School Board Briefing Meeting: February 22, 2022

001good afternoon today's tuesday february 22nd the time is 12 01 pm and we are gathered here for a briefing meeting before we begin sergeant-at-arms or whoever is acting as the sergeant-at-arms okay has the front lobby been intended to ensure public access and are we ready to proceed with this meeting okay thank you okay today on the agenda we have a statement of work from rsm auditors for 40 minutes followed by two policy briefings and then a presentation from academic services regarding challenge to instructional and or media materials so at this time we'll begin and i will turn it over to mr free bruno i'm going to turn it over thank you madam chairman turn it over to rsm i believe that clara ewing and matt blondell are on the line and if you could just

002go ahead and move forward with the presentation on the sow please hi everyone kane jeremy this is clara reviewing thank you for being here thank you for having us so this is clara i'm a senior director with rsm also dialed in is jennifer martha partner matthew blondell director and wife campbell manager always all with rsm who who you have all met first we'd like to say congratulations on the establishment of your audit committee which is a best practice we've had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with them already we're here today to answer questions you may have on the sow submitted to you on february 15th for internal audit services on february 8th members of your audit committee spoke to you regarding the scope for information technology and cyber security assessment risk assessment and follow-up

003testing the scope included in this sow is an alignment to what was discussed on february 8th in our discussion with your audit committee on january 20th fraud waste and abuse was subsequently included through communication with attorney dupree bruno we'd like to open it up to any questions that you have on the sow board members does anyone have any questions or comments regarding the statement of work from rsm miss morgan it's not so much a question of rsm and it's a question i addressed to the board attorney and she responded with an email and i'd like to understand better how it is that the information that's gathered for this cyber security piece is protected i understand it's against the law to leak it but we've had leaks from this board that are against the law so

004can you give me a little bit better understanding of what the guardrails are please thank you so rsm will do the evaluation and do all of the analysis and assessment once they complete the report it will be shared with the committee the committee will go into an executive session to review that information so that's that's pretty much the guard wells at some point if somebody does make a public records request for this information there are statutory exemptions that will be utilized to advise the person that they do not have access to this based on the statute thank you okay any other questions or comments regarding the statement of work provided by rsm ms jordan thank you thank you clara matt all of you really appreciate the hard work and thank you for working with the

005audit committee as well i guess my one question is we have the statement at work but we're still waiting on one process from you all and i guess the well we speak on that business to prove right now we received the service agreement on thursday they did make some changes so we're processing those changes and then probably there will be an another response going back to rsm so that's where we are on that thank you okay mr miss kittens yes thank you good afternoon everyone and if you've said this already you can just say so but the concern of the audit committee especially was timing and how quickly we can get moving so my question is once this is approved how soon can we get moving or not moving or what where are we at

006time wise so we received the master service agreement on thursday rsm did have some changes to that massive service agreement we're processing that information so as soon as we finish those negotiations regarding the master service agreement we'll be able to move forward and moving forward does that mean that has the board collectively agreed that we are moving forward with rsm and this sow that's that's a question that the board's going to have to answer i know i don't know where the board stands in terms of this particular sow that was presented the master service agreement is not a should not bar anything i mean the master service agreement is the actual document that hires rsm but all of the details in terms of the work that they'll be doing the costs associated with that work

007that is in the sow so can we move forward with the master services agreement and as the board collectively agreed to use use rsm and then work out the details of the sow so the board can take a consensus now to determine whether or not they want to move forward with this particular sow that was presented and then once we finalized that master service agreement it will come to the board with the sow at an action meeting so you can take your formal vote on it so basically then if we do that today sometime it can't come before an action meeting until a later time or can we do that at least tentatively vote to do business with rsm at a meeting tonight and then move forward with the details so that once the details

008are done we're not waiting for another couple of weeks to have a meeting to approve it so they can get started so i would caution the board in terms of moving forward with a formal action without that master service agreement being finalized again we just received it on thursday and there are changes by rsm in that document so we need to process that evaluate it to make sure that it's in the board's best interest and then we can move forward once that is approved by the board with the sow then rsm would be on board and you will have your board auditor but at this point if the board wants to take a consensus just to say that yes when we're tentatively based on the finalization of the msa and the sow we're looking towards

009hiring rsm as the board auditor let's move forward i don't have any objection to that it's the formal action vote you have to wait till the msa is finalized so my question is haven't we at a previous meeting taken a consensus that we wanted to ask in fact ask rsm to propose another statement of work with some questions about following up on previously issued audits so i mean i think we cross that bridge already maybe i'm wrong but then pending the memorandum the master services the master service agreement we should be ready to go yeah i mean i thought that was we were waiting on the audit committee and then we got the statement of work which is quite comprehensive and so now pending the master service agreement i think we are ready to go

010what are our options i mean we need to have an internal board auditor and i thought we previously agreed that it was going to be rsm with their permission so ms fisher well yeah i was going to say you are correct we have done that already and we were waiting for the master service agreement to come and of course the audit committee to be put into place and the rsm to have that conversation with them which that has already taken place so this is the last and final piece of that for us to to have that be brought before us and for us to approve that and to move forward okay great so then should we then take a consensus on the naw on the sow pending the corrections if they're and i don't know

011if the board has any corrections or anything else that they would like to add to the sow but i believe the next step is to take a consensus on the sow so we can bring both of these documents to the board okay okay so then may i ask one more question then so on the master service agreement you said is pretty much done or is that what you said they made a correction too so the master service agreement came in on thursday and there are corrections that were made by rsm's council so we need to review those corrections and determine whether or not they are also in the best interest of the board and then we can bring that forward you know back and forth a little bit negotiations if there are things that we

012think are concerning what what kind of time frame are we looking at i mean are they major changes or there are there's there are significant changes to the contract so the msa was sent to rsm it's been a little bit since it was sent to rsm and we received the corrections last thursday and there are there are some there are significant corrections in that msa so we do need to process that so our next i'm sorry yes so our next meeting is or actual meeting is the eighth so virtually we i mean we could have this taken care of by the eighth which is our next meeting i'm sure we will have this resolved by the eighth and can we then end this i'm sorry may i yes go ahead okay so if we have

013it done by the eighth can we have at least a plan in place and a time certain for them to just hit the ground running to begin their services as closely to the eighth as possible i mean if the board is going to approve the sow and the master service agreement technically the next day they can begin their process okay and rsm is on the line are they amenable to that i was just going to ask if they had anything to add or anything that they wanted to share with the board good afternoon this is matt blondell with rsn no i you know in the statement of work we've included estimated start dates of march 2022 for the cyber security assessment and you know sometime between march and april for the risk assessment and follow-up

014and i think you know we're we're of course still within that timeline so if if by the eighth everything is finalized we would certainly be able to start in march thank you matt okay any other comments or questions okay then at this time we'll take a consensus on the statement of work if there are no objections or any changes okay so i see miss divanelli yes i'm sorry okay so we have a unanimous agreement that we will move forward with the statement of work and then mr pre-bruno you'll work with rsm on the master service agreement and we'll be bringing it back for march 8th yes ma'am action meeting okay any other comments or statements from rsm representatives no just happy thank you all again thank you very much i'm happy too and we need

015to get the show on the road so it looks like we're finally moving in the right direction so thank you very much for being with us this afternoon and for providing a comprehensive statement of work thank you thank you okay thank you all right so then anything else on that mr p bruno no no ma'am okay all right so that we're ahead of schedule for sure okay next is policy 4.222 mental health and well-being this is the first reading and at this time i will introduce lori brooks and mr pr bruno our school board attorney thank you mr fisher hi there was an opportunity already for the board to take a look at this policy this is the in a pre-brief this is the official first reading so we can move it forward in our

016rule making process i think that everyone has had an opportunity to review it if you have any questions please ask and benny if you could put 4.222 on the screen please and we have it in our backup material so then i'm miss morgan yeah so i have a i'm not not about the policy specifically but about sort of about process section 4 starting on line 112. all school and based employees shall be trained i did the policy council meeting for head start last week and one of the things they did that's new is they're providing education to parents about how to intervene in children's behavior and the levels of intervention and so when i read this i wonder is there a way i know we can't train parents but we're giving information to staff is

017there a way that we can provide you know is references to families that kind of thing that's my first question then my second one is section 9 starting on page line 212. i didn't understand the paragraph and then section 10 i'm sorry miss morgan what was that number please that was line starting on line 212 post post vention i didn't understand the paragraph and then line 2 21 reporting requirement it says the superintendent shall report the number of involuntary examinations etc to the florida department of education on annual basis i think it should also say that needs to be shared with the board and in the historical context and those are my comments and i'll ask miss brooks to respond to that because i think there are some things involving parents that are in the

018works with our mental health department so i'll let her address that thank you thank you very much and good afternoon we have been offering wellness wednesday events for parents via zoom monthly and it mirrors the same wellness wednesday date that our secondary students experience once per month and in march on march 2nd will be our second annual suicide prevention for parents education event to really help them identify signs to look for and then also effective ways to approach their child or any individual intercede and then also resources if they feel they need additional steps to be taken especially while their child is in their care such as mobile crisis and counseling resources etc morgan yes so is that available online year-round or do parents have to okay so when you go to the website a

019parent wants to know what should i look for in a child who's potentially suicidal where do they go on the website so we have our recordings for our wellness wednesday events posted on our district youtube channel and we also have on the mental health and wellness portal on leeschools.net we have resources for parents and signs and symptoms and actions they can take on that mental health and wellness portal under suicide prevention okay thank you shame on me for not remembering that mr because we have a lot on there he has a question regarding that so for in reference to what miss morgan had stated so we have that on the mental health portal but if this were to take and i would like to see that if this were to take place to some child

020that the parents would be given something to say this is where you need to how you can follow up this is what you need to do versus i say it or assuming they're going to go look at our portal or a youtube station because their mind is not even there because they're concerned about what the heck is happening to their kids so to me it's that would behoove us to make sure that they have something in their hand on what the next step steps are but i will have more questions i just wanted to follow up on that one thank you yes thank you any other questions or comments yes just to go to number nine and number ten i think i understand number ten but number nine which is on the line 210 that

021miss morgan raised postvention that is a term of art and maximus brooks to explain that a little bit please thank you so with many of our functions related to student mental and emotional wellness or individual wellness we have prevention intervention and postvention and so if a student is considered as having suicidal ideation and we are interceding postvention is either after the parent has come to the school and we've provided them with resources and support or if a student has experienced an involuntary hospitalization whether at school or outside of school when the student returns to school those postvention pieces include information again for the parents but also a support plan for their hours at school so those would be the postvention pieces after a student has experienced suicidal ideation at any level or during what happens

022after that to support them and ensure that we are hopefully not in this situation for them again and they have access to supports and resources if they feel like they need to tap into that earlier on than actually putting potentially their safety at risk thank you for that mr brooks miss kittens so in the postvention trying to get it where the parental involvement comes in so if if a student has these issues the plan the overall plan includes pre-doing and postvention and the parents basically for lack of a better term sign off on the whole process all the way through postvention yes so in the intervention phase as a student may present with suicidal ideation at school we call the parent guardian or emergency contact early on in the process because we want them to

023be involved in that when that process is followed as written the parent guardian is contacted very early on because we want them to be part of the conversation they need to be part of that conversation and then with the postvention which is the support plan to support the child at school the parent is invited into that process along with the student to help us understand what may help the student it could be that they need to be able to see their counselor when they feel like they just need to have a minute or they need a timeout and we want to make sure we have plans in place that increases their access kind of on demand during the school day the issue that comes to mind for me is when you can't get that parental

024involvement because of cultural or whatever circumstances and they feel there is nothing wrong how do you deal with that moving forward without that parental piece that's an excellent question and that really highlights the power of the school mental health team as teaming with school counselors social workers school psychologists and our licensed mental health professionals because typically the person who knows the student best is going to be meeting with the student and their parent or guardian to discuss these items as if we struggle with parental involvement typically that's multiple outreaches we'll still do a support plan the best we can for school hours to have the student identify for us how to help them stay safe and also support their emotional well-being we progressively move through members of the team however if we're unable to obtain

025solid contact with the parent and a commitment even for the school support and that will escalate up to our licensed mental health professionals because frequently they can talk to the parent at a licensed level and really help them with another layer of information we don't always get to yes but eventually in in a lot of cases we do and then at that point of course we do no mental health services without consent this is more of a safety piece where the support plan is required when a student returns to school after having a concern for suicidal ideation because of course we have to make sure they're safe at school so it is a requirement that when they return that this has something has to be in place support plan has to be done ideally with

026the parent guardian and student but sometimes with just the student because during school hours at least we can assist them if they feel like they need access you know the quiet quiet corner of the room whatever it is that they need that will help them we want to make sure we're providing that during school okay i will continue the conversation with you because i see where with the parental rights information that we could get into some sticky situations from time to time thank you board members any other questions or comments miss jordan thank you i have a lot okay and i this is really like dear or near to my heart like so i took the time and i read through this multiple multiple times i've had multiple conversations and thank you miss getting for

027that comment as well because there is a problem when the parents do not know that there is that conversation to happen before their kids go back to school and reaching those parents and making sure that they are aware that the kids are not out a week before they even know that they hey i was supposed to go back to school because it's not stated but and i and i have the process we have a process document that everybody's supposed to adhere to and that's the thing too if the process is followed as written it works and i just want to say this too this has nothing to do with miss brooks i love miss brooks she's a wonderful person has so much knowledge but i just think that we have to make sure that the

028system is not broken and whatever it is that we need to do to fix it we need to fix it but if we have a process document and it's supposed to be followed and it's not being followed that is a problem to me and we need to make sure that is that is being taken care of we know we have a mobile christ team that is supposed to come out if this if the need arises but then again we have this time issue so if it's at the end of the day of school guess what we're not calling then we're going to make a decision on who what's going to happen to this child so we're just going to call the sro who's then going to call the their superior who's not there and of

029course they don't want the responsibility so they're going to say do what you got to do so we have failed our student so now we have the problem of and i and i spoke with miss brooks at length regarding this as well so nothing in here states about at the end of the day but if this child is there at the end of the day and they're at aftercare that's not the end of their day they're there till six o'clock at night or whenever that parent gets them so we have adequate time to you one they should know where that child is going to go is that child in aftercare are they staying there do we have adequate adequate time to get this team and if we cannot get this mobile team i'm sorry i

030feel as a district and with us having all these children under our care we need to create our own mobile unit so that way under any circumstances we always have the ability to make sure that these kids are taken care of and if it's our mental license license is that what they're called miss yes lmhps for short licensed mental health professionals yes so if we could create our own team here that would put us in a situation that not one person is ever going to make a decision based on a child's what they believe because i'm sorry we ourselves may be having a bad day so we're gonna look at this kid and go okay i'm sorry i'm tired i have to go home i'm not saying this happens so i'm not trying to disrespect

031anybody but i'm just looking at the situation and what does take place in our children's lives and we have to make sure that we are really really doing everything in our power so we have funds as for funds we have all these different funds for whatever and i just believe that we need to make sure that if that is something that we can put together here as a district and have our own team of you know professionals that if the mobile i'm sorry i know i'm rattling right now if the mobile crisis team that we have that we're supposed to call cannot be there we need to have our own mental health mobile crisis team that have the licensed clinicians my am i right on this yes okay thank you because i was taking lots

032of notes when i was speaking but i just think that we have to do that regardless of the time make sure that those kids are there we need to make sure that everybody has to take is required to do this that they understand everything that they that they are taught by the professionals not by an online class i'm sorry i because we can go through that we do that for a lot of our classes we skim through it but if someone's really there and we sign off that yes we were there we attend it we understand we sign off and that goes in their file there's no mis you know there's no confusion on yes we do already understand what we're supposed to do we understand the process we understand we're supposed to contact an

033administrator and i was like who is that administrator it doesn't say who that is so based on this the principle on line 84 reasonable attempts that's another thing reasonable attempts if you're calling people reasonable attempt you're trying to reach out to the people but the number you're giving them is a number that does not work that is not a reasonable attempt we have to make sure that if we are giving somebody a number to call back that number is a number that somebody's going to answer on the other end not a school number where that phone we know is going to night and nobody's going to answer the phone it'll just ring i'm sorry that's on us we need to make sure that is corrected and i'm so sorry just a couple more things go

034ahead and then when i see that's part of the reasonable attempt on 84 and then it says that the designee and care by the principal or principal's designee which i want to know who is that who is that person so if that principle is not there in that building who is that person so that should be a system principle is what i was told but and then there's a minimum of times a minimum amount of times that they're supposed to try to reach you but then again we have those times where parents are not able to be reached but it's it just irks me to know and when i know that they're giving you a number and it's they know nobody's going to answer that number that just i can't tell you what that does

035to me sorry let's see leaving the message so i guess miss brooks i would ask you is that something that and dr savage is that something that we could do here in our district is to have our own our own in-house mobile team that would be available if those other people are not available to make sure that our children never have to go through you know a situation without having other people there to access and not having it just be given to a sro or police to just make that phone call and make a decision for these kids what because i don't understand i don't know what they're as an sro i'm not taking anything away from them either i don't know what their mental health training is i have no idea what that is

036and i just need to i believe that we owe that to our children sure i'll defer first to ms brooks to answer the best your knowledge of in that question thank you dr savage we have been reviewing the opportunity to create our own district mobile crisis team to be secondary to the circuit 20 mobile crisis team we have been working with the cpe mobile crisis team we talk about how many teams they have and then how many teams are deployed and how many diversions we have because they're unable to report to our schools so the schools are required to call them even if the end of the day is imminent that was new under 590 this year and so they are now calling them even if it's like five minutes before the bell they are

