001good afternoon it is tuesday may 11th one o'clock and this is lee county school board briefing for today we're starting out with a discussion with mr quick and he will be introduced by our chair is debbie jordan thank you miss vaughn and good afternoon everyone today attorney quick is here to share with us so we could have conversation on the firms that he had contacted and i just this has been this goes back to when we were asked to go ahead and let's get some outside investigators and so i put this into mr quick's hand i removed myself from that other than the fact of just having conversation with attorney quick he contacted the groups here that you see before you also he did have conversation with them to make sure that they had no
002insight sources in in the district they're not familiar with anyone here so it is completely outside the district and now attorney quick i'm going to turn this over to you because we have two things on this the one is the choosing the information and i think we've had this for well over a week you know the information for us to to look at so we're gonna i'm gonna turn this over to him we're gonna do this first and then the second one will be then we'll be speaking about the potential external investigations so miss attorney quick i'm gonna turn this over to you please and thank you for being here hi and thank you for having me it's good to see everyone i hope you all had a good weekend and happy mother's day thank
003you so yeah so i circulated around and i know it's in your agenda a packet that has three potential external investigators there were a number more that i had contacted but but one of the you know basic criteria that i understood from the board was that they had no connection to the lee county school district so that it was a completely external investigation so others that i contacted had some form whether whether they had done work with the district in the past or whatnot so i did not bring those ones to the board the three that i brought forward today are people that feel comfortable if you know whoever the board chooses i would feel comfortable with all three of them in terms of you know doing doing good work and you know doing a
004full and complete investigation for the board they do all three confirm that they have not done work for the school district in the past they confirmed that they had excuse me no connections with what i'll call senior management as well as any members of the of the board the only only one there was one of them who was a law school classmate of your the chief legal counsel mr williams but she informed me she what she describes as very infrequent contact with him since law school and which that's probably i don't i don't know when he graduated but my guess would be probably around my age which would be about 15 16 years ago so that's the only sorry that's the only somewhat of a connection again she's just a law school classmate but not
005somebody who has connections but i did want to mention that for for your consideration so the that is the at least on your list in terms of let's see i can go in the order that they're listed on in your agenda the first is a firm hr and beyond it's a former lawyer she's based out in broward county and this is this is really what she does her name is eva lisa's thomas and she conducts what i would consider hr investigations which i would consider these to fall under that umbrella primarily for private entities but as i understand she has done investigations for public entities as well so i guess a recovering a recovering litigator i could i would call her the second firm is called the norfolk firm also another recovering litigator her name
006is natalie norfos she is she's the one who's a the law school classmate of mr williams she previously she has conducted similar investigations to what we're talking about here both for public and private entities in her early in her career she did actually represent school boards up in the state of ohio not in the state of florida but she does have experience representing school boards as well as you know conducting investigations for public entities she's also a former in-house attorney for burger king and her her position there was conducting internal investigations as well as eeoc issues for for them and the last is a law firm rumburger kirk and caldwell they are they have offices all over the two attorneys that would be part of this team that i spoke with are i'm checking i
007believe out of their tampa no orlando office and again they are they don't practice exclusively in these types of investigations but that is a significant portion of their work that they do and again they do that as well as the others they do it for both public and private entities as well as they have done it for school boards here in the state of florida i in terms of my review of them i spoke with each of them at length multiple times to interview them as well as the ones that did not qualify under the minimum guidelines and they were i also spoke with others in contacts that i have in in and around the state just to make sure that these were people that i would feel comfortable bringing forward for the board to
008consider for the investigation and i did not receive anything that would would make obviously i didn't receive anything that would make me not bring them forward so they all came recommended from from people who either had who either knew them or had interactions with them or dealt with them in the past that i was able to connect with so those are the three that i brought forward i mean they do have differing ranges in terms of their hourly rate i know miss norfolk's her hourly rate is 500 an hour and the others are both in the 200 range i will double check the rum burger rate is 275 an hour for partners and then any associates would be at 225 and the hr and beyond is at 250 an hour so it's it's on it's
009like a similar to the rum burger it's like a blended rate of 250 an hour so i'm happy to answer any questions in terms of the investigators or or you know provide any guidance that the board may be looking for okay thank you and then also when thank you for sending all this to all of us as well as the retainer information as well so we do have all of that as well so does it i'll go ahead and start with any questions for attorney quick miss kittens good afternoon mr quick good to see you hi so with each one did you say they've all had you know experience with school districts and all that any one of them more than the other i would say miss norfolk has more experience not as not in
010the state of florida or as an investigator but actually sitting and representing school boards in ohio as the school board attorney in terms of investigations in florida that would be rumburger kirk and caldwell have more experience with with school boards and were they with larger districts as well do we know i remember the district but i believe it was either the equivalent or slightly larger than than lee i believe i don't believe it was one of the smaller ones and the hr and beyond she has not experienced with school boards but does have experience with public entities thank you other questions fisher yes thank you mr quick in your conversations and i didn't see this as i read through the proposals but is there a timeline based on the amount of work that you presented
011to them or did you not even do that yet i didn't have that because i didn't know exactly what since there's a number of complaints i didn't know exactly which you know which of the complaints would be referred because that might impact in terms of the time frame but all of them did stress actually did stress to me even before i stressed it to them the importance of an expeditious investigation which is which i was glad to hear because it was something i was planning to stress but in their they all stressed that to me as well that in their experience yeah i mean obviously they're not sacrificing thoroughness for for for time but they did stress that you know an expeditious and thorough investigation is an important aspect so they are looking at this
012as something that is in a tighter window than than than not okay thank you and then to remember when we first started this it was i think we had three possibles and now there's we're up to like nine yeah there were the data yeah the day i was here last there were two and then there was one that was referred down by the board the next day and then yeah we are up to 10 actually now okay as possibilities although some of them when we get into it some of them do have overlap but but there are ten separate yes thank you any more questions please miss gittins is there i mean have we decided yet what the process would be or do they already have a process to start that when they start you
013know what type of things do they do no i mean i did talk with them about generally because you know obviously every investigation is a little different but but the first step that all of them talked about which i agree with them is gathering the obviously they need to you know go through the complaint which they've already at least the ones i've spoken with them about gather all the documents that they can get from the from the district in terms of and the complainant in terms of the issues that are addressed there go through all of those make out a plan in terms of who they're going to speak with and who you know who is the i guess the world of potential the universe at least initial universe of potential people to speak with
014and go through and speak with each of those and obviously from that it might it might draw another person in that they weren't aware of or maybe some additional documents but that's kind of generally the process that they all discussed and i think that's the most prudent process so that they can be you know well-educated going forward and before they speak with everybody going through the documents and then this question is for i was just gonna say attorney quick we and that's something we are not they are the ones who will be doing the process we are not going to get ourselves into their processing on how this is because this is what they do so we are looking to hire these people for them to go and do the investigations of this and we
015will then receive the information back from them correct yeah this is a separate you know independent external investigation obviously you know the you know within the bounds of you know obviously there's budgets and things like that we need that you know i will work with them to make sure that they're you know if they're it looks like they're you know there are any issues with that obviously that's something we will we'll have to address but yes but yeah this is what they do this is you know what they do on a regular basis okay miss kittens okay what i was about to say was since we have so many different cases the prioritization of those cases and it's similar to when we hired rsm and we as a board decided on the priority as to
016where we wanted to start and i would like to bring that up for a question to see if anyone is interested in doing that because it may take longer on some or some may be more relevant and i would just like to see what our thought would be not taking over their job but just giving some idea and it can be done individually and submitted to them we don't even have to know what everyone else is saying but just to give them some idea as to our thought process okay and then miss kittens that's gonna be the next conversation as far as legal sufficiency and the and the cases that we have that's part two of this conversation when we start speaking on the investigations so is that okay that we hold it until that
017point or is that do you feel that's something that needs to be that's going to help us make a decision on the firms that's fine you got it all organized that's fine i don't have it all organized i'm one out of seven yeah i'm trying to to do what was asked of me of the board and i'm asking you the question do you think that it has to do with choosing a one of the firms or should we just take that and put it with the other you just explained to me miss jordan that you are going to discuss that later i can wait until it's discussed i just don't want it to go away and we don't discuss that part of it that would be great thank you miss giovanelli hey so i just
018have a couple questions how do we okay so and bear with me because i've got i've been thinking about this for a while all right so how do we know what's not already being investigated out of these 10 complaints have you determined that mr quick and so that's one question is that you know some of these are criminals so we're criminal allegations so i shared with you my concern that hiring these attorney firms are going to and they're going to represent the client that and so i want to make sure this is a fair transparent process and that all these complaints are treated equally and because whether they're legally sufficient or not i mean i want everyone to know that this district went to the extreme to make sure that this is done right and
019that they're comfortable with that process so that was my concern of this is that these are all attorneys and attorneys represent their client right so we're their client so i want to make sure that this is a fair process so and that's why i mentioned to you just in some of our conversations that it be someone that you maybe utilizes an investigator a lot of attorneys hire investigators to do the actual initial process i mean the oig the ethics commission they use investigators they don't and then it gets back to was it legally sufficient so i think that we want to be really careful that this process is done where everyone's comfortable including the complainants that's my that's my biggest concern and so if some of these are under criminal investigation do we even get
020involved in those that's the first question and then could any of these be investigated under rsm we've eliminated that process that was supposed to be in our ethics process that kind of this whole whistleblowing hotline has just you know not really has not operated the way it was supposed to or that with the way the board had given direction since our own board attorney only received one complaint and there's been several i know i've been spoken to that we've had many complaints that come through the whistle yet the board attorney received one so that's my concern that this board needs to discuss is this process as well so and i'm sorry to be all over the place but those are some of my concerns when we pick a you know a firm and let me
021i'll break that up there are a couple things in there so let me impact the in terms of if any of these are currently under investigation which this is i was planning to talk about when we when we discussed the actual complaints but i'll give a little bit of a preview now it is my understanding i came to the understanding that at least a few of them are part of an oig complaint that is open that has now been open so you know that might impact whether you guys even want to refer those ones and i'll get into that you know when we when we talk about it in terms of criminal allegations i'm not aware of any criminal investigation doesn't mean that there's not one going on i mean a lot of times obviously
022if there's a criminal investigation it's not known publicly but the investigation i guess that would be conducted by the district would while there may be criminal allegations and criminal aspects in them there are also allegations related to violations of board policy or ethics types of issues that would not be part of a criminal complaint and so i think that as long as you don't interfere with a criminal investigation i think you could you could contemporaneously investigate those should the board choose or they could wait to see if they have any reason to believe that there's a criminal investigation the other part with regard to attorneys versus i guess non-attorney investigators i would say that these these are the what i at least two of the three that i brought forward really they are investigators they're
023still licensed to practice law but they really this is what they do they conduct investigations and while they are attorneys they're they're not advocates for the board they're being hired to investigate independently what these issues are and they may have things that come back that the board doesn't like and that's within their scope of services so that they're not being hired as an advocate to defend you know defend against the allegations or defend the actions of any board member or district employee they're they're they're being retained to investigate and bring back the good and the bad okay so two things on that which which two firms actually that is their which one that's their so they do the actually investigating that's really primarily their their first job that would be the norfolk firm in hr
024and beyond okay and then the other firm run burger kirk and caldwell the two attorneys do other things but the bulk of their practice is investigations but it's not exclusive thank you second regarding criminal if there's criminal activity i have been told i know on another incident we had at harness march that they were there was an investigation and they com they were very clear that they did not want the school district doing an investigation or involved until they resolved their investigation so if that is in fact because we've had dr atkins had said there was a criminal investigation and i believe ms patricka said there was a criminal investigation so i hesitate to get involved in that one if that is in fact the case okay yeah i mean if there is one going
025on i mean you know as your attorney i would you know i would give you guidance that to tell you that if you know there's a criminal investigation going on it would probably be prudent to wait on that because you could get the benefit of whatever that criminal investigation is once it's closed and once those document you know that information becomes available so if there are any you know i think yeah it would be prudent depending on you know which you know for whatever the investigations are if we know about that yes okay thank you so then that would be something that needs to come up to you so that way you will have that information right if you're if anybody's aware i mean you know without you know getting into too much detail obviously
026we have you know that we have confidential issues in terms of investigations but if anybody's aware you certainly let when we're discussing the complaints as to which will be referred i think that would be important for the board to to know if if you're aware that there's at least some aspect of that is currently under criminal investigation so you can make your decision on whether to proceed or or wait on that perfect thank you and certainly one thing that the board could do if the board this would be for the board the board could either table it and defer it or they the board could say yes we want to investigate but that investigation will not start until unless and until the criminal investigation is completed so you know the board has options as to
027how it wants to deal with those okay was stability did you have well that leading me to one other thing you know what is our objective here what are what are we going to do once we get the information i think that's vital that conversation needs to happen now so that the public is aware what our intentions are regarding the outcomes of these investigations i think thinks that's really going to be vital thank you thank you ms patricka so i think norfolk for me is off the table given the price and i'm comfortable with either of the other two entities that you have referred given your level your equal level of confidence in both i could live with either for me norfolk is too expensive okay thank you miss vaughn and mrs bishop yeah i
028just have a couple questions having to do with some logistics when this was first brought up quite a while back they were just actually i think it started with just one particular investigation and at that time i recused myself because i was named in that in the interim we have had as you just said 10 that have come up before us and all of them are confidential and i'm just going to say that i am not the only one sitting on this deus now that has been named in one or more of these so given that i've been sitting here quietly and not really having a lot to say except this question how do we how do we approach this it's it's confidential how do we you know say so and so is brought up
