001good afternoon mr whitlock sends his apologies at a last minute scheduling conflict so in march toward the end of march we met and received they received an update on the math textbook adoption the committee voted to approve the math textbook adoption process as is for the year they did offer a really good suggestion we thought they said that we should broaden our student representation so that we include english language learner students and students who struggle with that subject area so that they could help determine whether the supports for them are strong enough in each of the resources so that was definitely a great suggestion miss giovannelli gave insight on the new legislation regarding board term limits and requiring media specialists in our schools they asked for two topics at the next meeting they wanted to
002brainstorm on how to get more community members involved in the textbook adoption process and they wanted to know more about summer learning opportunities so in april we met to meet those goals we did not have enough of a quorum to have like a formal meeting but they still wanted the information so we proceeded with like an informational meeting so miss greneville shared information about our summer learning opportunities that the district was providing for this year christine showed she did kind of a q a on house bill 1557 for them ms giovannelli asked for an update on the state's removal of publishers because that took place in between those two meetings for the math textbook adoption so we gave her an update on which of our courses that impacted and how we were following because they
003would appeal and or revise and then some of them would get back on so we gave them an update on how we were following that and then they met to discuss ways on how they can attract more community members for future textbook adoptions and that concluded our meetings for the year thank you very much miss kittens okay first of all thank you for your committee's hard work during the year we appreciate it and one of the sessions that i attended and a couple of other board members at the fsba conference was a q a with florida department of education and one of the hot topics was the textbook adoption and the question that i asked was why can't we have a simplistic like bulleted list of the process that we go through because so many
004people are under the impression that we sitting up here have chosen that awful math book that they don't want and there is a whole process and the fact that we have to you guys when you do yours you have to select it from the list that has been vetted by doe that names the companies and the books and all that have been vetted so my question is how difficult is it to have just a simple this is how textbooks are adopted and not not you know pages but just a couple of bullet points to say we do have a process document but we could possibly do like a graphic organizer that kind of does step one step two step three that we could put out because we have the whole timeline on our district website
005and everything and so maybe we can include that graphic and maybe even do a quick informational video that they could click on as well so we can ask the superintendent then can we ask the superintendent to direct them to to do that type of information so that we can know simplistically as possible what the process is madam chair board member gittins there would be that process would be easy to complete in terms of putting together for you to confirm the question a sort of one sheet or step-by-step checklist of how it from the moment we know we need to adopt a textbook through the actual adoption and the official action of the board and when it comes to us and that actually the only thing we do is after it's all been vetted and everything
006we as a board are the final you know point of it and the deputy chancellor said well you know it's up to the board to verify the books and i said but they've been verified and verified by the time it gets to us it is basically just procedural that we say yes this book that our group has done off of this list so i would really appreciate that shouldn't be an issue at all so we start from the moment we know we're going to be adopting a textbook all the way through board approval and while it is procedural it is also financial right textbooks are a significant expense that the board has to approve okay thank you thank you thank you very much thank you miss houchin thank you appreciate you okay next is district
007advisory committee and i see dr spyro here welcome thank you very much good afternoon everybody as mr hurt scott hurts could not be here today so i'm going to be sharing his report we had two meetings for the fourth quarter one was on march 30th and very similar to the curriculum advisory the march 30th meeting was to share the summer learning opportunities that we were providing students for the for this summer that actually began this week and so we highlighted the programs we're doing for our ell students our esc students reading camps i-ready enrichment we also shared with the committee that we did send home and i know you're aware but i'd like to say this publicly we did send home with every elementary student we sent home books this summer as well as workbooks
008and there will be opportunities for students to zoom in with teachers during the summer to do a read two and a read with with these workbooks we also send home science labs to our rising fifth graders so they'll have an opportunity this summer to also do science labs at home as part of our extension and then middle school ms houchin put together a summer novel study on a book called peak and so i believe i've sent that information to you before the board update but i will send it to you again in case you want to join the students and be part of that novel book study for our middle school students and so that was the march 30th meeting our last meeting was fourth quarter was april 27th and during that meeting we highlighted
009the implementation of the new best standards as well as the most up-to-date information we had on the state's progress monitoring we had an opportunity for community members to ask questions about the best standards we shared the professional development that our teachers would be going through not only in the month of june and july but also as we turn back to school and as you know miss patricka is our board liaison for dak and so in the month of march miss patrick has shared an update on the contract with dr bernier who was our new superintendent at that time and then in april miss patricka shared how impressed she was with the committee's work this year and expressed that the committee has had a positive impact on the district's processes which have greatly benefited our teachers
010and our students and that is report for dak thank you board members any questions miss kittens i'm sorry okay my question is about the chromebooks and what is the process this summer dude did the students have to check them in and check them out how are they doing these programs that you mentioned so our chromebooks are available to our students yes they had to check them in to make sure they have the update that they needed for the chromebook and then they checked them right back out to our students we absolutely want to make sure that our students had chromebooks that they had availability especially as we do some of our enrichment so if you hear of situations where maybe a student did not have access to chromebook i would be very much interested in
011that because they should have been deployed to all students that were interested in them to all individual students yes ma'am okay thank you very much i appreciate it thank you thank you dr spyro thank you okay and next on the list is edac okay dr blakely good afternoon chris blakely here with the edac quality report so as you all are aware the vision of the equity diversity advisory committee is to ensure a community where individuals feel safe cared for and connected as one all having access to equity feeling included to cultivate diversity inclusiveness and we use that vision as a foundation to set the balance of the agenda items for the year that we reviewed so in the fourth quarter we took time to review the presentations we had throughout the academic year which included
012presentations from hr and recruitment strategies the student code of conduct equal opportunity schools as well as community and parent engagement to identify recommendations that were documented recorded on the board's recommendation tracking form in the fourth quarter edac met to discuss in a facility conversation about the review of the academic year and provide these recommendations during that last meeting as well as i want to state today publicly we want to express our gratitude to our board liaison ms betsy vaughn as well as our staff liaison jared edie and mrs crystal taurus nunez for their support and commitment to our committee we can be a very spirited committee with a lot of discussion and dialogue so we appreciate their patience and supporting as we work through that but the recommendations are listed as follow that were identified
013in april the edac committee recommended that the board support the crown act which is an acronym for create a respectful and open world for natural hair in pursuit of ending hair bias and discrimination additionally there was a recommendation that the board expand the use of restorative justice justices and practices to keep students in the classroom as related to the student code of conduct there's recommendation that the board eliminates at large seats and at two single member district seats in support of term limits additionally the committee recommended that the board develop and or continue to expand recruitment efforts to include canada the caribbean and central america to attract minority teachers administrators and staff to better reflect the district's students population the committee also recommended that the board create an annual reporting process between small business enterprise
014and edac that would include periodic meetings to review supplier diversity lastly the committee recommended that the board communicate with local small businesses and organizations that foster small businesses such as goodwill collaboratory and others to make them aware of the district's needs and availability to support the initiatives from the small business enterprise and that concludes the fourth quarter report for the edac committee thank you dr blakely any questions or comments ms vaughn it was it was my pleasure to work with all of you for the past two years and it is a very lively committee and your people after my heart because there's there's always something that is being brought up and didn't since we didn't meet again after after those i just wanted to mention on the first the first two things about the crown
015act and the i forget with the restorative justice and all i had a discussion with academic services and were covered with with those the report that was requested the reports that was well received and you know i'm termed out and but you should be having those reports next next year and the other thing is i'm very happy to report that we had a discussion at the dyess about the single member districts and we established that it does take a while for this so we came up i don't remember off the top of my head and we won't discuss it right now but we did come up with with a with a date that we needed to start putting that out there and having our discussion and should it be something that the board wants to
016move forward with that would give us plenty of time to do the things that we need to do with you know it'll take redistricting and it'll take a lot of additional steps but it is on in the parking lot for discussion and we have a date and so look for that all of you who were on edac this past year or are interested in in this look for it coming soon because it does take a long time to go through all the steps so again it was my pleasure to work with all of you this year it was our pleasure as well so thank you for your leadership thank you miss kittens do we have thank you for all that you guys did do we have a process an official type process for taking the
017examples of the recommendations from especially this last report that they give and making sure that it's on our parking lot or on the workshops or maybe we have a workshop where we discuss all of the findings that have come at the end of the year from these committees is there anything official that we have we have a process yes dr bernier former kittens there is a procedure by which recommendations move forward from these committees to the board i am not as familiar with that policy as you would like me to be right at this very moment it is one that i have reviewed i know kathy behind me probably has an even clearer answer this has come up before but there is a process to move those recommendations forward to you into a workshop for
018consideration i know that we've asked for instance one of the committees already reported on sort of the legacy idea regarding student enrollment that one is moving forward to come to you as a board but there should there is a process and i'll let kathy dupuis bruno talk more about what actually happens once the committee's made the recommendation so ms kittens there is a process that once the committee makes the recommendation it goes to staff they review it and they come back to the board there's also a process if the board wants specific action from the superintendent can direct the superintendent to look at something in particular and then come back to the board so there is a process document that does outline that and is i guess what i'm saying too is there a time
019it sounds as though staff will look at the possibility of doing it and then it comes to us is there any time that we would see that whole list and say our thoughts about prioritizing that list or is it staff and the superintendent that decide which of the ideas go forward currently the way that the process works is i'm worth very thankful for cindy mcclung she does keep a list of all the recommendations she then provides that opportunity and as we move towards a different cabinet structure it'll be an opportunity for us as an executive group to discuss but there is no reason when that document is put together with the entire list from each one of the committees that could not be shared with all of you in a board update making sure that
020you see the recommendations thank you have fun i just wanted to add to that edac happens to be one of the committees that has this past year brought forward a lot of recommendations and the way i've handled it is you know i work i've worked closely with jared edie and crystal nunes tourists and you know we talked you know divided up there were there were a couple things that i could bring directly or for instance the first two things that i just mentioned all i needed to do was talk to students services in academic services and you know that's already covered and all of those things and then you know i made the judgment that the idea of single member districts this is something that staff didn't need to debate it's something that we as
021a board need to debate and so i brought that directly there was something earlier this year regarding one of our board members that was pushed forward i brought that directly so i think it's part of this when we talk about the process part of it is just working the board lease on working with the staff liaison and the committee chair and then because some of them don't have to go through that process they're very easy to check out the other thing since we're talking about this that i've recommended ever since before i was on school board actually and was for a short time i took over from vice chair to chair of i think it was csi and i was not on the board at that time and i was a little bit lost quite
022frankly coming into it kind of mid-year and the thing that i had suggested and i don't know that it's been ever enacted i think there should be at the beginning of each year a training for the new chairs and i know we do have the board attorney comes in and we are versed well-versed on sunshine laws but outside of that a training on you know what's the purpose and that reminders even people you know they're going to be new people on this board and it doesn't ever hurt i know for me to have reminders if i were to be here again on what is the role of the school board chair because i know in the past some school board chairs have done what i've tried to do is to sit back and answer questions
023when asked and give my reports and others have taken a firmer hand with their committee which is not the way i feel like i have not done that and i really think that you know and this may be something it just popped into my head as we've been talking about this that we might want to discuss at a future workshop i know miss mcclung was just asking us yesterday what do you want to add well i think this would be something that we might want to add on the chairs and staff and board liaisons all meeting and having clear-cut picture of these are your roles and you know something i would like to see added so did you want to say something dr bernier thank you madam chair ms vaughn those are excellent points i
024think anybody going into committee work deserves that orientation to understand what the committee is what the purpose of it is certainly the legal requirements of sunshine and other things are vital but the other aspect of clearly understanding what the works the work is what they're expected to accomplish what they're expected to discuss i think would be very vital i can't say that it's not occurring already what i will do is i will get with cindy mcclung we will take a look at that and be prepared this coming fall when the committee is reorganized to be prepared to do that for you and the board thank you i think it would be very helpful thank you thank you and thank you very much dr blakely yes i just have one thing just for clarification with regard
025to the crown act i just want to make sure that it's clear the crown act is not law in the state of florida it did not pass and the crown act did not pass federally either however in addition to student services and what you were provided with with ms vaughn in our upcoming policy there will be a small reference to some of the requirements of the of the potential proposed crown act right and oh i'm sorry if i may that's that's exactly what i we talked about in when i talked to student services and they said the kinds of things that were referenced in edac about the natural hair and those things and we had just had the conversation at a workshop about different color hair as as well so you know i knew we
026were covered so but thanks thank you thank you mr spawn okay moving right along since it is 135. we have last but not least finance advisory committee and mr taylor daryl tevlam chairman of the financial advisory committee in march most of the meeting was spent with the discussion with miss kittens about rsm and handling our audit we asked a lot of questions and she also talked about that there was going to be a board briefing by davis company on march 29th at that point we made sure that we had our meeting set for the summer because last year we got shut down by february no matter what i tried i wasn't even able to call a meeting so we had to wait all the way to september april was very interesting we discussed the cost
027of replacing an employee and reviewing the exit data which brought up something that's come up many many times it brought up the benefits which i'm going to get to in a minute in may we had a very lengthy discussion with miss kittens about legislative priorities for student funding than the new legislation that was put forth by the florida legislature and davis demographic did give us a presentation at the end of that presentation we received some concerning news for many years the financial advisory committee has been tasked with saving the district money whether it be by cost saving measures assisting with debt with solutions for debt streamlining processes i've been on this committee for many many years there's an average of over 20 people every single year appointed by sometimes different school boards but nonetheless that's
028six seven years twenty each year it's over 120 members and every year it's come back that we have always revised this board that we need to send out for an rfp based off of benefits i spoke last night with miss lechler about this and she said she can only find it up to 2019 so i reached out to the former chair mr cohen and asked him if he would join me today here the same thing has come forth every year after my conversation with ms leclerc last night i happened to jump on facebook or somebody sent me a message asking me about what's going on with what's with the financial advisory there were 186 comments on facebook in a private forum about for employees talking about benefits and why they're leaving because of benefits it's
029an issue we highly advise the district to take up this issue as soon as possible we were informed at the end of the meeting that an additional contract was signed by the district for another two years without sending out for an rfp i've been on this board 2015 2016 six seven years that's over 120 times you know people that we've had this discussion with and we've all come to the exact same conclusion that we need to find out how we can cut the costs for the employees assist them with getting family members covered especially the children of the employees not even just not even the spouses we even just helped cover the children the last presentation we had the head of the union mr daley even came in to discuss this and over and over
030again year after year committee after committee this is brought up as a major problem the employees are talking about it their families are talking about it this is affecting the children which are also our customers stakeholders we need somebody to have the leadership to step up and take this one on that's my i'm at this point with them signing a new contract my first meeting with the superintendent the attorney that was in the room did not even have knowledge that another contract was signed and that covers through 2024. i'm sorry as an individual i have no dog in this fight i just find that absolutely unacceptable i wish this boy would step up and take action if you have any questions i'd be glad to answer them thank you okay board member questions and then
