the culture and the climate at the school is key because you immediately will have less um misbehavior I know we have a lot of kids right now who are whose behaviors are a result of some other thing substance effects and you know we have a lot of these uh opiate babies who are uh especially at the elementary level now we see them where they are inconsolable and have behav avors that are not appropriate for the classroom so you know I want to make sure that we have a built-in mechanism to rule out that kind of thing and

039I I know I've heard some um talk about you know different ways that we can handle that group uh Zone to Zone but I I'm concerned that at the school level initially if that menu of Alternatives is not in any kind of priority list that then it's it's a it's a subjective choice or you know whoever wants to pick ISS that day or you know community service or uh whatever and then there's it's not fail safe you know what I'm saying so what you said before about the code of conduct having the one two three step and that was the way it was and there was no consideration for the differences if in the students that you mentioned before how how will the person who's implementing that know that I mean is that going to

040be part of the training will there be some guidelines yeah I can tell you that you know what the expectation would be you know for St High School is that if if the first thing you would need to do is we would we would all be trained together in the summer about the new document and and the laundry list but also consistency amongst the principles about okay what are we going to do when the situation Arise at this point and then we would meet obviously all all the aps I would expect that that they are consistent the way that they discipline the kids you know if you have a certain number of the or letter of the alphabet that you know if you're at this this offense we need to try everything that we can

041to keep the kids in the classroom and be consistent about the way we discipline those kids because I know that if one AP does one thing and another one does another you know that might lead to some discrepancies but also you know it allows us to look at the individual situ situation of the child and say okay that that we had this child had some issues going on at home and I know in our case we do involve the SRO and the school resource officer and you know if there's an MTS mtss issue we have that those resources at school as well and um ESC so I think you know I agree that was one of the big things we brought up about being concerned about that but I think that you know being upfront

042with our training and and making sure that all the principles are on board with the document first of all which you know I presented it to the high school and all of them were on board with it um they they said you know we we can we can make this work because we think it's what's best for kids and then being consistent in the way that we do the training for everybody you know I'm confident that we'll be able to you know to move forward and make sure that all our our kids are being treated respectfully while we're maintaining you know helping out the teachers exactly while being expected to be respectful so will it be just assistant principles who administer discipline who will be trained or will you be involving your student service workers

043those people who already have training with behavior intervention and peer mediation and that kind of thing because when we talked with the student advisory um kids twice at length they discussed the pros and cons of ISS and OSS and some of them definitely felt that there were times when that is definitely warranted and valuable but they also mentioned that they had um other things that were important to them strong student teacher relationships opportunities for peer mediation community service and then we had a big dissertation by one of our students on the value of the RC program so which uh you know is a leadership development so I'm hoping that that is going to be part of the the preventive part you know the beginning when a kid comes to you the first time because over

044my career I saw kids come day after day week after week and end up back in ISS and and no improvement ever happened because those people on your campus who are educated and trained to deal with those issues were not part of that process and in 2012 when I sent an a memo I said I when I observed documents when we had expulsions and student discipline referrals um I observed the referrals the documented out of school suspensions and prior discipline history but I did not observe any academic history school counselor involvement documented or any kind of academic or behavioral interventions so you know so this progress that we're making to me is awesome I mean it's great and um I want to thank you for that but I just wanted to mention those those pieces

045and and also thank you for involving you know the parents the teachers and the students who were interviewed because I think that's critical a critical piece one of the other things that we're doing in high school and you I got to credit Dr Spyro for this but it's it's tracking the students for the minute they come into the building in other words we're not waiting till their seniors to to track their progress you know I know that we all do that but one of the things that we noticed and is to take your ninth graders and and we do we pair them up with the counselors and they actually have a meeting with each one of their counselors right right after um first quarter of 9th grade but it's also to make sure that we

046get them involved in something at school I think that's a big component of it as well and that you know you're looking at the child well-rounded we're checking on him academically with discipline but also making sure that they're involved in something at school which we know that the kids AR involved they'll cut down on their discipline and that's one thing that we're also looking at in conjunction with the code of conduct thank you very much Mrs laier there was just one other point that um comes to my mind um not all of our students when they come into middle and high school have been with us through Elementary but um we need to make sure a lot of I miss the oldfashioned child study team I think sometime when we had that word child study

047team um it meant something different to our teachers rather than mtss us and I I really believe that we have to work that their whatever the their team is they need to make it known our our job is to look for the things that our students need and follow it through and I know we're doing electronic but it sure was great to pull out those cume folders and have those notes of exactly what types of interact what types of things were done in more detail um for our students and um yeah because we have become we are a society now where too many of our students now are coming in alcohol babies and Drug babies and with tons more o tons of other issues that they come to school with so I I believe we

048have to have trust in what you're going to do but we also want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to provide the support and work with us students that we have in elementary so that by the time they hit middle in high school they are able to self-control they're able to self-monitor themselves as much as possible Mrs Morgan yeah this is a picky question but um I'm going to ask it under student dress code number 14 any method public display um of an organization etc etc on a person that disrupts educational setting is prohibited my question is what is disrupts the educational setting and why don't you just eliminate the phrase Al together and just say it's prohibited and not worry about disrupt what what is it that is disrupting the educational

049setting the way that the way that I look at disrupt educational setting is if if it if it's if it's causing a distraction for the students in their education process at school in other words if kids are talking about and it's taking away from them in the classroom is the point where that it that it meets A disruption to the educational setting and I know that's kind of a weird answer but no I I get that there are sometimes where we can pull them out um because of something small and then we would that's when we would discipline them I I'm just saying why isn't it just prohibited yeah exactly and then and I'm not saying there should be a punishment associated with it I'm just saying why isn't it prohibitive why does it have

050to raised to the level where it dis it actively disrupts why wait for something to happen in order to um I'm gonna defer to Mr dodic we we're gonna talk about the Tinker standard Free Speech well the wording I'm sorry the wording is relevant in terms of the legal standard with respect to um First Amendment expression in terms of disruption of the classroom environment but in terms of your concern the standard is not just that A disruption is is U demonstrated but that it's reasonable to forecast A disruption based upon the conduct so the wording could be adjusted I guess to address um the principal analysis believing reasonably that the the action could for could cause a disruption rather than it has already exact has already caused one yeah okay thank you thank you thank

051you thank you Mrs doer did you have yes I I do have something um in regard to this same issue um you know one of the things that we talked about because of an incident that occurred last year is um we've got to have clear definition of what you know you can't say if it's disruptive it may be disruptive in your school but then in the other school it's not disruptive so you know and one thing that when we go to training and we are are well groomed on training as far as policies they say you need to tighten it up to where there is a definition for what it is and that takes you out of the subjective decision making because that's when we get in trouble because your school allows strapless stresses because