029in this it this is really important we need to investigate this one but not that one i mean how how do we do that yeah i mean in terms of the basics of how i did i understand you're asking more than just the basics of how we're going to discuss it when we discuss it but i'll get to that yes not all i'm not going to say all of us i'm just going to say more than one of us is named so therefore should all of us be i mean now i don't we approach this so in terms of how i discuss it i plan to discuss it just by either incident number or case number or there's one that doesn't have it and i can just call it the whistleblower complaint in terms of
030voting i think you can all vote on it i know that you had you had recused yourself from voting before but there is not a at least not as i'm aware there is no potential financial gain or loss related to these invest you know whether whether an investigation takes place so i think you all can vote on the investigations whether it's individually or as a whole and then in terms of how how the board decides which ones get which one's getting referred and which ones do not i guess that's why you guys get the big bucks it's i mean oh yeah it is i guess that's why you get the big bucks yeah i mean ultimately it's it's the board's policy and only the board can authorize an investigation into itself or or any one
031of its board members other than obviously the state can conduct investigations and that can be criminal as well but in terms of that is really up to the board to determine if they feel it merits an investigation now like i said i think that there are some that are being investigated by the oig so there is there at least the complaint's been filed i'm not sure what the status is in terms of how far along it is but that's at least there there are other ones as well that could fall within the jurisdiction of the commission on ethics so you wouldn't necessarily have to make a determination you know that could be something that could be sent to the commission on ethics now it would have to be done as a formal as a complaint
032by the board not as a not as a referral they don't take referrals and they don't take anonymous complaints commission on ethics but that's certainly another means so there are other avenues available i guess what i'm getting there are other avenues available as well as there's one that could fall within the jurisdiction so just to make sure i'm clear we could bring these up by case numbers this really long case numbers and but then we really would be hampered in any discussion because we couldn't say well in this one so and so i think that's really i mean that yeah the confidential nature that's where i really have a problem with the confidentiality and certainly we can't really discuss the merits of choosing one over another and perhaps we would need the list i mean
033i've got some of the numbers written down but not all of them and then a notation already investigated under investigation now by oig or i mean is that how we would approach the logistics on this yeah what i could do and i i feel your frustration with with you know the you know being your hand tied behind your back a little bit in terms of being able to discuss the merits when we when we start discussing the complaints what i can do is i can go through all 10 of them by by either incident number or case number they were in the email that i had had sent around i'll refer to them that way and i can go through each one and tell you whether it's currently you know currently with oig or or
034some other entity thank you swan are you good yeah miss fisher yes i had a couple more questions too when it comes to the process these investigators have familiarity with the florida state law and the process used with the office of the oig and the ethics commission the ones that are being proposed yes they're they're yeah i mean they're not they are not investigators for those right but yeah but they are familiar with with that process and those issues as well okay great and then regarding the fees was there any mention of of a cap you know what i mean like up to an up to a certain amount or was that just because we don't know the timeline we don't know exactly how many we're going to ask them to investigate so i didn't
035know if that was mentioned at all in any negotiations or conversation i did discuss with them at the last when i was here in march there was discussion in terms of the cost i know miss morgan had asked me to estimate what the cost would be for for those again we weren't talking about all of the same investigations and i gave an estimate of 20 to 40 000 and i did discuss that with each of the three and each of the three understood that to be the amount that i had given to the board and felt that was an appropriate amount and then i didn't i don't think i heard the answer regarding rsm are they completely out of the picture because they're our employees yeah so we're the ones who are and also it's
036in terms of if you guys want to put a cap on anything you could certainly could and i'll answer the rsm question too but this just popped in my head if you guys wanted to put a cap and say you know if it if the if it exceeds x amount per and per investigation that they need to come you know to come back to the board or you know a check-in to to confirm i mean it's a little tough because either you're all in or you're all out on the investigation but i understand obviously you want to you don't want to just have a runaway train you know with funds going in terms of rsm it was my understanding that this was referred over to me because they felt that it needed to to have
037an external investigator certainly the there were there was at least one the the original one that we did the original investigation that we discussed not the whistleblower complaint but the other one that under your board policy absolutely required an external investigator and i think that was that was part of what triggered this and then the other one the whistleblower complaint had some overlap between those two and also it it needed for for various reasons it didn't require but really needed an external investigator and so i think that was part of why rsm was not involved in terms of the other ones i'm not i'm not sure i haven't been able to i haven't spoken with them i'm not sure why they felt that this needed to come to us as opposed to them being being
038the investigator on it but certainly in terms of i could i could speak with whomever you choose and rsm i can connect them so that if there's a way to limit fees and for them to utilize rsm i can connect the two to to hopefully be able to to limit limit the expense to to the district and the board and then the other thing is that a question i had was in the event that some of the complaints are already being investigated by the office of the inspector general or the ethics commission we wouldn't still go ahead and hire an external investigation for those cases would we wait to the outcome of the state investigation yeah you can do like i said i think it would be prudent if you're going to conduct an external
039investigation to wait for for because then you get the benefit of their work and the benefit of their input so i think that would be would be prudent i mean certainly you i think you could but you would you would be losing out on some free information thank you and can i'm going to just shed some light on rsm as well that's something that we really we definitely will have to go back and revisit with them because the way that the lighthouse is set up it either goes to employ employees go to hr the other ones they have no idea if it has the word board member in any of that at all it's like where does it go they have no idea where it goes so that's how it all of a sudden they
040start coming here and then going to the conflict attorney because when it says board member board attorney then it takes all of us out of this and that's why it has turned on to them so that's something that we really do have to revisit with them and the way that this is the lighthouse is operating so that's going to be coming up when they when we have that revisit with them so yeah it's this is what has taken place now and miss jim and elliot i know you had your hand up and then i'll go to miss kittens so regarding confidentiality i think i know if something's in litigation it can definitely be confidential i know if there's an investigation on an employee that's confidential right yes there's a state statute that covers the confidentiality
041and right i think all of these involve at least some level employees as well okay yeah i just wanted to i don't know that people understand that okay okay yeah so for the public purposes there's a statute that you know where it's being recorded so i mean i think it's vital that people understand that so thank you that's what i wanted to bring up miss kittens and then miss patricka so going along with the last question are our complaints against board members confidential in that we are public figures i don't think so they are i believe all of the board member ones are tied in with employees as well so i don't think i've can we can we check on that i will check because i don't know i've never seen the distinction like that
042before but i'm i'm hesitant to i will check i'm hesitant just because i don't have the statute in front of me but i will double check you can get back to us i was just wondering that because you know we're public figures and all that stuff so the question i have though is when you were talking to the different firms or companies were they aware of the number did you discuss the number at all because my question is if they're going into it and there's there's 10 potentially and who's to say we don't get five more tomorrow so is it just and maybe that's where i'm confused with the board are we just looking at these specific ones or as others come along is there going to be a need to do that i'm not
043really clear on on that point okay well there were some that we had to use outside it was it was mandated so that's that was number one and then and of course because of the fact of how it's coming in when anything that has vm and there it goes to hr and hr throws it back over because they will not touch anything dealing with board members because they cannot so it goes over to to this area and then that's where it winded up with mr quick so that's why we need to to re-evaluate how lighthouse is doing how they're sending that information and where does rsm tie into that so that in itself is a whole another issue that we really need to so in the meantime if something else does come this way we
044may it may have to go to the conflict attorney if miss debris bruno cannot handle it so it all depends it's all of this everything's like up in the air as far as that is concerned because at this moment our own attorney cannot handle a lot of the stuff so that's why attorney quick is doing it and in terms of the number i did when i first reached out to him i was aware of well the two that were discussed in march and then the one that was referred i think it was the next day but i did let them know that they're so when i initially spoke with them i knew of three as they came in i did keep them apprised that there were more although i they knew i did not have
045the board had not yet confirmed that they wanted to refer those to to an external investigator so i just kept them apprised that there were more but didn't tell them that yes these were going to definitely be coming down the pipeline there was one that was filed over the weekend so they're not aware of that one yet but you know certainly you know who whomever you choose whether it's any one of these three or or someone else i will certainly make sure that they're aware of all the ones that the board has asked be be investigated and i will work with them to make sure that it gets gets up and running and the thorough investigation takes place so miss madam chair considering what you said about the process and what mr quick is saying
046attorney quick i think we need to sooner than later schedule a time to discuss this and make those decisions before or even in you know the same time that we're looking to hire someone because that can affect their scope of work if we don't get a handle on what goes where and who goes who's on first and that type of thing my hope is that we'll do that today as well that coming out of today and then and then assuming that there's consensus reached there will be an item that we can i'll ask to be added for a good cause to the action item to confirm it tonight but the my desire my hope today is that you guys will be able to select somebody and then also confirm exactly which of the complaints will
047be investigated so that i can get them started tomorrow thank you miss patricka so we are 41 minutes in and we've made no decisions so may i ask that we sort of move ahead are you looking for consensus for us as to which firm to hire and then we go through the list of 10 and decide where they go that's what i'm looking for in that and that way tonight whether you guys do it as a consented item or whether you do it as an individual item we can get a official a formal board vote confirming it but but yeah that way i can bring forward person x for tonight yeah and i and i do realize that we are 41 minutes in we had this schedule for an hour but i want to make
048sure that everybody does have the get their questions out and have them answered so that there's you know everybody feels good about who they're going to to pick and they feel confident in that so you know i definitely want to make sure that there's no unanswered questions do we have any other questions regarding the investigators so mr quick so saying there are none so i'm going to as far as we have three before us we can i guess we'll i'm gonna start with miss morgan is there a preference of that you would have i have no preference okay miss vaughn i would go with hr and beyond okay miss kittens i would go with h.r and beyond as well okay miss patricka i can live with anybody but nervous given the cost okay miss fisher
049i have no preference between the other two okay and miss kittens i will go with the rest of the board majority seems to be hr and beyond so that's fine with me yeah and i like them as well because i thought that they definitely have a lot of information here plus the fact that's what they do they investigate so i would have to agree so can we take a consensus then on hr and beyond tonight's meeting because this will be coming coming before us again tonight thank you let's give the order yes because we definitely need to move forward and get all this stuff we need to get working right yes okay so attorney quick did you yep i got that so i'll for we'll bring a good cause item we'll ask for a good
050cause addition tonight to for the retention of hr and beyond and then we'll also factor in which which of the complaints thank you so then we'll if we can move on to the next part of that which is the potential oh we don't even have that on here probably because it's public but it there were i can go through the please if you need me to resend the email i can send you there you guys send the email that i'd send around with the information with the numbers but there are ten the first is a lighthouse incident number two zero zero zero zero three six two nine that is the lighthouse complaint that we discussed when i was here in march related to what i'll generally call summarize the allegation as being disclosure of investigative
051material the second is a whistleblower complaint that was filed pursuant to the board's whistleblower policy it did not come through rsm so it doesn't have an incident number but that was the whistleblower complaint that we had discussed last time and the third is a lighthouse complaint zero three one three two zero two one four eight eight two it was filed actually day five was march 13 2021 and what i will generally summarize the allegations as being false statements in harassing behavior the next may i stop you for each one of these can you tell us as you're going through and you're describing them can you tell us what our options are meaning is it already being investigated is it appropriate for us as a board to refer this up to the ethics commission and that
052kind of thing so we can know as we go yes definitely i think that's a good idea it was he had sent this out on may 7th so it has one through nine the numbers on there so it'd be easier for you all to follow that too and i don't know if you're able to do that i have them okay the so that one the third one i was just discussing i don't think falls within the commission on ethics jurisdiction so i don't think that you would be able to file a have a board initiate a complaint based upon that the next three i'll refer to i guess collectively because they all involve the allegations all involve cyphers lakes high booster club issues those are instant number two zero zero zero zero four zero eight
053four nine then also two zero zero zero zero three eight nine seven and two zero zero zero zero four five five eight i and as i understand that there has been an oig complaint that has been filed and opened on this issue so i think that is currently as i do as i understand that is currently open with oig and so that one should be investigated through oig going forward there two of them were filed with a person's name attached to it and it matches the same person that filed the oig complaint so those are definitely grouped within it the third one was filed anonymously so i'm not sure if it's the same person or not but the allegations are subsumed within the oig complaint that was filed so again i don't know if it's
054the same person but the allegations are the same it's fine yeah can you can you repeat there's you just said there are three that all deal with cyprus blake i didn't follow the long numbers is that number four which which numbers are they i'm going through the same orders if you have the email that i sent there there's numbers four five and six in my email five and six that's what i was thinking i want to make sure i get it right and those are already they're up there now oig is that correct yes yeah yeah there's a complaint that's been open with oig number seven in my email it's it's the case number ending in 4-4-6-1-8 there are aspects of that so that relates to what i'll call allegations of improper actions leading into
055an ethics investigation there are aspects of that can be that fall within the jurisdiction of the commission on ethics to the extent that there was confidential information that was shared to a third party that would fall within the commission on ethics the issue there though is that is also a an anonymous whistleblower complaint so it also falls within your whistleblower policy and i guess i should should specify the your whistleblower policy only applies to employees the way it's written so anybody who's not a district employee does not fall within the whistleblower policy so if you have a member of the public they don't fall within that so that's why i mentioned that i'm not sure who the employee is they filed it anonymously but they do state affirmatively that they are an employee of the
056district so that would fall within your whistleblower policy as well although there is pursuant to your policy there's no protection extended because you obviously don't know who the person is that filed it and there's a different level of what i'll call scrutiny in terms of the whether the allegations rise to the level because you need to make sure that there's enough information in there that you can actually investigate it since you don't know who the person is to follow up so i mentioned that just because you know your whistleblower policy does have you investigating that so i think a portion of that could be could fall within the commission on ethics but ultimately you also would need to investigate the full extent of that and under the circumstances it would need to be the board
057would need to vote to confirm that full investigation as well as it would need to go to an outside investigator just based upon the allegations and the facts in that one and the parties number eight which is a lighthouse complaint ending in three nine three zero six that would conce could fall within the commission on ethics jurisdiction i say could because the allegations generally are receipt of a gift in excess of fifty dollars i know that there's a school board statute that talks about the fifty dollar gift limit the commission on ethics and investigates based upon the state law which is a hundred dollars so that's why i say it could fall within that certainly the allegations are in excess of 50 which means it could be above 100 but doesn't necessarily but that would
058definitely fall if it is would definitely fall within the commission on ethics and i think would be appropriate if you all wanted to to have them investigated the number nine the lighthouse complaint case number ending in 14882 that one yes i think would fall within the commission on ethics jurisdiction and then number 10 which is the one that was filed either on friday or saturday it is a alleges it's a lighthouse number and in four eight one two six alleging sunshine law violations i would say that is really a state attorney jurisdiction the state attorney is really who investigates sunshine law violations so in terms of an external entity outside of somebody you would retain that would be the state attorney not necessarily not the commission on ethics okay can i may i ask okay