037required sometimes you never know they might be right around the corner however because we really have been kind of convicted of the need for this team and it's been worrisome our school resource officers as you say miss jordan it's not to take anything away from them but i you know to be a mental health professional doing a one to two hour deeper clinical assessment before determining if someone needs to be involuntarily hospitalized is much different than being a law enforcement officer having to walk into that situation so i think there's support from all stakeholders for that additional team what we're looking at now is the mental health allocation is slated to have an increase i've been talking with our bureau chief at the doe of student support services and we are to experience an increase

038if all goes as planned and what we would like to look at of course pending the district process for approval is adding our own licensed mental health professionals to be that secondary team so we've run through then two layers of clinical opportunity mobile crisis through circuit 20 and cpe our own mobile crisis team before we would then have to ask a school resource officer and only the principal can go down that path even now to involve the school resource officer if mobile crisis can't get there it everything in 590 puts principals or their administrative designee so therefore assistant principal if the principal's not on campus in kind of the care custody and control of the situation but we are looking at developing a district team just to piggyback on that we literally miss brooks i

039had this conversation within the last two to three weeks so i knew it was in the forefront of the conversation the second piece that has always been of a concern to me is when you have the schools out there there's a lot of discretion whether it's the leader the level of experience the bias even among school counselors there's just a dramatic array of of services that our counselors provide and so some of them you know they vary wildly and then when your sros are brought into it while they do have standardized training requirements no two sros are exactly the same so having a highly qualified team of individuals at the district level that really is that additional layer for us of inherent quality control of the best expertise you possibly can do it just adds

040such tremendous value for us to have that assurance that we're really deploying these processes and as ms brooks said this is not a new issue but it's really been highlighted throughout the pandemic the other thing i want to mention just to answer to some of ms jordan's earlier concerns just about information one of the things not just for this but for all other issues the partnership we have with families is so significant and one of the ways that partnership can be at its best is when we all have accurate information contact information so we've really made lots of efforts to try to ensure that parents have the easiest way to update they have numbers of change all manner of things that's part of why we've moved towards capturing that information digitally wherever possible since so

041many people have personal cell phones such an opportunity to do it that's just one of the most essential things that we do is maintain current information for all of our families in the old days you know you'd have numbers that were maybe six years old and so i remember we were calling it was very very difficult that's why the emergency forms that we do try to collect why it's so important but it's that's just an ongoing body of effort that we have now i don't know that ms brooks can speak to all that because that is individual schools we work on it also through our information systems work that we do there's just a lot of work to go on that effort but thank you for for highlighting the concern over that particular piece ms

042brooks is there anything else that i mentioned that i failed to mention on that no that would i think i'm good thank you okay because may i okay so yes because my other problem is that when we do have the sros and it's written here in well 590 that just happened correct when was when did that just happen miss brooks it was for this school year and we had to delay some of our training due to the large cobit outages and so our training was deployed later in the fall and it took effect immediately so we that just took place this year and yet some of that still has not been followed so i think we need to make sure that we have the correct people training as like miss brooks and her team training

043the schools to make sure that they are all understanding what the what 590 does state and then also on here you have as part of this 156 and it speaks on the mobile the crisis unit it speaks about the resource officers again that they must have a consultation with a supervisor so if once we've put open that door for the sro to come in they must now have a consultation with their supervisor who is nowhere in that building has no idea what this child is going through but based on the fact that they're absolutely not wanting a lawsuit they're going to always err to the side of caution and say okay take the kid so there i doubt very much that they would ever say not to take this child but you're having a consultation

044with a person who's not even in the building who's not aware of everything that's going on based on those five was it five questions or six questions from the columbia the columbia which is yeah i did get the opportunity to read that mr evanelli so i just think that there's a lot of stuff that's in here that we need to make sure that we are following this to the t and that we are making sure that the post vention that we do have that support plan in place as soon as that child is coming out because again even even with our partnerships with with them i have a problem with that we cannot take a child there have a child we always tell these kids to trust an adult is there an adult in the

045school that you trust and they trust that individual person for them to get in the car with them drive them there knock on the door hand them over and that's it that is terrible i'm sorry what do we just do to that child and we just have to have some kind of better way of of making that happen thank you so mr vanello so i just have a couple questions the list of phone numbers there has to be i know there's like secondary and there's not just one number so you can't be limited to that i mean we had another situation just recently at a school where and this is off mental health but still it's not it's where a student was out sick or went home sick and was sent back the mother works

046nights and went to sleep and put with the center child to school the next day with a note from the doctor saying they didn't have kovid and they were that child was put sent to the clinic and stayed there through breakfast and lunch and with no food and very little contact until after noon how does that happen that for me dr savage that's too much discretion at the school level when you have things like that happening and so to me there's no with discretion there's no there's no leniency when it comes to a student i mean in a parent and making sure parents are contacted i mean they didn't call the second numbers so that child sat in the clinic all day long not learning and we have a duty to educate all students so

047therefore that child was a whole day wasted in the clinic and he was well and should have been in class and nobody they left him alone i'm assuming or no one checked on him if if he didn't have breakfast or and lunch so there's no room for discretion aryan at school levels it's a requirement when it when it comes to suit safety and the mental health and mental well-being of a student and so that's my concern is you know we need to make sure that the numbers are being called the secondary numbers and getting hold of the parent that the parent is a it's a that's a huge piece that to me there's that's a loophole or that's something that somebody's not doing their job and or the training wasn't adequate and so that therefore

048that falls back on us as a board you know what are we doing to hold people accountable for the job that they're they were hired to do and that's taking care of students because at the end of the day that's our customer that's our client and that's who we need to be focused on not it's five o'clock and it's time to go home i don't care if it's a friday at five o'clock and i love the mental i love having a mobile crisis team at this district level and i mean i think that i would like to know what other districts do you know these high-performing districts do they have that would be the questions i have for you on that and who you know what what does that look like what exactly would that

049entail thank you in answer to that question some of our size alike districts do have their own mobile crisis team many have not had them in the past and every year that the mental health allocation has been in force now and i believe we're in year four we see another district or two or three adding that for instance pinellas county has had one for years and we have been working largely with their director my counterpart there on asking those questions and having a lot of conversation around that collier county has their own and so we are really and i know collier is smaller than us however we're looking for best practices around the state and also how the mental health allocation has been utilized to support that service so many of our size alikes are

050growing in that direction some have them we our opinion and our feedback based on data and implementation and 590 really has helped school districts develop tighter processes because even though we followed best practices now it's statutorily required and personally with mental health i like to live there as far as student safety and so that really gave us a perfect opportunity as a district to talk about how could we do things with more layers because of mobile crisis providing a great service to our students and our families in this district when they run out of teams because too many are out in the community and at schools that's when we have that deficit and we could fill in okay thank you so much for that and real quick and not so that miss patricka can have

051a chance we know mental health is not going away we know it's increased with the pandemic but it was still in our forefront before that we look at what happens with adults and you know what's happening in the world today there's there's so much so if we can try to head it off early and at least recognize it in in students early on where they can get the assistance and the help and the understanding that it's okay if you don't if your day's not a good day you know we have bad days you know just like bad hair days so i mean and make it is you know that it's it's just a natural thing and not and that we talk about it more because it's been such a conversation that no one wants to

052have because no one wants that stigma on their family or them but it's it's a fact and if we if we acknowledge it and that empowers us to be able to con to help children succeed and grow so i think if we can if we can really get a really good grasp on it at at the school level it will only help the future of our of our community and in the outcome of later so i would support anything we can to do to help people thank you thank you mr patrick i just have a question and it's probably for the board attorney to weigh in as time goes on but potential for increased liability if we have our own mobile mental health unit we're not doing it now so the liability is not on

053us what does that mean in terms of additional expense and not now just as this unfolds please and thank you thank you miss kittens kind of circling back around when i asked before about you know the parents rights and all of that and this since this is our first reading of this correct so can we somehow be proactive and perhaps it means a companion doctor document for parents and as i was looking through like focusing on the involuntary examination in three two six a and b c one seven a and a 11 are things that might affect that situation and i just know that now people are with the parents bill of rights out there that we could run into some situations that would you know cause that conflict so perhaps some type of education

054piece or companion piece saying to parents this is what we're statutorily required to do without them having to read through this whole document and maybe it's something in parent university or something that they can put out at the schools and give to parents when they give out at the beginning of the year but so that they know and that way we would be more proactive than reactive to some situations thank you okay any other comments or questions i just have a couple of things knowing that we have now a policy in the works and we have the process document i wonder about the staff training is it mandatory for all people at every school or is it optional and i know that there could be liability with our own mobile crisis team but they could

055respond to different locations and not necessarily transport a child we have an inordinate numbers of involuntary hospitalizations of children so i think if the crisis team and mental health team at the school had the ability to to intervene more and do a little bit of a better job that we may have less of those some families live in crisis you know so it's not just about a bad day it's about you know life sucks right now so how am i going to focus on my school work but i was just wondering when we have the receiving agency our partner agencies where the services are provided what's the mou with them i mean we have our process document we have our policy what about what happens once the child is delivered to the door of the

056receiving facility how do we assure since we're kind of responsible how do we assure that what's happening there is in accordance with our own process document and policy that's a very good question and the statute that defines the baker act unfortunately is kind of the it's the i don't know how to say this but it's unfortunate that schools live within that statute and that we are placed in a position of we want to keep our kids safe i don't want that to be taken the wrong way but we have to take action and call in the agencies that can take action that are charged with the ability to place an individual under an involuntary hospitalization via the baker act so while we're kind of a conduit for asking agencies and parents in during that yes

057if we have our own mobile crisis team with our own licensed staff they're going to also be doing that work and they have to do it under their licensure under the department of health now similar to the mobile crisis team our clinical team would always be focusing on verbal de-escalation and connection to services with a last resort being the potential of an individual being placed under a baker act and when you spend time with an individual and you're engaging in that clinical assessment you have a much higher opportunity or much better opportunity to achieve that de-escalation and release to the parent or guardian with connection to services in place so having said that regardless of whomever in statute under the baker act statute is charged with this responsibility the transportation is always done by law

058enforcement so that i just wanted to be clear on that regardless but the mobile crisis teams prepare the student and the parent guardian for what will happen when that transport takes place to your point miss fisher about the crisis stabilization units or the receiving facilities we could attempt to strengthen our mou on that end our mou right now with the agency that has a csu is more related to counseling services we don't have an mou with them as a receiving facility because by law the law enforcement agents have to take them there it's our only csu in lee county we certainly can engage in conversation with them it would be more of an ask for consideration of how csus intake and process individuals as a whole but we can ask related to minors and make

059those requests of them that we have some additional trauma-sensitive pieces in place and also with parents and guardians what does that look like yeah and i think that would be important because the baker act really is designed for adults but when children are involved sometimes they're further traumatized by what happens so i think that's what miss jordan is saying that we want to try to prevent that happening in the future thank you so much any other questions or comments do you have anything else i thank you for the opportunity attorney dupuis bruno i thank you also for including me in this briefing and the policy development and these are tough questions that need to be asked around what i think is the highest standard of care for our children and we are committed to doing

060this in a trauma-sensitive way and really with the utmost respect and i am very grateful for 590 being in effect now because it really provides stronger guard rails for us to continue to improve in this area so thank you for the questions and comments thank you did you just want to thank ms brooks again it's it's always a privilege to have someone who's so passionate and knowledgeable about this particular area address us and answer all of our questions the other thing i just wanted to get highlight the two districts that she mentioned pinellas is very proactive in this space part of their work when they started doing school turnaround transformation zones was it understood the issues that came with high areas of generational poverty so part of their robust development went in the areas of

061early education as well as in the mental health space and so they've seen tremendous improvement and i think there's a lot we can learn from a district like pinellas in that effort and also when i one of the first things i did when i was in this role was i reached out to the state of florida my counterpart at the top the chancellor and asked him who's really the best in this area knowing this is such an opportunity he said well you know collier is definitely up there as well so the fact that we have a neighbor to the south that really has a very nice partnership in this effort as well because that's part of it is you nailed it's not just what we do it's what our partners do they have a very

062very powerful partner on this work as well so just wanted to continue to highlight that and thank you miss brooks because we're very lucky to have ms brooks as well yes we are thank you okay oh yes so just one question that did come up i wanted to just clarify in the policy which is 3h it talks about non-disabled minors and i just wanted to make sure that was clear what they're really talking about is emancipation they're using a very archaic legal language that's what's in the statute but it really means emancipated minor so at this time i would like to have consensus to move the policy forward ms morgan yeah so just one comment i realized that we're using professional labels i think it would be helpful to put in parentheses what some of

063these things mean just for readability and better understanding postvention is really about student support after you know whatever okay thank you so go ahead mr dupree bruno wanted to have a consensus on moving this policy forward with the change to subsection nine which is the put a little parentheses there explaining postvention as well as 10 where the report will be shared with the board we can bring this to a public hearing okay then do we have consensus on moving this policy forward with those changes that mr pre-bruno just mentioned so miss jordan are you i still have an issue with this because i'll live with it yes what is it that isn't addressed that you need well i think that we need to put on here about the phone that has to be put on

064here that it has to be they have to because it gives us a phone to call back but we need to make sure that it's an active phone we need to put that on here so because otherwise they can just say i called i've called i left a message and i'm giving you a dead phone to call so that means that they met all the everything that's on here but have you because you just gave me a number that i cannot reach anybody so with regards to that section miss jordan so when we're looking at reasonable attempt and you look at section i starting with line 90 it goes into a little bit more detail in terms of what that means you have to contact a parent or guardian or you can contact another emergency

065contact it specifies how to contact the individuals and then section 2 which starts at line 97 says that you must document the method and the number of attempts made to contact that parent or guardian or other emergency contact and the outcome of each attempt so it has to be documented that's that's specifically required at this point and i've read that multiple times but again you can tell me you're texting me or you're calling me and you're leaving me a number that does not work that's still doesn't get it so i contacted debbie four times by text three times by email four times by this but the phone number that you're giving me to call you back on that message is a phone that's no one's going to answer so it has to be a live

066phone a way that people can call you back doesn't do me any good if you're calling me and giving me a number that nobody's going to answer so how does one get how do i contact you when you have not given me the tools to do that and may i just say yeah make it yeah because if you call a school after a certain point and still get no one it's dead so the contact person regarding the specific case of this specific child needs to be a live number yes perhaps the school counselor's cell phone number or the principal's cell phone number i mean that so that when the parent calls back and says what's going on with my child then they get somebody and they can get an answer ms brooks actually may have

067some comments to make of us and i would propose if it's amenable to the board that potentially we would add that into the process document because as schools vet this situation that process is highly prescriptive it tells them exactly what they need to do and i would like to add students that are in the after school program to the process document that we make sure we ask if they're staying and we act based on that extended day and then also that we place in there that a working number should be provided we have district issued cell phones that can be used if there's a concern that the switchboard will be closed we need to provide potentially the school like the cell number to the administrator and on char in charge etc in the process itself

068because that one that process document is malleable and we can add more to it and take away as needed based on situational pieces such as this those are two things that i wrote down to add as we move forward to the actual process and i would agree i think that is more of a process issue than a policy issue okay but i just want to make sure though is that if it's enough process how are they held accountable for not following the process so there has to be something in here that's saying that if you do not we've trained you've signed off our licensed practice medical professionals have trained us we understand this we've signed off we understand the process we understand this and now if we failed this child somebody's going to be accountable

069for that and so i think we have to do that we have to have a cya i'm sorry and even with the with the police when they're the sros when they're contacting for verification you're contacting a person that is nowhere around you to have that communication so now you have two eyes on a child okay one person's here and then you bring in this other person that you just determine what's happening to that child because the person on the phone has no idea what is what has taken place they're not there they're just hearing what you are saying so now i have i have control of that narrative and i am so sorry i'm really really really passionate about this but it gives me the narrative the person in the school i have the right

070to say whatever or come up with whatever and i just think we need those more eyes so that's where our mobile crisis and we need to keep our money leave the money alone that's in mental health leave that let this stay there but even if they were the other eyes that came in there and looked at it not to because you cannot take them anywhere but we need that and i think that needs to be in here so we're making a policy we need to make it right and i want to thank you mrs jordan for bringing this these details up because you know i've heard this story multiple times over the years and you know from different parents who didn't have the wherewithal of the forum to bring it to everyone's attention so i

071think this is only going to enhance and improve our process so thank you thank you thank you miss brooks okay miss fresher what are we doing on this particular policy we need to take the consensus we did take a consensus and miss jordan said she could live with it and i think that miss brooks just said that it really is more part of the process document for those specific changes than it is the policy because there is a difference yeah thank you so is that okay so it's six zero thank you okay and then next is policy 1.181 emergency requirement for protective gear and this is also a first reading and mr dupree bruno actually we're just trying to move forward with removing this policy pursuant to the new statute florida statute one thousand two

072point twenty subsection three does not allow us to have this policy at this point so we're just going through the process to remove it okay thank you any other comments or questions from board members so shall we have consensus to oh miss juventus i didn't support this when it happened i was one that did not vote for this so i am very supportive of it being removed thank you okay i never felt that the superintendent should have this power and relieve the board of the pa of this power so i'm glad we get we're getting that power back thank you thank you any other comments okay consensus to move forward with removing this emergency policy okay unanimous thank you okay we are going to take a break at two o'clock for technical reasons but in