052it doesn't make a a statement or it doesn't um interfere but then this school over here doesn't allow strapless dresses and I'm just saying that that the more that we can hone down and and and I realize that kind of sounds contradictory as far as I said giving the principles leadway leadway as far as discipline is concerned yes but as far as the standards and expectations I don't want to see those delineated because I think we need to have an expectation that students should dress for success and I see Mr Toy's hand up and when you when you start relaxing those and you know our you have heard Mr um bohatch our students have spoken very loudly and very clearly at our advisory meetings I mean they believe that in order to be a successful

053student that you can't in fact one girl even went so far as to say yes I have jeans with holes in them and blah blah blah but I don't wear them to school because that's not professional you know and you know when you've got a student saying something like that and then you go back and you look at that student's academic performance you look at that students activities that they're involved in you go oh her statement is worth something because that's why she's you know the National Honor Society president that's why she's the president of her school student body that's why you know blah blah blah blah blah and so we've got to listen to that and so and and that's how we as a board get in trouble because this school relaxes something and

054this school doesn't relax it so and I think I've been very clear this entire time about those things we've got to have a clear understanding so the principal will understand what the expectation of this board is and what what is acceptable and what is not acceptable and then we won't have any problems thank you thank you Mr Tober thank you and just to reiterate and and to complement what Miss doer said our students have been um very vocal that they want standards that are continuous you know we are not a system of schools we're a school system and we need to have our standards so that they're they're uniform across the district otherwise they're not a district policy if they're if they're subject to to to change across all the different schools then they're not

055the same and that and that's what we you know the disciplines can be objective to the to the particular instance but the but the the standard itself should remain consistent thank you Mrs larier and there is a clear delineation for item number 14 it says any method of public display including clothing nail polish and other items that may be worn or carried of an organization affiliated with something controversial that could be up to opinion but when you get to obscene or illegal activities that's not people are going to know what that is so I really believe that that part's going to be a consistent piece but if on number six when you look at um the clothing piece I just want to point out it talks about strapless are is not are are prohibited but

056then it says when you get to the part that says halters backless dresses or tops and tube tops tube tops are strapless tube top should not be an optional piece tube tops needs to be removed from that part if you're going to say no strapl I might not have caught that because you're a man in and haven't worn tube Toops not that Mrs ler has ever worn a tube top but at any rate um so I would just make that suggestion to move the tube tops into where the strapless items are on number six board members any other comments or questions um I just have one more thing I was just wondering how um I I was expecting to hear today a little bit about um our restorative justice practices and how that was going

057to be implemented at the school level and I know Miss Edward has some direct experience with that so I I didn't know if we were going to hear a little bit about that for you want her to share what what she's doing at her site or the uh training the training plan well I think um why don't we start with what she's doing at her site and then you can tell about the training plan because I think that that's uh important for us and the viewing audience to have uh an update on that I'd like to go back to your question um that you asked previously about getting everybody on involved and on board and um and from a preventative aspect so I will share with you that I've had the great pleasure of having

058a wonderful parent Dr pavala Who is uh part of Florida Gulf Coast University's staff as well as a national restorative justice um expert and so she was the one that actually introduced to us when we merged the concept of restorative practices and what we did is we did a lot of research we went and visited some other schools and we came up with a system of support and I think that's what we use um so that we know that everybody's on invol involved the system of support included training not only the administration but all of the teachers and the students and all of our uh ancillary support that comes to our school and we have on a regular basis what we call preventative circles we use our character education word of the month um all

059of the teachers have been trained we have uh people on staff or guidance counselor our right to succeed teacher who can go in and assist teachers in the process if needed but it offers a great opportunity for students to get to know one another and for teachers to get to know the students and that goes back to that relationship piece when we have an incident in the classroom we use more of a corrective Circle where we will um take a few minutes form a circle and have some conversation about what happened and what we can do to correct it because it's all about correcting the actions it's not about punishing um and and I'm a firm believer in that regardless of what the action is um let me see I I want to share one

060quick example with you we we have had several schools come and observe what we're doing they've gone back and I followed up with them to ask them what components they're using because what work works for us isn't necessarily going to work for another school but we can all glean from one another best practices and quite honestly our right to succeed program um are bits and pieces that I took from Clayton's school when he was at uh oamic middle school and that's the best part of teaching you're always a teacher you you borrow from other people but we had a situation the other day in a classroom where the teacher uses preventative and restorative circles on a regular and routine basis and we had a new student to the school five days he was there and

061I don't know a lot about his history or background but we had an incident with him and his behavior in the classroom and what was remarkable to her that she commented on was the fact that her students understood what was happening with him and how they should react or not react to him and it ended up being a very peaceful closure we still have to work with the student on some corrective action but it is about training the students um in how to react and act when they're F when they find themselves and situations that aren't what we would call necessarily conducive to education but uh I'm a firm believer that we teach students academics and we also are in the job of teaching students social and emotional behavioral practices as well so that kind

062of gives you a quick update as to what we're doing at the Alva school I will share with you we have reduced our our out of school suspension significantly we track them according to PBIS we're a PBIS school so we track them based on the number of days suspended out of school and it we're excited about the Innovation grants that Dr Atkins is providing because it's our hope that we can even reduce that more by having uh an Innovative program in addition to our right to succeed program next year that's great so then you have the data that shows that that the investment of time in Manpower gives you a good return I do thank you and my uh teachers will tell you it's about developing a culture built on relationships there you go thank

063you awesome yeah real quick on the plan we're looking at uh training 20 schools last week of June um five members from each School in the Train the trainer model so Dr Pavel will be involved with that we're looking at a three-year plan overall before we have full implementation for the district and we looked at districts across the state that have went full-blown RJ we're limiting OSS has failed miserably so with regards to the training piece we're looking for Pilots we're going to move boom boom boom three years hopefully it's a perfect world see you smiling thank you very much that's that's good news appreciate it okay any other questions or comments board members thank you very much we really appreciate this and thanks to the whole team all of you and as are transitioning

064I just want to also um echo my U my appreciation for the work of the committee and Leadership of Dr booh hatch and Dr Spyro Mr doic um all the work the uh Community Partnerships Larry I appreciate it I mean the the queue has been there for me in the past as we've talked about so I I really appreciate you being a part of this process um I do have to just say um board I I want to give my thanks to you uh in particular because this is innovative um you can't do that unless you create an environment that allows that Innovation to take place in and you've done that uh what doesn't publicized very often is the conversations that we have individually about these types of issues and uh that helps provide us