059so seven eight and nine okay so we know one and two is something that we have to do through the outside correct the four five and six oig we're gonna wait for them you would advise us to wait for what they what they say on that seven eight and nine could be commissions on ethics who then would be that who then would have to send that to them if we're saying that this is i'm just asking a question because i'm not sure where this all fits in and then the other one is the state's attorney so can you help me with this for the commission on ethics they don't they don't take referrals or anonymous complaints so either the complainant could certainly file it with the commission on ethics but the board could vote to
060it's not referring it they don't take that but would would vote to initiate a complaint with the commission on ethics and it would be based upon the complaint that you have received basically so the board then would be the complainant although it would be you know via somebody else but that's just because of the way the commission on ethics takes complaints or is willing to to take complaints the state attorney's office i think you could just refer it over to them i don't think you have to the board would have to initiate anything but certainly the complainant could you know reach out to the state attorney's office as well okay because that's what i that's my concern because i know everybody's always talking about you know policing each other so when it comes to those
061certain ones if they're not going to the investigate investigation then that would be up to us to say okay this is what we want to do we want to send this up to the commissioner is that what you would you would vote to off you would authorize the initiation of a complaint on behalf of the board for the on the basis of this the allegations set forth in complaints x y and z thank you miss kittens now i'm confused because based on what you said it's as if some of these were done by board members against board members and it are we supposed to be filing lighthouse complaints on each other or if we are complaining filing complaint wouldn't it go up to tallahassee i'm so i don't know who filed anonymous complaints but i'm
062not aware of any complaints where it's a board member filed against a board member with obviously i can't speak to any anonymous complaints though well and if let's say the number 10 the sunshine one was done by someone outside and we know or the company hr says that has to be done through another venue through the state attorney wouldn't you then inform the person that filed it that this is the case and that they would have to then forward it and file it wherever yes if you know the person or or certainly if you if you even in an i don't know if rsm keeps contact information for anonymous complainants but certainly the board if the board does not vote to initiate their own they could encourage the person to file their own if they
063if they wanted to or if they're if they're listening one last question how many of these are anonymous i think you said one right there's a there's a couple number one was filed anonymously number four is anonymous and seven and eight are anonymous i don't know i it really gives me angst to think about paying someone to look into something that's anonymous and i don't know it just kind of bothers me to do that and for those i don't like four seven i think i would say seven has enough at least backup information under the whistleblower policy and again i'm not speaking to them to the merits or the ultimate decision but i just in in terms of is there enough information in the complaint under your whistleblower policy that you could initiate a complaint
064and i think probably it's it's it's close but probably but given the given the nature i think you would have to it would have to be the board would have to vote for at least one of the people that the complaint has been made against the board would have to approve it because it is a board member if it wants to but like i said it's it's close and we don't really have a new way to reach out to that person but they do mention other people who purportedly have knowledge but in terms of was that number eight that is number eight yes oh eight three seven because when no i'm sorry number seven number seven because eight is for eight is not a win pardon me that's that eight is extremely vague there is
065not follow-up there's not resource information etc but i can talk with you yeah and eight does as far as i know it does not fall under the whistle blow cause whistleblower policy because i'm not aware that was filed by a an employee so that would be a standard one and you wouldn't fall under the same the whistleblower policy has a little bit different different language in it than just a standard investigation okay thank you thanks for that clarification miss fisher mr quick in the event of anonymous complaints are we required to take it any further or do anything about it no unless it falls under your whistleblower policy as it relates to employees and it's and you feel it and it's sufficient to meet the language that it that it proceed if it involves a
066board member absolutely not you guys are you guys choose if you want to investigate or not but so that's why i say with the board member it's it's a little bit different than it is with an employee so then is that something that you will do for us make a determination about which of these we must move forward on and those anonymous ones that don't involve an employee that we don't have to take any further i yes i think that number two it does have to be investigated because of your the way that your whistleblower policy is written and number seven also falls within your whistleblower policy and it as long if it meets if it provides sufficient corroborating evidence to justify the commencement of an investigation that's what the language is used in your
067board policy then i do think it needs to be it does need to be investigated as long as it does now that i say it's close i don't know if you have it in front of you i'd say it's close because it doesn't have a significant it has some detail not a significant amount but it does have names of people that could be contacted for an investigation so that's why i say it's close i would generally tend to err on the side of caution because of the way it's come through with the for a whistleblower just because of that i would tend to err on the side of caution do an investigation but it's close okay and that one could go to the ethics commission if we vote on it a portion of that a
068portion of that could dealing with if there was any sharing of confidential information again it's not a hundred percent clear that there was confidential information allegedly shared but if that's one of the allegations that would would bring it within the jurisdiction of the commission on ethics thank you okay ms patricka so i think it's obvious we need to investigate number two i would recommend that we send all issues up to the coe that qualify and we send the other one to the state attorney's office because it qualifies a lot of the information in these complaints has been repeated allegations have been made by each other at the table by public comment i believe it's essential for an outside third party to come in and look at this stuff and set the record straight and if
069we have the ability to send it up to the coe whether it's anonymous or not we as a board should do that and the same is true for the sao i don't even know if that one's anonymous or not no it's not number ten let's send it to the attorneys the state attorney's office and have them make their investigation give us a report and then we can finally move on and for the for the whistleblower one number number seven there's two things i wanted to i when i said that one i think does need to be investigated also under the language even with the board policy i apologize for that i was thinking it wasn't whistleblower but whistleblower does say any complaint of retaliation against the school board member shall be given to an external
070investigator for review it doesn't you guys don't define external investigator though so i don't see why the commission on ethics couldn't be considered an external investigator i don't see that defined in your whistleblower policy so i don't see why a referral to at least for that one because it could fall within the jurisdiction i don't see why the commission on ethics could not be considered the external investigator and if i recall correctly the coe is already investigating the underlying complaint there so this subject is already with the coe so it makes sense to add this to it and have them complete the process the underlying complaint yes okay miss jaminelli did you have your hand up no i'm sorry i thought you did miss getting this okay then i'm concerned about the one ending in
071306 and i'm trying to say this tactfully it was anonymous it ends in 306 i i numbered is it number eight yep i see it okay it was anonymous it's about a board member there was not a lot of information substantiating it and i would not feel that we should send that to investigations further in tallahassee i forget to name but i just think an anonymous is for one thing it's a waste of time and if everybody would look at it they would see there's very little information that would corroborate any of this and then also the fact that there's the conflict of the fifty dollars and the hundred dollars they were anyway i could go on but i won't i think that it's frivolous patricka i could make that argument for all of the
072ones in which i'm named but but i'm not making that argument because i believe that for transparency purposes and for us to be able to move on as a body each one of these should be individually addressed facts gathered reports made to the board and then again we can move on not anonymously there are several in here that are anonymous against me again miss morgan i ask that you start pulling the board on each one attorney quick can you please assist on this as far as which the ones that we absolutely have to do with the outside that got us here to this particular situation that we're at right now is number two and number and number seven although i don't i'm not i don't know seven just came in so in the very beginning
073the two the ones that you guys had determined before were number one and two on your on the on the list those are the ones that we had discussed in march now we're saying number one number two we must do yeah because it's a whistleblower number one we you can do and if you do it it needs to be authorized by the board and should be done as an external for an external investigation but number one is not is not you don't have to okay so the ones that we must do right now that we know for sure that has to be done which is number taking my glasses off i can't see which is two correct because you just said seven could be sent correct yes okay so the only one right now that
074must be done through another outside source would be number two yes based on the language of your policy yeah based on the language so can we have consensus on number two the whistleblower complaint that we have that put on the agenda now is that the ending in eight two it is ending no it's just whistle blower complaint no that one didn't yeah that one did not come in through through rsm so it didn't have a case number and i just wrote it as a whistleblower i'm confused number two so can i please have consensus on that one on just number two but we must have we have to have that done it's required that we have that done so did you is that yeah i mean if you're saying we have to i don't have
075jokes yes okay i just want to make sure because you can still say no and is that through that would be through the people the outside and beyond correct so that's what you're saying is external mr quick external practice yes i have a question before we if i may attorney quick so number one is related to number two does it make more sense for us to send that one up to the coe or to have that included in the investigation for number two you know i think it's really up to you guys i hate to code it but i mean it fought it could fall within the jurisdiction of the coe yes and but i hear what you're saying and i there is some overlap obviously between between one and two we had discussed that
076back in march so i think i think you could do it either way i think you if the board still wants to investigate that again the board is the one who who has to choose that because because of the facts and allegations and circumstances i think you could do it either way okay so i guess is there an appetite to include number one into with number two ending in six two nine four incident there an appetite for that yeah but they're about the same thing yes they have some of the information and the complaint one kind of like overlaps the other complaints of the whistleblower yeah they stem from my understanding is they kind of stem from the same root root allegation i guess we'll call it rude allegations i'm named in number one i
077re accuse myself okay so can we put them all together get it done with and over with and that's external external external hr hr and beyond be external i know okay so it passes so we'll pull those two together and just get it done with and move on okay and then number three i'm sorry i don't i can't remember what number three was commission number three i didn't see anything there that would would fall within the commission on ethics okay so that is it involves a school board member sorry mr truth it also has it has to do with one and two they are related yeah they do seem to to have some sort of connection there as well i would say include that with one and two names and i will vote to investigate
078myself so can i when they are doing can i this is just probably a crazy thing to ask so when they are investigating instead of them doing all separate because they have similarities and things together will they just pull it all together as one yes i would encourage them to do their investigation i mean if you're going to interview somebody i would encourage them to interview them about all three if they have a knowledge of all three instead of meeting with them three separate times i think that it's going to be more efficient it's going to be more cost efficient and it's going to be less intrusive on the people who are being investigated so i anticipate they will but if i will stress that as well i think that's so if i may i'm
079going to go back again on putting together one two and three for outside sources to investigate okay thank you so it'll be the three the three of them seven we don't need to do he said no no do do we get all set i see yes okay thank you so it's really quick that we'll be we'll consolidate all three of those yes one two three okay four five and six as i understand was part of an oig complaint i'm sorry i'm not close to the microphone it was part of an oig complaint that was filed well the allegations are the same as in an oig complaint i'm not sure if what the status is if that has been closed but certainly what the board could do if it has been the board could say either
080we don't want to investigate it and we want to rely on the oig or yes we want to investigate it come back to us or yes we want to investigate it and have that trigger if and when the oig investigation closes that way we don't have to come back and you guys don't have to consider it again i guess those are kind of the three options you could do there and is four or five and six and then four five and six and nine and nine don't they all have kind of like the same information in those as well all of those collectively i don't think nine stemmed from the cypress lakes booster club issues i at least the way i read it i didn't see that but maybe you guys know the intricacies better
081than i do but i didn't see anything i didn't see that was part of the oig complaint as i saw it oh if it's part of the oig complaint but i think it has some of the same information and those as they as the other ones yeah it's possible but i mean i just when i'm looking at him i don't see it on its face but it's possible because it's i think that's part of one two and three i don't think it's part of four five and six so number nine definitely is part of an investigation of some sorts i've just i'm not clear based on the facts as to which one it is okay i think i think it would be added to one two and three okay so four or five so if
082we're going to four five and six right now with the oig complaints and i guess i can ask mr bruno on this if we still have complaints out there on this yeah she should have she should have if she is knowledge if it's closed or or open then yeah if it's if they are all closed or the allegations in floor 5 and 6 were referred back to the district to do with it what the district felt was appropriate the original oig complaint relating to those same issues were closed but then there was another one that was referred back to the district so that would not be waiting or on the oig would not be an option in law okay miss patricka and if i recall correctly you know a couple things have gotten in the
083way in terms of taking the board's attention to other more important matters like dr atkins retirement but i believe we're waiting on a presentation from staff regarding new practices a new manual and how we're going to move forward before we make any decisions regarding action on four five and six i think that was how we left it the last time we discussed this issue is that just does everybody else remember that the same way true miss miss fisher no i was just agreeing i remembered that okay sorry miss fun yeah well i really feel strongly that the whole booster club thing needs to come to resolution a better resolution than what we have out there right now and we've been waiting a very long time to get the presentation by i'm not sure who all
084mr larosa may be and the people that were involved with with editing changing out at one point we had talked about and i don't want to take this off the table rsm getting in involved and i know it sounds like it's a little off topic but in reality i don't see it that way because these are three legitimate complaints with a lot of information and i think we at some point we need to make a definitive investigation on the booster club i think we need to get the reports from the group that's been revising but it's been months i've i believe and you know we're spending a lot of money here for these other things and we reject it in some of the other schools and i really think that whenever we do this we
085really need to get this the cypress lake the whole booster thing resolved and i'm concerned that it hasn't come back to us i'm concerned that we have an opportunity here to do an outside investigation to put it to rest once and for all one way or another because if there is wrongdoing to us as a school board and a school district for not fixing it and not respecting our volunteers so i'm not sure what the appetite here is on on the board to put this out to hr and beyond while we're spending the money we rejected spending the money before not for kicking the can down the road frankly okay mr quick can you tell me is there because i believe there was an audit that was done on here there were several things done
086on here so is that something that we could have hr i feel like keep saying hr block hr look at what has taken place and come to a conclusion right wrong or indifferent of where we need to go with this and then and just let it be done yeah i mean certainly you guys could could refer and ask them to take a look at the audit because that's three items right there yeah and to see yeah yeah i think that's a fair thing you guys could do yes can we take cons well you have two ms fisher yes so regarding the cypress booster club situation i know that i had made several requests and i think it's on our list of workshops to come and i think mrs giavinelli had also made a request that
087we take another look at that and i think that's exactly why we have rsm an independent auditor that's why the state made it mandatory for districts to have that entity as an employee of the board just for cases like this so i'm hoping that we can move forward then with taking another look at that and really determining which of those many accusations and all of the bookkeeping is actually accurate well and i what i think that has to be done too is that because the fact that booster clubs are separate entities so there's so much other things that are going on with this so that's something that i'm not sure where that lies at so i'm gonna go to yeah if i may just finish so we've been waiting a couple of months now and