073the meantime we have challenge to instructional instructional and or media materials academic services dr spyro christine schroed staff attorney dr bethany quisenberry miss laurie houchin and mrs candice alevado welcome today's topic on the process for challenging instructional and or media materials is about laws policies and processes that guide our work there is not one individual making the decisions various stakeholders who follow a process that is driven by current board policy and legislation are involved in this process today speaking is christine show who will go over legislative pertinent legislation candace alaveda will review the actual process and dr bethany quisenberry will share parental resources available thank you welcome no okay is this better thank you good afternoon everyone we are here to give a brief overview on the relevant florida state statutes that guide our processes

074and procedures with regard to book challenges as you can see from this slide we have listed the pertinent statutes in play here and if you click on the orange writing you will see a hyperlink to the full statute because we are going to be just kind of summarizing everything for you here so let's start out with florida statute 1006.28 it's our early learning statute this just indicates that each school board has the constitutional duty to select and provide adequate instructional materials for our classrooms that includes any materials that students can access in our libraries however we must adopt a policy for parents or residents or interested community members to object to any use of material that they find not appropriate the good news is we already have this process outlined in board policy 2.18 we

075also are required to maintain on our website a current list of instructional materials by grade level which we have been doing for quite some time as well so when we look at what is appropriate in adopting instructional materials they must be obviously free of pornography and there is a reference to florida statute 847.012 now this is a criminal statute that defines obscene materials and distribution of pornographic materials to minors it also has to be suited to the student needs and appropriate for their grade and age level so these are all of the things that we look at when we're adopting materials for instruction or in our supplemental materials such as library materials again the statute provides for a process that we must provide for public review public comment and adoption of instructional materials which as

076you'll see in our presentation is clearly outlined in our board policy 2.1318 now when you're looking at what florida legislature has defined as harmful materials we go through kind of the criminal element of 847 and that is that no adult is able to sell to a minor or rent or loan for monetary consideration any of the materials listed on this slide i'm not going to go through each one of them but obviously this would be characterized as obscene material the part of this statute that would be pertinent to school districts is on the following slide and indicates that an adult may not knowingly distribute to a minor on school property any of the materials that was that were described on the previous slide however it is very important to note that this subsection does not

077apply to the distribution or posting of school approved instructional materials that by design serve as a major tool for assisting in the instruction of a subject or course by school officers instructional personnel administrative personnel school volunteers educational support employees or managers it does the statute itself contemplates a person coming onto school property and selling these materials to minors it is being used at this moment to try to have criminal charges brought against school districts for obscene material which is why we're going into the next slide and we're going to define what that would look like even if it did apply in the school setting of approved instructional materials so under florida statute 847.001 harmful to minors means any reproduction imitation characterization description exhibition presentation or representation of whatever kind or form depicting nudity sexual conduct

078or sexual excitement when it and now this is our three-part test that we're always looking at it prom predominantly appeals to a prurient shameful or morbid interest is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable materials for minors to consume and not or but and taken as a whole it has is without serious literary artistic political or scientific value for minors so this is where we have to look at the whole scenario when you have a book you can't just pull out an isolated passage and say that the entire book is without literary value for minors so that's what our committee is charged with doing is taking these these submissions on a case-by-case basis and determining whether or not they are appropriate based on our

079current community standards now there are first amendment issues implicated here obviously the government does not have the power to re restrict speech but obscenity is one of those that are is an exception to that and again you have that three-part miller test that we just went over that you have to look at when you're going through what material is appropriate for instruction of minors again it has to appeal to the prurient interest in sex judged by the contemporary community standards so that would be the entire community depict or describe sexual conduct in a patently offensive way and it lacks serious literary artistic political or scientific value i think one of the most important things to note in all of this is that parents have the right to ensure that their children are not reading certain

080books that they may deem inappropriate that process will be discussed with our academic services team but i think of all of that if you feel that something isn't age appropriate for your specific student you have the right to then say i don't want my child to read this book and we do have open all of our books it's it's listed on our website parents all have access to it so with that said all of this is outlined in board policy 2.18 and briefly just to go over what that discusses it provides for a process for objecting to library materials it describes a process for objecting to instructional instructional materials that are currently being utilized by our schools it also provides for a process for instructional material adoption and then it provides that same process for

081objection to proposed instructional materials so it's also important to note and i know i've talked to attorney dupree bruno about the possibility there's a house bill 1467 that is being discussed right now that could add some additional elements here it could there are things that are certainly doable but would somewhat complicate our current process but we are keeping our eye on that bill to ensure that any changes are made if necessary so with that said i will turn over the actual process that the team will walk you through with miss elevator thank you and good afternoon so those are our guiding documents so from there we build out a process document the inception of this process document was 2015. since 2015 it was not utilized so this year the 21 22 school year is the

082first time that the process is being utilized so there will be a couple pieces in here when we talk about it as we've been working with our curriculum advisory committee of areas that might need some minor adjustment now that we actually have this ad hoc committee in place some of the process needs to be refined somewhat so the very first piece is that a challenge form is submitted inside the original process document that gets submitted to the school so it was meant to go to the local because it was being provided as a parent or guardian i was admitting it on behalf of my students so it would go to the principal first we have already updated the process that if it's a community it goes directly to academic services to one of the three

083directors of curriculum so if that needs to be happened it comes directly here from there the process moves over to curriculum and instruction the principal actually submits that form to the directors of curriculum and instruction and we conduct an ad hoc committee only if required there are times in place where that ad hoc committee is not needed so an instance may be that when the material is looked into in the media center it's not really in circulation it's not actually on the bookshelves one of the things with having an electronic system is it's fluid so at the school level it's constantly being reviewed to take inventory of what is actually on our shelves so one of the first steps is when we get those materials in to check and is it in circulation at the

084school then based upon the complaint that's coming in if an ad hoc committee is needed then it's convened that committee meets monthly or as needed so again looking at our process document that was originally in place up until this time it hadn't happened so it's now meeting monthly as it's needed that committee and you'll see on the next couple of slides is looking for very specific pieces because as miss shrow just said the book has to be read in its entirety so every committee member needs to read the book from cover to cover and they're looking for specific things throughout the book that align back to those statutes that were just discussed the committee then functions underneath interest-based so a consensus is reached conversation is had at their there's a facilitator that runs the committee

085and at the end it's consensus once consensus is reached that is put in writing and submitted to the chief academic officer and next actions are taken immediately if needed and we say a next action is taken because depending upon what the recommendation of the committee is it will either then get submitted to the superintendent and then to the school board chair and school attorney or if this is a book that the committee feels that needs to be removed from the media that's going to happen at the same time so at that step of next actions taken it would be removed and then that information provided it would not wait until all information was provided to the superintendent school board chair and school attorney once that happens and the directors of curriculum provide the outcome to

086the petitioner so whoever submitted the actual complaint on the book would be receive notice on what was the outcome finally once all parties have the information it's posted to the district web page now there is a slight update based upon what's there that one says districts advisory committee information site it was recommended instead to put it underneath the public calendars so where we have the other public meetings and we'll actually go out to the website today so we can see exactly where that is but that's the last step in the process is to post the agenda in minutes so public has access to them as well so the committee who sits on the committee the directors of curriculum and instruction sometimes that's one director sometimes that's multiple directors it depends upon the book at hand

087so it's always the director that oversees that level but as we have many books that cross levels then sometimes there'll be multiple directors on there there's a school-based administrator it's important to note that the school-based administrator is not from the school in which the complaint originated so if it is an individual complaint coming forward then we have an administrator that is not from that school we've also this says school-based administrator because it can be an assistant principal or a principal from a location it can include content coordinators originally the process document had just the english language arts coordinators however many of the books cross content areas so it's been updated that it might be a social studies coordinator that is sitting on the committee it might be a fine and performing arts coordinator depending upon

088who's available to sit on that committee there's always a school-based media specialist a district lead media specialist a community representative from our curriculum advisory committee and then a representative from the department of equity and diversity this slide just reviews what is being evaluated and again the most important piece here that we discuss with our committee members is the book needs to be read in its entirety for all of the pieces that mr just described to you it is very hard to evaluate a book on its age of maturity on its intended use of material if the entire book is not read so each of the command members is charged with reading that book prior to coming to the meeting to review it this is the actual form that is filled out and submitted to the

089chief academic officer then to the superintendent and school board chair and attorney so this form gets completed by the committee and it's how it is closed out each meeting there are four recommendations that you're going to see here on the screen so the first recommendation that a committee may make is to recommend continued use of the material for both instructional materials and for media circulation it's important to note as ms strode talked about earlier there are processes that just drive instructional materials similar to how we were just here two weeks ago talking about our math textbook adoption but then there's also processes for media material so that first one says yes it's recommended for both instructional use and for media the next one is the command could recommend that it is only for media circulation

090this would be that we pulled it from instructional use the third is a flip of that we'll use it for instructional purposes but it would not be located in our medias and then the next one is we recommend continued use of it but with specific guidelines and this is where the committee will make a recommendation if there's something specific to that book which was being reviewed so those are the four ways it stays in circulation and then that fifth piece there is that's recommended to discontinue use altogether which means it would be pulled from media circulation and it would be pulled from instructional use there's always a place for specific comments that need to be added if the committee had conversations and it was pertinent to get captured that's there and then many minutes to

091the meeting are documented and posted to the page so that's the process as a whole that high level and now dr quisenberry is going to talk to you about parent resources though and how we can help alleviate some of the concerns and next steps that ms schroed discussed thank you there's many cases where as candice stated earlier that if a parent does not want their child to participate in a piece of instruction or not check out a book that they are able to do that without going through this challenge process so we get a lot of questions from from families for how can i see what is in my child's media center and so every child has launch pad they can go on to launch pad at least schools from any from any computer even

092from your phone and if you go into your child's launch pad you're going to go to fallit destiny which is our internal inventory program that we use for all instructional materials as well as media center materials as candice says some of these some of the things that are inside of destiny can be fluid because you're looking at hundreds of children checking out books and i'm sure when she goes into my child's destiny in just a minute he probably has overdue books and so every once in a while a child is prone to lose a book and it's not always updated immediately inside of destiny so if a parent wants to see number one if you go to my stuff and then check out yep click out checkouts a family has access to any like he

093does have overdue books doesn't he see i told you can see all of the books that your child has checked out during that school year and so if you scroll down if they're if they're nervous about what is my child been checking out is he checking it out on the right level then you're then they're able to see that thank you then if you go to the search that's in the upper right if a parent has a question for whether or not a book is available for their child in the media center they can simply search any book and it will pull up whether or not it's available in that media center as we know all of our media centers hold different books schools purchase materials in their media center based on their students so

094you might have a school that has a very high esau population so they're going to have a lot more books that are in spanish and english language you might have a school that has a higher reading level population so they might have higher a lot more higher reading level books for ar than a different school and so it's every school is different and it's based on their specific student needs so the next piece if she's going to come back out of destiny so let's say i searched in my child's destiny account and there was a book or a series of books that i don't i don't believe my child is ready for i don't want him to have access to what they can do is they can go back a slide oh like that's correct

095i apologize they can contact their child's teacher directly or they can go through the administration of their school and simply say my child is not allowed to check out xyz the media specialist at the school will then put an alert on the child's account i have an example on that slide that says it says student a student is prohibited from checking out and then it would list the books or maybe the series of books whenever the child goes to the media center to check out a book that alert will show every time and so as the person in the media center and because that person is sometimes fluid it pops up every single time and i'm able to say oh wait you know you're not allowed to check out this book please go back and

096get a different book so parents always have that right another piece that can you go back one more time go to overdrive in secondary it's much more common that our students are using overdrive and so overdrive is our inventory of digital materials digital books and so parents also have access to that if they go into the overdrive they can do a search and it's the exact same process as what was in destiny if a parent does not want their child to have access to overdrive they are able to do that same process they contact their child's school and they say i don't want my child to have access to these materials and then the school is able to take overdrive off of their child's lease launchpad account if a family decides that they do not

097believe that the materials materials are appropriate for all students and they would like to fill out a challenge form they're able to go onto our website to the parent bill of rights and that's where the challenge form is located they would click on the challenge form candice just went over that process but this is where they would actually locate the form they would complete that form in its entirety and then they would submit it to the principal of the child school who then goes through that process and submits it to us again a community member as candice stated also has access to that challenge form and so they would complete it and then it has the directions for how to submit to one of the curriculum directors as well and this just adds so we

098went to the one place you can get to it from the parent bill of rights page which is where we go to but then also underneath parent portal parents can go there under see is the challenge to instructional and or media materials so that's two of the quick places to get that link for this form on our website so with that we will open it up to questions board members miss kittens and then miss jordan okay i'm sitting here listening and first of all thank you all so very much for all that you're doing and getting the information out to everyone but i can't help but think our total demographic and my question is if i am not a parent that is you know digitally savvy to get on and to do this or to

099know about destiny or overdrive or even have the time and inclination to try to see what you're reading and then not know if i see a book called ballerina what does that mean my question kind of goes back to the beginning i love the challenge aspect but the challenge aspect reaches this portion of our you know constituents the other portion that don't for whatever reason challenge a book are we saying to them that they don't care if their child is reading something that is totally inappropriate and i know we're not saying that so my question on their behalf is how do we or where do we stop books that are totally inappropriate period from entering to the point that this group of parents has to challenge but i'm a working parent with four children and

100two or three jobs and i don't have time to do this so how how do i keep the purity of my child's mind if they go and select a book i can start with first a district process piece so before any new books are purchased into our overdrive which is our electronical electronic system that dr quisenberry went over it needs to be reviewed by two individuals and three media sources so if they do use common sense media ar finder good reads in addition to overdrive also has a vetting system that looks at the maturity of the book the level of the book and it has that's our layer of going through a review process before those books are purchased now that's at the district level and we know the two where how it's reviewed school

101based also are supposed to follow that same review process before new materials are purchased for their media materials for their media center or for their overdrive since we have both the electronic and the physical books inside of our schools and i want to kind of clarify one thing that was brought up in another meeting and i was asked about it by parents there was a statement made at some time about well the books are you know categorized and yes they're categorized for reading levels but they are not categorized for content as such and am i incorrect on that because the statement was made that well you know if you're in third grade there's levels of books that you read but that's just can you read it not what's in it actually with the text analysis

102and there was like some pretty thorough training a few years back on quantitative and qualitative analysis one of the parts when we do look at text complexity that has to be considered is the maturity and the content of whether or not that's appropriate so it is part of the analysis so it's not just the readability of the number of complex sentences and the number of vocabulary but it also is it pertinent and valuable to that student of that age as far as content maturity so that is part of the analysis okay and my last thing i'm going to say please is i understand that and i think kind of devil's advocate for the sake of of the parents that are very concerned about the issue of certain books that are in our system letting them

103know where we go from here and because some feel like well if this book got through to this point how do we know there's not others and are we putting the onus on the public to police that as opposed to us policing it is basically what i've been asked and thank you again for all of your work thank you i can just speak to my experience as a building level principal there weren't books that were purchased that didn't go across my desk so there is another piece of accountability anytime anything is ordered for the you know for the media center you know we use different companies that we say we want these types of books like i need more 1.1 to 3.1 ar levels they'll send a list of titles it'll come to the building

104principle to approve those titles and then they're placed into the media center so i think something very simplistic that a book comes in here's filter one here's filter two he'll here's filter 3 so that the general public understands in a nutshell and very simply this is how we vet books to go on the shelves and i do want to repeat too that parents can contact their schools anytime so anytime they don't have to go through the computer and all of those pieces they can contact the child's school and say hey can you tell me if these books are in your media center or how do i access these pieces and the schools will help them through that and again i hear you i understand but the group that i'm talking about is not going to

105do that they're not going to go through the backpack and look at the book and go what is this i they just don't have the time or the inclination let's say so anyway thank you again board members any other questions or comments miss jordan i would just say i really appreciate the breakdown of the process on how this works as far and i am aware of those going into the computer and looking those up because i do it quite frequently with my grandchildren because i can you know it's there for us to utilize that and i really appreciate that but you sharing that information i thought that was really good how you shared that and then even those who have no children in our district still have the opportunity to put a request in through

106the parents rights bill is that correct and thank you for miss rhode as well i know you said that multiple times about what i think both of you did about reading the book in its entirety because we can always pull out certain things out of a book that we or article or whatever but i think reading everything and getting the content is really good but i do appreciate that everybody has the ability to contact and challenge any book regardless of who you are so thank you for that great thank you miss miss patricka thank you so much this all makes sense to me now whereas on words on a paper it didn't necessarily make sense to me so thank you i am disappointed this is not a slam this is a compliment i am disappointed

107miss von's not here because i feel like she's the expert on the board at this specific topic and i would have loved to have heard what she had to say in the wake of that presentation on slide five i believe it is and i think this is a question for you attorney schrode am i on slide five no i'm on slide six it talks about the use of material how does that apply to materials in the media center if we're not using them we're just making them available or is it a legal distinction without a difference i think it's a legal distinction i think both statute and our current board policy allows a process to challenge any material within our system you know we've come across certain books that haven't been used in a very

108long time so you know it's anything that we make available to students can be challenged cool all right oh wait a minute i have notes in my wrong document just came up here we go you said it goes to the principal first if it's a parent and it goes to the district second how many in the past year how many objections have gone to our schools do you know one and how many have gone to the district an official challenge form following the process none we have received lists of books that went through the board or the board attorney or the superintendent but not with an official challenge form okay so that so then we are evaluating books outside of the regular process or outside of the established process so we at that first ad