065the direction and know that we're going to have the support so I was pretty confident as they walked in here today that this is something that that you would uh appreciate and I just want to thank you for your support of this effort thank you very much Dr Atkins so next on the agenda genda um is chapter five policies pre-briefing Dr puit miss elen my kids oh yes Mrs zaro I had to put my glasses on thank you so much good afternoon board members Dr Atkins we are here for phase three or three of four so only one more time time we'll bring you for pre-briefing with chapter 5 we have three policies that we previously talked about with some minor changes that were recommended the last time we were here and we also have

06610 new ones and as Dr Atkins mentioned uh Rita zaro is here with me and Dr puit and also Robert Morgan participated in this as well as a number of District staff members uh so good afternoon Dr Atkins board members we're going to begin with uh um policy former policy 5.06 which is now 5.05 and this was a pre-brief to you on uh February 9th and the only change since that last briefing was the um addition of the word or design to section three line 43 and uh please stop me at any time if you have questions or uh comments then next up is also uh policy that was pre-brief on March 8th and that is po former policy 5.13 which is renumbered to policy 5.14 and there were just some um we had discussion

067around this one but what we didn't have is the specific changes that aligned it with uh the human resources structure and then there was an addition to number two about the uh documents being made available you know after at the time allowed and what was allowed and the addition of the um New statute that is applicable to this policy and the next one is policy number sorry thought it was thank you um the next one is policy 5.15 um that has been renumbered to 5.16 it was pre-brief to you on March 8th and um the changes in this policy since the last briefing has been just to add except the spal employees to the foundation um deduction and then the next next policy is 5.21 we've renumbered that policy to 5.24 we just added some

068clarifying language and added additional statute information to this policy okay next up is um this is now we're starting on some new ones that you have not seen before first up is current policy 5 .22 which is going to be renumbered to policy 5.40 and it's on Personnel assessment and it is a change of wording to align with the current structure in human resources and along with um just adding language that follows current practice and that is for letter J where we included along with any written employee response to the evaluation this is our current practice it's just was not written in board policy next up is policy current policy 5.24 going to be renumbered to policy 5.27 and again just um um some minor changes there with wording and then changing to human resources

069and then the addition of that new statute next up is uh current board policy 5.25 which will become policy 5.28 minor changes and um the addition of the corresponding statute and the next one is board policy 5.26 which will become board policy 5.29 and this one was actually the uh changes were made primarily uh through with Robert Morgan through transportation and the main uh point was to update it to align with the spal contract and in addition to include the um applicable new statute and then next is policy 5.27 which will become policy 5.30 and only addition there is the addition of the statute and next up is board policy 5.29 which is going to become policy 5.31 and I'll um outline what the changes were um this was really a Mr Martin and M

070Mr dodig but I'm happy to go through it and then if there's any questions they can uh answer them for you so um again the renumbering and then if you follow along in number three it removes the requirement that complaints be in writing um it's encouraged but it removes the requirement of that number four um outlines the um inclusion of Professional Standards and that if the you know it's severe enough that Professional Standards will become involved in that process number six defines the role of the superintendent in process of employee discipline investigation um and no arbitrary termination of investigation and I believe these were from the recommendations that came out from from Mr Martin your recommendations the um you may recall board members that in February of 2013 the Florida Department of Education Office of

071a special in office of Inspector General uh performed an investigation uh concerning allegations against the then superintendent and um in the course of that investigation report uh the Inspector General recommended certain revisions to this particular policy and all of these revisions are are those that were recommended um from the IG thank you um then the next was in number seven it establishes the process to report Al allegations of misconduct um if their misconduct on behalf of the superintendent and then number 17 is an addition that prohibits retaliation against employees who may report misconduct uh of the superintendent or of other employees and then that additional statute was also cited next up is current B board policy 5. 30 which will become board policy 5.32 and again um I'll review these if you have any questions

072I'm sure Mr Martin or Mr dodig can can address them but kind of going through it really just um included language uh to include discrimination adds the definition of unlawful discrimination is prohibited by this policy and it also clarifies the procedure um for the complaint against the superintendent and addresses uh what that process is if there is a complaint it also clarifies the public record status of investigative files and it also um and that's that what I just stated is in number 24 there in that last paragraph about when the records can be made public and then um the applicable statutes have been added that um are relative to this board policy and then one more current board policy 5.31 which will become board policy 5.33 and uh it's simplifies the title it also adds

073the definition of unlawful discrimination prohibited by the policy includes pregnancy as um uh protected class clarifies the procedure for the complaint against the superintendent and again clarifies uh public record and that would be all the way at the end there in uh old 23 new24 and then I apologize the very last one current B policy 5.32 which will become policy 5.25 and that is the change is the renumbering so at this time um be happy to entertain any questions or comments board members questions comments Mrs doer not really a question but a comment um you know there are a lot of districts that actually pay for this service and I just want to acknowledge the the work of the staff and for all of this work because I know you know looking into everything of

074how you have to change the policies it it is a a tremendous amount of work and I thank you for that thank you thank you yes thank you Mrs L Rivier um I concur with that because I don't believe that our community recognizes that fact because many of manyy Staff hours are used for this and many of you go above and beyond your work definitely when definitely those of you who are on salary put in more hours than that salary requires but um we would be paying a lot more out of pocket if we had a bu company do that for us and so I just appreciate that um policies can some of these policies after they're adopted be Revisited should we want to make an adjustment in what we do for employees the policy

075I'm referring to is specifically 5.15 now 5.16 that has to do with payroll deductions and reductions and um there is something I have in the back of my mind um that I think we may want to make an adjustment on based on needs of our staff financially so but my question is we'll be able to go ahead later amend this am I correct okay thank you of course of course you'd have to go through the same process if through the public hearing process rule adoption process but yes it could after after adoption with these revisions being be revised again in the future thank you thank you any other comments thank you very much we really appreciate your work thank you you you're welcome coming up next is Mr MOA with um information regarding regarding policy

0769.11 naming rights for schools and District facilities welcome good afternoon board members Dr Atkins Mr Martin I'm here today to uh review the draft policy for naming rights it's board policy 9.11 I believe you're familiar with this policy we've brought it to briefing a couple times uh and I just know you've had it in front of you and probably had an opportunity to review it and I just want to ask if you have any questions in regards to the policy that I can answer board members questions comments wow if if if you don't mind I'd like to take the opportunity to mention to you that we did pilot this uh policy in process with two naming rights requests if you may recall the policy does have two types of naming rights uh one is naming

077rights in consideration which is typically reserved for somebody who's making a financial contribution to the district for one reason or another the second type is for honorary purposes it's naming rights and recognition and the two that we piloted were for recognition and I'd just like to review them real quickly with you uh we did follow the policy uh to a tea uh we did organize committees at both the district level and the school level to run through the process we thought it might be a good idea to test it this way uh the first one was Andy Harley field at Pine Island Elementary it's uh in honor of Andy Harley who was too many that live on the island the father of Youth Baseball on Pine Island uh not only did Mr Harley teach the