088i don't think that just rewriting the manual is going to solve the problem i think we need to determine exactly what the problem is and then having a manual that is widely tr used in training and people are informed of their responsibilities under and i'm going to go to miss morgan well i have to respectfully disagree i think the matter has been investigated i think it is an external matter there are limits on what we can do legally and i think that our responsibility is to make certain that we have a process and procedure in place for employees so we can hold them accountable for any role they might have in this external process so i see no need there was there may have been negligence but i don't think there the investigation showed that
089there was any intent to defraud or to do anything so why would we want to investigate it again we know there were mistakes we know that there were problems we've asked to correct the manual so that everybody can be held to the same standard i think pursuing this is truly a waste of taxpayer money i'm going to go this way and i'm coming back this way i know mr vinelli you had well unfortunately we were at the point where we have 10 complaints and i think that we can't pick and choose at this point i think we need to get them done and handle that handle the issues as they arise from the investigation so i'm i'm with miss patricka i think we need to just get it done so i'm i think they all
090need to be done and addressed at this point in time unfortunately it's we've let this we've kicked this can down the road and now it's totally exploded and on fire and we need to address it and where everyone knows that we've done that and that's the only way to move beyond it is to be held accountable and identify the issues and make the corrections and move on thank you thank you miss patricka so four five and six have already been investigated these are the same complaints that we've had over and over and over and over again and doctor if i may dr atkins when can we plan to hear from staff regarding training for booster clubs going forward changes made to the all of that please i'll get back with you on that i'll find
091out it should be real soon my understanding the manual has been has already pretty much been done and they have training reading in place so if we i think that the discussion was we asked that we direct the superintendent to refresh the manual and put together training and then report back to the board we and you call it kicking the can down the road i call it doing the business of the district these are outside entities things like interim superintendent hires i believe take precedence over investigating outside entities and having staff come forward and report to us on outside entities so i do have a little bit more information thank you to our chief of staff they are ready to go they right now have the financial advisory looking at the manual and just waiting
092on their feedback great so if we could just do what we had originally agreed to do which was wait for staff to come back and report to us and then if the board figures out that they need further investigation then we can do a further investigation but this is not what we agreed to do and i'll jump in really quick with the financial finance advisory committee they asked to as the committee asked to look at it because of a lot of those gentlemen that sit on that board maybe some of the women but i just know that the gentleman had spoke they actually sit on their booster clubs and their their audit auditors for their booster clubs and they definitely wanted to see what the manual looks like so they do have it and i
093know rsm had sent us a quote of what they would charge us and mr preet bruno is going to chime in on that really quick and then i hear the question but never just for clarification the manual is completed it was sent to rsm because of the scope of work that rsm has which requires it to come back to the board for the board's permission to be able to move forward nothing has been done on rsm side rsn then sent a scope of work it was actually put on either a briefing i believe it was to be discussed but that was around the time that we have the workshop i believe it was with regards to the superintendent search one of the first ones so that got pushed back so that's why there was delay
094and then now because of that delay it has now gone to the finance committee so they can take a look at it so we can move this forward so it's we're getting tied up a little bit with regards to rsm's ability to advise with regards to these lighthouse complaints and anything else that should pop up for them to review such as the booster club manual thank you miss kittens well my concern is that when the booster club issue came up it came before the board it was voted down to do to spend the money to do an investigation so you know i beg to differ with some of my colleagues there was not an investigation done it was decided we would not spend the money to do that so it's not that it's been investigated
095and all this is done it was decided to just leave it and to i guess see what happens with the with the new guidelines and all that but the new guidelines are talking about what's gonna happen going forward it's not talking about any issues that happened before that they keep you know saying to us there was an issue here that has not been resolved and because we as a board decided we would not investigate it any further it's still sitting there and oig is saying it's something that needs to be done by us we have the company we've decided to hire the company to let to let them look over it and see is there anything needs to be done further i just feel that we should do that there has not been an investigation
096miss fun yeah the whole reason that i brought it up is that when this first came to us the board did not we didn't get an approval to go ahead and spend money the initial if i recall the initial quote was all of us felt it was high but they had they said they could reduce their their scope of work and do pointed investigations or audits of of certain other booster clubs and at that time we in addition to saying we're going to wait for the manual to be updated we said we want to revisit it so we didn't just dismiss it we wanted to revisit it and this has been somebody said on on fire for a long time and if we're not gonna do it within and i'm not gonna count on what
097we're gonna do down the road because i can see this can is still rolling along burning and gathering other cans as it goes along because this is truly hurtful to us as a district when we treat our volunteers this way i've made that point before so i'm on record as we either do it now with h r h r and beyond which is my preference at this point because i don't believe that it's going to come the rest of it's going to come to us in a timely manner and as far as priorities absolutely we are looking for an interim and then a full full-time not full-time but permanent superintendent but what happens to people people like us that are not we're not hourly employees we're employees and if you have a lot of stuff
098to do you just put more meetings on the schedule and you do it and it's all important i mean you can't say that one thing is more important well yeah there are a few things but no we've got to do all of it and that's what we're here to do and there's sometimes when we have a little bit of slack in our schedule and there are times like now that the schedule is full totally full but we've got to do it and we can't sacrifice one thing for another those are my opinions and i'm gonna go to and miss jaminelli and then miss and i just want to remind the rsm's recommendation was to investigate that was the recommendation we just didn't do it so i think that we're keep kicking the can again so
099i just think that we just need to get all 10 of these done and call it a day and then and deal with the the recommendations we need recommendations on making what happens after all this so i think that's vital mr bruno did you no okay mr patrick it was not a recommendation we asked them what it would cost for them to conduct an audit and an investigation and they came back with a price they didn't recommend an investigation i will go back to the harm that this does to our volunteers i agree with you and putting our volunteers all of them through this kind of scrutiny for mistakes honest human error is very very harmful and i'm hearing from people in the community that there's a desire to not serve on boosters because of
100the kinds of oversight that's being put in place and because of the kinds of accusations that are being made did we have an investigation no we had an internal audit that showed we had problems we're asking for staff to address those problems to bring the information back to us i don't understand i don't understand the desire to to hurt people who were volunteering for us through some kind of an outside investigation it seems like a tremendous waste of district resources in order to do that and i don't understand how it moves us forward at all we know what was broken the internal audit shows us exactly what was broken the internal audit was accepted by the office of the inspector general and the office of the inspector general has said this matter is closed the
101reason why the can is on fire is because a group of people continue to come forward to every board meeting and continue to send us emails and we're paying attention to that instead of serving the entire community which is our job it is not our job to serve three or four people who feel like they were wronged it is our job to serve the entire community and i believe the best way to serve the entire community is to make sure we have good training in place and a good manual in place that's what i have learned from this process i will not be supporting the expenditure of any any dollars on this issue unless and until the superintendent brings forward a plan and i'm unhappy with that plan and i have concerns based on that
102plan may i ask you to call for a consensus okay whether or not we go for no i hear you but mr quick can you said that this group can do look over to see what if anything was needs to be done more to make this make this work yes that's if yes if that's the direction given by the board then yes they can do they can do that as well looking at the what has already been done and then they can look at that and say yes we do need to move forward with something else or we do not yes i think they can that's fair to have them look and do do as part of that and come with a recommendation yes is that doable for the board for them to look this
103over and anything that goes coincides with that on these numbers put those all together and have them look at that to see if there's something further that needs to be done or should have been done and move on with that do we have consensus on that okay five to two so it will carry okay so then the others seven eight nine and ten seven eight and nine yeah and i i wanted to follow up on the commission on ethics issue because it dawned on me while we're sitting here and i apologize for not raising before that a complaint with the commission on ethics needs to be filed it's a sworn complaint right so the i would while the board could file the complaint on behalf of someone i want to mention that because i want
104to be i want to i would caution the board because obviously there are allegations in there that you are presumably not as a board aware of the so i did i did want to mention that and i apologize for not for that not thinking of that before but that's something that i don't want to open up part of me what would be your recommendation if they're for that's that's dealing with the ones going forward where i did talk about that it would could be fall within the jurisdiction of the commission on ethics i think in terms of that my recommendation would be if the board is not going to investigate it itself that it just or or recommend that the complainant file the complaint with the commission on ethics if the board feels that's a
105more appropriate jurisdiction for that to be be done in as opposed to the board doing it and i apologize for that miss kittens well okay so that we're are we talking still about the four five and six no we're not we're on seven eight and nine okay well then my concern and no i am not concerned about being named that's not the issue if i don't know if attorney bruno has shown the complaint ending in 306 to the other board members but the fact is and i have seen it and read through it and the fact that it is extremely vague it is anonymous there is not i am not worried about it going through that's not the thing but it's to me is very frivolous if you all want to do something a little
106bit stronger and do it better then fine but i don't think this one has enough meat on the bones to even spend the time so four that's number eight number eight okay and then again four seven eight and nine who would initiate that complaint first we have to decide if we're going to send it yeah but i want to know who would it be one of us that would have to do that's what i want to know if we'd have to decide i'm sorry i was gonna say seven and eight are anonymous so we wouldn't know who unless rsm has their contact information we wouldn't know who it was number nine we do know the name of the person who submitted it so if the if the board believes that the commission on ethics is
107a better place for these as opposed to an external investigation at least number nine we could reach out or i you know certainly i could or whoever the board asked could reach out to the person and then maybe if rsm has contact information for seven or eight you know through the lighthouse system then maybe they could reach out otherwise the option is do nothing or or you know not investigate or or investigate thank you miss miss patricka so i think number nine has to do with one two and three i think i had brought that up earlier i think the names are the same so mr quick can you and then validate that if number nine is part of one two and three you just checked the names really quick that would take that off
108certainly looks like it looks like it could be yes okay so just based upon the limited information we have so should we add that to one to one so could we add one two three and nine then yes collectively together is that agreed with everyone thank you and then for seven and eight attorney quick can we verify in a sworn statement that we have received these complaints and send it up to the coe that way instead of verifying the truth of the matters contained in the complaint the fact that we receive them and how they receive them and leave them up leave it up to the coe to contact the whistleblower hotline and determine whether there's any identifying information associated with it you could you could try i don't think that they would take it
109because they don't take referrals and that i think that they would probably look at that as a referral but certainly you could try and if if it failed then then you could you know elect to do something something else okay so i think i'm named in seven can i file a complaint against myself you could i mean you'd be swearing to the facts of the complaint though that okay it's just the issues in seven have come up over and over and over and over again i'd really like to lay it to rest you don't want to i'm sorry you don't want to file a complaint against yourself i understand i'm just trying to get it out there that i want this to finally be over so can i and i have to apologize because i
110do see the time we are really going much over just one more thing about eight when i looked at the complaint the there is a name of an individual but there when you checked all the boxes there was no substantiating evidence they did not want to be contacted there was no contact information there was just the name and the allegation and it was you know i anyway i just think that's frivolous so going back to seven because we moved nine up with the others so going back to seven and eight do we have an appetite well an appetite mr quick can you please tell me if the one that ends in three zero six do you feel that it's legally sufficient to even move forward with anything i mean certain there is a statute governing
111gifts there's an allegation in terms of the amount in excess of fifty dollars and there is the name of a person who purportedly par partook in that so i think you could there there's enough there you could actually conduct an investigation again i'm not speaking to the merits or the validity of any of it but there's at least enough there you know certainly if it was just an anonymous complaint saying this person had a lunch for fifty dollars in excess of fifty dollars you know that would that would not be a sufficient at all you know again there's information there that you could you could investigate to determine whether it's the veracity of it but can i say the i mean i speak god the only information was the person's name there were no receipts
112there were no there was nothing else and they did not provide anything else right the only allegation was a person x had had lunch in excess of fifty dollars with with a speci a named individual and certainly you know i don't mean to be saying that you there are any number of exceptions to why you know to being able to have lunch with somebody that would not violate a any gifts regulations so i don't mean to be saying that just because somebody alleges this that number one it took place number two that even if it did that it was inappropriate in any way i was just responding to miss dupuis bruno's question that and the incorrect part is that it actually had an incorrect location it said one location and it was in a different
113city so miss patricka so i say we send seven and eight to hr services or whatever the name of that company is we take a consensus on that then that's investigating ourselves again in the spirit of transparency and in putting an end to these consistent complaints that are coming before the board yes so would we do seven eight and ten no 10 goes to the sam can you please split them so could we i'm sorry say again do them separately please seven and then eight okay so do we have con census on seven moving seven forward to h r and beyond for investigation ms fisher what's the i don't i just don't understand what's the issue of seven i was just curious well no we're just moving it forward for investigation right well that's all
114you're saying with mrs fisher there's some that disagree i'm sorry i thought in our discussion seven and eight were going to go to the ethics commission that's what was said okay yeah that was where i after thinking about it further they require a sworn statement so i would caution the board not to do that because you're you're swearing to the veracity of the allegations as opposed to just referring to it so it certainly can be done but then there there are it's it's attaching potential issues for the board and i don't want to i don't want to guide you that way okay so with so then if i may go back to seven again can i please see thumbs up or that we move this forward to h r okay it passes now we have
115number eight number eight as well is the same thing do we want to move that forward too to get it all done and over with want clarity okay and okay it passes six to six to one now we have one left and which is number 10 sunshine the sunshine law state attorney how does that who does that i mean certainly i could i could reach out to the state attorney's office and then inform us back on that if the board wants to refer it i can do that and again i don't want to speak to the veracity of that because obviously there are communications that can be had between board members that are not covered by the sunshine law you know somebody says how you doing certainly that's not covered by the by the sunshine
116law so you know when i when i just want to caution that's more because i know people are listening that when i'm i'm saying that it can be referred i'm not talking about the veracity of that'll be up for the investigators to determine so the thumbs up for everyone who agrees that attorney quick reaches out to the state's attorney's office okay and that's it so attorney quick is there anything else i think that we've covered everything on this that we needed to correct yep as far as i'm aware and i can get out of your hair and i'll let you guys get on to the the good business thank you so much i really appreciate it all right thank you and i'll be here tonight to for this issue so if you i mean if