031dr bernier will comment okay do you want to speak personally i can't i don't for the record for everybody that first meeting i don't know how long i'd been superintendent i think it was less than a week so i want to make sure that everybody understands i was not aware of a two-year renewal at that time but have since that meeting dug in very deeply to our insurance into our insurance benefits you will see in the future a meeting coming forward with this board as a workshop to talk about insurance benefits specifically looking at the cost of our insurance specifically looking at the level of employer contribution as well as the inflationary costs that we're experiencing as we all see like our gas pump medical services are also inflating costs and our program has been
032pared down over a number of years to try to reduce the amount of cost we have a comparison now of how we compare to every other governmental entity within the lee county area we have some other factors that we need to consider but i will tell you your comments in that particular when i met the committee heads did not fall on deaf ears i immediately went to work i've been discussing members with with board members but let me be clear the reason for the two-year renewal is we had a contractual obligation to renew for two years but we will be going out for an rfp in the spring of 23 because it will be time to renew that particular service and we want to make sure if the committee's suggestion and in my in my
033direction we will be doing an rfp for insurance benefits this coming spring in order to be prepared to make a change or to continue with our current our current provider and make some make some additional changes to the structure of how we go about insuring our employees i'm happy to take the conversation also offline with you to talk a little more depth but i think you will see the action that you want and the former chair wants to see you'll see the board begin to take that under advisement and then we also will need to be careful in the sunshine because i'm very sure that this will be an item of interest as you all know we do interest item of interest bargaining with our unions we are a hundred and more hundred percent you
034can't be any more than a hundred percent we are 100 sure that this will be an interest item for our unions moving forward so i'm looking forward to making good on some of the efforts that have been made prior to your leadership but also making efforts on on what the committee has provided us in terms of feedback regarding insurance benefits and i just wanted you to understand that work's already underway thank you mr table miss kittens okay and i wanted to to let the superintendent explain that to you i do know that in the committee the next i think it's the next meeting the superintendent is supposed to be coming to speak to the committee you know one-on-one with all of you and i really appreciate the work of this committee i was very grateful
035to be able to be the liaison to this committee because of all that the thought and ideas and things that they come forward with but i do want to echo that it is something that is being worked on but thank you for all of your perseverance and hard work yes thank you very much does anybody have any more questions thank you have a good day thank you very much we appreciate the work of the advisory committee chairs and members and the district liaisons and now we'll move right on to our next presentation which is an innovation school update and so on this team we have dr jeff spiro chief of academic services dr helen martin assistant director professional development dr bethany quisenberry director teaching and learning candace alabado director teaching and learning and our friends
036from fgcu dr thomas roberts interim dean college of education dr melissa meehan interim program coordinator dr michelle stork program coordinator and associate professor and javier salazar architect so welcome and we're looking eagerly forward to this presentation thank you well thank you good afternoon everybody my name is jeff spyro i'm the chief academic officer for the school district and i am here with my partner from fgcu i'm with here with dr roberts and he and i get the honor of doing a welcome so i just want to take you a little bit through what this afternoon's going to look like as you recall we began this journey back in 2018. that is when the memorandum of understanding was signed and that's when we began this phenomenal journey together and this really this once could be a
037once in a lifetime opportunity for all of us working here together because this is the first public school and a university working together to create this partnership and we're going to be the first in the nation if we're able to get this across the finish line successfully in the near future and so we're excited about the work that we've been doing this is the third time we've had the opportunity to present to you as a school board and give you an update on where we are so today the set well this afternoon what it looks like we are going to share the milestones and dr bethany quisenberry is going to share some of those milestones with you then we're going to give you an update on professional development and curriculum and we have dr helen
038martin and dr melissa meehan from fgcu who will be providing that update for you as well as an update on communication and community engagement and then candace alavado and our guest javier salazar will talk to you a little bit about our facilities and construction the work that we've been doing in that particular arena and then i'll wrap it up at the end as far as next steps are concerned up on the screen is an update of our committee membership as i said this began in 2018 and so our committee membership has changed as continues to grow the newest members of the team you'll see there are highlighted in green we've added we've added mary grace romo and i believe mary's in here there's mary hello mary mary from early childhood is here she has joined
039the team as well as mr joel de guzman who's sitting in the back joel thank you he's from the planning department he has joined our team and then miss barbara moreland miss moorland is here as the talc representative mr daley our top president was part of a meeting with us and has really tapped barbara to be part of this conversation and then you see at the bottom the two green the two green names are guests from rg architects that have joined our committee and javier salazar as well as mr ryan richards who you know well they've joined the committee and then i'll let dr roberts just share a little bit about his team from fgcu who's part of that committee and then he has a few words that he want to share he wants to
040share as well dr roberts thank you dr spyro thank you board members it's good to be here this afternoon i really just want to start out by saying that since fgcu's very inception we've always understood real realized and valued what an essential and vital partnership we have with the school district of lee county and serving as interim dean over the past year and a half has only reinforced my feelings in that regard i've seen many of you at different events in our community and i know for a fact that nothing could be more important to us than educating the youth in our community and preparing teachers to be ready for what's in store for them when they enter the classroom the way in which learning has evolved over the past 20 years is very significant
041it's it's changed quite a bit and i believe that the innovation school is a great opportunity for us to prove that public education can and will adjust we can be responsive to societal needs and we can base it on innovative research-based practices the innovation school is an initiative that aims to do exactly that being the best that we can possibly be being bold enough to lead and working together to transform individual lives young lives in our community so they in turn can transform their communities and our society as a whole so it's been a pleasure to work with everybody at the district dr spyro all you'll hear from many of our fgcu colleagues who are highly vested in this initiative as well and we're very proud of the proud progress that we've been able to
042make to date so without further ado we'll get on with the presentation bethany that's our part maybe maybe not is this one already on yeah okay all right okay so i'm some of these slides will be a little bit of a repeat from previous presentations but we thought that it was very important that we go back to when our committee was first established as dr spyro mentioned in 2018 we felt that it was important for us to create a vision and a mission for the committee to lead our work so you see our why starts with our vision which is to create to create innovative leaders and lifelong learners who positively impact an ever-changing society which i believe dr roberts just did an amazing job of speaking to that why and i just want to
043repeat again also what dr spiro mentioned that this is a first of its kind this is the very first school that will be a public school in partnership with a public university in the nation which is very exciting and then our mission again that our committee established in the beginning which i just really want to highlight the piece of innovative leaders and in especially in the work as we have began the design which javier is going to speak to at the end is very challenging when you sit and you start to really look at what is innovative what does that look like and move as especially as educators that have been doing this many years and you kind of get in your box what does that really look like to be innovative not just for
044today but five ten fifteen twenty years down the road as this building will be you know continue to be current in our district and so in improving the quality of life not just for our students but for our community the state the nation and beyond we also established guiding principles which we ensured matched our district values so aligning with our district core values of excellence integrity belief in students high expectations accountability and professionalism which really works towards an equitable access to quality education for all and being able to replicate that not just across our district but again across our state and across our nation replicating those best practices for our students teachers administrators and the way that you utilize the school for your community so some of our committee milestones again we the mou was
045signed back on august 28th of 2018 and that was when our committee was established and we began that joint pre-k to in the beginning it was a pre-k to 12 innovation school design and we have now as you know determines that it will be a pre-k to 8 school design moving into 2019 2021 we gave a board update in august of 2019 and then again in march of 2021 and we also provided a presentation to our curriculum advisory committee the district advisory committee as well as the staff at fgcu that was in 2020 then we began our action planning so from 2020 to 2021 we really began action planning behind what what is the curriculum going to look like what is professional development going to look like and really getting into the weeds of those
046pieces that my colleagues are going to speak to more in depth in just a moment of course that was the world of covid so we kind of took a little bit of a pause so moving into 2122 this past year we really focused on a research project that the team is going to share out and our professional development pilot beginning to move forward in 2223 we have now began the exciting work of the design with our partners at rg on the building some additional committee milestones the places that you see that are underlined indicate the links out to board presentations for when these decisions were made and so our site is the treeline site which was a consistent consensus by the board on march 9th of 2021 and then we had our approval for the
047rfq for architectural services with rg which was on july 27th of 2021. in february we had an fgcu day which i'm going to hold off because we're go our fgcu friends are going to talk more about that but it was very exciting it was an awesome event and then in february we began our talc inclusion and so really starting that work of bringing in more members into our committee to be able to really start guiding that work then in may we began visioning and programming with rg architects which we have been meeting i think every two weeks right every two weeks for the past couple of months to work through that work and then just last week we had the amazing summer series for and professional development there were over a thousand teachers there that
048were able to design their own path for professional development and so we were able to offer that dr martin is going to talk further into but where teachers were able to choose those pieces that we had already isolated out to be innovative for the school so we were excited to see those teachers excitement for these pieces as well and then as our as we started moving forward into the work we divided into subcommittees so we met in our subject subcommittees each month and then we also met as a full committee each month to be able to share out from the subcommittee so we have a professional development and curriculum subcommittee communication and community engagement and then facilities and construction and so we are able to divvy out that work to to really now that things
049are moving much quicker there's lots more lots more work to take care of so i'm going to turn it over to dr martin who is going to share some of the professional development pieces okay good afternoon good afternoon i am dr helen martin i'm excited to share with you the pd and curriculum subcommittee updates our subcommittee meets monthly to review data read research create action plans and really reflect on our progress so the work of our professional development and curriculum subcommittee is driven by the national association for professional development schools standards for partnerships so these standards really create benchmarks and guideposts for the school and university collaboration in terms of professional development in terms of research as well as shared inquiry the work of the standards really ensures that all students have access to high
050quality educators through identifying and sharing replical best practices so the professional development and instruction focus with the innovation school will promote inquiry-based learning today's learners are different than they were two years ago 12 years ago 20 years ago and beyond they want to be active participants in their learning they want to set their own goals they want to see where they are in relationship to those goals and they want to see quick tangible measures of success the world of work is also dramatically different as it was even two years ago now so as more and more jobs are automated an education that promotes a one-size-fits-all approach will really leave students behind so because of these shifts today's students tomorrow's leaders really need critical and creative thinking skills a mindset for collaboration with all stakeholders and
051the ability to communicate their ideas in a myriad of ways inquiry-based learning encourages students to be active learners by identifying real-world problems and applying cross-curricular skills really to identify solutions so in order to promote inquiry-based learning high-quality professional learning for teachers is needed teacher professional development is really at its best when it's driven by teacher voice and by teacher choice so seeking to capture teacher voice and teacher choice the department of professional development sent out its first annual pd temperature survey to teachers in december of 2021. the goal of the survey was really to take a temperature of our teachers to get a feel for what their professional development needs were and what their habits were and really what they wanted in terms of pd topics and how they wanted it to feel and look
052for them to best promote their learning over 1100 teachers responded to our first annual survey and here's a snapshot of really the insight and input that was provided by our teachers regarding their desired instructional areas for pd what's clear from the survey results is that teachers want tools and strategies to accommodate the needs of all students in their classroom with meeting high standards and really applying those literacy skills across the content areas in other words universal design for learning that promotes a flexible individualized approach for education so all students can meet high standards the committee was excited to see that the pd and instructional focus of the innovation school was really mirrored and reflected in the teacher survey results so teachers also recognize the changing nature of students and the changing nature of the needs
053and the classroom in the world and they requested more training and topics to really help them manage their classrooms in a way to promote critical and creative thinking to mote collab promote collaboration among students as well as to support multiple formats of communication so again the committee was really excited to see alignment between our pd and instructional focus and what the teachers said they wanted so the pd and curriculum subcommittee we collaboratively analyze this data together and from that collaboration we identified a list of possible professional development topics that we could pilot with our teachers and the school district so from there we found the summer series which was an a la carte choose your own adventure pd opportunity for our teachers and it really provided the perfect format to pilot some of these pd
054opportunities so our first offering was last week was attended by over 1 000 teachers and they engaged in over three days of learning and they had over 260 sessions to choose from and of those sessions several key ones were designed and facilitated by our partners at fgcu thank you good afternoon i am dr melissa rodriguez meehan i'm an assistant professor of early childhood and elementary teacher education at fgcu i'm gonna i'm going to just go over a little bit about the workshops that were offered by the fgcu faculty to support classroom management which was one of the components mentioned by the teachers that they wanted some more professional development in dr nate turcotte provided opportunities for teachers to reflect on and discuss their own classroom experiences and how to navigate some challenging situations that were
055presented to them in a game-based program format dr michelle stork provided an introduction to universal design for learning where teachers learned how udl is a tool to support all learners as emphasized by dr martin additionally attendees in the second session provided by dr michelle stork received practical and replicable strategies to apply udl in their own classrooms play-based learning and student agency were the focus of the other two fgcu sessions offered there we discussed how to incorporate more play and choice in classrooms to enhance children's development and foster student motivation and engagement all the sessions were well received we just received our feedback today teachers provided feedback which included wanting to have these sessions offered at school-based professional developments and having wanting additional opportunities to collaborate with fgcu faculty in terms of research so currently speaking
056of research we are we'd like to update you on the committee's current research project which shares our collective experiences of coming together to build this school this paper as you can see there's a short short little synopsis up there on the slide was submitted to the national association for professional development schools their special issue which was centered on the university school partnership which is which we are exemplifying here through this process we hope that other school districts will benefit from reviewing our process understanding our experiences our perceptions and hopefully support them in establishing similar partnerships and similar schools so we are excited to talk a little bit about fgcu day this was one of our main community engagement events this year and fgcu was fgcu day was a celebration that took place on saturday february
05712th from 9 to 3 p.m and here we were celebrating fgcu's 25 years of impact so naturally the innovation school had a place at that event the college of education and school district employees had a table for the innovation school there were a variety of stakeholders who approached the table including students ftcu students future future teachers current teachers community members and parents and they had an opportunity to engage with committee members ask questions just kind of see what the curiosity was about the innovation school additionally there was other there we had some tables set up in terms of technology and inquiry-based activities for children in the community who were able to experience that as well so with that as javier is coming up to join us now we're going to be moving into speaking a
058little bit about our facilities and construction and where we are right now we've had the opportunity twice with our partners from fgcu school district of la county and now rg architects to really start digging into the work and based upon the research of what does the building look like and how will it foster all of the these pieces that we are talking about so javier is going to lead us through a little bit of what that initial workshop looked like that we had on may 12th where you heard dr quisenberry say it really stretched all of us so as educators it really took us into looking at this through a very different lens so we're happy to share that with you today hi good afternoon i'm javier salazar principal with rg architects i'm not used