078fundamentals of baseball to the youth on Pine Island he also taught many life lessons such as hardwork sportsmanship never giving up in self-belief so they would like to name the baseball field they on the campus after Andy Harley the second was Jeff Summerfield at Estero high school I'm sure you're all familiar with Coach Summers uh he was the face of a stero High School athletics he had a contagious and positive uplifting spirit that touched the lives of many students staff members parents and community members so just two examples of naming rights that uh we'll be using this policy going forward with comments questions thank you that's that's good news thank you very much board members appreciate your time thank you we appreciate yours following right behind is Dr Denise Carlin with an accreditation progress report

079welcome good afternoon thank you very much good afternoon board members Dr Atkins and Mr Martin it's a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon as you recall our district hosted an accreditation external review team visit in March of 2014 the team provided us with an exit report which provided us with some feedback relative to strengths and opportunities for improvement including some required actions five to be exact Advanced a does require a progress report from us which is due on May 1st of this year and you have received a draft of the progress report relative to your three required actions associated with the board I do want to assure you that the staff has worked diligently is continuing this week to work diligently to address the two required actions relative to data analysis as well

080as um looking at the Continuum of services for student services in our district so you do have the accreditation draft report in front of you relative to the three required actions and I'm just here today to answer any questions you may have or provide you with additional information okay board members questions thank you I think this was um very well done and captured what what progress we've made to date so I thank you did you have anything Mrs Morgan no okay short and sweet I guess we're all on track thank you very much thank you very much for your my pleasure support and guidance numers that we can just usually am I miss um now Mr MOA is back with this uh information on the Strategic plan for Student Assignment good afternoon again board members

081Dr Atkins Mr Martin getting double dose of me today we are uh my purpose here today is to present on behalf of Dr Atkins uh an update on the long-range plan for Student Assignment which will also include a review of the current student assignment plan as well as what the vision is for Student Assignment well into our foreseeable future as a school district as you know Dr Atkins has quite a few initiatives and this is one of the major ones that we have um I do want to just review with you the current assignment plan and some of the history and where we've been and where will we be going in the in the near future uh some of you might recall that the last boundary system we had for Student Assignment was in place

082during the 1997 1998 school year and at that time we were under court order for desegregation uh shortly after that school year we implemented a controll choice system that introduced the three zones that we're familiar with right now and at that time we achieved unitary status and we're no longer under the supervision of the courts the plan that we currently have in place is 11 years old and uh it introduced the subzone concept so you're familiar with our zones as well as our subzones that's where we are at this particular time we take a lot of pride in being one of the only districts in Florida of being a true school choice district there are a lot that will claim to be a school choice District but Lee County is very unique we actually do

083provide all of the parents in Lee County a wide range of choices and not just schools but programs as well some of the special attractors and magnets that we have throughout the district are available to all children our current assignment system has four key goals and four key features uh the key goals help us accomplish what the plan uh sets forth as emission and the key features allow us to accomplish the goals the first key feature that we have in place are the zones we have three zones as you're well aware west east and south broken down into sub zones and I call this to your attention because some of the zone system that we've been using to assign students implicates Transportation uh I'll give you an instance if you live in the eone and

084reside in E2 you have up to 16 elementary schools to select from and you can imagine that's quite a stretch of land that we have out in the eastone we do have students that are being transported quite some distance because of the fact of where they live so I just mentioned that because as we move forward there might be something that we do to go away from what we look like now the uh second key feature are the preferences and I like to point out the proximity preferences because that's something that has been done over the years we look annually at the plan at ways to tweak it and improve it and the preferences was an attempt to attract students to attend schools closer to their home uh the P1 preference which means students that

085live within a 2 mile radius of their school has always been in the plan but in 20112 we added the P2 which means students that live between two and five miles of a school were given a proximity preference a weit in the lottery not as powerful as the P1 but then again it did uh guarantee that assignment if they chose that school as their first choice School in 2013 we amended the plan to include any student that had no school in proximity we had uh roughly close to 3,000 students who lived more than 5 miles away from a school we thought it would be Equitable to assign them a uh proximity school so they are now mapped to the closest school and if they rate it that as their first choice they would have a

086weighted uh chance in the lottery of being assigned to that school uh the second key preference is the sibling guarantee and The Sibling preference uh these are obvious nods at the school district's recognition that keeping families together is very important in student assignment uh sibling guarantee uh states that if two students enter the lottery at the same time they live in the same household we will assign them to the same school so that they're together The Sibling preference is a little bit different if there is a sibling already enrolled in the school uh we provide them with the strongest preference or proximity I'm sorry s the strongest weight in the lottery to being assigned to that same school key feature number three is the actual Lottery process and this seems to be the probably the

087most mysterious part of our system uh you'll notice during the open enrollment period the first day we have it you'll have a line stretched around the parking lot trying to get in there because parents believe being first in line guarantees them that their number will come up and they'll be assigned to their choice school which is not the truth uh we run the lottery actually this week and we've collected applications since the middle of January all of those applications get the same consideration um so in this particular process the parents will rank all of the schools available to them and again like I mentioned if you live in E2 and you're an elementary student 16 choices so parents will rank all of those schools a computer will randomly assign a number to that application and

088after that number is assigned each application is waited with any preferences the student might have and remember they have to rate that school as their first choice in order for any of those preferences to be uh active so those are the the the key features and I mentioned them to you because going forward there might be some really good features that we want to maintain in whatever system we move to I thought it was also important to share some assignment Lottery information um every year we have quite a few students enter the lottery this year it was a little over 177,000 applications were received and out of those applications I'm using last year's data now of the kindergarteners 87% got their first choice and these are numbers after the first batch Lottery those percentages actually

089improve as we move closer to opening school because if a student is not assigned to their first choice school they are put on an eligibility waiting list eligibility pool in quite a few of them do get in at sixth grade it's a little over 79% and at 9th grade 76% but all around 8.66% of our students who entering these transition grade levels are getting their first choice school another interesting fact is a lot of times during the eligibility pool it runs through the second week of school student assignment will often contact parents to offer them a seat and a lot of them elect to stay at the school they've been assigned so there's some interesting information here this year we've run some test lotteries and we're really close to the same numbers which is a

090challenge as we grow and there's fewer and fewer seats available to our students to maintain the uh First Choice percentage that we do now let's talk about moving forward uh the system that we have in place as I mentioned the current plan has been in place for 11 years uh things have changed and the system must change as well uh we as a county have uh grown quite a bit uh our population has shifted uh and our demographics have shifted as well so so it's that time that we need to look at a way to assign St students more equitably um so staff have begun at Dr Atkins um initiative to begin the groundwork for the new plan uh We've looked at um a three-year period of implementation phased approach obviously and at 201819 having