117you guys want to deal with the consent agenda i'll be here shortly if you want to have a discussion i'll be here as well so perfect thank you mr free bruno i just want to be very clear with regards to four five and six what are you requesting be done because i just wanna i just wanna make sure we're very clear on that because i can see issues coming from that what exactly so that he can put that in the retainer appropriately what exactly do you want in four five and six that did you understand what we were asking for yeah i'll say my understanding i was also going to go back and look at the tape so i could write it down all accurately but my understanding was that it was being referred to
118them to to look at to make a determination of what if anything should be done for a potential future a potential investigation or or not and they would come back with a recommendation after that's correct look at everything yes correct thank you okay again thank you so much and miss vaughn i'm turning this back over to you and i apologize to everyone who said your what we're going to do is because these two gentlemen have been waiting for a long time going to have the pre-briefing on adult code of conduct and the presenters here are mr todd everly senior director of the technical colleges and mr brian mangan director of constituent services and after this presentation we will take a five-minute break before we go to the last part of the meeting so gentlemen thank
119you good afternoon madam chair board members dr atkins and council thanks for the opportunity to just discuss the proposed code of conduct for adult students for the fiscal year 2021 and 2022. we sat down with our leadership teams at the post secondary and also director davis over our cte programs sat down with all of our staff even some of our students to see where we're at look at our strengths our opportunities what our weaknesses could be and we really only came what was proposed in your packet is on the cover page was the proper listing of the board members and the new physical year coming forward let me give you a little bit more information on that and how we derived from that we sat down with our leadership team at all the schools and
120kind of came up with the top five infractions referrals that we see at the post-secondary sites and when i mentioned this is minor sites very few that these happen but just to go over so you can have a little bit better understanding what we see in our academic world for post-secondary you would see infractions of insubordination tardiness cell phone use while on the campus while you're in the classroom minor safety violations and cheating and again these are adult learners we try to really onboard them and especially for the programs that they are taking to get them ready for career ready for interview job interviews and we tell them you're on you're on audition here to get a recommendation from us to a job so we give them verbal warnings in the beginning and then after
121that we'll sit down with leadership and with them and the appropriate people to sit out and talk to them about you know going over those policies and if the pattern continues just like in the real world there'll be a suspension from that program so we give them off the all those opportunities additionally at every orientation no matter what school they're going to what program they are afforded the opportunity they sit down of our leadership teams and our career counselors to go over the code of conduct and the student handbooks that are assigned to each of those schools on top of that if you're at the public service academy you sign that commitment because the variety of the programs we offer the others don't have a signature page but they acknowledge on a survey and it's
122also on their websites and additionally what i wanted to just to mention to you is that we had another set of eyes we were very fortunate this year for with the co-accreditation which is the council of occupational education cape coral technical college i want to give a little shout out to director charlie peace and also director megan who said next to me in the beginning got charlie up to speed quickly he was thrown right into getting that technical college up to speed and reaccredited successfully that happened part of that is as you know that they review all of our policies and part of that privacy process is looking at how we deal with students and behavior and they found nothing wrong with how we are doing our program they're saying it's pretty much a national
123standard of what we do and they also recommended on to continue doing as has we have been in the past so i do not have any further but i stand ready for any questions if you have any i don't that's fine it's your it's your turn you've got the floor yeah don't be fine please thank you all right now that i'm snapping my mind that i'm back doing this before i ask anything board members do you have any questions okay my only question is i know you do have some dual enrolled students right yes we do okay so do the dual enrolled students when when they're in the college facilities do they come under this or do they come under their home school yeah they come underneath the secondary school and depending on what that
124is we refer them back to that to that because they are still high school students until they graduate we actually have that in the code of conduct under page one as adult students and that is covered on the very the third paragraph okay i missed it so oh it's my yeah it's all high school students attend the adult it's under page one okay all right so yeah because there are some differences in in penalties on things and with them still being technically assigned as a dual rolling student through that school that high school they come they follow underneath that's what i was thinking okay thank you that's the only question i had anybody else have have a question because other things that you need to go over yeah i think i think we're running honestly
125i think we're running very well we got a great team there we get a lot of good support and i think you've seen some changes over the last year and two and just appreciate the opportunity that how we're collaborating with the district and also our community to get people out and work in our workforce so thank you for the support well and thank you for being here and doing what you do thank you ma'am so before we go on to the next item which will be a budget briefing since we've been here for almost two hours we'll take a five minute break and then we'll come back for the budget briefing okay we are back in session and we're going to have a budget briefing dr amy desmore's chief academic chief financial why does it
126say chief academic officer on my copy did you change jobs no ma'am not any time recently and miss kelly lecher director budget hello everyone how are you doing today and they are from financial services yes so i just was going to start us off with we did receive from the legislatures the first calculation or the proposed first calculation i should say i think it's was in its cooling off period and they i think they still have to do the final vote and then it has to go for the governor but based on what we have right now i wanted to bring it to you all so you would know what we were looking at what we're planning on at this time the state if you remember at one time i had come to you with
127our enrollment projections for next year and then the state came back and asked us to increase it more so we did and so the projection for students next year this budget's based on 96 432 students which is a 2 632 000 student increase from where we are now i'm not sure that we're going to get there so in preparation of that i just want you to know that we are going to be holding some money in the back so that if we don't get there we're not having to go back out to schools and make some reductions mid-year that we will be prepared for that we were we really think that probably 12 hundredths more in line maybe a little bit more so but just in preparation we want you to be to know that
128and if the kids do come we'll be pulling it out of the back and putting it into our schools to help fund the kids when they show up so based on that number we're looking about at a 9 million dollar increase over the current year's budget and next year which while that's not like super terrific that is better than i expected so that's a good thing but i want to remind you that of that nine million dollars we already negotiated with our talc and spout bargaining units to increase our health insurance cost for next year so we're looking about 7.4 million of that already going into health insurance cost and i had told you before that the state was still looking at increasing the florida retirement rate that we were looking at and they did
129do that's good and bad i was expecting it to be higher than what it came in at that it's going from to 10.82 i really expected it to jump up around 11. but that is about a 4.2 million dollar increase to our budget repeat that number please yes it's a 4.2 million dollar increase is what we're expecting at this point for the retirement system itself so if you're looking at 4.2 estimated in 7.4 you're looking about 11.6 million dollar increase is that we know we're going into fy 22 and the state is giving us 9 million remember some of that will be held back because we're not sure we're really going to get all the students that are generating it so we're starting next year in a in a spot where we know we're going
130to spend more than we're getting we will have esser funds that's for two funds to help us through with some of this and we're now we're going to start meeting with academic services to look at what is the best way to use that money to give the best impact on our student learnings our student learning gains so that's where our focus is going to be with those dollars one of the big if you're looking at and i'll bring this down so you can see on this you can see is one of the big reductions took place in our class size reduction from my understanding what they're saying is that apparently they said they've been doing the calculation wrong for years and they're correcting it this year so that's a 10 million dollar reduction in what
131their original what their proposal from the current year is so that's where we get took a big hit had class size remain the same it would have been a nice budget but it did go down there so that did make a difference the bsa did increase 53 53.42 which is a 1.2 increase which you know it's fluctuated around for years they've had it go down and up and so that's a pretty good increase for the bsa i want to point out to the district cost differential if you remember last year they were talking about changing the way that they do the district cost differential which was really going to hurt lee county again they decide to keep it status quo and they're having people look at the best way to do the district cost differentials
132and that's basically what they look at to for like the cost of living in different areas to make sure they account for that in the calculation now if you look at the dollars per fte at the bottom of the page we are our dollars per fte is 8 000 11.96 which when you compare that to last year is a decrease of 1.57 percent and again that's mainly when you look at bad class size reduction dollars it really did drop it down i want to make sure i hit all of the points oh i went to talk about two about again there's no lottery dollars built into the budget remember lottery came to us in two pieces for school recognition there's no grades again this year so there is no school recognition and then they usually
133gave us money for us to give to our schools for the school improvement plans and that again is not in the budget for next year some good news for lee county however is that they did fund pico for the charters at the higher level which makes it so that we do not have to share our capital outlay millage dollars with them which is a win for us in lee county because of the amount of our capital outlay dollars and the number of charters that we have so i also just want to touch on the fact that we will be meeting again with you all in june for the preliminary budget at the end of june at that point we'll be bringing to you all of the pieces of the budget that and how they come
134together and then we'll have our tentative budget in july and the final in september we're hoping to come to you in between at some of your briefings to talk about other pieces of the budget you know there's many pieces that add up we're working on the capital amy's going to talk about sales tax now but we're working with operations and academic services to settle on the capital plan right now as well so are there any questions about the budget okay i'll start with mrs gibbons and then go on to miss patricka thank you very much the question i have is about the class size reduction change is there a possibility you can send us just how it previously was and how it's done now for the comparative sure just simplistically they used to add this
135and now they add this and subtract that sure i'll take a look at that and send it to you so you can see the differences thank you very much and it is raining outside bad so this is your only question okay this is patricka is the guardian program funded this year i think what they did what i'm trying to remember from the legislation what i've seen on the guardian program but i believe there was a small piece of that funded but i don't think it was for the whole piece but i can look into it and let you know for sure if you wouldn't mind letting us know whether there's sufficient funds in there for us to create that program because i believe what was in the budget last year was just like the fifty
136dollar bonus and we were left without the ability to actually pay for it we would have had to have substituted sros for guardians second question am i correct in seeing that they did not roll back the rle this year we will not know that for sure until july on july 19th is when they do the certification for the millage rates and that's when i'll know for sure what the millage rates are right now i just have estimates based on what they have july 19th is when they'll actually certify and i'll know what the state's doing okay and finally if i this is kind of unrelated but really important because i don't think we're having the superintendent's evaluation out loud i have to thank you guys dr jessimores and your team for your amazing ability to
137manage our finances during the year of a pandemic and do it in do it while dealing with ever-changing regulations you know you would get money from from the cares act and they would say okay you can use it this way and then they would change and say no you have to use it this way and you were forever on top of it and you made sure that our kids and our staff had what they needed so you guys were as far as i'm concerned magicians this year and i really really appreciate what you've done so thank you very much thank you okay other board member questions yes just saying none don't go away ladies oh i see okay well you're still chief academic officer on on this but for everybody she's the chief financial officer
138and dr decimors and ms fletcher will continue now with our sales tax briefing all right and thank you so much dr atkinson members of the board ms patrika thank you for those kind words do appreciate it i do want to stress that it truly was a group effort there was a lot of information that was asked for in very short periods of time that many people from all across all divisions came together in order to make those things happen and so i'm grateful and appreciative to all of them as well just as you are and some of some of that fun and madness will continue into next year as well so we'll go through this information and then wrap with kind of an overview of what we're ex you know what we're expecting to have
139to do for next year at least as far as what we know right now so oh not good so just wanted to also share with you some of the latest information that we've shared with the independent sales surtax oversight committee or the isoc we are now or in january we hit the two-year mark in which we had been receiving sales tax funds ms gittins as our board liaison to that committee has joined us just for i think in person the last board meeting thank you but put me in wide mode thank you joined us i think we've had one in-person meeting since all of the you know the pandemic stuff started so that was the last meeting in march of 2021. you all have all of this information in your packets but i wanted to
140point out some some special things so that you we could collectively talk about it as a group as a board and know be on the same page as to what we've done so far what the plans are moving forward and then how that fits into the capital plan as you will see it or as we will bring it forward within the next couple of meetings for you so i won't go through each of these because they're very large but we included all of this so that you all have a sense of the types of information that we share with isoc each time we get together with them if you haven't had a chance to view all of the meetings so the information we believe is comprehensive we've worked with the committee since its inception and
141ms patricka was the first board liaison to the committee and knows how he kind of worked and tweaked and moved and was flexible in order to kind of get the information together that we felt like they were looking for and we think at least at this point that we're in a good spot so looking at this information part of what i wanted to impress on you is that when you see in the current year fy21 the capital budget of 453.8 million you've got 144 million of that or that is 32 percent that is from sales tax revenue so at this point in time two years in there's a third of the budget that would not be there had it not been you know for the efforts the successful efforts of getting this sales tax in
142place through the efforts of the board and then of course the tremendous support of the community so that's pretty phenomenal i think when you look at it in that way of something that you know two years ago we didn't even have so the large impact of what that you know what that will do over a period of time and then at this point and again all this information is as of march so these numbers change on a daily basis but this is as of march you see how the total amount of money was spread or budgeted throughout all of the different categories that we had proposed using the sales tax for so a pretty even spread between the four categories and then you see there's a reserve category as well because all dollars won't be
143spent in one year those things carry on over to the next year so we think a pretty good depiction to get for people to get a fast picture of how is it that you're budgeting and spending the money so then on down and i'm gonna fly through some of these because again i don't want to i want to hit the highlights for you but i wanted you to have a sense of what is shared with the sales tax committee when we get together with them but we give them an overview of the major projects that are going on at any point in time and we define that as any projects that are greater than a million dollars and then of course any major school new schools or major renovations that are going on we're going
144to give them the update of all those as well we try to make sure that we include lots of pictures in there so they can really get visuals of how the projects are moving along and what they look like at beginning to end as well as the timeline for those projects their total project cost and then you know how verbally how we're doing with those projects are we following along and within the timeline and the budget that we had initially established for those projects so these are the types of information that they'll get each and every time but then we also gave this past time some cumulative sales tax data based on what we had received and had expended over the two years since sales tax had been in force so this here was this
145graph here will show you the cumulative sales tax expense by school level and by zone in the different categories so you see that here and then we also have the depiction by the age of the school and as you see here this data is as of february so this is as of february 2nd so we also have that cumulative data as of the age of the school and then this one was for all categories maintenance safety and technology and then this one by age of school is basically just hitting maintenance only so we're reviewing all of this data because it is a very piece of important pieces of data in that we want to make sure that when we're defining the projects that we will utilize sales tax for are we spreading them across all