059to speaking on a mic so good afternoon i'm extremely excited to be here to be talking about this project because a few hard heard and seen on the on the initial slide and recently with some of our colleagues here this is all learners this is for the student this is for the teachers this is for the community creating an environment that would foster learning for the benefit of the students learning experience the professional development of the of the teachers and for the community to understand how to best support education so we start with why should we care about school design well this is all research driven and the reason why we are working in the design stages of it with research is because that's what the committee has been doing all along right we're not
060one we don't want to be innovative for the sake of being innovated we want to be innovative because it has a meaningful impact so if you can see here ask you to focus on the 16 which is physical learning environment this is what impacts the learning experience of a student that 16 is mis is meaningful but if you look at the of the upper two individual student variability 50 this means the individual characteristics of the students that are influenced by space because you know there could be a student that behaves or performs better in a certain type of space so having flexibility to adequately address that then teacher effectiveness a teacher can always be more effective if they have more tools at their disposal everybody teach a little bit different so being able to be
061adaptable for that so it is important that we capture the essence of the research staying in the line of research what does research say about spaces so this is a very simple research study that was done where as you can see here there are five different design strategies for a classroom suite so the very first one a being kind of your traditional classroom b is kind of your traditional classroom but it has a little in the green area it has a breakaway space then you have c where it has a portion of traditional classrooms some of those classrooms are flexible and can open within them in the in the pink and then in the green again your breakout space then there's d where is less traditional space and mostly flexible that can be not only
062open plan but also closed off for specific strategies and then a completely open e so if we look at the research and i was going to ask you to think about which one in your head real quick would be the most effective so they asked teachers and they evaluated both the performance of the teachers and the students based on on any of these concepts so the results were that the most effective was not all the way open it was the open plan that had the ability to be closed into smaller classroom a medium-sized classroom a large classroom or any combination thereof so this is you can see how it measured both the teacher you know experience as well as the student inclusive in in our innovative design are all the elements that make for for
063an enhanced learning experience keeping the learners as everybody you know having flexibility you know having flexibility of where the learning experience happened in the individualization i had to practice this word like 20 times on the way here personalized activity so every learner is different and so having the ability to either break away into smaller one-on-one smaller group medium-sized group having that ability to adapt adapt to the students ownership of their learning experience naturalness and nature is extremely important and research shows over and over that being connected to nature being connected to materials that connect you back to nature greatly foster the education experience stimulation we want to have the right type of stimulation within these spaces right make sure that when we have environments that require the or we have exercises where require the students
064to be active that we have the environment that incentivize that or where it needs to be quiet it does that when it has to be in a smaller venue it does that so we have to make sure that the spaces stimulate the student so this is the kind of the end of the research which is really interested in my opinion so on the left you're going to see the preoccupancy so this is your they evaluated the traditional space and see how it performed and they looked at testing collaboration and many many metrics that are generally looked at so they went back after the school was open and then see how the new space was behaving and what's being you know how did it improve the performance of the students the first thing you'll notice is
065that on the on the right testing is at the very top and on the on i'm sorry on the left testing is at the very top on the right testing is at the bottom testing is at the bottom but in the same magnitude meaning that the testing result remained the same so they perform at the same level but now if you look at the top of the right side collaboration was greatly increased you know creativity was greatly increased all these other aspects that are part of a healthy education experience where increase so the point being is that research does show that space does matter so now what do we do with all of those pieces so you've heard about the research our ongoing projects and now we're working with rg architects and here we really
066had the ability on may 12th to sit and go learning the learner what does that mean pushing us outside of our comfort zone and that picture there kind of illustrates some of the work we were given stacks of cards that tied with each of these areas here they tied with that learning teaching spaces furniture technology and safety and as we broke out into groups we had to come together and think about what was the learning and pick one card that we wanted to see and then based upon that what's the teaching you expect to see if that's the learning that should be happening with the students and moving from there if that's the teaching you expect what does this space need to be for that teacher to be successful for again bringing it back to
067the learner and that outcome and moving forward of then what's the furniture that goes in that space that supports that teaching again for student outcome moving all the way through the technology needed and then of course safety of our students so really having the ability to map all of those pieces out and we did that as groups and then we talked about it and just yesterday when we came back again we were able to say where were all of our commonalities and as you've heard this partnership so you have fgcu and school district of lee county coming together to be something first in the nation it was amazing to see all those commonalities because of the research and rooted in best practices that our partners at rg were very clear and we have a vision
068of what your team is really looking for as dr quisenberry started though we're looking to create something that has to withstand much longer than any of us here sitting on this committee we're looking at a project where the learners it's going to be very different we're creating something for students whose jobs are not even created yet so another activity that we went through is what does that mean the day in the life where we had to think about and be that student who's sitting inside that building not in two years or three years after it's open but in 10 years and what does that student's schedule look like because we don't expect it to look like anything we have right now dr martin spoke about that professional learning and those pieces and students wanting to
069have more of that ownership so what does that mean but what does it also mean for the intern for the teacher the pre-service teacher going through that building how do they engage with the students and the spaces and then what does it mean for the teacher inside of that classroom and this is really breaking it down where we are very focused on the here and now in our day-to-day and providing our students with what they need but as we look at doing something very differently we have to shift our thinking and look out those 10 15 20 years as that building's still there so this is just that team on the 12th that was able to come together you've heard how our team has grown but this was a snapshot of those individuals who spent
070four hours in the afternoon a very late afternoon trying to think differently and we appreciate our partners at rg architect who have really helped us with that one of the other updates we would like to bring you today based upon the last time we had met and presented to the board though is while we have our treeline site that was under consensus originally what you had heard from the committee was that this would be an open similar to a magnet from all but as we've talked about our need and our population and our student growth one of these pieces is this will be a dedicated east zone school so what you see here is just a draft of a five mile radius of where this could be pulling from to really have that diverse population
071because one of the things we talk about is how much this school we want it replicable for all of the districts so the population needs to mirror what our district looks like especially as we want to be replicable not just in lee county but setting as dr quisenberry had said really for across the state and the nation one of our other milestones i'm going to turn back over to javier really quickly is about our wetlands that were just done all right so as part of our services and as any project you gotta start with the due diligence right understanding the site that you have the program for the program that's why we have the meetings with the with the team to understand programmatically how those translate into square footage and then do our exercise on
072understanding what can fit on the side given you know all the characteristics of the particular side as of right now our team has completed the environmental assessment writing reports for that we have the program information we're messing the side to understand what we can fit in it and what we can work with and we'll be issuing that report in order to move forward into the next stages of the project as far as the schedule goes as it was put together by the school district right now it's a tentatively full 25 for the opening of this particular school and as explained earlier we are at the very early stages of kind of due diligence exercise thank you and then yesterday we had a meeting at fgcu with our full committee and i would end with rg
073architects and i will tell you yesterday for me professionally of everything we've done since 2018 was the most challenging day yesterday because we really had everything that you heard today we now had to put in the action you heard dr martin and dr meehan talk about how this is going to be a school that's driven by inquiry-based learning and that means critical and creative thinking that means active participants you heard javier share with you the research about what it says for student learning in relation to the physical space in the building you also saw javier share with you how the research shows they need to have flexible opportunities inside of the building to support inquiry-based learning so rg architects yesterday broke us up into three different groups and they gave us basically shapes that represented
074classrooms or they represented flexible spacing in a school and our task was to work together in teams to create one of our learning suites if we say we're going to have this school based around inquiry-based learning we know it's going to be an active building if we are going to look at the research of what it says about spaces then what does that really mean and what does that space look like and we had to make some recommendations and again this is not final recommendations this is committee work so anything i'm sharing with you is just committee work there are no official recommendations we had to make some decisions such as would we recommend that teachers have a dedicated classroom or since it's inquiry based learning do they begin in another space maybe it's a
075maker space or maybe they're in a digital creation space or maybe there's a suite where grade levels get to come together that's in an open area that allows students to learn in a different modalities or as a traditional classroom where i'm providing direct instruction and then there's flexible spacing in that classroom that allows students to then dive deeper into that work and those were the beginnings of those types of conversations in the u and the word they used yesterday with rg and with our fgcu families they kept talking about the word bold if you really want to be bold and innovative and we're looking 10 years down the road 15 years down the road road what this could what could this really look like and so those were that was the work that we began
076yesterday based around everything leading up to it and i don't know about my fgcu partners but i found that one to be a very challenging and taxing and they're all nodding their head yes so we're looking forward to our next meeting that will be coming up shortly so at this time we are going to end here and leave it with superintendent comments and board discussion thank you dr spyro to the board members just briefly thank you very much for the opportunity to provide you this presentation today it was relevant for me in going through with the team and learning more about the innovation project it's something that i heard about from a distance and then got up close and personal really really fast and i really want to thank the team for their their work
077and the depth of this presentation i know you will have your own discussion i look forward to hearing what you have to add to the to this presentation so that we might get further direction as to what to accomplish moving forward so then board members miss vaughn then miss morgan okay so first the kudos glad to see that the teachers had a menu of choices frankly this is something teachers have always wanted i know from first person experience and also i've in a previous district we did a lot of collaboration with our local university and actually even some vertical planning and all of that so i think that's wonderful opportunities to be working closely with fgcu i love the idea of the published paper that's going to be something that other districts will rely on
078and i just want to mention that just as an individual i have no plan i just as someone who took graduate courses at fgcu and has a daughter who earned both her bachelors and masters at fgcu i kind of feel a connection with it and just wandered around and had some great discussions that day so that was that was fun now let's get down to the other part well one thing i'm just going to mention in passing because i have something more important you all are pretty young i have actually worked in a middle school that was built in the 70s and had the flexible spaces it was god-awful now from the early 80s when i was teaching at that middle school i think we've had a few advances in technology and at at some
079point when you have your how many of you have taught in flexible classrooms ah there we go at some point when you have these i would love to be invited because i know i can sound negative sometimes but that's just my way of brainstorming and i know a lot of things that may or may not come up as adults you form your little practice groups and i know that we have some amazing innovations now that will be a bit better than the one two wall divider that i had between my class and i still remember that the class next door not not fun anyway part of what was missed in this and i see a big hole in this presentation between now i came on the board in november 2018 and the mou had already
080been signed and at that time as this is early my board experience of course it was going to the innovation school was going to be built in estero and it was going to be part of a complex of like an education village that and at the time i remember a discussion about the school being built in an opportunity zone so the whole concept and this is what i'd like you to explain the whole concept of going from well there's another whole story with what happened with that land and all of that which we won't get into but the concept of the opportunity zone where it began to now basically a microcosm of our of our district in terms of the socio-economic and i'm guessing you're going to be looking to get i don't know what
081you're going to do if you're going to be looking to bring in students who are level 1 and 2 students as well as upper level students you might want to talk on that but how did this is my question how did we go it's a big gap for me in in the presentations how did we go from the original concept of the opportunity zone to now it's a microcosm of the district to reflect all the different grade levels board member vaughn that's a great question and unfortunately with the lack of experience i have related to this project i really can't answer i want to be cognizant though of individuals who are sitting at the panel currently i'm not sure that they have the necessarily have the answer to that question is specifically either it was
082not something i believe that they were prepared to present today but i'm looking i'm normally i get a nod i get a raised finger from jeff if if he has that information i do know i was not here in the very in 2018 when the inception of the school began so i cannot give you the genesis of the location we have to go back and do some research on your behalf okay because you know maybe i missed something but i know for a fact that was the original conversation the opportunity zone and part of the discussion centered around was estero the right location for this because of the demographics in the estero area and there were discussions in between well is well and now james stevens is not obviously going to be used different plans
083emerged and then it seemed to me that all of a sudden here was the tree line site and i know there's some also so there's a lot that maybe i just need to talk offline but i still have lots of questions because i know some of the there's some there were some issues with the treeline site in terms of the building and how big it could how much capacity we could build in that school and i've heard stories not stories but reports to me when i've asked individually well we had to go up like three stories do we have do i are there answers on any of that because it currently it's what 1500 capacity a canvas so where we've kind of landed with where we've always been i guess i should say at the
084committee work kind of from the beginning around that where the most comfortable is that 1200. so really 1200 when you're looking at a k8 and those numbers there however adding on the pre-k so there were times and conversations lots of numbers have been but the committee consistently that recommendation to be able to do that work based upon research and the need as well has been 1200 and that's been in all of the documents from the time where we really started our proposal together of what did it look like is 1200 where we have been solid and then additionally and then part of the work from the stairs so after the estero site was no longer an option then working with the planning department and then they brought forward the tree line site that was presented
085to the committee the committee made an official recommendation and the recommendation was brought forward here for the board as far as the ability to build a school on that site that has not been the work of this particular committee we were provided opportunities for locations and that's what our committee had a conversation around but how can you be planning the ideal interior of this school without knowing exactly what that piece of land will handle and i have heard you know i'm not trying to be difficult i'm just trying to understand because i feel like for me as a board member and maybe some of you have had more specific conversations than i've had this is a big it's like i love all this other stuff and the planning and all of this but a key
086factor is what this land will handle for a facility and i mean in in looking at this we've even had this discussion here at the board table as a matter of fact when we were talking about a while back having a principle as as a planner the whole idea that you know people that are familiar with what they want and what's important in the school and what is disastrous what's great you have to know both of those they mesh so again i'm not trying to be difficult i will do this on line with some of you but this really is an important question in my mind so if i if i may as a part of the design team so in in this particular process is no different than than when you are creating something
087that hasn't been created yet in the sense that we need to first understand what does an innovation school means programmatically you know just to get a rough order of magnitude in terms of how big of a building footprint would be required to support 1200 students plus pre-k so right now we're doing both things concurrently so our team is meeting with the committee to understand what are those programmatic and functional needs so that we can kind of roughly capture that into some kind of model that gives us an understanding for area and by the same token as i explained earlier our team is have done the environmental assessment on the property and we're going to produce a report that is going to provide in this piece of line and this piece of land for this program
088yes you can build it with this much it would have to be this many stories it would have to have this much stacking for cars on on the site itself these are the mitigation requirements for wetlands whatever it may be that is a report that we'll be issuing but that is part of any project starting on that's a very early due diligence package that we would issue and once you receive that and it's reviewed that's how you move forward to the next stage because that's the the document that is going to determine whether you can fit it or not now if you were looking at a traditional and i don't like saying the word prototype but if you had a building that you knew exactly how big it was and what had in it that's