091the plan in place again we reviewed the current plan because there might be features in there and goals that we'd want to maintain going forward the plan that we have in uh development right now at a very high level has five main objectives and we'll go through those later in the presentation so the project we're we're approaching this with a project management Institute format or framework uh we're looking at what the Project's purpose is what the outcomes are setting some kpis uh and really setting some expectations and Gathering data so that what we are doing is accomplishing what we expect it to do so Outline Three of the high level purposes of the project one is to provide for the assignment of elementary students to schools in closest proximity to their homes and if you

092look at our system now that's not always the case even though we have preferences built into the lottery uh Based on data that we've collected over the past three years only 50% of the parents actually select their proximity school as their first choice so that that's a telling number and there's a some work that needs to be done to discover why that is and I'm sure you're aware that we had a survey that went out just a couple weeks ago to kind of get at the Crux of what parents are looking for in a school and we believe that data will be very helpful going forward at the same time we want to ensure that students still have that Equitable access to Quality academic programming and services throughout the district that they enjoy now so

093if you're taking away choice we're talking about those students that live in E2 that go from 16 choices maybe down to four or five are we ensuring as a district that those four or five choices they have now are Equitable to the ones that they had prior to US changing the system and again looking to be fiscally responsible uh another purpose of the project is to realize some decreased operational costs as it's related to Transportation students makes up a large portion of our overall operation budget and um we believe that changing the student assignment system will help us realize some cost Savings in that area so again a project description we are currently now in a zone-based student assignment system and we're looking to move move to a system that has a greater emphasis on

094proximity assignment and we'll talk about what that might look like uh we're also interested in reducing the average Elementary student travel distance as you know Transportation has many challenges in delivering students on time and a lot of times the student assignment plan is the uh implication and on the same side we want to reduce the travel time to and from the school the students need to be in the classroom learning and not on the bus traveling just um Mr Moa just I just want to interject here as we build this project plan you know he had referenced some kpis and um you know some of the KE the key performance indicators that we're going to be looking at are you can kind of pull them out of this particular portion of the presentation as it

095relates to Transportation um Mr Law's in the audience you know he's one of these that will be charged at and monitoring these uh things such as looking at Q links and making sure that our percentage of uh the total operational dollars as a as um related to transportational dollars that we see that coming down to uh looks what looks to be a a mega District average of about 4% um we also look to increase the uh the average bus occupancy and also decrease as he mentioned the uh the travel time so um just wanted to kind of pull out the kpi portion of this that that we will be putting in that're actually in the project plan now thank you Dr Atkins in regards to the Project's alignment with the district initiatives uh this Student

096Assignment project is aligned with the superintendent's immediate priorities I'm sure you all shared with that document and we were as a staff and it's also aligned with the district's strategic Plan Focus area number seven which is allocating resources strategically let's just jump into the objectives I mentioned there were five and these are very high level at this particular time because the project is still in development but we thought it'd be wise to share with the board and along with the community what we're working on to get some direction uh objective 1.1 is to establish and maintain active and engaging learning environments in all schools uh this is very important because in a choice system parents use these types of data what's going on in a school the report card data for a school to select

097their schools or rank their schools so ensuring that all schools are Equitable in as far as the way that they're actively engaging students in an environment for learning is very important to school choice again we're moving away from a school choice Zone type system to one of a proximity situation uh can we guarantee can we ensure to parents that the four or five schools that they now have available to them have those engaging and active learning environments that might have been available to them when they had more picks or more choices so very important and you're going to find that some of these objectives you might think really not connected to Student Assignment per se and you're correct we have some codependent projects at this moment that are being uh they will be briefed to

098you in the future I believe but uh they are attached to Student Assignment Student Assignment cannot stand alone it is imperative that we build other projects and plans around it to support what we're doing going forward uh objective 1.1 continuing is looking at achievement and selection gaps among the highest performing schools in the schools in need of improvement and one of the key pieces of data that we uh collect around this time is First Choice picks we look at all of the schools and what percentage of the first choice picks is a school getting in a particular zone or Sub Zone and there are quite a few gaps in the district there are some schools that just receive an overwhelming amount of first choice picks and others are very underwhelming and again that data speaks

099volumes and what we have to do is determine why that is um that data by the way is available on the learn paper if you go to the planning Department's page and you can see the selectivity rankings for each of our schools in the district it's uh quite interesting so also part of our balance scorecard and and we do some Trend analysis one of the things like when I was meeting with principles over the last couple weeks to talk about um assignments one of the things that we look at is we look at that Trend in terms of of student assignment data and whether or not a school's trend is growing in terms of it being chosen as a first choice or going a different direction so just part of our balance scorecard as well

100absolutely and that speaks to the second bullet point here about allocating resources strategically to those underperforming schools and that includes leadership and quality of teaching continue on with objective 1.1 is looking at the Elementary programs in policies and standardizing them to a point where we're reducing the variance amongst the elementary schools and improving the assignment Equity uh again pointing to the fact that we're taking away quite a few choices from parents and we've got to ensure that the choices that they will have going forward have the same rigorous programs have the same Services have the same activities be it after care or before care uh and we're taking a hard look at that through a committee uh to make sure that we're U moving forward with Equitable programming and and lastly and again this is

101going back to what Dr Atkins was mentioning uh implementing a plan to select and deploy high quality teachers and leaders in schools and they've already done that with the administrative ranks and we continue to develop ways to incentivize quality teachers high- performing teachers to work in these most needed schools so that at our um Action meeting this evening you know we'll be bringing some names forward and good calls it's really a first step in this particular prog Pro process where we've identified some um some Dynamic leaders that are going to go into into some of our schools that we've identified as as significantly challenged so step in all of this plan is happening this evening and I'm sure we're all familiar with uh another initiative that we have in the district is regards to Lee

102County's standards of excellence um that's under the direction right now of assistant superintendent Sera Ralph it's very important that we have a rigorous curriculum in place in all School in one that's differentiated so that all schools can service all students um if you look at what we have right now in the district there are some schools that have the ability to service all students uh they can do it very well and others would be challenged so one of the things that we need to ensure is that when you have fewer choices all of your choices have the ability to um service students of various exceptionalities and have that differentiated learning and curriculum in place so pretty much the first objective is a look at teaching and learning in curriculum and making sure that uh we

103have that all in line when you look at objective 2.1 we're actually getting into the mechanisms and the ways that we assign students uh and one of the things that we want to look at is developing school zones or assignment mechanisms that prioritize the assignment of students to their closest proximity school right now we do not have that our our system is basically the sub zones and you know how it works now you can go to the schools in your Zone and a sub Zone as well as the schools and the adjacent sub zones and so when you live in subzone 2 you have two two bookend sub zones that you can attend that's just quite a few choices and that's quite a few distances to to cover uh as far as assignment of students