109hoc committee meeting for to review the one book that had come in on a form the committee evaluated the list that was submitted with an email and a letter and based upon the content of the email and the letter since it was pointing to specific statute that ms schroed addressed the committee felt to move forward with reviewing those books so those books are being reviewed based upon the statute that was referenced via an email and a letter okay i don't know why i wrote this down something you said jogged my memory do you know the book love you forever by robert munsch i hate that book i think is creepy it's so creepy that an adult mother is sitting on her adult son's lap at the end of the book it's just the creepiest thing

110ever but i'm not going to ask you to take it out of our libraries because i think it's creepy you know what i mean and i feel like that's some of what we have going on here and that's a little frustrating to me i know this one is for perhaps attorney debri bruno or attorney shrode it's my understanding that we're quarantining books now or potentially thinking about doing something along those lines as of right now we are not quarantining any books we are going through the process that the academic services team described and then once a determination is made at the point where it would go up to the superintendent the decision would be made whether to actually pull the media or the book from our media centers okay good because i would prefer to

111err on the side of protecting first amendment rights as opposed to pulling a book until it's been evaluated oh what we're doing now in our libraries allowing parents to put holds on books do parents have the ability to do that in a public library i don't know the answer to that do can they do that on the internet i don't know the answer to that i don't know i mean i know that there's some software that we can put on our live on our computers at home to block kids from seeing stuff all four of my kids know how to get around that software in fact if i look at my phone right now i probably can't tell you where they are because they've disabled the tracking software on my phone so it seems like

112we're putting an awful lot of effort into protecting kids from books in schools that are widely available in other avenues or other venues if that makes sense and i guess the last thing i want to say for now is ms gittins i totally understand what you're saying about parents who don't have the wherewithal i myself work two jobs and i have unbelievable number of volunteer activities that i do on top of that and i'm raising four children and i don't always have time to see what they're reading or what they're checking out of the library or what they're doing on the internet or what they're doing on their phone but it's not their responsibility to determine what's appropriate for my children and what's not appropriate for my children so i think that parental responsibility in

113this realm in particular when we're talking about prairie and interest and we're talking about i know it when i see it because it's obscene when we're talking about things that are that personal and that intimate in terms of a family's determination about what's appropriate for a child what's not appropriate for a child i don't expect the professionals sitting here to make that determination for me that's my right to make that determination and it's my responsibility to make that determination so i'm not arguing with you i'm just offering a different perspective on on what it was that you mentioned and that's it for me for now thank you okay may i respond miss miss giovannelli and then mrs kittens i'll let her respond because it's okay it's ongoing okay well no and i was just saying

114i am not trying to say that they police when i was talking about the layers and the filters that there must be at least one major layer at the beginning that would preclude fifty shades of gray being in the school library that's what i'm talking about not the parental decision as to whether you want your student to know this or this but i think there's a determination as to what is you know pornographic or or and just you know going there but that level is what i'm saying i'm not saying i want you guys to read every book and say that you know this child won't read it but i'm seeing it that first level of entry into the system it does that make sense to you thank you okay thank you mrs giavanelli thank

115you so i have like several questions and so and to piggyback off of both of what they've said have we educated our parents in this process because that is where there are many layers and what miss kittens i think was talking about somewhat is the digital divide the unknown you don't know what you don't know so how are we educating our parents in the process how long have we been doing this process the process has been in place since 2015 but again we've had no challenges up until this year okay i think it oh i'm sorry i'm sorry go ahead i was just going to add to that i think it should be noted that you know we have taken complaints that didn't go through the formal process as described by the team here and

116if that happens if a parent raises a concern we're not going to say no we're not going to consider this because you didn't fill out this form we're going to work with the parent and attempt to assist them in making whatever challenge they wish to make okay so and so back to i think for regard i'm and i'm talking about parental rights so and they don't not everybody knows your rights you know that's why you have to read them to them before they arrest them so i'm kind of gonna go on that angle a little bit like we need to educate our parents and that goes back to educating the staff at the school level to be able to do that because that's where it starts and their understanding i know you mentioned that they

117can contact the school and everything but if they don't even know the process then they can't educate or guide them in that in that right the direction that works for everyone and helps us process so we know and keep keep track so that one that was challenged what was that outcome their challenge was it for for the book to be removed from the sunshine state list and that's not in our purview so they received the contact for who to contact at the state of florida for that and then the other piece of the challenge was for their child not to have access to that book it was for a book that's part of our book battle so we do the sunshine state books as part of book battle in elementary school the book was one

118of those and so it was simple of your child is not required to read this book for book battle so and that's great that's a perfect example of not knowing the process or being in the sent in the right direction or guided properly so i think it like it goes back you know we're in the education business so we need to be educating our parents which would in fact educate the community which would help in this whole process so i mean that's what i think is important because so like the launch pad how how long has that been implemented because i loved it do you know how long we've had launch pad i believe launch pad we've had since we launched the one-to-one initiative where it just at least had the applications that the students

119could access yeah is that correct it's not sure alton just said 2014 if i'm looking at his reading his lips correctly and we did do a large push with the launch pad when we went to distance learning two years ago in that march 2020 every resource that we had for our students so that when we have been actively pushing that families no launchpad.leeschools.net where they can access anything for their students so that's their first place of anything curriculum wise and our resources for them and the reason why i asked that is the community doesn't know about that until you've told us today i mean you know so i mean it's really important because someone that might be here challenging books may not have a student that has launched you know so they don't have that

120access so i think it's just it's about how we educate and that's that's the business we're in so i appreciate what the whole this has been awesome today i have one other question regarding the ad hoc committee how how is it determined out of the two advisory committees that you have someone representations from that how is that determined who is that usually that's basically for transparency purposes for me do you mean how how how do we determine who on the curriculum advisories represented we asked for volunteers you just asked for volunteers we asked for volunteers yes no it hasn't happened too often but i know that's going to be that's going to be a question that's asked to me how that's how that who's who is that you know so we had one last month

121and there was a volunteer and then our next meeting as you know is monday and so we'll ask for more volunteers for the next meetings awesome so thank you for that i think and if we could just show since we're there and coming back it didn't fit naturally within that presentation but to when committee members and then results so underneath calendars on our leeschools.net page underneath public meetings there is a folder that or page now that says the challenge to instructional media committee so this is where that goes there are the meeting dates and then following suit of the other committees there's a folder for agendas and minutes so going back to kind of that presentation just bring it back together as you asked about committee that's where that information can be found as well

122awesome thank you again thank you so much this has been very enlightening for for me i think the community will appreciate that too thank you yes just a suggestion based on what ms g vanelli just said and mr mangan if you're listening or please don't hate me but maybe included in the student code of conduct because parents are pleased parents are supposed to review that at the beginning of every school year with their kids you talked about educating parents that would be a way to force the education of parents at the beginning of every school year regarding the process challenge form and the other thing that i guess i didn't make clear before and it i really think it's about the slides that were included by ms schroed attorney schrode is the language in those

123supreme court cases is real and that is the language by which by which we must conduct ourselves so even though i think love you forever is the creepiest book on the face of the planet i can't the law does not permit me to bar access to that book by other families in the community i just and again like you said it's not one passage it's not five passages in a 250 page book it's the entire work that you have to look at and if the entire work appeals to the prairie and interests then we have an issue but if five passages in a book appeal to the prairie and interest that's not the entire material so i get the words on the page of the law and i think we're doing a really good job

124following the law how i feel as a parent and what my kids are permitted to read it's completely different from what you guys just presented to me today does that make sense so i just i'm very grateful that you did today thank you thank you this is giovannelli i'm sorry so and that leads me to think you know back to something i had mentioned earlier regarding i don't know that we have to take the books out but how do we say the content might not be you know at what level the you know how is that how do parents know the content is at the level that it you know that it's you know adult themed or you know how we do how the i mentioned the movies how the movies rate the their movies

125and i know that's i've been told it's different but it's still in a parent's eyes you know what g-rated content is at appropriate for elementary is really important as a for a parent and if you can't read every book to know what that you don't yeah that's impossible so you know how how do we can and i don't want to say control but how do we decide and make sure that we have the books that are at the at the right levels of each of their education you know stature so we're going to invite ms baber to come up for just a second as well to answer that because there are interest levels in there that tie to it's part of what the committee does and i think she would be able to provide a

126little more insight into that so when when they're looking at best practices for selecting during their collection development content appropriateness is one of the big things they got to look for and they are a lot of the review sites will give an interest level of you know a primary or middle grades meaning fourth through sixth grade middle grades plus meaning six through eight or high school level books so they actually do review those as well when they're looking at the book so you might have the color purple which a reading level is a fourth grade reading level but the interest level is definitely adult and that's not appropriate for elementary so that is one of the big things that they really do look at when selecting these materials what is that interest level where is

127it and how appropriate is it and for the elementary schools they're really looking at their their population they're supposed to be looking at the not only the reading levels but those interest levels because you will have a student who is reading at a higher reading level but you need that interest level that is for them and for and so those books are based on and they're put into the libraries that they're appropriate for for overdrive they do have the they are also content access where the elementary schools are only going to see those elementary books they will never have access to anything that is coded a higher reading level so we do make sure that those things are very well looked at when selecting the materials so hope that answers your question thank you so

128much because i think the community doesn't know like i said it earlier you don't know what you don't know so it's important for you to be able to you know educate us so thank you thank you any other comments or questions i'm sorry i think miss guttens had a question no okay thank you very much for a wonderful presentation and for answering a lot of our questions and have a good afternoon okay it's 1 55 and we need to take a 10 minute break for our technology people to reset before we go on to our agenda review so thank you for your patience so at this time awesome yes she's ready oh she's ready okay great thank you okay ladies and gentlemen yes okay okay it's 205 and we're ready to resume our briefing meeting

129for our agenda review sergeant at arms or sergeant-at-arms designee has the front lobby been attended to ensure public access and are we ready to proceed with this meeting thank you very much okay we can proceed with the meeting next on our agenda is the agenda review for this evening's agenda and i'll turn it over now to dr savage thank you madam vice chair so i'll just proceed in order the first question that we received today was item h1 this was pulled prior to the meeting it's the approval of the elementary and secondary school emergency relief esser fund under the american rescue plan act grant please explain why this item was pulled and does it have any effect on bargaining our response today is from ms kennedy ms kennedy briefing which is on march 7th so

130we met with each of you this past week to go over the particulars with the astro 3 application but we wanted to make sure that we also did a presentation and included some of that when we present the strategic plan so that will happen on march 7th and then as far as does it affect bargaining at all it does not thank you miss kennedy you're welcome okay all right my been a vice chair the next item is h4 approval of the florida post-secondary comprehensive transition program the fpctp grant the questions for this item were please provide me with the plan in detail on how you're going to use this nine hundred thousand dollar grant objective four increase workforce success how provide examples objective three increase college and career readiness how give examples objective one increase

131academic achievement how provide the action plan and we are fortunate to have mr todd everly our senior director of the technical college is here to answer those questions hey good morning good morning everyone or afternoon i want to introduce you to somebody here i always like putting the face to the people that actually do the work and make it happen but this is chris christian zimmerman he is our hire coordinator program coordinator for the hire grant he works out of the fort myers technical college site but this is also part of the cape florida technical college's site well so he's going to get into the weeds if you want that i know we responded earlier today on all those questions did you want every one of those they're going to be very lengthy if you

132want every one of those written out that i responded back i was not sure i could go over what this grant's about and so on but if you wanted the four questions that you just wrote down so we'll be more happy to but they're very only through they're right out of the grant was it emailed to us they were emailed to you at 11 o'clock well let me say this well i send it back to staff to send back to you yes ma'am we're happy to provide the written answers that would be great wonderful and i just i actually i just think it's a kind of it looks like it's a really wonderful program and i was like it was really more for the community to know all the good things that you're doing and

133what this is for the community and i can give you a brief overall of that if that is suffice but the higher grant is under the florida center of students with unique abilities it helps students vent electrical disabilities pursue technical trades or certificates to seek the ultimate goal is to seek employment this grant is through the university of central florida and oversees the grant and in short its mission is to get the ever opportunity for everybody to seek employment and this is to give them some unique training to allow them for an employer to see to answer some other questions is this grant's been here since 2020 we've had 17 and if i'm off a little bit christian please let me know sir but we had 17 students already gone through the pro process with

134this grant proposal of the nine hundred thousand dollars we are looking at 14 more new students and add four more each year there are several technical colleges and community colleges that are using this actually there's 17 in the states but if you want me to list the names that are actually using this it's orange county technical college usf st pete there's two in broward county there's tallahassee community college and also lively community college that is also using this grant it's a win-win for this community and it's it's pretty unique what christian does with his staff very small staff to give somebody a chance to contribute that probably wouldn't get a chance to contribute so this is worthwhile for us and i did send that miss giovannelli i sent a pretty lengthy on those four however

135meet the strategic goal and all that it was right out of the grant and i'll be more than happy i did get a sense today awesome so thank you know we don't tell our story enough and this is one of those that i felt that we needed to know more about and and it was and you know it's it's a million dollars almost so in in helping our community and helping our students be successful out of and after high school is really important and one of my main focuses so i just wanted to make others aware of something that i think is a good thing thank you so much kristin is there anything else that you wanted to have that sir i'm not putting you on the spot now but it's okay okay i do

136oh i got to lean in here sorry i used to be in the classroom i didn't have a microphone my voice kind of carries was always the comment i got so yeah this is a phenomenal program and i appreciate you for bringing me in here to talk a little bit more about it and you're exactly right mr givenelli increasing community awareness has been one of my priorities since day one that's why i partner now with the chamber of commerce both in fort myers and cape coral and they have been a phenomenal ally with us in gaining employment opportunities for our students and then also in breaking down some of those presuppositions that people in the community have around hiring an adult with an intellectual disability and i did just want to share one success story

137i was actually talking to dr granster about this we have a young man in our culinary arts he's a product of lee county he graduated from lehigh senior high school his dream job is to work at publix and when you talk to somebody about a dream it's kind of interesting because dreams are subjective you know what my dream may be compared to your dream are different but when we talk to this young man about how you know what publix is a great place to work but what about something else he didn't even anticipate or think about something else because this was his dream and i am proud to say that he has his serve safe certification it's an industry cert that he passed on his own and he will be hired by publix to work

138in the deli so that's just one success story and we have a few of them and they're going to grow every year this program exists so thank you very much thank you for that sharing that story because that's really means a lot because it's what we're supposed to be doing and so i just really really really appreciate that thank you great thank you very much thank you miss kittens and you have to know that the teacher in you just oozes out right golden apple 2016. there you go now you can understand why i wanted to that's right i wanted to introduce this is the gentleman that makes this happen and it's easier for leaders to come up here and talk about it but i want to introduce the people that are actually making the work

139and you can see why we're excited about having christian with our technical college system absolutely and thank you so much board members anything else thank you very much thank you thank you for your all time the next up we have item h6 approval of the english language learners plan for the 2022 to 2025 years the question was in this time of staffing crisis how are we handling this objective how does the lea assist parents and students who do not speak english in the registration process languages spoken by employees at the seo sites include english and spanish where available community language facilitators can also assist with translating or interpreting registration documents as well as transportation other pertinent school information website information is available in english spanish haitian creole so we have dr rivera and saretta ralph

140here to answer today good afternoon how's everybody today hi so we have a bilingual staff in the student enrollment department when parents come into the enrollment department we have staff that are available to assist them oftentimes our staff our parents that come in that need assistance we don't oftentimes know what language they're going to come in speaking many of our parents come in speaking various dialects so even though we are available in various languages that dialect is sometimes another language so we oftentimes rely on google translate and sometimes it takes multiple staff to assist them when we get focus up and going we'll be able to rely on focus to assist them but still it's going to take a as we shall say a village to assist our families we do use our student enrollment

141emails and when parents email in a different language we use google translate again to see what language they're emailing us in and then we'll respond back to them in the appropriate language and get staff to assist i'll let evelyn respond back also on different services that we're able to provide good afternoon we have a plan in place we are contracting a company that is for translations and interpretations you know the difference between both the interpretation is the spoken language and the translation is the written language so we're having almost done with the contract we've been going back and forth with fixing things on their end fixing things on our end and as soon as we finish the contracting our schools and all the district departments are going to have access to translation in 240 license

142languages and dialects okay so this is a very really wonderful step thank you to dr savage and to dr spyro for their support and in this plan and this is going to be a it's going to be a wonderful support for everybody in here any parents that come to student assignment they speak any other dialect they can you know they have a special code their staff and they will call on the phone and there will be another person in a matter of 20 seconds they'll speak the language or the dialect of the parent wonderful miss miss patrick and then miss kittens is that the language line language line solutions yes yes okay miss kittens yes this was my question and thank you so much for for your answer my another question with this though is

143as our demographic and numbers have changed and shifted to diff all of these different dialects and more languages and all of that how how has your has your staff grown to accommodate that i mean besides getting the company that's awesome but i mean i've seen the lines out there and see all the need and i'm just wondering have we continued to provide the need in that department that's necessary we have not grown by much by two teach by two insta specialists that were added to our department last year but we have right now our staff consists of 20 eso professionals that we have to support schools in addition to the paris that the district provides these are supplementary nozzle planting and also the eso specialists that provide support to the teachers they are now shifting

144their role into in addition to provide support to the teachers by modeling lessons and also you know giving you know having those conversations with the teachers about good practices for ells they're also now going into the classroom and providing support to small group of kids they sit down with the students and they model also what they're they support and so specialist is pro is for example teaching a something the content the teacher can observe and also they super professionals can observe in order to expand also best practices into the classroom so and this may be a question to the superintendent and we talk all the time about upward mobility in the district are these positions that are so needed and becoming so necessary are they a step up let's say if you're an esau para