089a lot easier because you can just plot it and kind of understand it but in this case being that is a little bit programmatically different all those things need to be put in the mixer and produce a report and that's what we are going to be producing before we move forward okay and i just i'm sorry i have to go on the record saying that i feel like that's the cart before the horse and that if we have selected and we did decide on that site by consensus in 2021 i mean i felt like planning and you know the people that vetted the site for the purposes of this school we wouldn't and knowing that it wasn't going to be and that's been round and round too would it be one of our what's what's
090the word i want the standard prototype prototype prototype thank you the pro would it be and it sounds like maybe it's not going to be a prototype or maybe the outside the exteriors prototype and the inside's not but there are a lot of things that as a board member that worry me concern me that we're not totally sure if we can do that 1200 on that site and have the vision of this new plan so definitely if we can't get answers today because i understand what you're saying about a different group i would like to talk to some people architects and who planning online to to understand this the only thing one of the mention is fun we have had planning part of this committee kathy ebau has been part of this committee and joel
091de guzman from planning as well so i think he's no longer here no and joel and joel have been part of this yes and he's a new member of the committee that replaced kathy as she stepped off so planning has been at the table as the conversations have been going on for a number of years as well okay thank you thank you miss bond miss morgan yeah so i love how you talk to us about your process because we all are going to have to stretch when it comes to this innovation school i love that you talk about how difficult some of these decisions are that tells me that you really are stretching and we need to understand how it is that you're coming to the places where that you're landing i love that it's
092research based academically and in terms of the physical plant i do have one question i've been talking for years about project based learning how is it different from inquiry-based learning sure thing so it is a subset of inquiry-based so project-based you've got inquiry and then there's different levels of it so project-based fits right in the family of inquiry based okay well you all had me at inquiry based i was all set just a thought this is this was a fantastic presentation and i think it needs to be on our website at fgcu's website because if this article is published and people want to know more about what it is we're doing i think the actual you know process would be of interest i also think that people are hearing about the innovation school and they
093have no clue what we're talking about and so you know i would just like to see us start to build community investment knowledge about an engagement investment in in this school and along the same line i'm wondering about whether we should be thinking about a strategy to engage our legislators or at least the aides at this point in the process because we won't be going to the legislature soon but i think it's important to introduce them to what we're trying to do and the significance of it in some way so those are those are my comments thank you thank you miss kittens then miss jordan okay thank you very much for the presentation i have a couple of questions one when we talk about the universal what is the universe so don't tell me design
094learning okay and if that is if we're bringing teachers into this environment to teach them how to do the mental academic piece of this are we looking at how that will be infused back out to the other schools besides yes we're teaching the teachers these principles and the way to do it and the other question is the resources so i can learn how to if i am one of the teachers of the innovation school how to do this wonderful you know activity based but if i go back to a school that has portables sorry i had to say it how do i have the resources to do the same thing i'm not going to it's not going to look like these pictures so how are we looking farther down the road as to you know
095this is the capsulation of it but how do we infuse it out into the rest that is to me that's the whole process is to teach teachers how to teach the students of this century so that's one question and do you want to answer that one or you want me to i'm going to take my first shot and then turn it over to the committee if they have additional responses first and foremost i think it's really important for the public to know that this is not just great professional development training for the teachers who will be selected by a principal to work here this will be a professional development center where all of our teachers can come to learn some of the activities while they may appear to be furniture dependent are adaptable to other
096classrooms and other classroom structures and i agree with you completely what the teachers and what florida gulf coast university is bringing to the table and our own professional development people are bringing the table is an opportunity to really revolutionize instruction really talking about what it means for everyone and potentially with scott and other members of the construction team really look at the design work here to see if it's applicable in some of our prototype models moving forward this is really a chance for us to look at what a school of the future would look like and that's why the planning is so far ahead of the construction process we have to get an idea of what this means before we can ever determine how long tall short wide it will be right that physical plant
097can be adjusted to fit a piece of property that number could be adjusted downward but we still want to keep in mind for the public we want to keep in mind the cost per student station we need to make sure we're compliant with the law we need to be sure we're complying environmentally but to your question about instruction the short answer to your question is yes this is a way for us to change the way all of our teachers approach instruction and i'll turn it over to the committee if they have anything to add dr bernier that was an excellent description of really what the school looked like i think what our team needs to think about is housing that so how do we provide res where do we house the resources for teachers after
098they leave i'm a teacher i'm interested in learning about udi for example where can i go so that'll be part of our work is also then how do we house that information publicly so that all of our teachers have access to that not just coming in for demonstration or professional development but truly a house for resources for our staff and that's a great suggestion and we'll add that to our work can i add one more piece that i think the other piece of it is and we've all seen this with professional development and professional development instruction one of the things that jeff and i have been talking about we'll engage with our principals in orlando and we'll engage with the more moving forward is and you've heard me use the phrase and it's probably been
099overused now but you get what you inspect not just what you expect one of the things that i've been talking to jeff about is a classroom and school walk through design for accountability not for accountability as a gotcha but as an accountability to have real solid conversations about what's occurring in a school building as we walk classrooms if we've invested in this type of learning for our teachers we have to have a process by which when we walk our classrooms that we're following up and looking for that instruction and those professional development opportunities actually being implemented we've all sent i it's a it's a funny joke we've all sent people off to cooperative learning they've been trained to the hill but we go into the classroom they're still sitting in rows we have to change
100the way we teach our young people but we have to be able to walk into a school building and have those courageous conversations as well thank you and i had my next question is on slide 26 if you can bring that out i just found it very very interesting the location of mentally challenging work and how that shifted from the teacher perception on the left to teach perception on the right so i academic people can you explain that to me i will take the first shot at because this graph really i really loved this graph yes because it really shifts the focus of a school building but keep in mind testing on the left-hand side is the same percentage as testing on the right-hand side so the importance of testing on on the scale the
101perception did not change just other things became more important so i will let somebody else who's not coached me and help me with the graph if i look at mentoring mentoring actually increased on the right hand side it's closer to four when on the other side it was closer to approaching number three so while it has dropped in category from collaboration at the top to mentoring as the now the third gr third from the bottom it has actually increased in its score and per score of itself so and if i may before they say anything too if we really take a close look at that list there is not one item on there that says being able to add two plus two everything on that list is a social emotional piece and i just think
102that's fabulous to notice when we talk about social emotional learning that's it everything that we do social emotionally hands-on work creativity community real world collaboration all has to do with being a human being learning how to live in this world with other human beings so i really appreciate that one did you guys want to say anything on that or shall i go to my next one you could go to your next kittens i want to just touch on it real quickly jeff if i may but everything here is about learning and achievement also right these are the type of environments where when constructed correctly staffed correctly and professionally developed in professional learning community models this is where children will not only thrive as you said as the social emotional but they will also thrive academically
103we should see the academic needle move here because when you engage children with an anticipatory set and you engage them right out of the gate in in an environment that sparks their learning then you will see the results on the other side so i want to make i want to make sure we're clear on that we still have really great expectations for all of our schools in terms of their academic outcomes oh definitely and i wasn't i wasn't trying to separate them i'm basically saying that it's the foundation it's like maslow all over again that you know you have to deal with the individual the human being before you can teach them anything okay my next one ears on slide hold on excuse me it is on slide 34. and i will preface this by
104saying this is not a gotcha or a anything negative but as i look at this slide and i listen to what the purpose of this project is and i look at the left side that says the demographics of the students who are looking at to be involved and i go back to the slide previously slide 33. i'm just saying when we're talking about all of the questions and all of that we when and how are we going to involve all stakeholders that would have to do when you go back to 34 look at who's on that list we can check off some of those boxes but we can't check them all off and i just think that it's it's necessary to look at who is planning and i was talking to someone last night about
105the fact that in in education well just in education especially in our demographic cultural competence plays a big role and educators know that how we educate a child from this demographic is going to be different than how we educate a child from a different demographic it's just fact so if that is that important we need that representation that experience and that knowledge from those demographics to be involved in the planning of this process and i hope i said that tactfully enough that everybody got my point there i do want i do want to go ahead and make a comment on that dually it's well noted well noted on what you just shared and i also tell you this is not the this is not everyone who is going to be the committee moving forward this
106was this was the group that was doing the begin beginning part there now as we begin to accelerate these decisions once we understand the framework there are different groups of stakeholders that are brought in everything from the student services component esc ell their variety you know everything that makes up the whole child there are experts from our fgcu team that come in they're experts from the district that come in as well and i know part of the part of our plan also is then the deepening of our community engagement i was looking at dr malloy but deepening of our community engagement as well as we accelerate this process so yes your point is well taken but i also want to let you know that this is not everybody that is going to be engaged in
107this work moving forward no and i get that but what i'm trying to plant the seed in this district that when we're starting at that ground level at what point do you infuse not after we've got the basics then we'll bring you into to help us figure out where we go from there at the ground level that's all i'm saying board member getting message received okay thank you very much for pointing that out when we vetted this and we've edited it deeply in cabinet you've given us a whole nother level of when you take it and it's something that i'm taking responsibility of looking at that slide and not catching it when you look at the student population that we're potentially could occupy the school and you look at least at the initial planning team
108i see exactly the point you're trying to make and those people need to be involved right from the beginning and honestly just for the record i believe that's why i'm here so the last thing is on slide 34 on the right hand side how you have the circumference of who will attend that school i really from from comments that i've heard in the community and what people have said i'm just concerned as to some people thinking this is our school and you know exactly what i mean because of where it's located i've heard it over and over again how do we deal with and this is kind of rhetorical you don't have to answer it now but the school choice piece because if you have 28.9 white students at the school and you can select
109within a half a mile of the school the 28.9 how are you going to get more of those students from that broader area so school choice is going to be a really really proximity and all that is going to have to really be looked at because i don't want to have to be the one to tell someone who just paid 500 000 for a house that their child cannot go to the school that they have heard of before they came here thank you very much thank you miss kittens miss jordan okay i'm not going to repeat what miss kitten said but i was thinking the same thing was kittens because when we looked at this and when i look at east zone this is definitely not the east zone because i see the villas there
110i see areas that are there that because i know my areas so that really is south zone the villas does not does not incorporate into the east zone and then you have all the way to colonial so a lot of that part is not so are we going to re-change the zones but i did like the presentation though the presentation was great thank you but i'm just curious about the zoning here because i've had some issues with zoning and but i'm seeing that here that this is not all the east zone madam chair this line is an arbitrary circle it was a way for the team and we actually tried to find a way to remove the circle from our from our presentation and to include some additional demographic data but ultimately we did not
111have another version of this particular draft document so we i think it's very clear to the public we need to be very clear to them this is just central area the population percentages that you see are reflected in that circle we know with our proximity plan currently and the work that's about to be under to be undertaken by another committee to have a recommendation ready for you by january we don't zone schools like this is just a slide for us to look at the demographic data surrounding this particular site but the school is physically located in the east zone correct and that's when they said it was the east zone school but when i'm looking at this and i know that this has changed because the first one hanson actually was in that circle so
112that has changed all the way to 41. and so this has changed it has i don't know if it's moved more to the east or how that looks but i know this has changed from the last time but i just agree with what ms getting said said and thank you for the explanation so mr tricha do you have some comments no i'm gonna go back and watch the entire this entire part of the meeting and then if i have questions may i get with you dr bernier thank you i just don't feel comfortable jumping in without having been part of the entire thing thank you very much i don't know that mrs giovannelli has joined us on the phone yet mrs giovannelli are you with us i'm assuming not so i've been i'm not going
113to be redundant and repeat anything but as someone who taught her first class in 1960 this presentation excited me and i do want to say this that i was thinking along the way the flexible spaces so we used to use outdoor classrooms and we used to go in the hallway for more physical activities and we have teachers now who are innovative and i loved that we have teacher input because that was one of the things i starred the professional development is critical and i was glad that dr b clarified that will be for all teachers not only for those who will be teaching in the innovation school i really want to appreciate the work you've done i do agree with both ms gittins and miss jordan about you know we are a minority majority district
114and we have a lot of diversity and we do need for the people who are working with our kids to reflect the populations of our kids so i love the word partners i love the partnership with fgcu collaboration and communication are two of my favorite words and with the slide 26 with that changing of the social emotional things if we don't do that if we don't make kids comfortable if we don't feed them if they're not safe they're not going to learn so and i know that from as mrs vaughn said first-hand experience so this excites me i know that there's a lot of tweaking and a lot more work to be done and i think that putting it on the websites is a great idea because i think we can get garner some more
115input from from stakeholders around who could benefit from it and who will be interested and may even want to support it so i don't want to be too wordy and i don't want to repeat anything that my colleagues said but i know this is a work in progress and i know that there are so many concepts that are being explored so thank you very much and i appreciate it thank you miss fish the only thing i want to end on is you're part of this part you are part of this partnership so this third presentation to you is to get that continual feedback so our committee can hear this work and add that to the body of work that we're doing as well so we do take that feedback as another extension of our team
116so thank you for your candor this afternoon thank you miss dupree bruno do you have anything yeah ma'am thank you okay miss kittens that's one other thing in in future like the event that you had at fgcu and all of that i know it's hard to keep us all informed but maybe some of those things could be put on our calendars and then we decide if we can or we cannot attend but at least it would be on our calendars and we would be aware that those events are going to happen thank you we'll be happy to do that i didn't see it thank you very much thank you this was great and madam chair yes can i break protocol for just one second because if i don't i'm going to burst i would like
117for us to please give a hearty welcome back for dr dustin moore thank you i couldn't see well enough to be sure that was her i was gonna text her and say are you here okay thank you all right moving right along i see mr rickerbacher is right in in his place and capital project quarterly update welcome mr rickenbacker thank you fgcu people for coming over thank you guys good afternoon afternoon board dr bernier mr weibunu this is your quarterly capital update before i begin the presentation i just want to remind all of you that thais elementary school is up for an architectural historical award if you're a member of facebook and you are signed up for the lee county school district facebook site there's a center and you can vote as many times as
118you want so i hope you all will get out there and vote away so you'll see many slides we try to condense this for you my team is currently working on pictures inside of our website with hopefully less than three clicks so that's underway now so we've given you slides that encompass all of our major programs that we're engaged in throughout this summer and going into the fall so the first slide you see is all new construction projects these are cape coral technical college and elementary school j otherwise known as amancier franklin parks elementary school gee weaver hips pre-k center lehigh acres edition which is the new lambs building transportation east buckingham which is our transportation building so you can see we've updated you on where the status of the project is procurement stage for
119the first one k carl tech on schedule for emancieer elementary school foundations are going in currently franklin parks right now we have the gmp is going to be coming to the board for a phase one total project cost on the 28th of june so you'll see that on the radar moving forward g weaver hips we are in a design phase for that school and the money has finally been released from the feds to move forward for a hundred percent of the design costs so we'll be able to get that cranking again lehigh acres middle school mm again that's on schedule we pre-did the foundations last summer so we wouldn't disturb this school year and once we get the foundations done at emanci air right next door then we'll start going vertical in both sites transportation