104so just to talk a little bit about the things that we've been working on uh we're going to leverage the geographic information system that we have GIS as it's known uh to do a lot of the modeling that we want to do uh one of the first things that we looked at was um a system that is used right now in the Garland Independent School District and Garland's located Northeast portion of Dallas uh although the districts a little smaller than us they are currently under a court order desegregation uh they have quite a bit of diversity in their schools and they got a lot of land to cover similar to us they don't have the challenges of a river or some of the geographic challenges in the CATE where we have canals but they do

105have quite a few uh challenges are similar to us so staff has work with the staff at um Garland ISD to identify what they're doing as far as assignment purposes uh and just in a nutshell what they've done is they've really leveraged their transportation department to establish something called Transportation zones and the transportation zones are drawn in a way that we can move or they can move students very efficiently from homes to school so they're located along major uh thoroughfares and Roads that they could be traveled very easily and efficiently uh it's not a boundary it's not drawing a line around circle around a school and say whoever whoever lives in this boundary goes to this school students could actually live in the transportation zone of three different schools they do have choice so if

106you have three schools in your in your Zone you rank them and there's a lottery similar to ours so they have a lot of similarities that caught our eye they also have a walk Zone which is similar to ours two mile radius those students have priority assignment and lastly they allow any student within their District to attend any school provided there's capacity and provide the parents provide the transportation so that's really how they get at utilizing their buildings to the maximum so that caught our eye that's something that we will actually model for us here in this District we'll develop these Transportation zones with our transportation department uh and we'll use GIS and we'll run through the assignment process to see what happens uh we got to test these things many iterations one of the

107things that we're going to be Keen at looking at is the diversity of these schools when we do these types of assignments what are we doing to the demographics so we'll do that with any model that we create the uh second idea that we've been uh working on is uses as GIS as well but it's a homegrown idea it's the idea of assigning students to one of four or five closest schools so we'll use G GIS to map each student in the county to the four closest schools and they will have to rank those four or five schools uh and again we'll still have the proximity preferences in place so they'll still have that weighted Lottery uh one of the challenges here is is the density of our County there's going to be some schools

108that will have quite a few kids uh uh attached to it because it's very densely populated and there might be others that are more Rural and have fewer students assigned to it but what we're trying to do here is in both of these models is to get students assigned to schools that are closer to home but ensuring that the same quality is in those schools that they had when they had the system we have now I again we talked about the mechanisms and I thought that's why it was important to review what we do now for Student Assignment because we'll have to make some choices on whether or not we want to continue some of the things that we're doing now I think parents do enjoy quite a few of them and hopefully through surveys

109and uh engagement with parents in the community will'll find out which ones they do prefer and which ones work best for all of our students so again looking at those mechanisms and looking at how we prioritize the assignment of elementary students to their proximity schools 3 basically looks at reducing Transportation costs as part of the total budget and one of the aspects of this is looking at the way that we route how we route buses are we doing it the most efficient way possible are the boundaries that we currently have in place uh implicating how effectively we can route buses uh is the way that we're assigning students the most effective way to do it from a transportation perspective and those are things that we need to assess moving forward and lastly as Dr Atkins

110mentioned as a kpi it's these student ride times and on time delivery to and from school that's imperative that we get kids to school on time uh because they're supposed to be there for learning not riding the bus so moving forward with this plan again I share with you that we're at the very early stages uh we are there's lots of work going on but we are still at the early stages um you know our vision is that we'll have to transition uh in a phased approach that there might be some grandfathering uh with students that are assigned to their current schools now of of course we'd provide some gentle encouragement for them to move to one of the new schools that they have available to them but we do understand that U the grandfathering

111has to be a consideration moving forward uh transitioning to the new assignment plan and some of the other bullet points speak to this as well something as major as Student Assignment needs to be vetted very well it needs uh to have input from the community and stakeholders and the parents we understand that and that engagement is key to developing a plan that's good for all of Lee County and all of the students that live in Lee County uh Transportation zones you know sometimes when you look at them they might be prohibitive right now for what we need to do with transporting students efficiently so moving towards something that is almost a zoness type system might give us that flexibility and increase our efficiency we have specials attractors and magnet programs out there we're talking basically

112Elementary for this three-year plan but we still know that going forward to get that equity and choice we might have to consider special attractors and magnets we've already talked about parent and stakeholders input um tonight I mean this afternoon is one example of bringing it forward to the community uh we will also be attending our educational Forum next week on the 27th as a breakout session to talk about student assignment and what our vision is for the future uh rolling out the communication plan and how we keep that continuous communication flow between the community and the district and lastly and the reason why we have the plan we have now is because of of segregation and that's something we got to be keenly aware of as we move forward you know equity and diversity is

113very uh important to The District in maintaining a level of of diversity in our schools is Paramount the next steps and Dr Akin alluded to this developing key performance indicators we are using the uh acto kpi system right now the great City Schools to collect a lot of these kpis so I Believe by miday we will have access to data from other school districts so we'll have some benchmarks which would be a neat thing for us to have uh establish Target measures and goals you know what is an acceptable ride time for students what is an acceptable distance from home that we should be transporting students so we want to have some Targets in place as we Implement a new student assignment system uh engagement we talked about that communication planning we've already mentioned that

114as well and lastly modeling of these assignment processes I think it's is key to whatever we do we really have to vet these well the models have to be run in quite a few iterations before we can put anything in place uh so this will be an ongoing effort to make sure that we get the most Optimum plan that we can put forward again very high level we just thought it was important to bring it to you so you understand where we're heading and what we're doing and I open up the floor for any questions board members Mrs doer not really a question but a comment um you know when we began this plan years ago one of the things that we knew was that it was a document or it was a plan that

115would need to be tweaking and um I appreciate the fact that we're out there taking information and trying to make it a better system and also a more cost effective system because as we continue to grow um if we don't do something then you know the costs are really getting very very extensive and very expensive and you know it's interesting that the piece of legislation that was recently passed that gives parents the opportunity to have choice and um I'm not quite sure how that's going to work out yet the jury's still out on that um but I I think that that anytime I speak about our choice plan I talk about the positives and I talk about the opportunities for improvement and I always invite anyone that has any ideas or any suggestions to please

116contact um you know our office down here because we are looking to improve it and to make it the absolute best most userfriendly best program SEL of selection for student assignment for students so I appreciate all the work you put into this and thank you for listening to our parents thank you for listening to our community because it is important that that they feel as though their input Was Heard and their input was actually considered for for the uh changes that we make so thank you right board members anything else um I just had a question did I hear you say that um only the school that the parents designate as their first choice will the preferences be applied to that is correct if they have a preference to a school they have to rate