145in a school is there a forward trajectory that you can move up to you know being a translator at the district or doing something do you understand what i'm asking if there's anything like that because the need is not going away and if we make it you know look good to people that maybe want to move up the ladder so i know dr rivera was is probably the most uniquely qualified as you know she really is over the full range of services that we provide and obviously they very con significantly across the biggest training though that we do is really helping all teachers be armed with really an understanding of how to knowing that we can't necessarily replicate as you mentioned you know hundreds of languages and obviously we've seen with like the mayan dialect

146piece that came through or with our guatemalan families you can't find people necessarily that even have that skill set but what can you do and i think that's where the psy up and there's a number of training pieces but in terms of the staffing which i think is specifically the questions the direct services provided by staff dr rivera you have you are you willing to share just kind of some of the different types of positions that we have in the district 2 to provide specialized expertise such as the paraprofessionals the esol paraprofessionals as well as the international in our department partner basically in this in the schools or within your okay yes we have insufficient professionals that are provided by the district and also we have additional supplementary eso paraprofessionals that come from paid from

147title three we also have eso specialists that are based on the district and they are deployed to the schools to support schools we have two compliance specialists that we also look for that fte weighted fte for eso and we have a coordinator and we have an ell instructional leader that her main role is to support the schools and provide the basic the site of training and also orchestrate and also plan and concern and collaborate with other schools in order to provide specific training during plc's and also school school-wide and for them to entire staff those are the basic services that we provide in addition to also provide services for our translations too okay and i guess my major question and you can get back to me whoever but as that population of our school district

148has increased have we increased that staff that's basically what i'm asking miss jordan okay first of all i want to thank both of you for all the work that you do and yes i see the lines and i and i see how quick you try to get through every single one and all the different languages that are standing in line as well so you do an amazing job of that and then dr riviera you also too you hold a is it a monthly meeting where you hold for the parents who need some extra help as far as knowing what's going on with the schools it's a it's not it's like parent university but it's for the ell talk about the eastern institute yelled parent institutes yes so you do you do hold that for our

149parents we do do need to understand more of the things that we are doing which i think is amazing as well absolutely so thank you for for doing that in addition to that we also hosted an elm institute for parents to so to help them understand about the different programs that we provide to the students so they know how to use the program we know them to learn the benefits of the program so they can also support the students at home also correct and it's in english and spanish as well i mean it's different languages multi languages okay thank you for that thank you i'm sorry board members if i could add just one more thing i would be remiss if i don't we have as far as the district growing we enrolled 1200 students

150new to the district for this current school year in the month of january alone during that month 160 of those students came to the district with ieps so of those students those are that's the population that's currently coming new to our district with that our population of students we're growing our district is continuing to grow our staff is staying the same too in student enrollment we've enrolled currently for this current upcoming school year for 22-23 we started the application period january 17th there are two students just throwing it out there that haven't done their enrollment for next year yet are they about five twelve thousand plus students have got their applications in when bethany had her had her overdue books there is a very specific i'm telling 12 000 students have entered their applications for

151next school year and they've already been processed this is the last week so not only are we getting those students processed for next school year we're we're getting 1200 students in a month new to the school year so we're we have the same number of staff but we're continuing to grow and i know this school district is continuing to grow and i continue to say that and i know each of our departments and our schools are growing and i know we're we are really really struggling as a district in every place but i just i would be remiss if i did not bring that up thank you thank you for your time yeah good thank you thank you for that yes miss kittens and it i don't know i'm just jumping way outside the box

152now but it seems like years ago i used to work as a part-time sub at the post office in chicago and i bring this up because during that period of time like around the holidays with christmas and all that type of thing and there was a different pay differential for that time period do we do that have we looked at that you know between january and march when they are just flat out with you know 1200 more students do we offer some type of a you know peak supplement without getting too deep in the operational leads on this side because obviously we've we've had these conversations with our situation here i just it would be remiss today we've certainly had those conversations about peak time what's the overtime what does that look like what are

153additional groups that potentially can help with that like for example just to your point was getting so when i was a back in administrator at a middle school i remember for student enrollment you know normally who would enroll students throughout the year was our guidance counselor we had one guidance counselor in the school the back up to that was the assistant principal which was me so when new families would enroll in us i we would build their course schedule we would do those kinds of things however when we'd enroll an entire new sixth grade coming that middle school it was all hands on deck we had teachers trained so essentially we expanded when i did an analysis of a supervisor of elections office in our state they are an incredibly agile organization because they their

154permanent staff footprint is usually very very small but they expand to thousands of employees both volunteer and permanent extra pay and things of those natures so there's always that analysis to try to be responsive to our piece the other piece that we do we didn't discuss yet is just how do we continue to adapt the processes we use to increase efficiency of our side of it leveraging technology things that are more that don't require the same interaction point when you are studying the people who are walking in through the lobby who could have done it virtually why did they not using things such as virtual so they can actually have a live person but on the other end of a computer instead of having to do it during regular office hours there's a litany of

155things i could go through different conversations about that piece but the reality of it is just like we're seeing here in the district with the growth it's very significant because that's happening in our schools and again we are short hundreds of teachers and sadly so those are just all the competing things that we need when we have many students it's a good problem to have that we have more students moving to lee county the other piece that mentioned by both of our two speakers here today is the diversity of the students that we are we're seeing in lee county and meeting those needs as well that continues to be our work and we'll continue to evaluate all those those pieces so thank you ladies for answering the questions and then some thank you very much

156okay so great the next item we have j1 approval of personnel recommendations the question was please update on my suggestion to include in the lms the ability for part-time subs i made the suggestion our last meeting was told was possible add one line to sub lms process advertising and communicating the availability to the general public and then how do the change in assignments from teachers affect class coverage i.e more classes to be covered and then i'll the second half of that i'll break up so the talk about part-time substitutes are all part-time so the half-day substitutes have always been in existence that's something if a teacher's out for a half day and they use lms we try to get a half-day substitute however advertising it or bringing it to people's attention is something we'll certainly

157work on and i can work with payroll because lms is not in hr it's in payroll to put that word out so that's the answer to that comment the coverage we have four people transferring to jobs one to an athletic director i think two to coaches and all instructional personnel right now are providing coverage even if they're in a coaching job so because it's all hands on deck so that's my response to that yeah and i would understand that they would be covering classes as well but it kind of speaks to to what i was saying before if you move a teacher that has you know let's say seven periods or whatever of classes and they move into another position how many of those classes are now left for the teachers that are already covering

158for for the other classes do you understand what i'm saying i do exactly i mean i'm just looking at the changes of assignment one's at colusa middle she's promoting a teacher to a coach so i'm sure that principles that's an internal that's not one person going from one school to another one is going from being a teacher to an athletic director which is essentially a promotion in some respects one is going from being a teacher to intervention support specialist which is a critical position with mtss and the final one is going from being a teacher to a math coach at james stevens internally so they're all internal moves they're not people going from one school to another and within the school then they still have the same number of classes to cover that they're eligible

159to do and the second part really had to do i think it was either the superintendent or dr spyro mentioned at our last meeting when i suggested about district staff going out to help and the answer was if the administrator of the school asks for that help then they would go out and my response was i would like to see how many classes that equates to at the end of the week in any period that we have somebody other than someone in that building covering a class may potentially save us a teacher that leaves because of the stress right so i think if we say to the public we are doing this and in the last week we covered you know 50 classes throughout the district by district staff that is a palatable easy to

160understand i agree with you that everyone would go great they're all all hands on decks sure truly okay that's an academic services function but i'll get with dr spyro to get that information for you absolutely thank you rob if you want to hang out for just a second we do have a big second part of this and it's it's pretty lengthy so rather than reading it verbatim the basic thrust of this was again this given elias was actually your question so the idea of not making any administrative changes at the current piece until the dr bernier is involved and just wanted to kind of highlight from my perspective on this and then if you want to go into more depth on this you know certainly you're in the question it was raised basically the intention

161of a new person coming in having say over staff and so forth one of the reasons through our transition time that we have maintained a lot of communication is so that there is a natural onboarding of dr bernier obviously he's not under contract at this time and until he is you know obviously the work of the district has to move forward at the same time i if anyone is aware i am well aware of the difficulty of when you go into a system not just the people in it but the structure that is there you have as a chief executive you have to be able to do the work and based on the wide array of experiences that dr bernier has had in different districts he's seen the way it works a lot of different

162areas he i would certainly encourage that he needs to be given every opportunity to do the work the way he sees fit it's a balancing act from my perspective of basically the work of the district has to proceed we it's it's we're in february right now if he's in place maybe say may that's a significant period of time the district has to continue doing work but i am very discerning in terms of like there's there's a position in mind right now a director position that i'm thinking of that just i want to make sure he has every opportunity to understand what what is happening in the district and if he has different concepts for those kinds of things so that said i just want to give you my take on that piece i know that

163you had specific asks in there feel free to to eliminate those questions now for the group's conversation i think that's what your question really had but i don't know that was really for rob but i want to make sure he was here in case there was any aspect that was specific to staff that they could address based on the agenda for today that he was available for that as well so my concern has is that we're hiring people at the district level right now that it's something that may see maybe that dr bernier should be doing and my concern is why we haven't had this position filled for now well over almost i think going on almost two years so why push it through now why not wait until dr bernier's can make that a

164call now if if he was here i would ask him you know to work with you and y'all work work that out and then i would respect that but i just don't want i don't want to see a bunch of hires happen in the next two or three months that he has no control of that he wants to that he would want to change or you know or actually circumvent him from being able to change that and so that is my concern you know i thinking about how when you came in and how you tried to make changes and you weren't allowed to do that i mean at this point in time you're just a placeholder so i think that we need to really respect the new superintendent and in doing so i think that

165we need to really evaluate any moves that are happening here at the district level of course i want to be really clear that nothing where the need is at the school level when they need to hire somebody that i would not want to touch that with a 10-foot pole because that's really where the greatest need is and i recognize that and respect that and wouldn't want that you know i want them to have that ability to do so and because we that we're all short in schools and so if they can get a teacher even for the last three months of school i would never want to stop that so that's really my concern and i don't know if anybody else at the on the board here even shares the same concern but it's something

166that i thought of recently and i just don't want to see a bunch of new hires coming in at the district level and dr bernier not have the you know the ability to oversee any of that and so that's my question if anybody has the appetite for that i would love to know miss jordan may i think that and i believe that he's watching this briefing as well so dr bernier is aware of i believe what has taken place here and of course at this time until that contract is signed dr savage is the superintendent and at such time when he does come on that power will be shifted but he is being responsible as far as keeping us up to date being participating and listening in and clearly clearly stated that is what his

167intention was to make sure that he's that he was going to listen into this afternoon and this evening as well as our one-on-ones and so what is coming before us and our one-on-ones through the superintendent dr bernier is definitely aware of and he has has knowledge of that because he's listening to the our conversations plus he has his one-on-ones with dr savage on a weekly basis as well i just wanted to put that out there thank you miss kittens i was going to say that as well that dr bernier high if you're out there is watching and participating and does meet with the superintendent on the regular basis and also the fact that he has stated that he is working on his his plan i forget what you call it the day one plan and

168all that and i will say one of the things that kind of swayed my vote with him was my one-on-one with him when i discussed some of these very things and his answers were very concrete were very deliberate and so in in the meantime i think the collaboration between the two we've talked a lot on this dais about a smooth transition and i think we need to work on making sure that is just as smooth as possible and you know handing off the baton and i'm sure it won't be dropped so thank you board members other comments okay i you know dr savage is not only a placeholder he is our superintendent now legally and the work of the district has to continue it'll probably be close to three months before dr bernier is free

169to come here and be sworn in at which time he becomes the superintendent so i don't think that we should hold up the progress of the district as as things are changing and we're growing and we need help not only in schools but at the district level also so i support dr savage's personnel recommendations and looks to me like most of them are from in-house anyway and people are already doing the job and you know now we'll be basically have the title and the pay to go with that so i appreciate your caution but i think we need to keep moving forward in spite of the fact that we have hired a new superintendent who is in contract negotiations now so and thank you thank you for that but my concern you know i don't

170want to take away from the need but i mean we need to pay our teachers and staff more and we keep hiring at the district level and not fulfilling the need the real need then it causes me to pause so that's where i just want to make sure that dr bernier has the full authority to be able to proceed and that's my concern is we start filling positions that have been vacant for a long time and all of a sudden they're important that is alarming when the job has been done and being in and is being done it's not stopping progress at all it's just allowing the new superintendent to not be circumvented that's my biggest concern so i think i may have something that would help on that ms juvenelli so one of the

171issues is that every year the way we basically do reappointments that comes into play in the latter part of this of our year here so that's right around the may june area which then begin in july is when the new contract year starts so it's not uncommon and very typical for us that during our adjustments if a person wants to make adjustments where they believe like for example when i had the 4 million reinvestment plan that involved certain positions of the district going back out into schools a lot of the things that we're talking about right now during this budget season are all about those things dr bernier the day he walks in is simply going to need time as well and so that's a big part of the reason why he is he's very

172actively involved in learning and listening of what's going on i would just say that he's also very clear about his boundaries of his role that in his current state where he's negotiating contract and trying to get through that it would be inappropriate for him to provide direction to staff or to me that's just not his role right now and he's been very respectful to the whole process of acknowledging that at the same time i know very clearly that he is our next superintendent and so i am making every effort as he is we are working collaboratively as much as possible so that it's not a situation as what you're describing where i'm going to point a bunch of folks and then all of a sudden he's going to inherit a difficult situation that is absolutely

173the last on the last thing that i would consider doing but i will say that like if a person appointed now this week or next week or so forth they still get they still have their renewal period just as everyone else does the only people who don't have the renewal period that falls in those same windows has to do with like people on negotiated contracts like the attorneys myself we're the ones who kind of fall outside any any specific contracted work that is beyond that is the it's a very small number and so any adjustments with the budget if people were to decide you know i kind of like these two departments other to consolidate them that's the work we're going through with the budget and certainly we'll have lots of opportunity to hear whatever

174suggestions have come up through department managers directors executives and chiefs but that's a normal process that we can go through annually so i hope that helps a little bit on that side yes it does thank you so much so and i just have to ask one question so the 4 million 400 million dollar savings that you were you were you able to implement that savings no it was not that's all about a million we were able to to to invest about a million thank you okay any anything else thank you mr dota we appreciate you hey okay okay two next one up is k2 approval of expenditure for itn number n207390dg e-rate network infrastructure equipment the question was please remind me how much infrastructure equipment that was installed last year and at what facilities we

175here to have chief dwayne alton here good afternoon afternoon so when we the first question of remind you how much was installed off of last year's period it's actually waiting to be installed it's actually waiting to be delivered because we're having supply chain challenges so they've been delayed and we've had to get extensions from the federal government on e-rate in order to get those but if those were here we had it's 404 piece of eq 404 pieces of equipment going into 66 sites so i didn't know if you wanted me to read them to you or if you'd like me to just drop me an email 466 please i just i knew we did this last year and so i was just actually more curious and it's you know it's a lot of money and

176i like for people to know sure and we do this on an annual basis we replace equipment on an aging cycle so your network equipment that this is you know typically your five-year-old equipment would be getting replaced this year probably more towards the summer than during the school year this year but we continue to do that on a five-year planning cycle for most of that equipment thank you okay you're welcome thank you any other questions no thank you thank you mr alton the next is l3 approval to piggyback the school district of manatee county itb number 22-0004-mr bleacher repair services the question is this a sales tax expenditure if so please provide the url connected to change exchange website and our response today is from the lovely and talented ms kelly lecher from our budget

177department thank you all so no we are not using sales tax dollars to cover the bleacher repairs this is an ongoing project from well before we received the sales tax it's a safety compliance thing and so we continue to do that without sales tax dollars we'll continue using our regular dollars to do that for me i guess and my question was when we did get the sales tax and you looked at all the things we needed to do wasn't was there a decision that something like this could move over to that side for sales tax or or prior to the sales tax because i wasn't here did you have that list already set up so basically what we did when we were going out for this sales tax is we got with the maintenance department

178and all of our safeties and departments and stuff and we you know we were so far behind in our maintaining of our schools and we said if we got this money what would we want to utilize it for what would be our priorities and based on that we went through and said you know all of our schools need new carpeting all of our new our schools need you know this safety feature and we went through and prioritized things based on what have we not been able to keep up with that really needs to be done and that's how we set the priorities of the things that we would put into the sales tax something like the bleacher repairs that's an ongoing project and you know we could move it over but we had those other

179pressing things and we were already taking care of this so instead of moving it over we said what can we do with the additional dollars that we haven't been able to do and that's what we prioritized the second part of the question had about the plumbing and repair services is that is that also i guess the same type of thing plumbing ms malay here for that one yeah that was that was based on the contract so i didn't see a question on sales tax with that one so thank you're welcome thank you ms lecher and now miss susan lay for this item this is l6 and this is the approval to renew the plumbing repair services itn hello since this is a renewal of a three-year contract for three additional years was there a new

180bid process in light of significant economic changes since 2019. miss malay the request is for the renewal for a one-year renewal period so it's not a three-year renewal period so it was the original base contract was for three years and the request before the board is to renew a one-year agreement and it would be in our best interest to proceed with the bid that was previously awarded and the current awarded vendor has agreed to do so that we believe that would be the best approach and if i may yes please and i'm not questioning your decision on why i guess i'm looking at the contracts that are three years that we automatically do every year and then at the end of the three years when they come up now in this particular economic time and