120east buckingham center that's the new dispatch building that will be replacing the old portables out there that right now is structurally up the exterior roof and skin is going on and once we get that weather tight then we can start the interior finishes next slide represents our renovation projects and here you will see a bunch of re-piped projects that were taking over from maintenance you'll see some of our hvac projects our kitchen projects unfortunately you had to cancel or not fully but cancel two of the kitchen renovation projects due to a lack of federal funding some of the funding lines however we're moving forward with the fabrication of the freezer coolers for next summer so the vendor is going to store those boxes for us so next year when the funding is available we can
121get those schools done and we have several other schools moving forward let's see right now we have cypress lake high school repipe is in design fort myers high school re-pipe and design fort myers middle school this was a re-pipe of the kitchen that construction is underway horns marsh middle school that will be pushed till the following summer for a freezer cooler lehigh acres middle portable renovation that work is completed obviously you've seen all the portables that were deployed and refurbished orangewood elementary is in the procurement phase contractual phase for hvac orange skyline elementary cooler freezer we're revising that proposal we weren't able to get all materials to do the full scale of that school but we're going to move forward with the some of the serving line changes to make it more efficient for the
122school and that proposal should be up to the superintendent's desk here in the next week and then we'll get that underway for that to be open for the start of school what i mean by that this is one of those issues where procurement of materials we're creating those front serving line areas where we typically have the rolling cages where we secure the kitchen those rolling cages may not be here in time for the opening of school so we will have the openings done the serving lines created and we'll just make sure we secure our freezer cooler areas and our dry storage until the delivery about a month later of those doors so we're starting to see material delays across the board and we've got a couple other freezer coolers and success academy we have a
123re-pipe there as well continuing on we have some more renovation projects at skyline elementary cooler freezer our sunshine elementary cooler freezer trafalgar middle cooler freezer that is another one that's being pushed till the summer but we are fabricating the freezer cooler now this year and villa's elementary sewer line which we're in the design for a replacement of the piping remodel projects cape coral technical college right now we're in the procurement phase and what that means is we are going through with the contract we're developing scope and we'll start negotiations with our vendors for architect construction manager and building official services fort myers technical college is on schedule right now that's underway you folks approved the total project cost and that work has begun veterans park academy of the arts the campus remodel right now you
124have the 17.6 million that is the renovation of the old lambs building the middle school site that is on schedule on target and opening august 8th for start of school high school campus right where you are in the design phase we're in schematic design phase right now so that's where we stand we had we had done some early field work we had hoped to get our permitting from south florida water management to do that parking area over the summer unfortunately those permits weren't released and so we're looking for like a january start so you'll see me coming to you with a total project cost probably in or around december beginning of january special projects there has been a big push for traffic studies primarily at the elementary schools right now all this traffic studies have
125begun for these six sites gateway elementary harness marshmal elementary harness march middle it's a combo study raymond c page elementary tortuga elementary and villas elementary and what this will do it will be a traffic count a study and the civil engineer will come with recommendations that they believe should we engage in a project will resolve those parent stacking issues and pushing traffic out onto the surface roadways and last but not least we have 20 single point entry projects so that in combination with what maintenance projects are doing for single point and safety and security are doing with single point we're touching all the schools everywhere this summer so a lot of work going on you can see right now we have about 17 of the projects are underway we've already reached out to our vendors
126to ensure that they're going to have materials in time some have already stated that they couldn't get the door doors needed so we're per the project is purchasing temporary doors until the final doors can be delivered in the fall so we will be secure however again we're realizing material delays and we've tried to pre preempt that delay by pre-ordering materials and so far it looks like we're going to have a pretty successful opening and completion of these projects okay and some more single point entries so right now the last schools that we're working on we're looking at our technical colleges so we're still figuring out exactly the design we choose to use for cape coral technical college but we're pretty close we have another meeting coming up here next week and hopefully we can finalize
127that and get that under design and underway as well and completed projects so you're probably going to say what all the hieroglyphics on the right mean well i asked the exact same question so what it is this is a status of all our schools and you have the alva school k-8 special structural survey that should not be there that should not that's a an error all the structural surveys at all of the historic buildings have been completed and right now we there we had a meeting with the maintenance staff we're going to prepare to bomb and do some bug work at the various schools to kill the termites that have infested most of the historic schools and the recommendations from the structural engineer in terms of what types of foundation work is needed in there
128some flooring work some foundation peers repairs some vapor barrier i feel comfortable in telling you that we don't have anything imminent failure in those schools so that's good news and we'll be presenting that to the cac committee in the fall as well cape coral elementary school this is hvac renault we're looking at 18 months it's underway we've forecasted and budgeted for 3.2 million dollars the final cost obviously is to be determined because we haven't completed that project yet dunbar community school this again was an analysis structural survey there are no dollars attached to this the survey was 17 860 dollars to provide that survey edison park again structural survey the total project cost that was 20 it came in at 17 000 to provide that survey fort myers another historical survey 867. fort myers high
129school hvac renovation that product is completed 7.3 million dollars was a total product cost and right now we're going to be entering the close out and the auditing phase fort myers middle wrap around school that isn't a project that was scheduled in the five or ten year plan however part of the wraparound program that has grown momentum here in the district they asked us to go out there and just do a quick schematic study of what we could do there and what the cost was that study has been completed and is sitting right now and it will be brought forward to academia of the capital committee and possibly maybe engaging in a future project should we be able to to afford that oh let's see where we at j colin english elementary another structural study
130that's complete lee county public education center well if you haven't noticed all the fencing is gone the banging is gone and the smells have subsided the project is done so the trailer has moved we're going to enter closeout phase and final auditing on that so fortunately we had a lot of heavy rains i don't i'm not aware of any departments having to use umbrellas or raincoats so that was i think this building was a success lehigh acres middle school the old renovation of the portables that was completed just so you folks are aware that was a half million dollars worth of portable renovations and ramp work that had to occur and some of that work had to occur on portables that we lease so a critical thing here in the future with portables is we
131have to have people with eyes and ears watching even if they're unoccupied to make sure the air conditioning systems are working so mold isn't prevented it's just future food for thought as we move portables around and take portables out of deployment and put them elsewhere the quicker we get them on air conditioning the least amount of renovation we're gonna have to do southwest florida public service academy special product gun range again this was a non-funded project however i was asked to go out and just do a study to see what it would take to put a gun range out at the fmtc campus and it was part and parcel of the whole adult education and todd everly's police academy and how over the years it moves forward and with the future potential larger campus in
132the east zone so this was just something short term how could we do this if the vocational school was on the 10-year map or further so obviously that study came in and that's been issued and it'll be sitting with curriculum the superintendent's office and the capital committee to make a determination as to where that may fall in the future in terms of funding or not thais elementary believe it or not tice elementary actually from a structural perspective from the structural engineer and the architect's point of view is in the best shape of all of our historic schools so it's one of the oldest and it's in the best shape now a lot of that has to do because it's had renovations over the years but i was pleased to hear how well and remember that
133building has a steel structure think of it as steel cage that it was built around now whereas alright our others are timber and so forth so you know we can expect a lot more years out of that school i would think so probably outlive me for certain so and that is the report and next up will be maintenance in addition you have a change order report for this month did you folks have any questions ms morgan yes the change order for veterans park academy for the arts scott for something this size it would be really helpful if you made additional comments about what the work stemmed from i know it's changes in what we've directed you to do but if a member of the public looks at this and they just see a change order
134for a million dollars it raises questions do you understand which one i'm looking at yes ma'am well well right now i understand what you're saying yes for something that big absolutely yeah it just a little bit more information that suggests that this is part of a plan and not just oh we have a change order dr brunier would you like me to expand on that a little bit for the public yes sir okay you will see this is our change order reporting and i'm required by the state and by the auditing every month to come to you with any major change orders this change order was the actual the board had already approved a total prod total product cost increase due to unforeseen conditions about two months ago at your board meeting and what that
135work is progressing that work becomes a that was one change order once you had approved it that i have to report again so that all that work was additional unforeseen conditions in that renovation that you added to the total product cost and this is me following up now that i'm engaging with the services with the change order but i understand what you're saying i could put a little bit more information that you've previously approved this amount by the board and so forth point taken thank you miss kittens okay hello sir how are you thank you a couple of questions one on the transportation i don't know which slide it was now but on transportation remodel at buckingham we were told previously that would be done this year and i had heard what october november or
136something of this year and yet on here it's saying next next year is that no it'll be it'll be done this year and quite frankly that may have been me that misspoke at a previous meeting it will be done this year we have some items where we're waiting for long lead air conditioning systems we're hopeful to have it done by october and we're tracking that so the building moving as quickly as we possibly can predicated on final equipment to be delivered okay so it's slide number three and it says new facility and then it says substantial completion date 623 the last column down there the last row on slide three yeah that's incorrect that's incorrect i expect this to be done in october okay thank you so if that can be corrected please yes ma'am
137and then because this is on the board docks it needs to be corrected so i can see we'll do sorry about that's all right and then the portables at the old lambs i thought we were told that after the end of the last year that they had made repairs on those portables and i know there was some repair work done no no it was not no when when we when that building changed and i had to utilize those portables to support some of the school population why i renovated the inside of the old lambs building we had to go in and dump a half million dollars to refresh those portals and get them into a condition to to be usable well because originally they were going to have i think it was like fourth grade
138or whatever in the old lambs building but in one section in the back while the renovation was happening in the rest of the school and then when they finished that part they were moving into the portals because halfway during the year i don't want to speak for what grade levels they put in there i can only tell you that they needed all the portables and i needed to get them reconditioned and ready for for seats i can't speak to grade level and how many i mean that's that's irrelevant but the thing is like halfway during the year they had to move from that back part of the building into the portables so were they fixed up prior to that or were they fixed at the beginning why they were in the building we kept a
139section of the building available to them as we started our demolition or renovation in the other parts of the building and at that moment in time we refurbished all those portables anticipation of knowing come january or christmas break i had to get those children out of the hard building to demo that area and into the portables to continue their classwork for the year okay the next question on riverdale it seems like it's going to be taking us a lot longer than expected so how is how is this affecting their school choice like right now again i don't do school choice or numbers the program has always been budgeted riverdale high school to go out through 2025. we were trying to get an early jump by getting some of that site work done this summer unfortunately
140we weren't able to get south florida water management permitting in time to accomplish that we were trying to accelerate the schedule a little bit budget and finance was going to work on trying to push some of that funding from 2025 forward for me we weren't able to get that summer work underway so we're still on our normal schedule okay which is 20 25 and that would be i would like to pose that question for further answer at another time if you want of how that is affecting the school choice and the numbers of students that will be able to go to riverdale because i'm getting i'm getting quite a few calls about well you know i'm on the list and house list and you know i refer them back to but if we had expected
141to open up some of those spaces in the fall and we're not going to do that how is that affecting school choice i will get you that information board member gittins there is expectation and the principal in the community did know this renovation project was going to get started i've had some conversation with student enrollment in the planning department that i believe those numbers have been taken into account but i will get you confirmation and make sure we respond in writing okay thank you and the others i'll leave until later thank you very much and thank you okay thank you miss kittens any other questions or comments i just have one question on the traffic studies at the elementary schools so do you have any data about incidents that have taken place or improvements that
142have occurred at other schools that have had an upgrade in their traffic flow i can get with safety to see if there's any incidents i can tell you when we did our first round of traffic improvements about five years ago they significantly improved some of the traffic backups at some of our schools unfortunately when covet came in you had an abundance of parents now who are driving their kids so where we on schools that we've actually accommodated and expanded that parking i'm at a loss now because the children aren't on the bus they're in their parents cars and i'm hoping now that cove it somewhat is dissipating we can somewhat go back to a normal situation i'm sure roger lloyd is hopeful of that as well so i'm sure he is thank you very much
143miss kittens i'll make those two correct corrections for you thank you i do have one more question on slide six the remodel projects and you're talking of veterans park academy remodel can you update us on is that the performing arts center is that the rooms and the vpa up front or what is that what you have right now is the renovation of the old lambs middle school building part of that board approval or the expenditure that we have in the capital plan was for the arts building as well the increased funding in the renovation of the old lambs building has eaten into the funding that would have supported the arts building subsequent to this there has been some discussion as to doing a global survey of the entire master plan of that entire project which
144i believe is underway now that is going to provide you with several options as to what the board and the superintendent based on recommendations from staff can do at that campus i'm not going to go forward with the arts building until that survey is complete and then the direction is clear as to funding and how the superintendent and the board wishes to go forward okay thank you very much fixing up the old building and pausing thank you thank you very much mr rick and mocker we appreciate have a good day thank you i know yes and now the maintenance update with mrs farb cedeno and her team good afternoon board members dr bernier attorney kathy dupuis bruno and fellow colleagues the maintenance services team presenting today consists of mr christopher stuber our coordinator for main
145student services dr tony dent mcnair our assistant director for maintenance services and myself barbara cedino director for maintenance services for today's capital presentation we have highlighted 65 capital projects the maintenance services department is currently managing as you will see on the powerpoint slides the par the projects are being performed throughout all zones in the district as well as they vary by trade under current renovations one project group focuses on restroom renovations at cypress lake high school and norfolk myers high school as well these projects will refresh the existing aged and outdated restrooms will bring them up to date with new building codes both projects are in the final stages of design and implementation work is scheduled to begin later this summer other renovation projects target intercom upgrades and door and window improvements each of these
146projects supports safety and security initiatives for the district with these projects communication systems for staff and students is improved security of the buildings is boosted when the doors are upgraded and last our building assets are better protected during storm events with hurricane impact windows also under the category of renovations we have painting refreshes chiller and emergency generator changeouts and flooring upgrades exterior painting projects will protect and seal exterior surfaces from moisture intrusion that can lead to microbial growth within buildings chiller changeouts will assist with the removal of excess moisture from buildings to create comfortable learning and working environments and flooring upgrades not only improve the aesthetics of the facility but also help with building health when floor coverings are breathable and avoid the trapping of allergens under upcoming projects one focus area is the main
147switch gear upgrades these switch gears are the main hub of our facility's electrical systems it is their responsibility to receive and disperse power to the subpanels throughout each facility improving these systems will help support the growing technology and electrical needs our district facilities by ensuring they are reliable electrical systems this also serves as a proactive approach in preventing unforeseen down times due to aged and outdated equipment this side here is a continuation of upcoming projects maintenance services will be managing the last part of our presentation focuses on completed capital projects the most recent projects completed are either hvac or lighting related other projects include blind upgrades and cabinetry improvements as with the other renovation projects currently in progress these projects also support safety security efficiency and beautification of our district facilities thank you this completes
148our portion of the presentation back to the superintendent for comments no comments from me members of the board thank you miss morgan none miss kittens i want to thank you for the way you gave us that lengthy report and then made a summary of the why of these things being taking place i appreciated how you present how you presented the report to us in both stages so thank you thank you thank you miss kittens yes thank you very much very good report i just have a question it may be kind of crazy bill what is on slide 12 cape coral high water i could have dealt with the water reclamation if sewer hadn't been in front of it so i just i just wonder what what does that mean okay see it's in the middle