117it as their first choice in order for it to be active in the lottery okay okay and um I think that's all the only question I had now thank you for all all the work this is a a large undertaking and I wonder if there's any antici anticipation about how the the newly adopted state law will impact um the planning moving forward yeah absolutely staff will be meeting next week to kind of discuss preliminary what that means to us you know we're still waiting for some guidance from doe in regards to what that looks like for us I know it's the Cross County enrollment uh is something that's interesting especially with the development of the Badcock uh Ranch uh that's a planned community of over 20,000 people and um our schools are in closer proximity

118than the Charlotte County Schools so that's an example of how this law might implicate us and what we're compelled to do but again the magic word is capacity what do we have available for capacity that's defined by the district right okay so we get to define the capacity and then there's no requirement that we do provide transportation that's correct not yeah I didn't read it in there that we would have to right okay thank you very much thank you board members I appreciate your time okay um next on the agenda is public comment Mr Martin will you address the issue of public comment please Schoolboard policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter on this meeting's agenda the subject of comment is limited to the items

119on the briefing meeting agenda the time allow for speaker is three minutes uh is there anybody on the right side of the auditor who wishes to speak anybody on the left side seeing none uh we'll move right on to board member comments Mr toyer uh thank you madam Vice chair um I went to the edac uh last week and the uh NAACP gave their presentation on the redistricting uh we did uh identify that this board would bring that back for you know for active conversation for the 2017 year um I person personally don't think that it's prudent for us to bring it prior to the election that gives us still plenty of time in November of 2016 to bring it for all of 2017 to get it done if we so choose um because then

120it gives the whole complement of the new board rather than starting because I don't think the process can be done quickly um but I we did uh present it for the uh the edac did present it and they did give a unanimous recommendation that we do that does get presented uh forward to our board so I wanted to bring that forward they also brought forward a very uh good concept as far as uh what big corporations do which are called employee resource groups where there's actually groups um within the district um that actually help uh people feel more welcome in our district in other words people are coming from different communities different uh different areas in our in our from our from all around the country and down you know to come down here especially

121you know from the as you know the uh Viewpoint of a minority when you're coming down into an area that doesn't have a huge minority population um they they feel alienated so they some of the L larger corporations are actually having uh group resource groups that are actually you know a Hispanic group or a or a uh uh different all the different authenticities or just a a group or or a minority group that we that allows them to work together as far as support group to get to to acclimate to the community so that was something that they recommended and I thought i' bring that forward and the third issue that they brought forward which was was good is not so much particular to the EDC Dr Atkins spoke uh at the edak committee and

122was uh did have a great presentation and it wasn't even so much the fact that we're not we we don't have qualified minorities for our key for our positions we don't have people period And so you know we went through the the the the uh the numbers and one of the the recommendations that they brought forward was um Middle School teachings in other words trying to get uh students more acclimated to become Educators not wait till high school but to have some type of an influence so that they understand um what it is to be a teacher and the benefits of a being a professional in that in that uh discipline uh in middle schools and so that was just an idea I mean we need to do uh put a full press and I

123mean it was not understated at the EDC committee and Dr and made it quite um prevalent as far as the crisis that we're facing as far as putting in teachers and we can't start soon enough to get people interested in becoming Educators um and so that may be something to put forward as as a Middle School teaching Academy um that's all I have thank you thank you very much Mrs Morgan I have none Mrs doer thank you um I have a couple of things well um the student advisory um met and um they basically were discussing the code of conduct and restorative justice and it was really a very enlightening conversation and one of my favorite things is to say that you know if you listen to what who who something is affected who is

124most affected by a decision and listen to those those individuals my goodness what a Insight you get and we really did get some insight from them and I want to thank those uh staff members that were there to attend that Miss Morgan I want to thank you for attending the CAC meeting for me um last month it's my understanding that they were talking about the process that we use for development of our for our selection process and it's my understanding um Mr Martin isn't wasn't there a piece of legislation that was passed that um is going to that actually requires us to have a component in there for um uh local you know about selecting local companies we we wait something we wait uh our our selection and give them weighted um credit because they

125are a local company I believe you're thinking of the last legislative session I don't believe it was this but yes there was language okay all right address could you provide us with that language please certainly okay um thank you also uh attended the golden apple what a wonderful event um the uh Foundation always does an outstanding job putting that together and you know it's funny every year you think the speeches can't get any better and yet every single year the teachers just come up with just the most outstanding speech speeches and they come up with you know this year every one of them had something a little a little different twist to it and it was just it was it was just such a wonderful warmart e evening so I thank the foundation and I

126certainly thank all of our teachers not only the golden apple teachers but all of those teachers in the academy as well as all of the teachers that put in their uh applications as well as all of the people in the community that took time to read those applications um also I wrote con congratulatory notes to All of the girls basketball team from Fort Meers high school for their win and I certainly hope that you know when we start acknowledging all the teams I don't want to forget my girls because I know we acknowledge a lot of boys but we've got some girls that are you know state champions this year so I'm very excited about them also there was an art show last week at the alliance of the Arts and it's still going on

127I believe I think they might have taken it down um I went there and had the opportunity to see such good Elementary projects you know it's it's absolutely incredible to me what our teachers do and the teaching that they do for these students this week actually tomorrow night there's another um reception and opening for the high schools and middle schools so I will be attending that as well so thank you very much and that's all I have Madam chair okay thank you and I'll I'll try to be brief um uh we're right in the middle of national Child Abuse Prevention month and it really is a time for us to acknowledge the importance of families and communities working together to prevent child abuse and neglect which are definitely um barriers to learning uh we want

128to promote the social and emotional well-being of Children and Families Learning for Life uh character Ed program will hold its 12th annual recognition dinner teachers will be honored for teaching character education and their students will read essays about how the teacher has impacted their lives bring your tissues entertainment will be provided by the winners of The Learning for Life talent show which was held in February um the only other thing I'm going to add about our student advisory because we both Mrs doer and I commented on that is that um we did discuss dates and agendas for future meetings and the kids did come to consensus about wanting to continue to attend uh Schoolboard meetings during the summer months even though they will not be in school so they really are enjoying the uh opportunity

129to sit at the board meetings and feel like they're learning a lot on April 11th um Early Childhood Services uh hosted a poverty simulation day and I had the opportunity to attend the beginning and the end of it uh people in the community and and members of our staff were assigned roles to play uh in in a of a family in poverty and how they go about trying to access services so some of the facts about poverty as it impacts our school district are um Lee County has a poverty weight of 23.5% for children under 18 a 3 million Floridians live in poverty in 2015 in Lee County alone 169,900 families are living below the poverty poverty level over 20,000 500 adults have not graduated from high school um the average average poverty threshold is