146of our zones effectively are we spreading them across ages of schools and by level effectively are we appropriately addressing the priorities that we set out at the beginning when we talk about how we will spend sales tax so when you look at these categories here keep in mind that the new schools are not included within this is just the three categories not four the new schools because they're just basically on debt service we didn't put that in this depiction here so that is one category that you're not seeing here but we did want the sales tax committee to know and then appropriately the community to know and the board to know that this is the type of data that we are making sure to examine and review so that when we're identifying the priorities or
147how we will spend sales tax in any given year we've looked at all of this information holistically in order to come up with the priorities as well as taking into account what you as a board identified as your values which you wanted to see in terms of how projects would be looked at and prioritized so that is that information and then we also as i said like to share lots of pictures with them so they can kind of see before and afters of different things we usually have all of our people here from the different areas so maintenance folks would be here technology people all of our construction people so that they can talk them through some of these different projects and the impact of them and the scope of them as we show them
148the pictures so that they can really see the differences of the befores and the afters so this is the type of information they would receive and then they also receive more detailed financial information as you see here so this is a depiction of all of the sales tax revenue by fiscal year and the month that we've earned them so in fiscal year 19 and that was the beginning that was a shorter year because that was just at its inception so from january 2019 to june 2019 then this was the entire fiscal year 20 and then you see here each month starts fiscal year 21. so they're able to see and you're able to see as well detailed information about how and when we're collecting sales tax revenue this is a year-over-year comparison so as we
149continue to get more information we can gather this so that we can better pre see what the trend data has been in the past and it helps to inform and better predict the you know the projections that we're making in the future about what sales tax revenue could potentially look like so that's why we keep this so the lightest blue line is fiscal year 21. so as you can see interestingly enough that fiscal year 2021 line is riding over that orange line for fiscal year 20. so we have out collected fiscal year 20 basically in every month this year so outperforming our revised projection for fiscal year 21 so far and then this will show you too the projections versus the actual collections so our inception to date you'll see over here we projected at
150the very beginning 199.5 almost 200 million we're at 163 million right now knowing that this was as of 315 we got a whole another you know quarter to go when you look at our current year to date that projection of 76 million versus the collection of 47.4 million we had earned at the time that this was gathered 62 percent of the total revenue that we have projected only halfway through the fiscal year so we were outperforming what our projections were at this point in time and then it shows you just the breakdown of quarter two as well so this is the type of information that we'll share with the committee as they come both the financial data and the project related data and then for those who like more hardcore numbers less pictures because we
151do have both ends of the spectrum on the sales tax committee we also have the table here that just shows the actual number when what month that collection was for when we actually received that collection because it comes a couple months behind right as you can see so if sales tax month was in june we didn't actually receive that money until august and how much all of that was compared to the projection for that particular month so we have have it laid out for them like that as well so this is just the type of information that the committee will receive each time and then we'll have a discussion about that they'll ask any questions they want to ask and then part of the flow of each meeting is that they will take a vote
152on and agree that based on all the information we gave them number one everything that we've expended the sales tax on to date and they will receive a financial statement both an annual and a quarterly financial statement that everything we spent the money on does in fact agree to or does fall in line with or adhere to what we said we were going to do within the referendum when we passed it and then also agree that future projects that we discussed with them as well also follow those same guidelines so we wanted to share this information with you because at the two-year mark this has some really good cumulative data in it that i wanted to make sure that the board was aware that this was here it existed and i'm sure that there'll be
153times where you're going to want to refer to it and be communicating this information out to your constituents as well because we've received really good feedback from the isoc related to the information that they've received and the difference that the sales tax has made thus far which brings me to the next part of this and you'll see in the information you'll see a change for change have said sales tax report in here as well and this is one of the this is information from the sales tax related to its inception since january 2019 through june of 2020 so it was really the end of fiscal year 20. and we wanted to create something that summarized some huge things related to impact of sales tax and be able to communicate that out in nice bites to
154the community so communications helped us thank you so much for their expertise putting this information together that was a message first of all from the independent sales server tax oversight committee attesting to the use of the sales tax funds and thanking the committee for their support and then basically a summary an annual report or a report i keep trying not to use that word annual because i'm not sure that we'll necessarily do it every year but it's a sales tax report that gives it by the numbers you know what have we collected so far how have we spent that some spotlights on major projects that have happened had happened within that year and a half time period that utilized the sales tax and the difference that made and then also there was a graph in
155here that listed each of our schools and then there was a little x in the box if that particular school i will blow this up a little bit so you can see that on the screen and then there was a little x in the box related to in any in either of the four categories was there some type of work funded through sales tax that was done at that particular location and as you can see when you flip through you know the boxes and all of the schools we really did we really were able to make some good progress at many of our locations within that period of time and again this was january 19 through june of 2020 of course the the story continues so we wanted to be able to put that out
156there to to adequately communicate to the community the types of work that was going on and what impact it was making we do have the dashboard right on the website where people could go in and look up any school and figure out okay so what's budgeted at the school this year but what we do know by the information that we're receiving from the hits on the website is that there's just there's not a lot of them right so that we can't rely on the website by itself to be able to communicate this information there's things that we have to actively do to get that information out which is one of the things that communications is helping us on and at our last isoc meeting we talked about the media education campaign that we wanted to
157engage on that would continue to engage the media engage social media engage the community in being able to push a message out and make sure that our community is educated on all of this data all of this information how it's impacting our schools therefore how it's impacting the community including how it's impacting jobs in our community and economic prosperity in our community so we're working with communications in order to come up with the whole education campaign and several of our isak committee members also weighed in on certain things that they thought should definitely be included within that education campaign communications laid out a plan in a timeline and we continue to work that plan and timeline and then last what you see here is an example of what a financial report to the isoc would
158look at would look like so this particular thing is an annual one and it's it's it's based on you know for all year what has happened so there's two since its inception 2019 fiscal year 20 and then what has happened so far in 21 and then it also has cumulative totals on the end of that this particular information is as of march 15 so they can go in and see within any of the categories that we you know budget our sales tax dollars within what has happened in that category in any given year and what's left reserved to move on into remaining years so we wanted to make sure that we had shared this sales tax information with you at the two-year mark it's important especially embarking on that education campaign with the public and
159then it will play an integral part as we just saw 33 percent of the whole capital budget we wanted to make sure that everybody had a good overview of what the historical has been so far so that when we're going to building the capital plan which we are in the midst of doing now and bring you all that capital plan and maybe a couple different versions of that capital plan with some you know decisions to be made in certain areas we are on the same page and share the same information in terms of the background of some of these things so that we can make sure that together we collectively feel like we're on the right course with how we're building our capital plan what we're prioritizing in that and at the end of this
16010-year period we're comfortable with where we believe we'll end up based on everything that we know now knowing that everything we know now could completely change tomorrow but we only can work with the information that we have so just making sure that you know together we'll we're building what we all believe collectively is the best capital plan that we can that accomplishes the goals that together we've set out for so i'll pause for some questions before we wrap up are there are there any okay board members questions yes miss jordan i just have two questions on page 17 when it says island school what is that sanibel or is that pine island what school is that i think three so i was trying to figure out what island has three schools on page 17. so
161i'm going back oh this is part of this right here it was showing like the schools the west said west zone then it has island schools and then there's three and then even over on the left oh right here you're talking right here yeah and on the left-hand side to it's it says i'm always i always see east south and west but i've never seen the island so i was like where is so barrier island is what we're referring to so you got pine island you got sanibel and you got the beach okay so it's all that's where the three are at yes so i was like none of them have three schools right right because technically they're not in in any one of those zones okay yes thank you for that and then it
162was just going around in my head and then on this on that page 46 and 47 where you have like the markings there's i think there was three schools that had not one check mark is that because they're newer or improvement projects yes so you're talking here yes so you have some who have that are straight across the board and then there's a few i think it was three actually that had not one not for safety maintenance technology nothing yeah well pine island is on there and it's not they don't have they don't have a check mark that's not a new school yeah pelican like a yes so i see a couple here like a pine island pine woods yeah those are a few that i see here that don't have any and so skyline
163i see that here didn't have one and tell you so there's four yeah okay down here so it did so that doesn't necessarily mean that there was no work done in any of these categories there it just so means that it happens to not have been funded through sales tax but the reason why this information is important is so that we can go back and examine each of those locations and say okay is there something of priority here that needs to be done that we may not be addressing or is it just that it happens to be at these particular locations they haven't been prioritized because of maybe recent work that had already been done as somebody mentioned tortuga is a pretty recent school so that could be some reason for that but we have
164did you did you want to add to that tray sure if you don't mind yeah please so if you look at that there's definitely some lagging data there if you look at the dates as dr desmord mentioned through january 2020 if you remember a prior briefing that we had where we accelerated because of the excess labor that occurred a couple of months later we have been in and sometimes multiple times in those schools some of which that you have noted where we have installed promethean boards and on access control projects we've done mobile broadcast cart refreshes and so forth so just i would just say keep in mind and that's just certainly relative to technology other areas too but that was from january 2020 prior to our acceleration thank you it just caught my eye
165when i yes through that yes i didn't and it did not see that 2020 so i apologize for that yes it was it was only through this is through june 2020 so that was at that point but then also it should catch your eye because that's one of the reasons that we keep the informations for it to catch our eye too are we doing this right are we covering all the bases the way that we need to cover them or is there something else that we need to look at so that's part of the process of when we come up with the next capital plan this data helps to inform the decisions that we make perfect so it's so it's a it was it is a very valid and a very good question ones that
166we ask as we go through and determine what's next it was very it's really good thank you okay other questions mrs kittens okay thank you all for the report and it is very educational and interesting being at the isoc meetings because they do ask some very deep questions and get down to actually you know what is this and what ifs and all that so it's very good so as the liaison i try not to ask many of my questions so i have a couple for you right now okay one is on slide 11. get to it really quickly and it's on mm middle school am i on the right one right on mm middle school and my question on that is we had discussed at one point that the extension in the front of the
167building for the additional classrooms could be done through sales tax and i am gathering that is what is called phase two is that correct no no not exactly so for each construction project there's a phase one and a phase two phase one is just the design the architect that type of thing and then phase two is the actual construction together phase one and phase two make up the entire project as it had originally been planned the expansion that you're referring to is a completely separate project that has not to do with this first construction partner yeah so my question is we had discussed the fact that doe originally did not approve that additional those additional classrooms and in the discussion it was that i believe you'd said well that's something we can do through the
168sales tax so my question is that what is being done because i understand when they're building the elementary school next door that they're going to add those classrooms and is that going to be through the sales tax yes yes it is you don't see that's not on here because like i said that this project cost that we're referring to here doesn't reflect that separate project it only reflects the first project that the board approved which was the original building the expansion of such you will see on the next capital plan that comes through for the next five to ten year plan so that will be on there and on the i think it's the next slide is the elementary yes school that's going in and do we have the breakdown of how much of that
169is sales tax or no not because we're not into it yet yeah we haven't completely built the plan out yet or the funding sources for the plan yet so not just quite yet although i am anticipating that the entire cost will be sales tax but i don't know that yet for sure because we have to break down the funding sources and we also have the ability to use impact fee for that because that's adding new student station so the whole name of the game as far as assigning funding sources to projects is to use your most restrictive funding first right so impact fees would be most restrictive so we want to make sure that we were spending those out first so i can't yet say until we finish building out the whole plan and assigning
170funding sources what now is assigned to what okay and you answered two questions because i was going to ask what is that process and you said you used most restrictive and then work your way down right okay okay as well as of course keeping in mind what the purpose of the funding source is right so adhering to all rules and regulations related to that restricted that you can only do this with that you start with that right okay the last thing is the i guess it goes back to that last page with all the little asterisks and stuff but when you talk about technology and this may be try to come back up but what percentage of that technology piece is sales tax as opposed to like with the promethean boards we had you know
171several sources including i think it was cares act funds and different things i'm not sure of all the process so how much of it is sales tax and how much is there there are two main sources and trey you're welcome to add anything that you want to to this statement but there really are two main sources of funding that we use for technology across the board it's either typically going to be if it if it isn't capital because there are some technology costs that are completely operating right but if we're talking it is in capital it's either sales tax or it's the 1.5 mil of the property tax funding so between those two sales tax and property tax funding makes up the bulk of everything that we're spending as far as capital expenditures and technology
172so i'm not as far as the total amount i'm not sure as far as the breakdown of that but mostly with what you're talking about in schools with the promethean boards mostly all of that is packaged inside of the sales tax funding okay detroit did you want to add to that no i think that's that's right yeah just on the sales tax so you've got our computer refresh atlas project which would include like mobile carts broadcast carts as well as like the promethean boards of course of which we're deploying 6600 panels across the district so those those are in access control of course those are the primary areas and technology that are covered by the sales tax okay thank you i think that the others i can get you with you personally sure absolutely mrs
173patricka just whenever we talk about the happening sales tax makes me really really happy because i really believe this is legacy work that you're doing in terms of spending it appropriately and in accordance with the promises we made to taxpayers it's like legacy work for dr atkins and his team in terms of the amount of work you put into going out to the public in gaining their trust it's legacy work for three members of the board who were seated at the time and put in that work to go out it was a political disaster at least for me personally but it was a huge win for kids and i just every single time we talk about it makes me happy and it makes me feel excited and i just wanted to share that with you
174so thank you very much oh well thank you thank you and that was one of the reasons why we wanted to bring it forward and make sure that we had a special conversation about it because you know it is it is a big deal it's it's generational and you know we we didn't feel like we were talking about it enough so we needed to talk about it some and really spread the word in terms of the impact the great impact that it is having across all of our locations and some of the great things that are able to happen because it's here so yes thank you okay mrs morgan so a couple of things first of all i think you've done a great job with the numbers it just how you lay it out how