149of the page yes so cape coral high school store water reclamation project so what's happening there is at the athletic fields we actually have septic tanks that we have to completely terminate so concurrently we've been working with engineers to help us with the tie-in from you know whatever the main sewer system is for the campus to tie into the city of cape coral sewer system so with this project we've been in the design phase for multiple multiple months now where we've gone undergone permitting as well so we're trying to finalize that project so this is that sewer reclamation type of project that we're trying to tie in that sewer system to the city's sewer lines okay thank you i will sleep better now any other questions board members i just want to thank you also
150for the efficient way you presented this information and it's a lot of work great job thank you very much okay okay okay so next we have early childhood and lamp once again can we say welcome to the new people that it's their first time being up here i think for maintenance thank you welcome to them i think i don't think they heard us miss cedino could you introduce your team again so that we can welcome them as first-timers yes please so with me i have mr christopher stuber he is our coordinator for maintenance services and also with me i have dr tony dent mcnair she is our assistant director for maintenance services okay so with this we have mary grace romo welcome good afternoon good afternoon board members superintendent bernier and attorney david bruno it's
151a pleasure to be with you today i'm here to share lamp updates and early childhood updates the terms early childhood pre-k vpk head start are often used very interchangeably i do it myself but today i really wanted to showcase to you the variety and expanse of programs that we offer under the term early childhood learning services in actuality we provide multiple programs for children birth to five each with their own funding sources local state and federal requirements and targeted demographics our work is richly embedded into the world of grants local partnerships contracts work groups but the common outcome is for children to be socially and academically ready for kindergarten in order to accomplish our goals we have a large staff of over 200 employees who serve about a thousand children at 18 sites throughout the
152district these employees include teachers paraprofessionals resource teachers nurses social workers licensed mental health counselors family advocates specialists administrators and support staff it is an amazing group of people who are truly dedicated to early childhood our leadership structure is designed to support the requirements of each of the distinct programs each of the administrators are responsible for service area teams such as health family engagement and curriculum in addition administrators support a group of classrooms and work collaboratively with their schools there have been several challenges to overcome this year as we've worked to serve our children and families like other departments and schools we are facing staffing challenges filling vacancies the stresses of covid including losses isolation and keeping safe teacher ratios all of these things have affected the mental health and wellness of our staff and students
153one of the greatest challenges we are facing is an increase this year in chronic absences absenteeism excuse me we are taking measures to address this through a strategic action plan and committee through a non-profit agency called attendance works i've said to the board before if the children are not in school we can't get them ready for kindergarten this graphic breaks down our chronic absenteeism breaking it down this way will allow us to address family needs in a tiered fashion through our strategic attendance plan which will include relationship building recognition data monitoring removing barriers and building school family traditions we have many new team members in early childhood it has been a year of transition we have focused on strategies to strengthen our team create a shared vision of quality over compliance and provide effective comprehensive
154services to children and families these are some of our accomplishments this year we focused highly on improving safety of our children we inspected every pre-k playground there's a different lens you use to ensure that a preschool playground is safe we walked the playgrounds we inspected for rest we checked the strength of things and we found there were a lot of safety issues and so we prioritized and began repairs and replacements of many playgrounds and we have several next year that will also be improved we've also worked very hard to examine every position's roles and responsibilities we're a new team there are many new employees as i stated before and it was important to identify each person's roles and responsibilities and make sure that each member is working on the right work this increases our organization
155efficiency and quality of service this is a graph that shows a four-year span of flickers readiness scores flickers is an assessment that children have taken upon kindergarten entry for the state we started lower than other districts and i'm going to use the cursor to call your attention to this green line this is lee county and although we started lower we have improved over these four years and maintained our progress and you can see how the line the green line levels out and has maintained and if you look at the other districts you notice there has been a sharp drop for many of them during these these two years of pandemic it's important to note that the data this represents is a representation of all 6 000 plus entering kindergarteners in lee county early childhood learning
156services touches about 800 of these new kindergartners with this slide you can see we are one of three of the 10 largest florida districts with this favorable trend this is very encouraging and a springboard for our continued improvement great all of our four-year-olds take the voluntary florida voluntary pre-k assessment three times during their pre-k year this assessment is a summative assessment and it measures where children should be by the end of pre-k as you can see from the bar graph the growth for assessment period 2 is quite a jump from where the children started when they came in and the trend as you'll see in the bar graph is for our children to make huge gains in the third assessment period so our children just took before leaving school that last month the third assessment
157we don't have the data yet but we expect the data to be on par with that last blue line that you see which is last year's third period assessment growth so we took a very close look this year at our data our program standards our student needs our family needs and we identified our 22-23 school year priority initiatives that you see here on this slide to support our children's continued progress and development we have chosen two curricula the first is an engaging online software called imagine learning this is a supplemental curriculum to address literacy and math our second curriculum is a positive parenting curriculum called conscious discipline head start requires that we offer parents a research-based parenting curriculum we chose conscious discipline because it aligns with our classroom curriculum and reinforces the ability for the
158teacher and the parent to work together on social skills and positive discipline and self-regulation pre-k expansion is a major district initiative the expansion work group recommenced this spring the group is represented by many district departments including budgets grants planning early childhood and academic services according to florida kids count data there are over 7 500 3 and 4 year olds not in school in lee county while some parents may choose to wait there are many that are missing out on the pre-k experience due to cost and limited access our committee looked at what the other big ten districts are doing to provide greater pre-k opportunities the primary models combine the state of florida voluntary pre-k voucher which provides a free half day to all four-year-old children in the state with title one funds or parent fees
159in order to provide a full day of pre-k the committee is working on a road map that will allow us to expand opportunities in the future and give us a clear path to move forward these are some of the specific expansion efforts we are looking forward to specifically we are focused on reviving our preferred provider program with our private community providers it's of great importance to us we want to support our community providers through collaboration among pre-k and kindergarten teachers and leaders this includes school forums that allow for articulation and visits to kindergarten classrooms another effort is moving our head start classrooms to brick and mortar buildings to align with federal expectations and also identifying new spaces for pre-k classrooms now we're going to transition to our lee adolescent mothers program this is a state-funded
160program that supports youth and teen parents through comprehensive services lamp students often face many challenges for example we currently have a student with a baby in the nicu we have young people who have experienced trauma we have young parents who are homeless who are struggling with postpartum depression young fathers and mothers trying to financially care for their babies while also staying in school this incredible program and the incredible teachers and staff of lamp become very invested in each and every one of our students the ultimate goal is for our young parents to graduate high school become great parents and fulfill their dreams lamp teens and youth can attend the lamp center on michigan avenue or they can remain in their traditional high school and still receive all of the services child care transportation social services
161mental health services we are very excited that next year we will be sharing our campus with grad academy this will maximize the resources that lamp possesses and offer more options for our young parents so you may have noticed that the lee adolescent mothers program also serves young fathers this name of our program doesn't represent all of our young parents and so we formed an ad hoc committee we are following the name changing process and we worked with communications to distribute a survey we are awaiting those results and on friday the ad hoc committee will meet to look at the community suggestions and identify the names that we will present to you at a future board briefing our goal is to have a name that represents all of our wonderful young parents thank you for allowing
162me to share these updates with you and now i will turn it over to dr bernie year just briefly board members we are very very lucky in our school district to have somebody like mary grace romo she is a content expert when it comes to this information she has been working hard along with her staff to ensure compliance with federal regulation as you can imagine the younger children get the more rules are associated with how you interact and how you work with them she's very adept at moving through she's got a great focus on continuing to want to improve our green line i love the fact that you used your cursor to to draw that line out for us but she's working on that aspect of trying to continue to raise our performance with our
163youngest children so that we can have them as kindergarten ready as possible i've shared with her and some of the other people that i've interacted around early childhood our goal would be that all children have that opportunity to arrive to kindergarten being able to read it's a it's a very large lift a very large goal but for those of us who could afford private pre-k's and had parents reading it home to them and supporting their children we know that it's possible we have to make sure that we have the opportunities for all of our parents to have access to that type of education and mary grace is committed to making that happen in our school district and want to thank her for her service we'll now entertain your discussion and listen for points of clarification
164where we would need to create further action yes thank you board members miss vaughn yes thank thank you for the presentation the figure 63 enrolled youth and teens is that just at the michigan avenue or is that include at their home schools and i'm curious how many students right now are being served at their home schools that is the total number and we have five students being served at their traditional schools we've been working with the high schools to increase access and understanding of what the program is so that we can attract more teens i do believe and statistics show that there are more young parents in lee county than than our 63 and so we've got to get the word out yeah and i have kind of expansions on that all right so when
165these students let's say it's a mother with a young baby is at her high school is the placement of the child on her or is it something that the program does so the placement of the child is something that we support and we are able to cover the cost of child care and transportation and support the young person in selecting a child care facility that she or he feels confident with and we create a contract with that agency it's monitored is monitored but the student is supported completely okay and i'll be honest i see a problem with that i'm very very familiar with lamp as a guardian ad litem i had two young mothers that went through the program i was also before i was on school board a volunteer at lamp as a volunteer
166tutor working in the little store so i'm very very familiar with with that and i know that some of the young mothers are nursing their their children so are their babies and so obviously the young ladies that are at their home school don't have that option because the child would be at a distance correct and the other thing that i wonder about and i'm all for the kids the girls and the young men to have you know a full school life so to speak and if they were involved prior to the pregnancy and the child involved in band or clubs or whatever that they get to do those things so i'm it's it's not that i'm not supportive but i see some issues for instance transportation is huge so the let's i'm gonna use a
167girl for this so the young lady would take her bus to her to her school but there's no provided transportation am i right for the child the young lady would have to get her her child to the chosen site daycare site we actually do contract with the child care facilities that provide transportation so that the child can be transported and the mother can then take her bus and go to school or drive to school and to your first question each student that comes into lamp has a very unique story and you know that having been guardian ad litem there's as many stories as there are kids and so part of what we do when they arrive is have that conversation and ask the questions that need to be asked to help provide guidance ultimately it's
168that young person's choice or that young person choice and their parents choice and they need to make a decision do they prefer to be on the lamp campus or do they prefer to be in their traditional high school there are possibilities of opening other nurseries at local high schools and in many districts that is done and i know it has been done in our district as well and so there there are opportunities there this year we really focused on expanding at least the choice because students were automatically being sent to lamp and not really understanding that they had a choice of remaining at their high school and having services or coming to a more intimate setting where the babies are at the nursery and mothers are able to breastfeed and be with their babies throughout
169the day okay but it's not really a choice for many of them and i kind of i'm sorry i kind of shook my head when you said the student and parent because both of the young ladies that i advocated for were in the foster care system one of whom lived in a group home did not live with her baby who was placed elsewhere and the other was lucky enough to be in a foster home and in my during my tutoring at lamp i talked to a lot of a lot of the girls who you know some of whom were either married or living with the baby daddy and you know there's when when we say choice and we say the parent it's been my experience in getting to know some of the some of the
170girls that were there and this is a few years ago that often a parent is not involved because typically if there's a parent involved there there's more support it's it's also my experience that some of the girls when they get pregnant they're kicked out of their home and that's how they wind up in in foster care the other thing is that what i'm wondering is for those that would prefer being in the more intimate setting i know in the past the michigan avenue early childhood center was the place where and it was particularly important to the young lady who didn't live with her baby he was placed elsewhere because she at least got a chance to see him how are the openings in in that are all of the young parents that want to go
171to the current campus the traditional lab campus have they all been able to have their babies placed in this early childhood facility yes they have and that option is very desirable for most of our students they want to be with their babies and near their babies you know they're young young parents many of us understand that experience of being a young parent going through all kinds of changes trying to make your way in the world and as you said mrs vaughn many many of them come from a group home many of them have no other support than you know what they can find at school and so the relationship and the bonding between the young parent and the child is of critical importance we find that the handful of students that have chosen to stay
172at their traditional schools do have a support system in place and so it works for them but for many many and i could probably say most the support system is lamp it is the school it is the teachers it is the nurses the social workers okay and i'm just gonna close with one comment i'm i'm happy to hear that none none of the girls are being turned away because there are no because there are placements for their children and the idea that in in the future that perhaps some of our schools maybe one in each zone has somehow a nursery attached to me is a triple win situation because and actually i talked to mr doty one time about as a benefit especially for some of our spouc employees that you know very low cost
173child care would be a wonderful benefit and a way to retain some of our people that i mean inflation and child care costs have to drop out of work because the work isn't paying a much more than than the daycare and the other thing i want to say is you know we differentiate of course between finding child care and many of our lower income parents well just you know a neighbor or somebody else with a child that's staying at home and their child care is basically the kids in front of the tv all all day it's not the high quality daycare early education that they get through programs like this and so the reason i say it's a triple win is then we take those children who have been in these programs with the teen
174moms and they've had the high quality and guess what they're going to be much more kindergarten ready so i'm really hoping to see an expansion of the program i hope we start thinking out of the box a little bit more with establishing these things on campus it's even an opportunity for maybe some of the moms and i know like the stereo high school has the early learning the little daycare the not daycare but the early learning academy and i mean there's so many manifestations that we can do to expand this and every single one of them equals the goal of getting one of our team parents to graduate and have a better outcome in future and having those children be more ready for kindergarten i know there are some counties that have developed these programs
175i started a little research but i haven't gotten very far in it but i'm just saying as a outgoing school board member this fall one of my wishes would be to see this development of the program continue and prosper and thrive so thank you miss vaughn okay i think miss morgan had her hand up next and then miss patricka so first of all kudos to the staff i'm looking at these numbers the voluntary pre-k assessment i mean you held the line or even improved despite the challenges that you present so clearly you all are looking at your practices and and you are making a difference in terms of what you're doing for these kids with respect to the flickers we are the second lowest in the in the and 18. we're second lowest but we
176made improvement we grew while other districts did not do you have a clue as to what what is going on what is your focus that is changing this trajectory well i would like to say i had a clue but i don't i do want to mention that this data is from last year i wasn't here at the time but it is fascinating you know a global pandemic and we held our we held our own we have been investigating and we have been digging and we don't have an answer to that mrs morgan but we are very motivated because it's it is a springboard it is it's momentum and we want to to to keep it going we want to grab it by the tail and really dig in which is why we are focusing on
177some supplemental materials that will meet children where they where their need is and help accelerate them so my last comment would be you need a jump shift i mean it's not enough to just continually improve we yes we need a significant significant new paradigm or whatever operating in this area and lee county can show everybody else how to do it so anyway those are my comments thank you very much miss patricka hi good afternoon slide 15 the first item under future expansion efforts indicates that we're going to recruit private providers for lee county preferred provider partnership program somewhere in the recesses of my memory i think i recall having tried this before as a district and that it wasn't successful what will we be doing differently this time in order to make this successful please