130$ 24,8 uh due to this threshold the hunger and food insecurity percentage in Florida is 18% and um I spoke to um Cecilia St Arnold from blessings in a backpack and she was telling me that as she goes around presenting to the different organizations and gated communities they they have no idea that this many of our students are food insufficient um the primary cause of our homeless population is poverty uh and the lack of affordable housing housing domestic violence Substance Abuse and Mental Illness are some of the root cause causes um there are currently 1,6 homeless children registered in Lee County Schools the number of homeless children who who have slept in a shelter has increased 60% in the last six years one out of every five children in America receives food stamps and More

131than 70% of students in Lee County qualify for school lunch subsidies so the impact of poverty on our kids in this district is considerable and during the poverty simulation it was really interesting that some of the uh staff members who are professionals and other community agency people were actually visibly shaken as they tried to go through accessing Services as a family member and there were uh senior citizens represented and children and it was really quite a powerful um powerful thing and I think it should be replicated as much as we can through our professional development because it really is an eye opener um our Florida Gulf Coast University counseling advisory committee met and they reported changes to the program which were based in part on input from the Lee County School District they invited us

132to continue sharing comments and suggestions and reminded us of the program dependence upon shared rep responsibility they requested a little bit more support from school administration for their um interns uh let's see uh continuous systemic Improvement meeting we had a presentation from Human Resources regarding Recruitment and Retention Focus area four me um and and it was prompted a lot of questions and a lot of comments about um recruiting versus uh retention and uh comments were made made that if we were able to somehow do a better job with retention we'd have less need for recruiting so I thought that was a uh interesting um an an interesting comment from them um they also questioned how will we the board document for them the value of their recommendations to us you know their reports and recommendations

133and I know this question has been asked at at other advisory committees um so um I'm asking for input from the superintendent and his staff and and us the board members to have some input or some way of fashioning a response for them that we can discuss in June they have decided to meet one extra time in June um to kind of wrap things up and they formulated a plan uh to do not only that but to refocus on the purpose of the Strategic plan and to begin in September when we have some newly appointed board members with an overview of the updated strategic plan with emphasis on the focus and are asking to invite Dr Atkins to outline his priorities let's see quality improvement um advisory committee also talked about teacher retention and discussion

134centered around Leadership School culture empowerment support feeling valued having enough time which I know we we've made some efforts recently on that and the last thing on the list was the money so that was also interesting I had an opportunity to visit PACE Center for girls and they have made uh amazing strides and credit um their support from um Mr Herman Williams as their uh District liaison and they have increased their academic focus and successes and um they appreciate the partnership and they were touting the success of their transition program as they transition girls from the program back into the um uh homeschools or into second uh into postsecondary education how how successful that's been and they wanted to thank the district for the partnership um yes the golden apple was a great um event

135and thanks to the foundation for all of its efforts and all of its different programs that enhance Education in Lee County Schools every day and thanks to our students our staff for working hard and our parents for trusting us with them okay um Mr Martin yes Miss Fisher board members I do have a schoolo minute today appears we have some time so the subject today is the law and policy with respect to purchase of real property by the school board seemed like a timely subject for this day so section 103.4 of Florida Statutes is the law that establishes the process for the school board to purchase real property uh the statute allows the superintendent to enter into an option contract on behalf of the board that is to negotiate and sign a contract which must

136be ratified by the school board uh that ratification being the option the statute allows it authorizes but does not require it the use of an option contract so for example the contract being presented to you this evening for approval is not an option contract it's being presented uh for the board's approval directly rather than through an option process policy 9.01 authorizes the superintendent and specified District staff to negotiate the purchase of land on behalf of the school board and the statute requires that all such negoti ations that his offers and counter offers be in writing it also establishes that such documents those offers and counter offers and any appraisals of the proposed property become public record 30 days before the date among which the board uh considers ratification of the purchase contract the statute also

137requires that the school district obtain an appraisal of any land that's proposed for purchase of a value of greater than $100,000 and less than $500,000 if it's in that range the requirement is one appraisal if the value is over $500,000 the requirement is to obtain at least two appraisals the statute provides that if the proposed purchase price is more than the average of the two appraisals that an extraordinary vote one more than a majority of the board is required for approval then finally the policy again 9.1 9.01 in order to ensure uh Community input in the purchase of such uh pieces of real property requires that the proposed School site uh be reviewed by a site selection committee and by the uh equity and diversity advisory committee and those recommendations be brought to the board

138uh at the time that recommendation for for the purchase is made that's all I have today thank you Mr Martin uh Dr Atkins I'll just be real brief um your golden apple was wonderful so just kind of um my experience Mir mirrors that of yours that um you always look forward to the the stories um and so kudos to the foundation and and those uh exceptional teachers the um the U Florida Golf Coast University actually invited me down to visit their uh Engineering School of Engineering so uh Dr bear um took us on a tour um I took Dr Spyro with me and Mark MOA and the the purpose of that was really to uh to just see what Golf Coast University uh students experience down there and to uh help educate our High School

139principles and our counselors in terms of the options that is available down in Florida Golf Coast University I have to tell you that uh I came away as did Dr Spyro and Mr MOA very impressed with their program uh they're kind of looking for a niche that falls in between you know Florida and MIT but kind of that next rung of kids uh the advantage um that U those students will receive besides just being able to attend a a pretty u lowcost local option U which as a um as a as a father of an FG FGCU uh student former student now Alum um it is a very lowcost high quality option but the other advantage that uh students would get receive at Florida Golf Coast University is low class size uh you know I

140remember the University of akaran sitting in classes in in mechanical engineering that were like three four 500 of easy and um you know and that wasn't just the engineering classes but you go to chemistry you go to physics you all the the science classes that I intended and it was always you know just absolutely packed Florida Golf Coast University on the other hand only has one lecture hall and it's not it's I don't even think it's near as big as this room uh the rest of the classrooms are those laboratory act you know kind of small group just more like a real world work experience and so um we like I said we came away very impressed and we're going to offer suggest that our high school principals and our counselors also uh take a

141tour um did do some advisory committee meetings this week uh curriculum was last night and just I walked away from both uh Equity uh and diversity advisory committee and the curriculum advisory committee and I I know this holds true with some of other ones but uh there is a huge willingness to do work on behalf of the district by these uh by the folks that serve on these committees I know that you all have heard that as board members I've heard it loud and clear and so we're going to put them to work and that's all I have thank you very much um we will have a student performance at 5:45 and our Action meeting at six o'clock and seeing no other business to come before this board this meeting is adjourned thank you thank

142you e