175you portray it graphically is fabulous i'm looking at the sales tax dashboard that's really the only place where we aggregate information about the sales tax i think it would be helpful to have a link to the meetings as well as the presentations so just because i think the more information we put in one place the more members of the community different communities we provide information too i love the communications plan especially talking about the economic impact because that tells me that you and communications and i especially want to give kudos to communications you're now targeting communications to specific audiences we have a parent audience about what's happening in the schools we have a business community about what the impact is in terms of of what we're doing in the schools and i think the more
176we try to communicate directly to certain parts of the community the more people we will reach if you don't have to look through generic material to find what you're looking for but you can find exactly what you need given your segment of the demographic i think that's great oh and i also i was going to ask does the committee issue a report i know they take a vote you mentioned that they asked themselves three questions at the end of every meeting i think everything we're talking about communicating is coming from the district so we're talking about ourselves and our accomplishments but nobody's putting a stamp on it from the outside i think it would be helpful if isaac essentially issued a statement at the end of each meeting you know that this is what we've
177agreed to and then we put it up right on the front page i socks meeting in march 2021 this is their finding boom because i think and we need to list the members of the committee because i think the community needs to see who else is engaged in this process not just staff but that we have a panoply of people okay community doing it so those would be my suggestions i think you guys are doing awesome work and i and i think that from a communications point of view the district is getting closer to not only in the area of finance but hopefully at some point in the area of academics etc that we are more targeted in terms of the audiences that we are attempting to communicate with okay thank you all right okay
178thank you for that we so we've not necessarily done that to date that's kind of what that sales tax report was meant to we put that letter on the front from the ice or the message on the front from the isoc so it was kind of their stamp of approval on the information that was in there go to the report yes yes we need to see this in my opinion we need to see that on the front page of the website on website okay i got you i got you and then one of the things that at least a couple members have of of the isoc have talked about is as we go out and they do believe that we should be going out to different places in the community to discuss and share this
179information that they wanted to join members of the district in terms of doing that in terms of disseminating that information as well so just wanted to mention that so i have that yep great thank you great work awesome other board member questions mr patrick i just wanted to address ms morgan so i remember early on on isoc asking them to put out a statement and they were very hesitant to do so i think anything beyond what i agree with you on the front page or whatever but anything beyond this on a quarterly basis expecting an annual statement i think is probably about as far as we'll get i just wanted to sort of let you know that you know i made that request and i was met with chirps and it just sort of wasn't
180going anywhere okay other board member questions or comments i just wanted to say thank you once again for this very comprehensive report and i have an off-sided question has there been much of an impact due to recent construction and growth on our impact fees you know have we seen a big increase in that or not as yet not not not a bunch not not a big increase remember we're still at a lesser a lesser percentage of 52 and a half percent i believe is where we are now in terms of the collection rate right of impact fees so there has not been a large increase to that as of yet okay and i read that they are going to increase the impact fees for people or that they're planning on voting on it so i
181didn't know if you had heard anything about that i so i hadn't i do know that the you know the last committee meeting with the board of county commissioners was that once it got to a certain level of collection that's where it would stay until they chose to take another action and they've not communicated with us as to this point as to their intention to take any other action so when you say that are you referring to the collection rate are you referring to the fee itself i'm referring to the fee itself okay okay which might be which might have been a different fee because with our you know impact fee report there's a you know there's a consultant that comes on every i believe it's five years and does you know rev a data
182collection in order to determine what a new recommended calculated fee would be and it's not yet our time for that so it could be i'm not sure and of course there's many different impact fees that the county is collecting so it might have been in reference to something else but we are not in the middle of in a school impact fee collection data report with them at this point okay yeah thank you any other questions or comments board members but we can we can sure check into it though if we find out something different i certainly will let you know but we have not communicated with them on that recently okay yeah it was in the financial in sunday's news press okay yes okay all right we'll we'll look into that thank you okay anybody
183else from the dais thank you so much ladies it was a great both of those were great presentations very beautiful job with the slides and i'm sure the committee appreciates the pictures as as do we here so thank you awesome all right thank you so much and we'll we'll see you next time okay all right at this time we are done with the presentations and we are on public comment it does not appear i think there's some in the back room is there somebody in the back room it appears that there's two okay have you gotten cards i have i have the two individuals names so i can call them okay so if somebody would get the individuals in the back room please denise nystrom and christine divijelli school board policy provides the opportunity at
184this point in the meeting to address the board concerning any matter from this meeting's agenda only this meeting's agenda if you completed a blue card please put it in the basket provided if you need a blue card it will be provided to you and it's located outside rules concerning public comment are posted in the back and you will use the back central microphone please be advised that the board does not respond during public commentary remarks made by speakers at the end of the public comment period excuse me the board vice chair excuse me sorry ms vaughn will address concerns or the assignment of any concerns or requests to the superintendent board policy 1.181 requires the wearing of mass speakers and those attending the meeting are expected to act in a respectful manner the purpose of
185public comment is to provide feedback on today's agenda personal and tax such as embarrassing or harassing comments on individuals or abusive language are prohibited in addition clapping hissing and booing are prohibited any display of temper are prohibited speakers who fail to follow the prophet decorum in the chambers will be ruled out of order any speaker continuing with such remarks will be required to relinquish the microphone for board policy one point eleven the time for speaker is three minutes you will find a countdown on the big screen in the front of the room once your time has elapsed the microphone will automatically shut off we encourage you to address the board as a whole versus individual board members as they act as a collective body please state your name prior to making your comment and madame
186vice madam chair there are two individuals for public comment denise nystrom one one individual now okay oh just one yes all right please begin christine tv jelly just me today so i just have a couple of questions real quick can you guys please remind me what happens to a complaint that's filed that doesn't make the cut to be sent to a higher authority or gets sent back to the district like when it gets sent back to the district does it just come back to you guys and just does it die here or what is or where is the due process in that my next question is if someone on the board has a complaint filed against them and it is of a criminal nature should they still be sitting on the board and acting and
187voting on important issues like i can appreciate the level of concern for members of the board i too am very concerned i'm concerned that compromise board members are still voting and making important decisions for our community even though they are currently being investigated for criminal allegations that are made against them now i'd like to know if the board is willing to agree to update the public at every action meeting as to the status of this ongoing investigation perhaps we should have a web page for this investigation just like there's one for the interim superintendent search so that parents can be involved in the process for for the sake of transparency in regards to the adult code of conduct it was asked what someone asked what code of conduct students are gonna will fall under it
188while in attendance at a technical school and the adult code of conduct claims to fall back on the student coc so does that mean that if a student with a 504 receiving special bathroom accommodations will be provided those same accommodations at the technical school because i did not see any mention about any of that in the adult coc in regards to the sales tax budget on the school's school improvements projects page it mentions 67 schools that are in need of safety improvements or have already had them performed on them and then it says on slide 34 it mentions to to further ensure the safety of our students specific details on these projects are not shared with the public but my question is what about parents like i don't need to know nor do i want
189to know every single detail of every single change however i would like to know if you're if you've replaced all the cameras at x school or you've replaced all the locks at y school and i would like to see a more detailed list of what safety measures are being taken in our schools perhaps that information can be a little i did hear the one committee member come up here and explain that they were trying to educate the community better in that in that regard and i do appreciate that but i was hoping that maybe the information could be a little bit easier to access and assimilate for us that's all i have for today thank you guys and i'll see you in a couple of hours thank you thank you some of these i can
190i can comment on complaints it would not be appropriate to have a special page on on the website ongoing investigations into complaints no matter who who it is who the complaint has been against are confidential once the investigation has concluded then it becomes more of an open matter some of the things miss jelly is did i don't think i said that right but anyway ms denise miss christmas i'm getting the names messed up miss christine some of the things that you have asked for are readily available and keep in mind that we do have public records requests so if there's some things that you know we there's so many moving parts to a school district we can't possibly have everything on our website but i think we do have a very comprehensive website if there's
191something that you're interested in learning about you can always email the board board members board office we will find who can address these for you same thing with safety measures we can we can get you answers that are not readily found on the website so hopefully that helps them somewhat with that okay so we have had one public speaker now let's talk right here on on the dais and let's start in the middle today with miss jordan we'll never comment okay board mentor comments let's see okay i have i wasn't prepared yet so we had a franklin park had their meeting and i spoke about this sometime this week it was great the community came out missible and her staff did an excellent job in sharing information regarding the rebuild we had a lot of
192the alumni that from there which was quite interesting because they shared the history of franklin park and the community in itself so i thought that was beneficial as well hearing what they had to say and how they feel that we helped to move forward with that let me see what else we had i was able to come to the parent university graduation which was done by communications they do an awesome job the parents were excited to be here the children were more excited that the parents were here and that they were part of seeing their parents be celebrated which i thought was awesome as well and they had it was just set up so nice it actually was a graduation and in saying graduations we're looking forward to our graduations that are coming up within
193a couple weeks we're moving right along with that and i'm really excited for these for the kids for that we're gonna be able to do that this year so that is a great thing we have a lot of things going on we have the all county dance is taking place at north fort myers high and that's coming up on the 20th we have so many different things and i know ms vaughn had mentioned the website i would definitely say that people should go to our website and look and see what has taken place in our district and what amazing things that our students are still being able to do it may be a little bit different how they're how they're doing it but they're doing it and i think that we really need to be
194thankful for that we have what else like a buckingham exceptional student center they're going to be doing a alice in wonderland there so i'm really excited for them because it's just so much fun when you go over there and you see the joy in their in their eyes and just if you want to just really feel good that's the place to go because they can make you feel good the kids there and then we also have coming up the ribbon cutting of gateway high there's just so much going on and i thank you for allowing me to speak first and i'm just looking forward to all the good things that are coming our way thank you okay gonna come this way miss kittens you're catching all of us off guard tonight i'm just you gotta
195be ready okay a couple of things that i wanted to bring up but i'm going to hold off on some of it at this point because of the hour i just want to admonish my colleagues that we have to be very careful and listen to each other more and i think because of some of the situations that are happening in the community and with the district right now a lot more people are watching our meetings than before and i know i've heard other board members say they get a lot of in you know calls and messages and texts and so do i and we just need to listen more to each other there have been several situations that would have been misconstrued because people don't listen to each other they just listen to answer what
196they feel they'll say afterwards so i'm just saying we should be real careful about that attorney bruno has put out a couple of things about robert tools and all of that and i have spoken to some other districts a couple of retired superintendents and current superintendents and other board members in other districts and i think we need to kind of look at some of the ways that we do for example the consensus and attorney bruno said this afternoon that a true consensus and when you research at a true consensus means that everyone should be agreeing with it and if someone is not that's when you ask the question how can we get you to the point of agreement and i think as we look back and i've gone back to some of the meetings we've
197we've done it differently it's not you take a consensus and it's a vote and we go on and i really think we need to look into that a little bit more i also have a question about the audit committee we've been limping along with that for quite a while and don't know when that is coming through and i'm just bringing up you can get back to me on it but i believe we should have moved forward with something at this point and anyway i'll reserve the other comments what was the other thing i wanted to mention okay the you got you all have the web page that we did and i will bring it tonight for good of the order for a vote to go ahead with that you have the url that was sent
198to you and the corrections were made according to requests by the board members and laura howard has said that i'll share this with you excuse me the forum can go to all emails the question had been about the subject line that's been fixed you won't see it as you're looking at it because it's not on the web page you would have to send an email to see and receive one to show that it has a subject line on it will it can go to all emails of all of us with the subject line on it can go to one email or an excel document that we she says i can email the excel document agreed upon so the excel document would make it very simple for everyone to see how many communications we've received and
199what the comments are and that type of thing and my preference would be receiving something like that because then you're not going through individual emails you're just looking at a whole spreadsheet and it would be time saving in my opinion but it's up to the rest of you and we can do that later are there any comments or questions on that at this point yes may i no that's miss vaughn oh yeah i'm i'm just wondering mr priebus should we wait for this evening when this comes up at our action meeting i think you can talk about it now and you can also talk about the action meeting so it's really up to the pleasure of the board okay well since because this is good of the yeah you know your comments since since you
200brought it up then i think miss morgan has a question i'm just wondering why it has to go on the agenda do we normally approve web pages on the we had said last week when we were discussing it that it would be brought up on tuesday for i withdraw sorry wasn't paying attention my apologies i mean if i if you don't want to and you want to that's what had been stated i thought yeah that is what was stated that it would be brought up for review and a vote at the action meeting wasn't it tabled friday it was to come back on tuesday during the action meeting after i get some corrections had been made and you would take a look at it again and vote yeah that's my memory of it is as
201well okay yes mrs jordan i'm not sure where the corrections i did it come from who did it come from when you click on the url the corrections were done live so whenever she made the corrections it was like it was changed so when you click on the url it's the up-to-date version of it i don't know if we've received that okay it's the same it's the same one you received last time okay i can send it out i was just going to suggest it might be easier and it'll be at the top of our emails if you send that your url again to everybody please okay okay other yes i don't want us to be in a situation tonight where we have to table it again so i think it's important to have this
202discussion now so that it's it's affected by tonight so we can that's why we're that's why we decided to do it so what other comments do you have i don't have any oh okay i'll send it right now i think this is given ellie my only question is how much staff time will be involved in the spreadsheet is that or is it just easier just to send us a link and us look at it on our own at our at our pleasure laura just informed me that it was very simple that she just clicks it in and i don't know if someone can explain the technology part it's not a matter of her gathering it's just clicking a button okay and she said that she would be able to do that she offered to do
203that okay yeah that's all i do i'm not asking her to do something i know i just want her just was getting tried to get clarification on who was doing it and that kind of thing really go ahead ms stillwell i was texting while miss kittens was speaking but basically what could happen is that people would fill out that form it would automatically populate a google sheet and then we would give you all the view rights to a google sheet so you could go in there and it would basically automatically update whenever anybody put in a comment so that it wouldn't be a job for someone else to do pretty much yeah oh okay so it would be it would pretty much be automatic once we set it up awesome so it operates on its