181under the circumstances do we kind of take another look at them to see is that the best thing for right now based on the economy and all the things that we're going through that's basically what i'm asking at what point do we say okay so let's just take one step back and look at this do we just automatically do it again whether it be one year three years and that's kind of my question right so there's never just an automatic renewal it's a very thoughtful process that the department that's using the services is given a questionnaire about the services about the vendor's performance and in addition we ask about market conditions when we're doing a new bid i don't think we do that necessarily as we're doing a renewal the what we're seeing with current

182market conditions is we are asking our standard processes to ask vendors to renew as they originally signed up for so when the solicitation goes out they're aware of how many years of renewal years there are they're even given the option to you know they can state they want to increase of five percent in in the third or fourth year or something to that effect but at this point in time the vendors that are unable to commit to renewing so our process is to contact the vendors a couple months in advance ask them if they're interested in renewing at the same terms and conditions which includes pricing and when they come back and say yes that means they've accepted the terms we've accepted the terms that we all agreed up upon at the beginning in these

183market conditions we are seeing vendors come back and say no i can't hold prices so we do give an opportunity for vendors who have manufacturers supplying their products they would if they would request a price increase they could provide us a letter from the manufacturer of the percentage of price increase and that price increase can be passed along to the district if it's approved so during that renewal period we are seeing the opportunity for the vendors to come forward with the price increase request or to decline to renew and in this case the vendor agreed to renew with the same terms and conditions so we're a thumbs up with that at the same cost same yes okay so what what about you mentioned the questionnaire and that it's done for new contracts what if the

184questionnaire were done for you know renewal that type we have two different questionnaires one for renewals and one for new okay and in for the renewal one if they say well we can't really match this and you put it out for bid does that positive questionnaire have any input on the contract for that person in other words if other people decide they're going to you know participate does that give them any so it's a clean slate at each time a solicitation goes out so it's not like we would hold it against somebody because they increased their prices they would come back with their new prices and if somebody else came back with a better price you know they may not receive an award at the following time okay all right thank you all right thanks

185all right the next item madam vice chairs l8 approval of expenditure for the itn number n197369rc which is the locksmith installation services the questions are like the total locksmith costs expenses for each school year over the past five years and to not include materials i would like separate material costs for the same years i would like that separated out by year and by labor and materials please advise how many employees working for the district that locksmith is in their job description where they are housed in the locksmith maintenance department or where who are those employees working under so today i have mr frederick ross our executive director over capital operation planning and project management good afternoon recently holly sent you an email with that with a spreadsheet with all that locksmith data so you can

186review it's the last five years one thing i can comment on that you'll see that all of the expenditure for the outside contracted services is in is within your fiscal year 2021. that was the new requirements for the marjorie snowman douglas high school act for securing the schools and that's when all that expenditure was submitted outside of that year no expenditure was submitted on this contract again this is contract for emergency basis when or when the work exceeds the current staff and as it relates to that current staff there are three individuals with locksmith in their position titles there's two locksmith and one lock and hardware specialists and this team handles those locksmiths and these of the districts and it's only if and when we go over what they can handle we do outside contracting

187they are supervised by assistant supervisor or maintenance craft who has additional responsibility outside of locksmith any other questions on that any following so yes so for four employees is that what you said right two in hardware locksmiths and then they are supervised by assistant supervisor who has other responsibilities other than lock crafts maintenance crafts and that's other not just locksmith but it's just what that work is correct so really three dedicated staff there are only locksmith activities so isn't there someone also being trained or is that included to someone that's being trained i have no knowledge of anyone being trained these are the three in those positions yeah so yeah so i have the i have all four of the names and so there's four actually and then that and then there's the mr james

188the supervisor right there is a supervisor over master crafts as well that's five so my concern is that we have a lot smith department and i don't see the need for this contract and i won't be supporting this i won't be supporting this renewal thank you especially after 10 million dollars that they received last year for installation thank you're welcome okay all right item l10 and this is the approval of the revised phase one pre-construction budget estimate for the riverdale high school renovation the question was please explain why sales tax money cannot be used why can't sales segment be used up front when agenda items are referred to please provide specific previous documents as part of current information and we have ms kelly lecher again welcome back hello okay so sales tax money can be

189used and will be used for parts of riverdale so what we've done is you remember the new legislation that passed that in order to keep with the student cost per student stations we have to do a cops so the i sought committee when we met with them was having grave concerns about so much debt being put into the into the sales tax and then the last you know couple of years of the sales tax not being used anything for debt so we realigned our debt so that we could use sales tax but we weren't limiting it to the time frame of the sales tax so we go out for longer debt and while we have sales tax we can pay off portions of that debt and then use another funding source after that to complete

190that payment so sales tax is being our that is part of what we're using to pay this and then we'll switch to another funding source after the sales tax it's just not making it so we have to stay within the sales tax limit which increases the amount of debt for that time frame okay so can i make this really basic so i can understand we'll go to kindergarten okay okay so we decide to build or do renovations and we take out cops to pay for it correct which is a debt correct and we decide to take a portion of that and pay it off with the sales tax yes after the sales tax is done whatever remains of that debt we have to find other funding sources to pay that correct okay leads me to

191another conversation but not today okay thank you oh and then there was a second part to that asking about providing previous documents yeah basically what i was saying when when i pulled that up on the weekend to look at it the new what do you call it proposal was there and it referred to a date and all i'm saying is can we just if we had had both documents because i had to go and find it and then print it not that i shouldn't have to do that yes but i'm just saying to have it right there because then the only real change was that moving of the fields and i see my friend standing there waiting to discuss the movement of the field yeah so it is in there it's just not on the

192external board docks if you go in through the internal board docks it's under the administrative portion on the bottom which gives you all of the previous documents that were approved and come before the board so it's on the internal version not the external version and i'm saying for the public as well transparency we're making this change to have both of them right there would just be you know real simple and listen and i'll let mr frederick handle that one mr boss you're passing that off too easily i can check what's to happen see if we can post that externally as well yeah just to have it up the end and well i don't know if your answer can answer this part but when you looked at the two the 299 thousand for moving the fields

193can and you may have to call my other friends i'm gonna need scott for that to come up but that was the question i had and did we not plan that in the beginning that in the overall plan that we were going to move the fields and yeah i'm sorry you could have started earlier you know i was going to call you because i saw you dr savage board members scott rickenbacker director of construction dr banu the 299 000 is a request and the vehicle right now is the phase one approval we haven't gotten into phase two which is a gmp right we're in the process of doing the on-site work which we'd like to accomplish over the summer but that gmp won't be available for about two two and a half more months in

194order to get this work and do something this summer i had to get 299 000 to relocate a practice field for the school so we got the county to take out one softball field we're going to move that practice in order to have some time frame for the grass to become established so they can use it this summer i have to act now otherwise i'd push the entire school program a full year back okay so is this something and i'm not pointing a finger i'm just asking for understanding when the project was decided in the very beginning and planned was that something that was already in there funny you should ask that because the project didn't get decided what we were doing only two a month but like every other project i'm given the football

195and i've got to make magic happen so my team is making magic happen so in order to have football practice not destroy their permanent field which is what happens when you don't have a practice field your permanent field gets destroyed and it's useless for the season we're trying to get some work done this summer which is the major parking lot renovation work in the front of the school so it's a multi-year project but no this couldn't have been determined because we didn't even have remember the characters we brought forward to you there was about four different characters as to what we were going to do that only got decided about two months ago if i'm maybe a month and a half two months ago so and just out of curiosity where so the football field

196is here and all the portables and stuff are here are you looking at putting it north of the football fields this is where the second softball field is in the back they have two softball fields there so we're commandeering one softball field it's back behind the portables and that will become the football practice field but i need these months to get that sprigs the grass to grow so that it can be utilized and that allows me then when we get into our phase 2a which will be the foundations of structure and the off-site work that allows me to go in there and take that area where the practice field is now coming into the next phase which will be over the summer and make it a football practice field so i'm making a football practice

197field now with the 299 thousand 000 that frees up the area so when the gmp comes in in about two and a half months i can go right to foundation and structural work on site get that done over the summer as well so it's about not pushing a lot of the site work into a whole another year it's trying to advance and get the practice field done so i can commandeer the area now once the gmp for phase 2a comes on to get that work immediately gone and i will make an appointment to go walking with you just to see someone give you a shovel hey as long as i got a heart i got a shovel at home right here i'll bring my own shovel all right okay so that's the reason for that

198we're just trying to make best use of this coming summer when the school was shut down okay thank you have a good day and we found out 2014 to 2016. we're trying to nail down the wrestling building age thank you insurance shows it on the books at 14 yet we have fish that shows 2016 so suffice to say between 14 and 16 the wrestling building was commissioned so real quick because i was like i don't recall a new wrestling building but i know i so i've had parents complain that the air conditioning wasn't working so that's why i was curious how old the ac would be then they went there we can find out about that i don't have that answer but that was a building that was funded with the community funds and built

199out there in that year so it's not part of the renovation there was nothing that stated that i had a renovation need in that building but i can certainly get with maintenance and ask him to look into the air conditioning yeah so and this may not be a question to you but so how does that work if a community wants to build a wrestling auditorium or how does that work exactly with the school and in fundraising and so forth and how does that work like and then another question if the ac is an issue you know does that become our issue through tax you know our the sales tax fixing the air conditioning or maintaining you know where does that how does that all work if it was you've got about six questions i'm sorry

200i'll peel it like a banana number one yes they can fundraise they have to follow building code they have to follow all of our processes for building that building and getting inspected number two once it's on our site then it goes on our books and fish so it has to be registered in fish in terms of the maintenance sometimes kelly will say how are you going to sustain that if we give you permission to build something like that how are you going to sustain those payments so that becomes a finance so okay yes we maintain it once we take them unless there's opportunities with finance where they can show they can maintain that on their own great miss kittens i know did you see did you all see she looks like miss kittens yes ma'am

201she gave me that teacher okay anyway a quick quick question though so this is phase one and are we looking at anything else coming up in the other phases that are net that's not out there now that would increase the price sounds like somebody wants some erican didn't obviously no we're in the phase now where we're designing so as much as i'd like to come for one phase two which is an entire design and in gmp it's going to be multiple gmps but that's what i don't understand so in other words like if i was going to build a house and you tell me it's going to cost 200 000. and the first phase you need a hundred thousand for me and i give you that and you start building and you say well for

202phase two it's going to take you an extra hundred thousand so the house is going to cost you three okay well let me give you an answer to that quickly and you're you're on point i get exactly what you're saying i can delay this school for a year and have all the drawings done 100 percent it's going to push your 5-year plan a year and it's going to cost you more because you're waiting a year okay because of it you know this is similar to bonita springs high school went back a year because there were delays there were delays in the community and the permitting and so on and so forth there comes a point where if you want 100 documents which is what our original phasing the process was phase one move right to

203phase two with a full gmp that takes at least a year of design time so if if i just got the answer two months ago on what we're doing i've still got ten more months before drawing so basically the whole summer the whole fall everything shifts so i'm trying to keep on your five-year timeline again i get the football i run with it if all of those steps and processes needed to get that moving on a time frame don't occur it's creeping up on me and i'm the guy that has to make the magic happen my staff and our design and our team bottom line is we really because we're trying to fast track it we really don't know that final where it's going to be that is correct that's all i ask you thank

204you thank you thank you mr rickenbacker you're welcome mr ross did you have anything else to add to that i believe those were all the questions that we had today you know how quickly they run away yes okay thank you next on the agenda is public comment for agenda items only attorney dupree bruno please address the item of public comment thank you madam chair school board policy provides the opportunity at this point in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter on this meeting's agenda if you completed a public comment card please put it in the basket provided please be advised that the board will not respond during public comment to remarks made by speakers speakers who failed to follow proper decorum in the chambers will be ruled out of order any speaker continuing

205with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone for board policy 1.11 and may be removed from the chambers there is one warning for board policy 1.11 the time per speaker is 3 minutes you will find a countdown on the big screen in the front of the room once your time has elapsed the microphone will automatically shut off please state your name when you approach the microphone and please follow the staff's direction when lining up and madam chair let me check how many individuals we have today and i seem to be having some computer six six well the six individuals who signed up because i'm not able to open up my cheat sheet let's see if it's popular for me looks like i have it so i have them right here if you want

206me to thank you for the names there's denise denise nystrom tara jenner jamie miller edward dress edward dress robert roper robert roper and christopher and chrissy divijelli thank you very much dr savage can we get the light sound in the back random chair yes i'm oh yeah back there yeah get the lights on the lights are not on in the pace address it right now thank you for your patience thank you i can't hear you he's the best denise nystrom lee county resident i have been i have been attending school board meetings now for almost a year and i would have to say that a big concern is the number of parents compared to the number of district staff that are on committees while i appreciate the presentation that was given today and i have

207read thoroughly through every statute and bill that was presented i get the sense that the end result will be that the district will not change its procedures with regard to the form about the books but rather to explain to us the constituents why you do not have to i am here to represent parents and community members and to ask you to look at the composition of all of your committees and to involve many more parents as well as community members from all cultures and all walks of life in fact i'm asking you to go to a lottery system so more people have an opportunity to participate on the various committees because many parents and community members will otherwise not get a chance it could serve as a cultural change to have a multitude of people

208at the table learning to compromise with each other i believe that given the opportunity miss nystrom i think your microphone just went off so it's not her fault i don't think they froze the time sir -huh here comes a new one i'm not even going to start over just kidding okay i believe that given the opportunity people working together can reach solutions that will be workable for everybody the parents bill of rights is a bill for all parents and all parents should have the right to have their voices heard i am requesting that instead of the status quo and asking parents to submit a form to complain about one book in an attempt to have it removed that a committee with equal number of parents and school district members be put on a committee to

209solve the problem together the board has been asked on numerous occasions to place the parents rights bill in a place in the code of conduct where it is guaranteed that parents will see it so that they know their rights that hasn't happened yet today there was a whole conversation with regard to where you could find the link to object to the text to the books overall am asking for a change of culture and to create a culture of mutual respect thank you thank you good afternoon hi tara jenner you always state that the best interest of the children is your priority removal of challenged materials should occur immediately upon a challenge until the review process is complete as this is the most child focused and minimizes any repercussions for the children as well as the

210district from law enforcement and state attorney action under the obscenity laws should a book should be proven to be obscene this does not violate the rights protected by the first amendment as noted by mr patricka there are many other locations and resources from which children and parents may access the materials pending review just simply state this book is pending review and people will know to go elsewhere the process listed in the statute is a minimum requirement not the only way to approach things it is disingenuous to state that there have been no requests for review of books that is a logistic cover your ass rather than looking at the intent of the statute requiring a mechanism for challenging materials the email with the list of concerning books was mentioned that was mentioned was clearly a

211challenge and should have reasonably been approached as such the responsibility and burden for making sure any obscene non-instructional material are not accessible to students lives with the board under 847.012 the state obscenity laws through the schools are limited to instructional material that are designed to serve as a major tool for the instruction of a subject or course that is not a blanket exemption from all material available in the libraries to imply all items in the library meet the instructional standard is patently absurd peering interest refers to items that are erotic lascivious abnormal unhealthy degrading shameful or morbidly interesting interest showing a morbid interest in nudity sex or excretion potentially offensive examples include sexual acts normal or perverted actual or simulated masturbation excretiatory functions lewd except exhibition of genitals and sadomasochistic sexual abuse the lack of

212serious literary artistic political or scientific values based on a reasonable person standard is the rule under miller it's not utterly without redeeming social value test scotus actually rejected that standard as being too broad and clarified that was to be formed that was the standard was to be based on a forum community and not a national standard the review committee makeup as listed is not representative of the forum community as it is too school district heavy and not representative of the parents the communities and those who are a greater percentage of the human the community more than the 50 percent ms nystrom even suggested it should also be noted that there is a november 20 2001 doj opinion that specifically addresses the miller test thank you miss jenner thank you miss jenner good afternoon hello good

213afternoon not working oh of course it's not hello hello i just need to be louder i guess that's not nervous at all good afternoon my name is jamie miller and i am part of the florida citizens alliance kids first team i want to make sure to say thank you to the curriculum team for their presentation about the concerns for instructional or media materials i also want to make sure it's understood that florida citizens alliance is non-partisan so in no way are our efforts a means to impose political beliefs on others the mission of flca is to improve florida's k-12 education by uniting and empowering teachers students and parents with that said i have concerns the use of the word period on your first amendment slide means to encourage excessive interest in sexual matters so in

214order for material to be obscene and unprotected under the first amendment it must encourage excessive interest in sexual matters i have concerns that most of the books in question are prurient specifically tony morrison's the bluest eye it includes passages about incest and child rape and is on the american library association's annual list of most commonly banned books there are currently 46 copies and eight of your high schools on pages 84 130 147 162 166 and 181 there are graphic passages about sexual encounters with children how does a book like this not encourage excessive interest in sexual matters and i have it written out right here as miss patrick has stated and i rarely agree with her there are parameters or restrictions set on each student's chromebook so that they may not access explicit websites via

215district property why not implement the same parameters for books our initiative isn't about book banning though this is about protecting children from being exposed to harmful materials that their parents are not informed about this presentation was the first time i heard about the access that i as a parent have to launchpad why provide just an opt-out this process should be opt-in only to protect children from being exposed to explicit materials without parental consent where can we find a solution we would be more than willing to sit down with dr spyro and team to formulate a plan that satisfies all parties can we create or revise your committee to include parents which include team members from our kids first team to provide feedback there is a time and place for children to be exposed to explicit