178if i recall it wasn't successful because daycare providers could not afford to hire workers who were capable of teaching the curriculum well i have i have what i've learned in in the last seven months and what i understand is that there were a group of providers who who wanted to participate there i believe there has been some transition and it has it has fallen by the wayside a bit but part of the problem was there was a heavy lift with data and expectations for business owners and so our committee has been rethinking repackaging and and looking at what does the partnership truly mean the reason why these partnerships are important is especially the relationship between the school and the local providers that are sending kindergartners up i'm not sure to answer your question what will
179be different i don't have all of the details of what was done over the past years but our team is really committed to relationship building and i think that it's some grassroots building trust and truly making it worth the providers while to collaborate with us it's got to be a win-win situation it's got to not interfere with the running of their business and it's got to bring it's got to add value so some of the initiatives are in that relationship between the school and the private providers are the kindergarten visits for the pre-k classes to come and see the teachers kindergarten and pre-k teachers having communication and collaboration the articulation so that kindergarten teachers know each child that's coming up to that school and what they can do to to support and pick up where
180the pre-k teacher left off it's strange because early childhood in general works very much in isolation and it really is part of a bigger picture and so without our community partners we're operating in isolation we want to break those barriers down and we are engaging in grassroots efforts right now to do that i appreciate that if we mad if we could have an update in the board weekly update about what's going to be different about this program that was unsuccessful previously i'd appreciate that thank you and i would like to just make a comment i think that when the state got got involved it was a structural process but it wasn't a relationship process i think the complete difference is that instead of going to this the providers and saying this is what you have
181to do and this is what we need it's the building of the relationship between the provider and the school that is what this work group is really focused on because initially the demands of the pre-k providers were more than they could handle so what is it that we what's really important and that's our focus and so i think they're they're just completely rethinking we be doing how they integrate with or collaborate cooperate whatever with these providers i'm i'm optimistic i know there's a lot of passion on the part of the people on the team who are involved certainly some principals and schools are more invested in this than others but that's okay you want the early adopters to experience the kind of success you can have and then you can can branch out so that's
182just my observation thank you mrs morgan any other comments or questions for miss romo i just want to thank you very much i had some past experience at lamp for a couple of summers and i think you're doing an amazing job so thank you very much a much needed service thank you very much thank you so i'm just going to comment board members that it's 407 so we're over time and we still have another presentation public comment and board member comments and we have a celebration at the district cambridge award reception at five in the atrium so i just wanted to bring that to everyone's current attention and now we have our next presentation on job descriptions and i'm going to turn it over to dr bernier in a minute but first i'm going to
183say happy birthday to rob dodie who is our other presenter and thank you i couldn't find a greater audience to spend it with 38 i know you're thrilled dr bernier madam chair rob's going to present some information today regarding the information i've been sharing with you one-on-one in direct reports regarding some need for some organizational change i've worked with budget and finance department i do have an accompanying org chart your chart was not provided to you specifically at this point because i've not yet had the opportunity based upon cabinets still being on wednesdays following this meeting i will go over the org chart because there could be some impact vertically these are really the horizontal this is the big horizontal line after you see superintendent except for one position there is a position that this
184district desperately needs and that is someone in the risk management role one of the first things i had to do when i got here was evaluate a helicopter landing on a high school field and sign off i needed to send that to the same person who helps me choose dental insurance she's a very wonderful person and very very good at insurance but we really need someone in this day of osha and all the other types of complaints that a school district can get we really need to have someone who's in the process of always attempting to mitigate our risks so as to lower our costs and lower our exposures so other than that one position these are all changes structurally at a chief level and i'll turn it over to mr dodig and then we'll
185be prepared to handle your questions thank you dr bernier good afternoon the first job description before you is the chief communications and government relations proposed title that is an essence replacing a job description that you had approved previously called the strategic engagement officer the interest here is that we would combine both the communications function and a government relations function that the school district currently does not have so that is what is before you here and i'm here to listen to any comments or any comments dr bernier has okay miss morgan so just a couple of comments you don't you say state and federal they're advocating state and federal not local so for example some of the issues some of the mouss we have with you know the county commission some of the i just wonder
186if could certainly be put in there well i'm not saying it should i'm just asking the question the other comment i would make is that i'm very concerned that experience in government communications journalism marketing broadcast media or public relations is preferred i don't think you can put someone in this position who does not have some aspect of that experience and so i would say experience is required in these fields but that's that's those are my comments on this particular can you please repeat the last thing that you said i'm sorry i wasn't following where you are on the job description none minimum qualifications seven years of experience in government communications journalism marketing broadcast media or public relations preferred and i think that preferred is too weak a we've learned as a board that if we
187don't do prescriptive job descriptions we can get caught with people who don't have the experience set that we feel is necessary and frankly to say that none of these things or maybe one of these things is okay and just i'm just i'm concerned about that those are my comments thank you thank you miss morgan did you have any more comments miss patricka no i just want to clarification okay thank you and miss miss kittens yeah i'm i'm just a little confused on that minimum qualifications too because when you look at like bullet one and bullet two okay so the first one communication broadcast the second one is communicate oh government communications is it government yeah that's what i'm saying government comma then communications it's kind of repetitive and i agree with miss morgan that it's
188important enough to perhaps combine those and make it a mandatory i mean required i it just seems saying the same thing maybe i'm just reading it wrong the first poll it's a degree requirement the second bullet is job experience okay can can i weigh in first of all i would like local added that is an error that rob and i made in our communications with each other we've always wanted this position in the government relations to have a local state and federal press presence to interact with all those delegations and those delegations are extremely important to us as we all know we have to continue to consistently maintain those lines of communication this position would be responsible for it board member morgan i agree with you that the experience is vital the difficulty was if
189you put mandatory they would have to have experience in every single one of these areas the way the as long as i retain the flexibility to penetrate to find somebody who's got a comms background in a government relations background and there should be additionally eventually we need to engage in a conversation of somebody who works specifically for this person in government relations we have a communications team but we're also going to need to find and i've shared with all of you we're going to need to find an individual reading it publicly under the record because maybe they're listening we're gonna need to find an individual who's tired of working 24 hours a day seven days a week for thirty thousand dollars as a legislative aide who was now was willing to work seven days a
190week forty hours 80 hours somewhere in that range for a little bit more money that's really my experience with this position is this person would oversee the larger picture but the communications team and an individual who has that experience of interacting with the legislator legislators could be our sole presence in tallahassee when session is going on our singular point of contact and our daily report back to me and to others regarding what's transpiring so that we can give you real-time updates i want to be clear the capital strategies group has been wonderful group to work with and our plan was to continue their contract going into next year while we transitioned our people we still may want to look for another opportunity with another lobbying firm so that if we wind up without having a
191chief of government relations and an employee that we're still prepared to have a presence in tallahassee in the spring thank you i appreciate the vision yes thank you miss patricka i don't think i saw it in here as a required skill and maybe i'm wrong maybe i just didn't read it this way but when i look at the top bullet on page two serve as an ambassador for the district as needed and articulate the district's vision mission and goals to external stakeholders and partner organizations i believe you need someone who's a good public speaker as well and again i don't know that i saw that in the skills and abilities oral and written communication skills with the ability to organize proofread write and edit materials is not the same as being a compelling public speaker
192and to me that the two are am i am i reading this wrong you look confused no i'm i'm i'm hearing what you're saying and i'm processing i think it's i think it's a vital aspect to a person's ability to speak publicly this would not be the mouthpiece for our district we have a pio we have a public information officer they're very good at it they certainly work with me on a daily basis so that i can get better we're currently trying to establish the after-action research that i've been asking for since my first interview so that we can go through the videotape and make make additional changes to how i approach especially with reporters and other people i will look for someone who is a communicator and certainly their ability to speak publicly have
193the experience of working and interacting with state local and federal officials and a school board will be something i'd look for in every chief that i have not just a communications and government relations officer i look for the same in an operations person that we're currently reviewing resumes for i'll be looking for the same thing in any other changes at the chief level that may be anticipated or may occur without you know without any knowledge because people come and go from organizations we're always going to look for quality people who have a basic set of skills and then on top of it can bring these skills to the table as well miss jordan and miss kittens thank you okay i guess i was just a little bit confused because i thought the person is this
194person not the person who would be working with the lobbyists and definitely thank you for adding the local because i'm looking at i'm just thinking in my head how miami has it or broward and all the other different places they have the individual person as such here but then they also have a another person who is their lobbyist and this person works directly with them to bring them everything that we are wanting to do there are two different skills that are out there there is a model where you could have somebody like this that works directly with an outside lobbyist there are districts who have this position and then have a junior staff member somebody at the coordinator or director level who is the point of contact who goes up in lobbies on their behalf
195we had an outside lobbyist in las vegas but we also had two people in our government relations office that were full time in carson city during the times the legislature was meeting orange county public schools also has that same arrangement they have a chief whose communications and government relations related but then has an individual who is up in tallahassee doing their work and they have a consultant on top of that this is serious work and it's it's important to have a voice when our legislature is meeting and even more important to have people maintaining that relationship when they're not meeting that may be the most critical component of what we need i think you have covered sessions beautifully with the organizations that you've hired to help be your voice we need to be doing the
196maintenance on the ground right now as we put build your legislative platform somebody needs to be talking with them and being able to feed back to all of you this would be the first step a junior staff member reporting to this person would be something we would come to later on thank you kittens to miss patrick's point about being a communicator i believe under minimum qualifications the second bullet where it says years of experience seven years experience in communications journalism marketing broadcast media et cetera public relations would cover that would it not that you know if you've got seven years of doing that it would cover your ability to communicate to the public i mean just not saying no thank you miss vaughn did you have your hand up yeah a couple a couple things
197first of all under essential job functions and maybe it's this is not an appropriate place to put this but i see that this person would have to you know it says reports represents the school board the superintendent but as part of that representation especially of the school board with our varying opinions about you know what we're looking for in terms of legislative relationships i would think that you know somewhere it might be mentioned that the person meets regularly i mean how is this person going to know know what we're really about or i mean without the regular meeting with us and i would say also the person would have to at some point go to the go to the schools and you know i mean there's or or would this be an underling that's bad
198word is it would it be an underling but i kind of like you know sometimes somebody reporting to someone you've already lost one level of communication so and i have a second question but if you would does that is that part of isn't that part of the job function would it be appropriate to mention this individual would report directly to me this is not a board this is not a board employee so it would be my job to work with all of you with them potentially being present okay in in ongoing conversations this person would be integral in the part that we started to launch yesterday which is the beginning of a legislative platform for you this person would be integral in that role but i would want to be i want to have that
199clear delineation that this is this is a staff member this is a chief reporting to the superintendent i would be accountable for their outcomes and their expectations and how they're evaluated okay and that actually was the second so this maybe is for dr bernier chief communications and government relations i know you talked about the horizontal typically a chief has you know some vertical is this just kind of a standalone position as chief that you and this person would work together or how does this how do you envision it fitting into communications department this would be the chief communications officer this would be the person responsible for the communications department and all of our work whether it be website print all that and then on top of that they would carry the bucket of government relations
200work both locally federally and at the state level both here off season and during session okay and that makes a little more sense to me that this person would actually be chief on the communications department except okay i'm just getting caught up in a little bit of the semantics of of the title but that makes more sense that person would be in that position and you said you have not yet worked out the organizational chart is complete but due to the it's complete in a draft form that information has not been shared with you because it has not yet gone before my cabinet and some of the vertical alignment when we get to another job description could shift this particular position would be communications and government relations they would be picking up no additional duties
201in the current org chart okay but yet it would this person would be in charge of let's say any press releases crisis communication ongoing communication division mission of the school district community engagement work yes yeah and i'm just going to say my history with this and if you've all heard it the visuals of the organizational chart the horizontals and the verticals really helped me so getting that in my in my head helps and hopefully as soon as you vet some of these things and work it out with cabinet you'll have an updated organizational chart my plan was to try to wait on these job descriptions for the last meeting in july okay but if i wait sorry the last meeting in june if i wait some of the talented people that we have discussed and
202we would like to recruit are going to be either contractually obligated in july or they're going to be gone okay so we i this is a this is something that i needed to move forward at this time as soon as i believe that org chart will be fine in cabinet tomorrow we've had individual conversations with every one of the impacted directors they understand where the where and the why i've had some of those conversations with all of you that certain things in our org chart and how they're aligned maybe at one time made sense but food service and finance for instance amy sorry that you're hearing this for the first time today susan knows it food service and finance does not make sense that's an operational function of the school district okay then that yeah
203that that really helps because i saw another job description on here that might also bump some things on the org chart so thank you thank you and i hope we can stay on topic because it is 4 26 and we have to be in the atrium at five and we still have oh wow the rest of this presentation and public comment just saying so let's move on okay so the next job description is deputy superintendent which we don't currently have in the district this is an entirely new job description and certainly dr bernier can discuss his philosophy behind this but i'm able to answer any questions you might have regarding the job description we are a school district now over almost 100 000 students getting larger a deputy superintendent would split off the requirements of
204the split off some of the requirements placed on our current cio our chief academic officer last time i checked with jeff he has a number of direct reports upwards to 30. there also needs to be a very specific function in this role with the executive directors those executive directors need to be more school based and less curriculum focused they need to be our eyes and our ears in our schools when we were talking about innovation schools today and i talked about that process for school and classroom visits those executive directors need to be doing that work and the deputy needs to be driving that school improvement work the cao will remain in the curriculum and instruction side of the house developing professional development to making sure our materials are aligned to standard doing textbook adoption
205doing challenged materials work but the deputy superintendent would elevate our level of supervision of our schools and quite honestly move the accountability needle in the correct direction and we've had those conversations separately and individually thank you okay miss morgan and miss kittens then miss patricka yeah so i just want to point out that this is a contract and secondly the essential job that needs to be changed i'm sorry you caught the air and says contract does say that wouldn't be a contract i don't believe okay essential job functions first one to provide leadership to create and sustain an environment in which region leadership principles teachers parent guardians i'm not sure i understand what that means morgan i'm sorry i was making a note of your prior thing okay the word region before the list of
206people i saw that i was going to point that out to you that's just a typo oh okay i didn't know what that meant sorry it has to do with how our executive directors are split out based upon elementary middle and high school level by level yeah by region right okay thank you region may be from somewhere else where we were okay getting this right thank you thank you miss kittens that was one of my questions whether the in this case academic are you calling them regional or what do you call it regional my plan at this time is not to adjust our structures regarding our executive directors in the supervision of schools right but i'm just saying would those individuals report to the deputy as opposed to reporting to the they would report to