204on its own i want it yeah to to hear that because we did vote on a static site or at least we our consensus was for a static site and in in doing that in part we wanted to virtually eliminate the need for staff or anybody else to have to put in time now the site itself when you want like dates updated or if there are meetings and stuff like that would take a moderate amount of staff time it wouldn't be overwhelming right but the form itself who when they're getting comments that would that wouldn't take really any time at all okay everyone receive it okay so that might be since we're talking about this that might be an issue to look at it several different ways to look at the comments that come in
205several different ways whether they come in to all of us to board members or whether it's set that it goes automatically to what did you say a google sheet a google yep okay it could automatically be emailed to all of you it could go into that google document you could just access it with a click of a button if you were concerned about responses we could certainly have some kind of a static response that the board secretaries could just thank people and say thank you for your comment we'll take it under advisement it could be like an automatic response so people you didn't feel like you had to respond individually so there's definitely options there and i wouldn't want to take away the opportunity for board members to respond personally if they wanted to or
206or we could have stock response thank you for your comments or whatever oh no okay mrs kittens if i may the spreadsheet would allow anyone to to have the information the name and the email of anyone and their comments and nothing would preclude us from saying i want to respond to miss so-and-so or mr so-and-so that's up to us individually right that's a good point and i think that a stock answer and then as we educate the public that it's out there and what its purpose is as a part of that we let them know that you will probably not get an individual answer from this location but we are gathering information as opposed to creating a conversation okay good point and there could be an auto response that's generated so when somebody clicks submit
207and that information is automatically put into the google sheet and a response would go back to them thanking them for sending their feedback and their comments and it could even include something like you know you may hear individually from a board member or you may so we can craft that however at once but you they would automatically get a response if you would like that to acknowledge that they took the time and then you would have their information to be able to reach out individually if you so chose and i would suggest if everyone can open it and pull it up just to take a look at it prior to this evening then it should be the last thing i sent you and all it's in there is the url so yeah are there any
208other questions or comments or anything i like that they changed changed the pictures that's good so the picture does we got a little bit older and we included some of our diverse student population i like that i just want to say thank you for yes all the work that you have done and with staff as well for together a lovely addition to our page and of course we'll have to revise pretty soon when we put out the information for the permanent superintendent and we have some already discussed some ideas on the permanent superintendent search page so we will be able to let's do that simply yeah the hard the hard work is the establishment in the beginning and hearing from six different people as well as yourself and can you but it's looking good can
209you please ask for at least a consensus to see if we have you know the ability to bring it forward this tonight are we i'll ask that are we ready we have a question i just i just want to say once so once this is approved is it just it's ready to go oh it's ready she just has to click it and it's out there but we would do it after tonight i would assume when we can explain exactly all the details sounds good yeah we just had a few tweaks and it hasn't really been that many days since we discussed it so it'd be great to have it up and running by tomorrow morning with our approval and make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom there is another picture at the
210bottom okay did you have more that you wanted no i was just wondering if you want to take a consensus so we'd have some idea that tonight's going to go smoothly or not okay i'll ask you i'll ask board members do you feel that it is that you're ready to vote on this tonight everybody's okay so you're gonna put it forth this go to the order yes and we will vote on it tonight and it looks like we have unanimous consensus that we are ready to vote okay do you have anything else to add for your comments i don't think so at this time thank you very much okay mrs morgan so let's see the lee county school district hosted an early childhood superintendent forum with the southwest florida community foundation an early learning coalition
211the goal of the three groups is to link all of the early childhood providers and the school district of lee county to ensure that the high quality instruction that's expected for kindergarteners is in the minds and programs of the pre-k providers it was open to 183 providers it was attended by only 19 but i got some good questions out of it the point of this is this partnership between the district and the early childhood providers is to provide professional development resources and recognition for programs that meet the standards for student performance on kindergarten evaluations and so what what has happened is that some schools are actually linked right now to early childhood providers and the providers are visiting the schools the kindergarten teachers are visiting the providers and i think there's a lot of optimism
212that through this collaboration which is really just about professional development alignment we can do some good things i want to congratulate staff on that nine million dollar magnet school assistance program grant i mean that is absolutely incredible and i am going to mention it again tonight because i think the public needs to hear it but i also wanted to say if staff is watching that i think what an awesome effort and what an incredible outcome for franklin park james stevens and south fort myers high school i have met with commissioners sandeling and rohan to talk about the interlocal agreement projects in the wind and some of the problems that we're having as a result of the way we are working together in this new phase with with a lot of development being done by the
213school district i will be meeting with pendergrass and man tomorrow i was also with the community introduction to the franklin park project i thought staff members maloy and ebau did a terrific job talking to the community explaining to the community collecting comments and like miss jordan i have to say that the community history that came in from some of the members was really enlightening construction advisory they have been discussing recommended changes to procurements rfq procedures i expect them to bring them forward at a future date we had a presentation by harvard jolly on the plans for the k-8 school in estero and there were a number of questions from committee members but i think generally felt that the plan was pretty solid and addressed a lot of concerns that community's been raising i think that's
214it for today for now i'll probably make some more comments this evening thank you okay mrs juvenelli i actually made most of mine yesterday the only couple questions that i have actually is regarding public comment for tonight i am told that they're already lining up getting tick getting blue cards so is there a time that they that there should like what is our policy regarding public comment and because it's four o'clock and so we don't specifically have a time to line up to start doing public comments in the cards in board policy it's first come first serve okay and that's i wanted people to be aware of that and then another issue is i wouldn't say it's an issue but we're getting lots and lots of emails regarding the lgbt their rights and there's so
215many that we're inundated and we're not able to i'm not able to really respond to all of them and i would just like confirmation so the community knows that no rights have been lessened and that everyone has you know equal rights and that if that could be addressed right now at least so that they know that you know everyone is being treated the same and and we're not no one's losing rights because i think that seems to be concerning and i don't understand that i don't know who if you'd like i mean either either one of us i can from a school district perspective i can say that you know in terms of our policies they remain in place we haven't made any changes to policies in terms of our procedures that are being carried
216on in school as it relates to the individual rights of all of our students that continues to stay the same as it was prior to all this so i do want to reassure the community i understand i've heard some of that as well that really nothing has changed for all intents and purposes at the school level or the or the district for that matter thank you and then there's a new parental rights as well can that be just addressed a little bit too as well because i think it's they're kind of they're both important so that bill is going to be going to the governor hopefully become effective in july and it's basically reiterating a lot of the rights that parents already have everything from education to health care there are some very specific things
217within the bill we will be once it becomes effective in july we will be drafting a policy that reflects the parent's bill of rights thank you that's all i have thank you so much okay mrs patricka so i copied you all on a response to an estero resident who requested a town hall meeting i want you all to know that i will be securing the location on my own i am not going to be relying on staff in any way shape or form to conduct that meeting i will be using my own outlets for advertising that meeting it is a political request that was made and i'm happy to fulfill that request but i just wanted you all to know i'm doing that on my own i was at this wonderful event for the family
218initiative have you all heard of the family initiative autism support group out in the cape they just built a new building and they're just they're just a really wonderful group anyways they had an event last saturday i think for autism awareness and autism champions and i was at the event just because i love family initiative and it was such a proud moment for me when i'm gonna say her name incorrectly donna jerf yep is that how you say your name dj erf donna jerk from the school district of lee county was announced as the recipient of the believer award that award is given to an individual or organization that effectively uses just resources to positively impact individuals and families with autism it's my understanding that she's like a pit bull not a mean way but
219in like a relentless way to make sure that our kids get the resources and get the services that they need and she's just beloved in the community and jessica duncan ms duncan her boss was there crying when she received the award it was just a really it was a very proud moment for me as board member i wasn't expecting it she wasn't expecting it and it was just really awesome i hope you all have been participating in my sunday text messages to you to vote for our soon to be american idol champion casey bishop she is unbelievable she gets what's three times six she gets 180 votes out of our household every sunday i invite you all to do the same i was invited to participate in the national day of prayer at a church
220at estero and i was asked on tuesday and i went there on wednesday i think i don't remember the exact days but it's funny because i'm sitting in the church and the guy who got up to you know do the intro said pastors will be stepping on to the altar to give prayers in various categories i was education and as these each pastor comes up really try to focus on the category and i'm like oh my gosh i'm not a pastor like what is going on so when it when it was my turn to to pray about education i went up and i said and i'm hoping you all will see the humor in this i said i in full disclosure i am not a pastor i am chris patrick i am a member of
221the lee county school board and contrary to popular belief being on the school board is not the complete opposite of being a pastor these days because the headlines are making us look like we're not we're evil and whatever they thought it was funny so that was cool to be a part of that i was i went to a ceremony at estero high school where scholarships were awarded specifically from the eccl and the asero historical society thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars being given to our kids just at that school i know it happens across the district i happen to be lucky enough to attend that one and somebody said to me oh you must be so tired of these events and i said no there is no such thing as getting tired of these
222events this is my favorite time of year my face hurts from smiling my smile muscles are not used to doing that so often and it really is a wonderful time of year for for our kids i went to an event hosted by the chamber called education recovering from the pandemic dr atkins was one of the panelists along with is it mr or dr meyer i'm not i'm not sure i know him as john john meyer mr meyer the person at launch hodges mike martin and dr martin and mr all britain from fsw dr albritton i'm sorry dr albright dr so i mean dr martin is by far the most entertaining he always is he's just hysterical he's irreverent and he just whatever but i have to say i was most impressed in terms of the
223content of dr atkins presentation it was data driven it was and as i sat there and i listened it was sort of like a really quick reel or movie in my head of what what this school district has done over the past year and it reinforced for me the amazing work that i'm only looking at like five staff members out here right now but the amazing work that everybody at every single level of this district has done throughout the year and i understand that there's significant outcry out there about removing the mass and i desperately want to rip this thing off my face too but we are open we are open we have been open the entire year every single day to every single kid at every single level and i'd like it if our
224community could please focus on the success and the wonderful things that our staff has done this year instead of beating us up for mass dak i went to dak we had a transportation presentation and really good feedback from from the group i mean these are parents who are putting their kids on buses every day and they know what works and they know what doesn't work and again they provided real actionable immediately actionable feedback to the transportation staff some of that stuff has already been implemented so you know not recommendations to the board but like real everyday operation stuff and those are my comments for today thank you okay miss fisher and i'm going to reserve mine for this evening because it's very short okay i have just one or two things to say four of
225us were at the jrotc award ceremony this yeah this past week i was listening for things that may not have been it was it was lovely it was short and sweet because you know i'm remembering the huge ceremonies that used to take that well hopefully next year will once again take place in a much larger venue but the students it's it's amazing how many things some of these kids are involved in and the kind of amazingly outstanding gpas when you have a gpa that is five point and above five and above that's just kind of mind-boggling i also i didn't go in person to the pandemic the state of the pandemic that miss patricka had just referenced but i did watch i did watch it and i think there was i saw some other people
226actually it seems to me that dr martin was a really funny one he said he said a few things that i know i was laughing out out loud and so maybe he was the one dr atkins it was good that you went first not that you didn't have great information but just he's tough to compete with he's tough to compete with he's very engaging as a speaker he and yeah he had a lot of interesting it's very nice jokes and one or two i thought okay he got to say that all right and finally more seriously edac equity and diversity committee met last night and we really haven't had much public comment this year at edac last night was an exception we had three people all of whom were speaking in support of lgbtq community
227and the rights of the community and each of them gave some made some very moving statements our focus last night was presentation by recruitment department teacher recruitment and lynn harrell and suzette rivera were the presenters on that they did an excellent job they were able you know former teachers able to pull in edac committee and get them to suggest things like well where are some places what is what's some out of the box thinking that you might want to include and interestingly there were a couple new suggestions and i think suzette actually wrote something i don't remember which it was but something down like oh that's great most of the suggestions were very very similar to things that recruitment is already doing and just an fyi for everybody out there the numbers of education graduates
228educate school of education graduates across the nation has fallen dramatically and then you look at florida and then i mean you narrow these things down and you look at the numbers that we as a large district hire and other districts are i mean it's i remember a time when i would for instance one time when i moved to a different state and i was nervous about oh my gosh i don't know english yeah there are a lot of english teachers and you know sweating getting a job and now it's i mean it's a very very competitive world of recruitment and our department is doing just an excellent job with coming up with innovative ways to get out there and and it's been even harder during the pandemic because instead of being able to go in
229person to you know the in-person recruitment fairs which didn't happen this year and when that happens you can actually you know go up and kind of lasso recruits but you had they had to wait for people to sign up so it's it's been a very challenging year and then you add that on top of the pandemic and a lot of teachers especially teachers that may be were nearing retirement this year or had medical issues some people took an early retirement or did a switch so it's going to be an especially challenging year so you know if you're a still energetic retired teacher from up north let's say and you think you might want to teach in in lee county you know where the website is and it's easy it's easy to apply and finally eat
230act because we did miss a meeting in in the fall i think november we decided they decided to meet in june kind of at the brink of putting forth one or two recommendations for the board so hopefully we are going to be in person and hopefully we have our quorum so that we can put forth they can put forth those things and we did i did a presentation on the search for an interim superintendent and then what we're doing next and they were very very interested a lot a lot of questions and i love that committee it's very easy to get people to speak and as usual we go way over time i think we were there for we started at 5 30 and ended at something like quarter after seven and there was still
231questions so it's a great committee attorney dupree bruno do you have comments i have none thank you okay dr atkins do you have comments no none at this time thank you okay is there anything that we missed yes i just want to say the governor has just signed into law house bill 7045 which is the it's relating to school choice so that's something that 62 pages of that and that's something that you probably want to read because it has a lot of stuff that we deal with and we see every day and it was just signed into law so just breaking breaking news breaking news breaking news and there's going to be a lot of that as all that bit all the bills come across his desk and thank you may have some big changes
232on on the horizon all right so it is 4 37 and so we didn't considering how we start how we start it we are ready to end and we're not we're 37 minutes over but gives us time for dinner before six o'clock when we will meet again for board action meetings thank you