216materials and to have certain conversations the time is when the parents say so and the place is at home at the discretion and supervision of the parents or guardians thank you miss miller good afternoon board dr edward grass first of all thank you for letting me see your faces so i know who is talking the dropping of the mask is a good thing as a group and as individuals we're not here to censor books we are protecting our children as we would from alcohol guns drugs and sex the district itself censors many materials that come in through the doors we find that this is the process we want to follow as well there have been several key issues discussed this afternoon and i find it more than coincidental that one of them is that this

217presentation the powerpoint on screening the curriculum preempted pastor roper's presentation which was scheduled for last week and then canceled so that it'll be presented this evening i don't know if this was on purpose or whatever reason was behind it does this now place the board in good stead with parents who object to the pornographic materials that now are exposed in the schools in the district does it cover accountability when the school says look what we've done to clear this material from the schools time will tell the second coincidence was if i may use a political term that's common today the intersectionality of mental health the media we've been discussing in the schools and sel all of these things serve to what i consider denigrate the students mental health there has been no dialogue correlating the

218material in the district and the behavior of the school district itself is contributing to the mental health or the lack of of the teenagers in this district i have a very acute personal awareness of dealing with teens who have attempted suicide i've had the sad task to pronounce the ones who've actually completed their attempts and are no longer with us we're all responsible for the condition of these students what we present to them in this district controls what they think and a lot of what they think is what they read what they hear from their peers and what they hear from their teachers do you really think that supporting an lgbtq movement that according to this quote from the trevor project and 2019 survey on lgbtq youth mental health youth respondents identified with more than

219100 sexual orientations and more than 100 gender identities being a teenager is a mental health issue and we're certainly not helping that out by throwing all these confusing things at them thank you good afternoon christine divijelli first i actually would like to say thank you to all of you ladies up there because you guys did a very good job with the mental health conversation i watched that on my way here today and while i was getting well just at home while i was doing something and i was actually really proud of you guys you did a really good job i up thank you for that it was a very healthy conversation and you know it gives me hope that perhaps we can have more of those moving on to policy 2.18 i have some issues

220with this it was mentioned that the ad hoc committee is monthly or as needed what constitutes as needed and is this like yeah i just would like to know what constitutes that in regards to the committee makeup i'd like to know where the parents are i and that big long list of people i didn't see parents anywhere i heard someone mention that the schools pick books based on their students i'd like a little bit of clarification on that or a broader definition or then we were also told that parents were told that they can flag certain books and the kids will not be able to get you know to see those books what's stopping my child from going into the media center grabbing a book that i have flagged and reading it right there in

221the media center are there any provisions in place to stop my kids from doing that i'd also like to know the building principles we were told that the district is approving the books but then the building principles are approving the actual list of books who is it who actually is ordering the books is it the district or is it the building principles and who's reviewing them next one is in regards to reading inter reading and interest levels i would like it to be explained to me how killing mr griffin is at an elementary reading level because we know that this book is currently at trafalgar elementary and rhema c page it's also in a bunch of high schools because it's about the premeditated murder of a teacher by their students then i'd like to know

222why the book kite runner is appropriate reading material for anyone especially a middle schooler when this book talks about child trafficking child rape and murder i'm going to really quickly move on with the last 40 seconds that i have onto the locksmith because that is the very first experience i ever had with you people was the locksmith contract and i would just like to say this that there has been consistent controversy pertaining to the locksmith contract and millions of dollars have already been spent on labor alone parts and tools were supplied by the district which means that we the people paid for those too what about i'd like to know what about the complaint from former employee jim carrasco has this been addressed yet especially specifically in regards to this contract thank you good afternoon

223my name is robert roper i'd like to speak about the challenge to instructional material presentation it was just made it says it's on can we maybe i need to scrunch down can i start again i'll scrunch down my name is robert roper i'd like to talk about the challenge to instructional material presentation that was made this presentation was a beautiful example of a platitude policy that has very little to do with the reality of the issue thank you i thank god for you miss kittens today you asked the pertinent questions you did a great job just because a law allows for you to do something does not require you to do it if the text analysis process that we just saw is working today shows how woefully inadequate the process is for miss patricka protecting

224the first amendment what a dramatic way to make a presentation look like it hit the mark they even said they restrict by age by topic and by content in their own presentation the question is by what standard and your point about the schools protecting kids against material that they can get outside the school was disingenuous at best bring in the drugs the alcohol the tobacco and hardcore porn because they can get all that outside the schools anyway does all this text analysis book review include finding other materials that are better without the objectionable materials that maybe do not include killing a teacher or sex with animals or using a grown man using ice cream to get a little girl to spread her legs can we look for something better than what we have does that

225is that part of the process i'm going to end with this you guys talked about this book today it's perfectly normal you review you remove this book you censored it i'm going to show you how the whole process is flawed and has failed and has fallen flat on its face this book i found out just before i came here is in your libraries it's not the store it's written by the same author illustrated by the same illustrator as this book it's the companion book to it but it's written for four-year-olds here's pictures of naked people in it there's pictures of people making love in a bed for four-year-olds this proves to me that all this access and computer stuff is platitudes that doesn't meet the reality of what's happening in the schools today madam chair

226that concludes public comment thank you very much thank you for sharing your opinions with us we are listening okay next on the agenda is good of the order board members does anyone have anything for good of the order this afternoon okay we'll move right into board member reports and start with ms morgan yes i'd like to compliment mary grace romo on the first meeting i was able to attend the first my first opportunity to attend the head start policy council meeting she's changed it up quite a bit it's very parent-friendly in terms of the content provided and the way it's presented and how she does the data and i also want to mention just for the public consumption they are considering moving three classrooms from colonial elementary which are housed in portables to new cl

227the new classrooms at james stevens that are under subscribed and then i my last comment about ms romo would be that i'm also hearing from the public and staff that they really appreciate the work that she's doing in her capacity is head of head start and i have one other comment occasionally we are accused by members of the public of engaging in unethical and illegal behavior sadly this has proven to be true recently best case a member of the leadership team is undermining the work of the board and leadership team worst case this individual is acting in unethical and perhaps illegal ways to interfere with the leadership and governance obligations of the board those are my comments thank you thank you miss morgan miss gintons okay i have a couple of things and then i

228will do the rest this evening first of all it's black history month and i'm black so therefore that i thank you no i'm just teasing no the people were saying you know about me wearing the outfit it's my heritage and i was talking to miss fisher in the back and saying you know maybe i should just wear this and at least once every other month or something in other months as well so i will i will definitely do that on the bad hair days it's wonderful but anyway a couple of things one i sent you all the finance committee information and i'll give you time to look over that see if you have any questions very very very good presentation and the information is on there and i'll talk more about that later but a

229couple of things about the meeting one if in these committee meetings the people that are allowed to be remote the equipment is just not good because the people that are on by digitally have trouble hearing and i think it's a matter of getting no offense to staff at all you're doing what you're supposed to do the thing is that we need some additional mics for example there should be an external mic that either sitted in the middle of the room on a table i know we used to do that before but somehow not let's say reprimanding or punishing the people that for whatever reason are not able to attend that particular meeting they should be able to hear us and we should be able to hear them the other thing i want to bring up

230i am the liaison on two different committees and it has happened on several occasions that in the meetings that i'm the liaison to the speakers will stop and say i'm sorry i can't discuss this because there are two board members present i am asking the other board members to give the committees the opportunity to do their work we have assigned a liaison to each committee for that purpose and if we cannot cover information that is necessary because other board members are on digitally or whatever it hampers the work of the committee i have no problem with you watching what is going on listening to what i say i will say the same thing anywhere anytime we are recorded so the opportunity to hear and to ask questions or to hold my feet to the fire

231for something that you think i should not have said is available to you but i'm asking on behalf of the members at the different committees to please give them an opportunity to thoroughly do their work with the liaison for that committee without the interruption of saying we cannot and it's happened on several occasions we can't discuss this because there's two board members so i just wanted to bring that up a couple of other things in looking at the weekly report that came out and i just want to say thank you to all those miss matthews holly matthews and dr carlin that i know you guys must be scuffling every week to get all of this stuff together and make sure we get all the information we need so i want to publicly say thank you

232for that information i know we're on the cusp of doing it a little bit differently and i'm excited about that but one of the things i noticed in the vacancies the way it was listed was each job in chunks by district and it's that was different from before it's more detailed and i'm grateful for that and as i counted up the numbers in the east zone there were 74 vacancies south there were 39 and west there were 28 39 28. to me there's an issue and i know we're working on it but i keep saying we're in a crisis and we're hemorrhaging and i have been sharing with you all some of the emails i spoke with a group of teachers on the weekend on the long weekend and they're just up to here as

233to what to do and i and not blaming anybody we all know that the elephant is in the room but we do we know that elephant is raising his thing and making noises okay because we really really need to do something and just like i was saying when mr dodeck was up there we need to toot our own horn if we are doing things to help these teachers that needs to be front and center with some of these other things that we're doing in the community that needs to be first on our web page to say teachers guess what we're doing this is what we're doing teachers last week the district covered 50 classes in in classrooms so that you didn't have to it's the message and it's the way we present it's how we

234communicate it yes we're doing wonderful things but are we selecting the right wonderful things at the right time to put forward to the public i am extremely concerned about the 7439-28 some other things and i'll bring them up later this evening and i think that's it for me right now thank you thank you miss kittens miss jordan thank you i just have a few things i just want to say that i attended the well many of us attended the golden apple finalists event which was really great we had a hundred teachers of distinction 30 golden apples and the process i just really want to put it out there too the process that they have to go through to get there is very strenuous and i hope for more and i was encouraging some of the

235teachers who were already golden apples as i see happens at the villas because they get to they go in they encourage two more and they help them through that process and so now these two are now there's going to be four of them encouraging the next group to come in so if by them encouraging it helps them get through that process and they will be going through all of that this week as well also i had the opportunity to stop by cape carl the police department had a an event there chill with the police and many of those most of the people that were out there were are so sros student resource officers that were in our elementary schools in middle school and i believe most of them that i did speak to there were

236definitely elementary and the conversation was really great and the opportunity that they had to show the kids that they are there for them also how they spoke on the kids as these are our kids and the love that they that they shared that they have with their students and that yes they call them their students and it's they wanted to make sure that i understood that it's a joint partnership with them but it was really good to see how they were out there with with the kids and in 20 minutes they went through hundreds and hundreds of hot dogs so those kids were really hungry but that was that was a fun event also oh going back to the golden apple i wanted to give another shout out to our east east lee county culinary

237those kids are amazing and the talent that they have and i can't wait for them to come of age to be in my workforce because they are just their heart is in there and they are just very very talented and i just really appreciate the chef the principal and the students now the students are every time they have an event all the students want to participate so it's just it's really beginning to be really great for them and they have a cafeteria not a cafeteria but a dining room that they're opening so i can't wait for all that for them so i'm really excited for those kids also another thing that's taken place in fort myers the cra is actually we keep talking about this all the time about our teachers our staff having being

238able to live in attainable housing they are getting ready to build one in fort myers central location i believe it's three i'm not sure which page you look on but it's either 330 or units and the it's gonna be between a thousand and thirteen hundred for the rents so they're really trying to promote this for workforce base so that everybody working and i when you read all the material tells you the busboy at red lobster the person driving the bus they have like a whole slew of people but just the it's gonna be a it's definitely a beautiful property that's coming and it looks like it's gonna be done within the year so that's something that's a good thing for us too because we can direct our you know our people to to go there

239as well so i think that's really good and then my last and thing would be i had the opportunity to spend some time in a food service last week which was interesting and i'm so sorry that i don't have the gentleman's name who created this great inventory sheet which i wish i had and in a moment's notice they can see everything across the whole district of what we have in store and when they order the food for the whole district they can see that there's a shortage and at a moment's notice our team here and i have to give them props because that's amazing in a moment's notice they're calling and getting other food in here you know from amazon or whoever so when you go in this room you see all these boxes that

240are already like they're stacked up with all the school's name on it so they're trying to make sure and what i had suggested that they might do is because of the fact that the schools are learning on friday what their inventory is so when they're coming up with not having the tacos or the pizzas for miss giovanelli's granddaughter they get their product so they know what that product is for that week so if they were able to and dr savage i'm sharing this with you because i did share that with miss candice over there if they were able to the managers of each of the schools once they know what their product is in their inventory perhaps do a menu for that next week for their school because we understand right now because of i

241mean we're seeing it in our establishments as well but i understand that the process and the grocery stores are the same way we're trying to make sure that we are filling up all those boxes you know that needs to be in those schools but if they could create their own menu for that weekend put it out there on their website that'll i think will make parents feel a little bit better on what their children are eating for that week i know it's gonna take a minute but i in speaking with them they said that's something that could possibly happen and again it's like there's i think it's 67 schools am i wrong 67 cafeterias how many 66 66 64. say it out loud 88 88. 88. thank you i can't see you back here okay

24288 to me it's like 88 individual restaurants just like a cruise liner you know everybody has their own dining room this is their dining room it's their restaurant so to me it's like okay you have ownership of that make it you know make it yours and i think if we can do that and give them because i know that when they the kids go through the lines they know every single child that's going through that line they love on those kids and they know who they are and what they can and cannot eat so i think that i just really think that we really need to give them that support and appreciate you know all that they're doing and that was really interesting to me so thank you so much for letting me do that

243dr savage that's it okay thank you miss jordan miss patricka so does anyone know why it's appropriate to wear a tutu today no right 02 22 2022. so i toured edgewood academy today and everybody was wearing tutus and that's what everybody was wearing two times i'm glad you didn't tell me i'm glad you didn't tell us to do that i thought it was really funny because the assistant principal had completely forgotten that she was wearing a tutu and a crown and she was having a serious conversation it was really hard to take her seriously anyways wonderful wonderful visit out there the last time i saw principal nader she was at orangewood and you know she chose to go there and the school that she left desperately did not want her to go and fought to

244keep her there she really did a great job apparently when she arrived absence was a huge issue it was a cultural issue at the school and her assistant principal worked really hard to create an environment called fomo fear of missing out so now the kids want to go to school because they're afraid they're going to miss out on something if they're not at school and the kids that are absent on a regular basis get a call and you know the parents are told the child is missed and they're instilling that fomo sort of environment over there i thought that was great i was able to go into three different class classrooms and i have to say the teachers names because each one of them blew me away noelle shields sarah wechter and nicole cardinale noel

245shields was a esol classroom apparently there were some students who were having difficulty sort of making the grade with regard to testing so they brought noelle shields in who is a teacher coach is that the right phrase go with that something like that she teaches half the day and she coaches the rest of the day so i believe she's a teacher coach the energy in that room is unbelievable made me want to go back to school she must be exhausted at the end of the day ms wechter same thing in the fifth grade and then nicole carnell it was the early fives classroom the kids were like this tall but every classroom i went into the kids were focused on the task at hand they were having fun and they were engaged and they were

246acting like children and they were focused on the task at hand it was really really cool i need to bring up with my team meaning the school board the educating the public versus the on the elected versus appointed thing we have all received that letter are we in a position where we can approve that letter this evening if so i will make a motion for approval hello anyone i'm sorry i don't know if this is the one i read a while ago okay i can't it's it's not not clear i don't know if you're talking about something you sent out today or this thing i read 9 39 this morning okay probably it's essentially the memo just made it into a letter form okay and it also included miss gittin's comments in there too right

247and there are a couple typos that i'll go over with you but we'll just fix those who was it from i'm sorry who was it from the board look cathy bruno nobody came from kathy oh the email i'm sorry i thought you meant who's the letter from the email is from attorney debris bruno thank you okay the board doesn't have any we rights are you finished miss patrick no i'm waiting for a consensus for on sending out the letter and whether i should bring that as a motion before the board this evening all right are we looking at the one with the red or because i see the one with red one the one with the track changes included some of the comments made by miss kittens okay and then it was incorporated into another

248letter you had to take that adobe and put it into the other letter thank you shout out to jen schaefer for doing that because i know that was a project attack adam chair for me yes miss kittens okay and i will be totally transparent i have not had a chance to look at it again since this morning so all i can say is that you know between now and this afternoon i can take a look at it but i need to do that before all right i can say and then two weeks i'll bring it back to the table well and just i wanted to ask attorney bruno you had said something about the bill itself and can you maybe just or in terms of that right now i'm sorry are you talking about where

249we stand in terms of elective versus appointed is that what you're yes yes so at this point the house bill has passed and the last time i looked with regards to the senate bill it's still in process that's all i can say and i know that my understanding is that the senate would like to know what the board's position is on this i don't know i haven't spoken to any senator senators i can just tell you that's what the what's out there and are there school boards have they weighed in other school boards specifically for lee county that's right i forgot about it has nothing to do with anybody else except for us i forgot so no they did not okay miss morgan yeah so given attorney depuy bruno's comment i think we ought to

250do this tonight yes so i think it's incumbent upon us to read it and be ready to discuss it tonight okay mr so if anyone has corrections you can make it right into the document we can track changes and then i can submit you know finalized copy to everyone for review okay i'll make that motion tonight i'll finish with my comments if that's okay yes please i have one just one regarding that as well so when you're making your motion also include how is that going to be signed and also who is it going to be sent that's right yes signed and sent to you please okay so another thing i did was i went out to south to watch the girls basketball play against naples and they won in the sectionals i want to

251say of the fhsaa girls basketball tournament i went to watch amanda potts who's been all over the news but boy was i delighted to an entire team of good basketball players it was amazing to me i really expected it to be a one-man show or a one-woman show and there wasn't a player on that court that didn't know how to play really well so she might bring out the best of them and she might be the star but that team is going to be good for years to come i was really really impressed if i may direct a question to you dr savage it's come to my attention that some of our sros are carrying new weapons and i'm wondering whether that is jurisdiction specific i'm wondering whether it's a new best practice and if