207the deputy the cao would stay in charge of the curriculum and instruction part of the division that was my question okay this creates almost like a separate school office the cao would report up through the deputy the deputy would report to the superintendent and how would that numerically fix the 30 that report to one person right now well it takes the executive directors off of the cio's plate and the ceo of the cio and the deputy could look through the rest of the organizational chart make some determinations about some additional people being observed and evaluated by the deputy it would give us the additional person we need in order to split all of those functions that are currently housed under the cio what jeff spiro does for this district is incredibly difficult work and the
208most important work we have if we're going to spend resources anywhere it should be on the teaching and learning or the academic services side of the house thank you miss patricka the bottom bullet on page one talks about special attention on improving student achievements of ells and special education students i wonder why that's not expanded to i mean to me that talks about achievement gaps and i wonder why that isn't expanded to include achievement gaps for all stakeholders in our system certainly that is the avenue of the entire job description is to look at all the student data look at all gaps and making sure that we do the very best we can to close the situation in in some of our data we certainly can make that i hesitate to use achievement gap i
209understand it i heard there's a better phrase for us to use artfully stated i just wondered why it was those two groups as opposed to more groups of our students that struggle we can do that and then my second question is more general and it can be addressed in the future seeing the org chart is going to be very important and understanding where all this fits in and how are we paying for it and you've already mentioned those but i know that i'm a little shy gun shy as i've told you about approving job descriptions because of what it means for us going forward so having those questions those answers in place before i approve this is hard but but you also know that you have my support and trust well there will be another
210opportunity in june for your actual approval this is in a sense a first read an opportunity for rob and i to get your feedback on these publicly so that we could we can go deeper and make those corrections and make sure that they're ready for that final june meeting for an approval those are my comments thank you thank you very much miss kittens yes based on miss patrick's comment at the bottom of page one that last bullet i understand what she's saying and are we limiting or is the verbiage intended to cover all academics we can certainly rewrite and have it cover more of the academic situation i was looking specifically at past research that had been put in front of all of you right in the increasing number of ell students our gaps currently
211with our special education students and our declining graduation rate those were those were three heavy factors that i wanted to make sure that as we look for a person they had experience in making some changes to those areas in particular the entire strategic plan certainly lives with your superintendent but the deputy superintendent on the academic side would be responsible for helping me accomplish those outcomes that are outlined in envision 2030. so just a suggestion then where says improving achievement for all students and you know ag or for example something to that states that there's more than just those things rob we can have a conversation offline and i think we could add to that sentence improving school graduation rates and something around the goals outlined in the strategic plan because we do have closing of
212achievement as part of the strategic plan with the outcomes of all students well and i kind of go back to our discussions about what is it objectives what we talked about yesterday i forgot it now outcomes outcomes and that somehow because looking forward if this is the job description when we look at the evaluation should come out of this therefore if we have specifics like that it's easy to create a an evaluation process this would be the job description you are 100 job description is the basis for an evaluation tool thank you okay i think we need to two more mr dodeck so the next one is entitled chief construction and facilities officers management take you through the same exercise i don't know if dr bernier has any initial comment this is a position we
213do not currently have there did exist at some point in the school district operations is a massive job title in our school district it includes a variety of different organizations i won't belabor you with what is already under operations but i believe based upon the half penny sales tax and a need to be more transparent to work with the oversight committee isaac and to make sure that construction facilities maintenance and planning are all done appropriately so that we can not only cite our schools build our schools but then properly assign through student enrollment and our choice programs assign the student population that will support an educational model it would be vital for this school district to split off its construction and facilities work from its operations our operations and transportation food service procurement and all
214those other areas that are aligned potentially other places at this very moment would be better served if the operations chief concentrated on operations and we had somebody full time looking at our construction and facilities and our planning department excellent okay any comments i seem to be first up on all of these today but anyway i love the idea of including planning i think that's critical pulling that into construction and facilities thank you thank you mr dodig all right this is the director of risk management if you recall previously we had had conversations about a risk management division so this job description has been reviewed before by you all it was never approved because we didn't move forward with that division but we've brought it back with some of some input from dr bernier of course
215and i think he already mentioned earlier his desire to have a person in this type of position so any comments miss morgan so major function a comprehensive insurance and risk management program and yet this job description is really risk management and insurance doesn't appear anywhere else in the job description i assume that this is comprehensive risk management program and not insurance that's correct okay thank you yes you what what can be confusing about the word insurance is it can people start to begin to think about health care medical services other things that is a separate part of the human resources divisions where it belongs this is our liability work this is our insurer when we have a slip and fall accident this is when an employee gets injured and does workman's comp this is when
216somebody calls the superintendent wants to land their helicopter to recruit an athlete those are the people who need to to be calling our insurance company finding out what our liabilities are and helping us make informed decisions that prevent us from having to spend money after the fact related to a potentially poor decision when risk management wasn't a focus of the decision then i would suggest perhaps in the other places where you talk about minimum qualifications and essential job functions you make reference specifically to that liability yes ma'am okay be happy to make that change thank you thank you and i think one of the things that's going to help solidify this is the the visual and we had had his discussion once before about this risk management position and how it actually touches all areas
217because of the risk in every specific area so i think to me that will be interesting to see how it lands and how well i mean we should have just given you the org chart but i didn't at this particular moment it is still in a draft form until these were approved because if these these if i didn't get the feeling you were going to move forward with me then i would go back and revitalize the org chart so that's why i didn't post it publicly because there's no sense putting one chart out to then turn around and present another one and present another one i want to be transparent with the community but i'd like to be transparent with the community one time this particular position risk management is best housed within the finance
218division okay so that it so okay i'll i'll hold it i hope this gets any other comments or questions okay thank you then mr dodigan dr bernier i would just say that we will obtain we will amend these what's the changes and they will come before the board on the 28th the evening we'll have them in your one-on-ones from me there'll be all of you still mark draft and i will give you a copy of the draft organizational chart we can continue those discussions between now and that june board meeting so that we can continue to focus before we're under the posting deadline of having to actually post to make sure that they're prepared for the public to review at least seven days before your regularly scheduled meeting i do want to assure all of
219you i didn't take bringing job descriptions to you lightly these are this is incredible trust in your superintendent i will find you the very best people i can find you if i can't find them i will do the same thing i did with the chief of operations i advertised and advertised and advertised i now have a notebook it's approximately 21 resumes at least yes that i have to go through i'm having hr vet them as well but i am personally looking at every one of those resumes because this person would that chief of operations will be a direct report to me i need to make sure that we're matching up on philosophy and expectations not only for you but for me and this community so i don't take bringing a job description to all of
220you lightly finding the right person to fill these jobs is the most important factor that i have in front of me thank you very much thank you thank you mr dote again i hope you have a good evening on your birthday okay next on the agenda is public comment attorney bruno please thank thank you 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 fail to follow proper decorum in the chambers will be ruled out of order any speaker continuing with such remark will be required to relinquish the microphone
221per board policy 1.11 and may be removed from the chambers there will be one warning for board policy 1.11 the time per speaker is three minutes you will find a countdown on the big screens 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 madam chair there are four speakers for public comment thank you is there anyone else in the audience who did not fill out a blue card and wishes to speak okay seeing none please proceed attorney bruno thank you for the following individuals please line up jamie merchant sharon mcgill denise nystrom christine de vigilli we need the light on back there so everyone sharon mcgill i would just like to take a moment to address the chief
222communications and government relations position yes miss miguel please hold on for a minute because we don't have the all the time the time by shutting this down did i mess that up you shut everything up i'll put my watch out here i don't know i closed the computer that's all i did okay that's that's from the back okay we're gonna do it manually thomas has the time thank you okay it's okay sorry about that no that's okay sharon mcgill and i would just thank you everyone and i would just like to address the chief communications position i have had over 25 years of experience in marketing media and public relations for fortune companies and in my humble opinion i think that trying to combine this communications position with government relations is not in the best
223interest of the of the district one of the first things i noticed was that there was a huge lack of communication between the district and the public in general and there were so many opportunities for improvement there to be able to engage the public to be able to engage business and try to reach out to people one of the things i heard today was read those seven thousand young parents who were out in the public how do we reach them you need somebody who's in a position to be able to market and you've got so many different departments within the district that they need marketing and they need individualized marketing as well as a whole district perception and i think trying to combine that with government relations which as you know between legislation both nationally
224and locally and statewide is critical i mean that's a critical position and it's an ongoing position it goes on every single day and i don't see how someone would be in a position to be able to combine those two things and do it as effectively as this district really needs it to be done and so that's that's just my thought on that maybe i need to see the organization chart before i could give a final answer on that as a couple of people brought up already to know exactly how you plan on doing it but i just think that's not in the best interest of the district and it could be handled in a much better way because the one thing about marketing that you learn from the beginning is perception is reality doesn't matter
225what's real it's what people perceive it to be real and so the government relations part of it is totally different from dealing with the public and engaging the business community thank you thank you can you hear me okay or do i need to lower it okay yes my name is jamie merchant i was requesting okay there we go oh okay i was requested to read a letter by a student from the lamp program who encountered problems which impacted her studies as ms romo gave her presentation i received more emails with proof of children being turned away from child care my name is nayla de souza i was a student at lamp i gave birth to my son tony on november 30th 2021 during my pregnancy i had a lot of problems that i had to
226stay in the hospital for a few days after my baby was born i was very attached to him i stayed with him for my maternity leave to be home with my son i was determined to go back to school and lamp called me to come back because my studies were important and my baby would be near me on campus and i could go see him when he was hungry because i blessed them lamp insisted that i come back to school and at the beginning of january i gathered all the papers for the child care i did everything i was supposed to do for my baby to be at the child care at the school i delivered all the papers back to lamp so that my baby can be in the child care then they called
227me one day and said there was no child care vacancy for my son there was no vacancy and they told me there probably won't ever be that's what happened i've heard that there was no vacancy for him even though they wanted me to come back to school there was nowhere for me to leave my son so they told me they were going to look for a babysitter on the outside but that my baby wouldn't stay close to me and i couldn't breastfeed him obviously i wouldn't accept it i stayed at home with my son i felt i lived for him but his father left us and from there i started to work to get rent money i still want to finish school i only had five months to finish everything before graduate before i graduated
228i just want to try again even if it's a little more complicated but i know it will be good for my family these concerns are being brought to light as several current and former employees are stating the reason students like nayla and others don't have room for their own children in daycare is because employees of lamp are enrolling their own children into the daycare i am respectfully requesting that inquiries be made to assure that no student is left behind or is forced to drop out nayla has been told in so many words too bad so sad since she turned 18. but the lamp program failed her mary grace romo failed her and this district failed her prior to her turning 18. all she wants is to finish school for the benefit of her son i
229do have nayla's student id and phone number if you could please reach out to fix this thank you thank you good afternoon with regard to the innovation school as an educator i have to say i'm really really confused i don't understand the difference between how the innovation school is going to be delivering instruction versus how the rest of the schools are going to be delivering instruction it seems to me that good instruction is good instruction so i'm just letting you know that as a 25-year educator i'm totally confused by what's going on with that innovation school now i'm going to comment on the textbook adoption process last summer christy divijelli and i organized a review of the gay grades 12 english textbooks knowing that the district was in the process of purchasing english textbooks if
230one understands critical race theory then one understands the critical race theory was found in the english textbooks according to 40 individuals that volunteered as readers a report was submitted to the school board that to then dr superintendent savage and dr spyro later in the year the math textbook excuse me miss nystrom what part of the agenda are you there was a whole presentation on textbook adoption you gave an entire presentation and while you were doing it i started to write this i think it's highly rel in fact there's there's a whole information packet about it i don't i'm not seeing that you somebody sat there they discussed the whole textbook adoption process it may have been during agenda reviews no it would maybe stir it was during the briefing yeah it was on the it
231was on your agenda if you want me to wait till later i'll wait till later i'll wait until the public comment if you'd like to ask the question no i was just saying i did bring up the topic i asked a question yeah i think it was it was just discussed for quite a while i asked the question about was this the one that had been under review and then the answer was yes we did the process again and that was yesterday no this was not yesterday no i believe miss kittens asked me a very specific question today regarding a checklist for textbook adoption beginning that's correct we need a textbook all the way through board approval right all right thank you miss nice for my apologies go ahead that's okay okay so anyway we
232did a text book review last summer the english textbooks were read by 40 people individual people found critical race theory in there i think a lot of people don't really understand what critical race theory is but in any case later in the year the math textbook adoption process was beginning and we wanted to christie and i wanted to sit on the committee dr spyro obliged us but the training was given during a action meeting so i could not attend the training christie listened to it during that action meeting so she could sit on the math committee when she was on the math committee she was one community member among 100 educators and she sat alone by herself she commented on this earlier in the year now the district is beginning the social studies textbook adoption
233and i have read the approved vendors list since by law k-12 education must be civics-based i was glad to see that the textbook adoption committee will be informed about the difference between crt and social justices they are very different while board policy suggests that the district wants parents to participate and in my case community members they had one person on that entire committee providing little opportunity for anybody to participate i am requesting please dr bernier if you could have someone examine the makeup of the committees and the way in which members are chosen proportionally the textbook committee had one percent community involvement and certainly board members will never select parents or community members that they don't like that attend these meetings as a point of information i will volunteer to sit on the social studies
234committee and you also can purchase books that are not on the list you just have to pay full price which we don't know if they're more money or not yes i checked that with the state education department thank you good afternoon good afternoon christy divajilli i too would like to be on that social studies textbook adoption review committee i just have a few things today the first is on the risk assessment or the risk management position just really there's a typo in the essential job functions i'm guessing under where it says it says endure risks and i'm pretty sure you guys might ensure and then on which isn't a big deal but the chief communications and government relations position i have to agree with ms mcgill on most of what she said and i just
235have a couple of questions what is lean six sigma where did it come from how long has it been in the district and why do we use it i looked on their website it was extremely vague i tried to do some more digging even more vague so i would like i mean if possible some clarity on that and then implement coordinate and direct federal and state legislative programs that i feel like also needs to be expanded on because that is a very vague statement as well how is the implement like implementing i just have lots of questions about that as well and then to end i would like to make a comment about the lamp about that about the whole lamp thing and my question is what kind of federal what kind of funding is
236provided for lamp employees to enroll their children in that specific day care this program obviously receives money for the students to be on campus with their kids but if students can't enroll their children because an employee has a has a child that has taken that space is the employee receiving discounted or free child care those are all my questions thank you very much thank you that concludes public comment okay thank you very much and thank you for your comments ladies at this time it is 4 57 so i would like to recommend that we postpone board member and attorney and superintendent comments until tonight's meeting due to the fact that we're doing the atrium in three minutes and i probably can't make it seeing no other business to come before this board this meeting is
237adjourned you