252it is a new best practice should we be requesting that all of our sros do it i just want a little bit more background on why we're doing it and if it should be scaled up make sense absolutely i'll get that information as soon as possible thank you and then regarding sunshine at advisory committee meetings it's my understanding that more than one board member can attend as long as only one speaks and go ahead i'll let you address that sunshine is open sunshine is open the board advisory committees are open to the public which means anybody can go to the board advisory committee the thing is that board members do not want to engage with each other in those advisory committees that will be a violation and what we're doing now is any time that

253a board at least two or more board members are going to attend any event we are posting that just so the public knows that there may be two or more board members at this particular event so that is posted for the board advisory committees and anything else that we are aware of i was invited last minute to attend the finance advisory committee meeting by a constituent so i didn't want to say no and i didn't want to say i'll watch it later i wanted him to physically see me present there which is why i went and there were mr daly did say several times these are things i can't say because there are board members in the room and these are subjects of bargaining but there were no sunshine concerns brought up at that meeting

254i just i just wanted to make that i was going to make that really really clear can i please respond to that i'm not done with my comments yet i'm just saying in reference to your statement there were several times that it was said that there are two board members here and we cannot discuss this so okay so then that needs to be clarified for our we'll clarify that so just to be clear we have one board member who serves as the liaison and that board member discusses things with the committee discusses things with the chair but these meetings are open to the public which means anybody can attend we just want to make sure that board members do not engage and they're in sunshine they're properly noticed because right now we always say there

255may be two or more board members in attendance so they are property notice as well and there's minutes taken etc and then in terms of black history month ms kittens i would like to follow up on what you said and invite you to please do wear that more often because black history should not be just the month of february it should be every day all day in our schools and keeping it just to the month of february doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense to me those are my comments thank you thank you miss patrick and mrs giovannelli thank you well i actually have had a busy couple weeks because i'm part of the edison festival light and we did the children's parade and we also did the night parade and i

256just wanted to say the participation from our schools was amazing and i don't know if if you're aware i mean we had floats not to mention all the bands that were spectacular but there were several several floats from different schools that were i'm talking spectacular and i was amazed and really didn't know instead i started telling how many you know schools were participating so i just wanted to say thank you because that's can be an expensive task to do to and but it actually was a great representation of our schools and i think it's just was really really nice and i really enjoyed that so i just wanted to thank all the schools that participated in and i would love to see more participation but it's it is expensive to do so the other thing

257i've had people come to me regarding the custodial staff and the difficulty in keeping and retaining that the staff and the pay is so low and if that's something this is through to the superintendent you know if we could put that on our list of needs i know it the list is long but i just think we you know we have to do better because you know you pay for what you get so if we can pay more we'll get we'll get more then oh back to a couple of questions regarding the education materials that are used in the classroom do the parents get a copy of that at you know like orientation so they know what the students are going to be i mean like i don't you know the materials beforehand so they're

258kind of aware of what am i asking the question right yeah i'm happy to give a more comprehensive answer but the lion's share is at the beginning of a course usually the kids for the syllabus if there's specific planned instructional materials that they're going to be reading like a novel so forth they may get that in terms of like a full listing of like everything that might be in the classroom library that may not be the case they have a lot of books that get revolved through that piece so that may not be however folks who spend a lot of time on this matter i'm happy to have them provide a more robust answer in writing to the board so you have that and i was just thinking like mostly like in the elementary stages

259you know what materials educational materials are our parents aware of what their child's going to be learning for the year and then i have to go to food because i re over the weekend i received pictures and calls about the food and i sent it to dr savage you know but i was told it was a cold potato with cold cheese and cold meat and a cold all in a box so they prepared the food and put it in the fridge and then gave it out and kids aren't eating it so we're wasting money on food but my question really is why are we not utilizing the kitchens anymore and cooking the food and preparing like why can't we get back to what a cafeteria was we've remodeled all these kitchens and now they're dormant

260they're sitting when you know they're you're using refrigerators and i just don't understand i'm not really understanding what is going on there i'm happy to have miss messenger get with ms belay provided a response just to kind of what is our general approach to how do we utilize our kitchens what are the challenges with the current obviously supply issues but you know certainly a picture's worth a thousand words the picture thank you for sending it thank you also for letting me know that one of the most important things we know is if there's a school specific concern knowing that they are like 88 independent restaurants they're not fully independent you know there there are some standardized aspects to it but there are also you know they go through serving lines it's very important that you

261know if there is a quality concern we have the ability to follow up with those schools so anytime you hear it from a constituent or from someone in there if the kids aren't eating it that is not the whole point is so that they will eat the food and it should always be presented professionally as well so we look forward to every opportunity that you bring please don't ever stop sending them if you ever have concerns about the food send them to us so we can respond to it and handle what we need to do nothing green even on on their on their plate so i was like my goodness so yeah that's why i thought that and then i wanted to go to the allergy policy because i wasn't able to attend the last

262meeting and i've spoken to several friends that have worked in the cafeterias at the schools and in and some people were really upset over the allergy policy but what my friends told me is peanut butter's never really gone away kids bring it to school in their lunchbox so this is actually setting we're we actually we're a little late and having a policy with something we should have probably done and she said there's always been a table that is allergy freeze zone technically and you know and so i just thought that's something that i don't think the community is aware or not everybody's aware but i'd much prefer eat a peanut butter and jelly than the stuff i sent you so you know i think it's important that we have i'm glad the peanut butter is

263back in the back in the schools so we just have to make sure that when we and you have the allergy policy in place to protect those students that can't be near it or eat it so i think it's a it's a great thing and i just wanted to acknowledge that and let let people know that the peanut butter is always has not left the schools even when the schools weren't serving it parents were so it's important to acknowledge that and i think that is all i have i think just to touch base on those things so thank you okay thank you then i'll be brief i have a just a statement for the good of the order i noticed that we have had a lot of detailed individual board member questions and i think

264that our agenda review is very important because we get to hear one another's questions but in the in this time when our staff is so spread so thin and our district staff is out in schools helping because of our shortages that are not unique only to us but we are feeling it i'm wondering how much staff time is being spent on answering questions that may have already been answered or been presented to us in updates for the budget and for building maintenance so i just on the board's job is to set policy oversee the budget and advocate for students and staff and the superintendent and his staff are responsible for the day-to-day operations so i just wanted us to give us give that a little bit of thought i want to just quote a sentence

265that comes from our policy 1.27 which is our non-discrimination policy lee county school district does not discriminate on the basis of race color national origin gender age disability marital status or genetic information in its educational programs services or activities or in its hiring and employment practices so we have had staff out at schools helping i've heard very grateful reports from that i did receive a couple of letters which i did share with the board from teaching staff regarding the fact that they may not be able to stay with us because they don't have affordable housing their rents have been raised a lot and so they're wondering what they're going to do next and they have to relocate and live with family and so i don't know where we are in our negotiations but i know

266we have to pay all of our staff more and i'm not sure how we're going to do that i see mr dodig smiling back there but he may have the answer i just wanted to bring that up because it troubles me that we have people literally verbalizing how they feel and how worried they are about where they're going to be with their families and how they're going to be able to stay located close enough to keep their jobs anyway i attended the school health advisory committee meeting on february 10th and we had a presentation from the drug free coalition that drug house odyssey in its 27th year is canceled this year for the second time but that there is a video of that successful prevention program available for all of our schools and we want

267to encourage principals to make that time available for select kids at their schools from fifth grade on up it is black history month and it's also american heart month and i hope that we're all doing what we need to do to keep our hearts healthy heather parker from employee wellness reminded employees that they can earn 75 dollars for participating in a preventive screening and she said that 400 participants joined the lift project which is kind of a be happy be healthy and keep moving projects so we encourage more people to do that there was a mental health update and we have 27 licensed mental health therapists are hired we have community partners on contract but there are wait lists as we make referrals for kids and families who need help and we are educating parents

268with wellness wednesdays positive prevention mr bradley gave some update on 504 accommodations and how they're looking for physicians to work with the school district and how most of our schools now are participating in positive behavior support restorative practices and also that the equity guide is in the works the healthy living collaboration which is contracted activity a partnered activity with the district schools and staff and university of florida family nutrition program and it is blossoming we are collecting food from many of our gardens and helping to fight the food insufficiency continuous systemic improvement committee gave some recommendations and they suggest that we focus more on career and tech comprehensive health education and comprehensive mental health and they suggested that we try using emergency funds if we can to train and assist staff in implementing and collaborating

269with one another and in evaluating programs that could be used in implementing a health education program to meet some of the increasing needs in kids mental health kids and families mental health and also could we seek out business and community partnerships grants work with parks and rec and universities then my favorite committee to attend is the student advisory committee and mary lynn rodriguez is going to be stepping down as the district liaison and shelly taylor who does the graduations will be taking over they had a presentation on attendance by tammy scott and they had an activity where kids had to write down the one probing question that would encourage deeper discussion about the number of chronically absent students in lee county which has increased significantly the last two years and i know that part of

270that is due to the pandemic but they had a lot of good questions and many good suggestions and one of the things they said well a lot of kids aren't coming back to school because when they come back to school they get penalized and put in time out for being tardy and that is a problem that a lot of people are experiencing because of the increase in the traffic that we have so there was some conversation about that and i think that the people from academic services and attendance left with some really good ideas thanks to the students and that's why i always say ask the kids they also had a presentation on quality points and grading and had many of their questions answered it seems like some kids were happy about it and some

271weren't they were thinking maybe it would hurt their grade point averages but actually it aligns to the standards and is used by many districts and miss alavedo and lori brooks did a really good job answering the kids questions i am pleased to be able to serve on this board and thank my colleagues for all of their work and especially to our staff our parents and our students who continue to keep the ball rolling every day even in the face of a lot of challenges and difficulties okay so mr free bruno thank you madam chair i just wanted to remind the board of florida statute 286.011 which is titled public meetings and records public inspection criminal and civil penalties this is commonly referred to as the sunshine law and just a reminder that all of our

272meetings with there are two or more board members in attendance must be open to the public and reasonable notice must be given in addition we must take minutes and those minutes have to be promptly recorded any violation of this statute does result in perhaps a non-criminal infraction if it's not knowingly done in other words if it was an accident it was inadvertent there is a possibility of a 500 fine if it's knowingly done there's a possibility of a five hundred dollar fine and it could also turn into a criminal offense a second-degree misdemeanor with up to 60 dale 60 days in jail so i just want to make sure that the board is fully aware in addition there could be a criminal case that not a criminal but a civil case that is also filed

273for an injunctive relief if that case is filed and the individual wins and there could be attorney fees that are assessed in addition if a case is filed that is frivolous or filed in bad faith attorney fees can be assessed on the other party so i just wanted to make sure that the board was fully aware of that in addition in 286.011 that is the policy or the statute that we use when we're doing our closed sessions this is very important because these this particular statute includes that provision for an attorney to speak to its members because the legislature realized that it's unfair to be able to discuss settlement and possibilities in the open so that's why they created this particular provision of the statute to allow attorneys to meet with their board members to

274discuss settlement possibilities as well as legal expenditures so i just wanted to remind the board of that as well and then two policies i wanted to remind the board of because i do get questions about this from time to time not only from board members but also constituents board policy 6.11 which is the risk management insurance policy specifically says that the superintendent or designee is authorized to approve settlements up through the deductible amount so anything that is too like 199 999.99 under thousand dollars the superintendent or designee has the absolute authority to go ahead and approve that anything over two hundred thousand dollars that is when it comes to the board usually through a closed session for discussion so that we can get direction as to how the board wants to move forward with that

275the other thing is sometimes i have questions about how are these attorneys assigned or decided upon when we have a claims case when it is managed by our third party claims administrator which is john's eastern they choose the attorneys now they choose it with the approval of the superintendent or designee or the board attorney but they are the ones because they have a list of attorneys that they utilize that they have a contract with that is at a reduced rate so it is john c stern our claims administrator that chooses those attorneys and then last i would like to get some direction from the board i do have a contract from neola that we have reviewed and i would like to know from the board if there are if you are interested in moving forward

276with neola so that way i know if i should move forward with this particular contract they did come and they told you what the services were they did come and advise as to the cost which would be a hundred thousand dollars that could be paid over three years and then the maintenance fee of five of five to seven thousand dollars a year so i just want to know from the board is there a desire to move forward with that okay board members interested in moving forward with neola keeping our policies up to date and compliant okay so that is six zero thank you very much okay and then last but not least there is a possibility that there could be a recommendation coming to the board for us for the board to take a action

277on a booster club that no longer exists but there is the funds have not been returned to the district so we're trying to get those funds back if the funds don't come back then the only other option is for us to handle that with a civil action and i wanted to know from the board if this was something that you would be inclined to do it's approximately twenty thousand dollars that we're trying to retrieve i can't answer that question i don't know anything about what anything you're talking about i'll hold off on that we don't have to make a decision i was just bringing it to your attention we'll discuss that in the future thank you is that it mr free bruno i believe phil thank you thank you dr savage yes madam vice chair

278so just trying to answer a few of the questions i had and many others will put into the formal documents and some of it will even supplement what i'm going to say the first i just want to give you the quick answer on ms shields over at edgewood i just looked her up while you were talking and she is a pure collaborative teacher so that is the specific role but that but that does involve a certain amount of coaching that's a hybrid position where they are there to help support and grow the quality of teachers but also they are their boots on the ground they teach the kids so that it's not just a coach it's a it's it's but it is it's more job embedded but that's one of those like how the tiff

279grant when it evolved to become self-reinforcing and prioritized for schools within the budget so ms shields is a pct is the other term you'll hear for that in terms of just one thing that's been brought up a few different times here today is just about the pay and the teachers and folks who've wanted to know the pace you know one of the ways i just want to reiterate again is you know i'm not a part of the bargaining team that's not really how that is one of the ways that i i fully support the work of those parties coming together so essentially the union representation as they are done with a with our district team that they are there to so it can be a lengthy process to hear you know the interests of all

280sides involved and it can be time consuming but the end it's a it is a process and i always support that piece the second thing though that i do from my role to try to help in that and some of the conversations i had in board member one to ones about the upcoming budget season and so forth is that some of the recommendations that we are making are intended to to drive more dollars to the very issues that you're asking about so when you know we have a situation like a teacher shortage if we have hundreds of vacancies and we are able to through the scheduling that we use change that so that we reduce 100 teacher vacancies or more that allows for more of that money to come back if all things are equal

281that allows for the funds that would have otherwise been expended on those teacher salaries to then be reapportioned in the system that's just a basic example of it i read from mike martin the president fgcu he sent kind of a budget introduction to all of their staff at fgcu just to kind of orient them to the way the budget really works and put it in layman's terms as much as possible and one of the things that kind of struck me about that was he was trying to orient the fgcu staff all the personnel to the power of what that is and that's really what it is he said it pretty well which was something effective if you reduce the number of employees that you need then you have more money available to do things like

282raising salaries and so forth so that's a that's a always an important part of the equation that we have to balance that's why changing the systems the approaches that we use creating more efficiency and that me and that means helping to raise salaries potentially for for for the people that do remain and so we talk about custodians and these other groups you know all of that's a process that we go through but just know that is and it's not an easy fix but it's something that we are intimately involved in i really started that work back in november we'll continue that all the way up through and working i'm actually making sure dr bernier is aware of some of the strategies and thoughtfulness we have because there's so many things that we have to tackle

283i mentioned some of our conversations about insurance there's just so many pieces that we have to address and so i just want to make sure i had that piece another thing i just want to mention i know there was concern about the locksmith piece so i just want to mention you know i know we did provide the data table that showed the year-over-year numbers and obviously the 10 million dollar total jumps out at you so just want to reiterate what that really is again if because of our small team of of in-house locksmiths if they were to to re-key entire buildings the most they could do is two to three sites in a year what that what that 10 million dollars the 5.6 million contract the four i'm sorry the 5.6 in materials and the

2844.5 in in the contractors that served 34 sites or roughly estimate 15 000 doors so essentially what you're doing is massively upscaling the amount of services you're offering as part of an upgrade project with the ada and the and the code red but you are you know that's why there's that giant dollar threshold because you're really servicing just a ton of schools during that effort with additional contractors it would have taken roughly 11 to 17 years for the two to three people to have done all those and that doesn't account for all the day-to-day work and additional work that they're already doing so you want to it can be confusing or putting it in there and sometimes you put a data table there it doesn't tell the whole story so i want to make sure

285i clarified that one piece and again i'm not an expert but i think mr ross is gone so he'll have to put it in writing if i screwed up on any of my explanation there last but not least i did have a chance to check about the new weapons piece and it is a jurisdiction specific piece i'm not going to get into any specifics about what that is just from a security measure standpoint but just to know you're absolutely right about the jurisdiction specific pieces that is part of their in their their process of what they are and we'll get some more information out on that i believe those were most of the questions that i could keep track of and certainly if you have any others that weren't introduced today let us know and

286thank you very much yes i just have one more thing based on what dr savage said in terms of the bargaining yes i just want to remind the board as well that pursuant to florida statute 447.501 and related statutes that we have to be very very careful members have to be extremely careful not to interfere restrain or coerce public employees it's extremely important that we allow the bargaining unit to do their job because any time that it's outside of that process it could potentially become an unfair labor practice exposure so we need to be extremely careful with that okay thank you we will resume at 5 30 for student performance is that still on yes okay students will be here performing at 5 30 and our action meeting will begin at 6 00 pm seeing

287another no other business and hearing no objections this meeting is adjourned thank you