001Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Hello. [Music] Heat. [Music] Good afternoon and welcome to the Poke County School Board's work session. We will now call the work session for September 9th, 2025 to order. School has now been in session for a month. The newness of the school year has worn off and it's time to buckle down and work hard to serve our students and staff. I want to thank our district staff in the back there who are available and accessible to help with any uh questions we may have. We are humbled to serve alongside you and the most highly educated and dedicated workforce in the nation. I would like to start by reading our who are we statement. We are the Poke County Leadership Governance Team. If we were to pick one phrase to define us, it
002would be student centered. Because when we we come together to work, we lean on our diverse backgrounds and experiences to ensure that our decisions are focused on providing a highquality education for all students. The four most important things to our governance team are operating with integrity, respecting our students, staff, families, and each other, establishing a culture where stakeholders feel valued, supported, and have opportunities for personal and professional growth, supporting an approach of continuous improvement to ensure student outcomes. Collectively, we need to work on behalf of the children we serve and find avenues of agreement so that we can govern the district in an effective manner. There is no acceptable alternative. We will always collaborate in a respectful manner in order to enhance opportunities for each student and staff members. We will not disparage others. Our
003students will thrive because we will remain committed to supporting the whole child. We hope to engage and empower our students and stakeholders to create a community of lifelong learners. At this time, I would like to turn it over to Superintendent Hyde to lead us in our work session today. >> Good morning, Mr. Vice Chair, members of the board, members of committee staff. Thank you for being here. We have several topics for you this morning. I'll be kicking off with the screen time conversation. The initial intent was to work um over the last few months to develop a policy, potential policy for the board to consider based off of screen time. There are two handouts that you have that were placed at your seats. Um one is an outline that I'll soon go through. The second
004one is a comprehensive list of all PK County Public Schools instructional materials. And I'll I'll explain why that's relevant here in a moment. Um the research results that neither the state of Florida or the uni United States Department of Education nor the American Pediatric Association have establish any standards or set expectations for the restriction of student use of devices otherwise known as screen time. What they do though however is highly differentiate between social use or personal use and instructional use. And when we talk about the use of devices for instructional purposes, there are some generic guidelines and recommendations that they provide. Um, they can vary slightly based off students ages. Um, and and arguably they would be developmentally appropriate. For example, in the early primary grades, typically in grades K through two, the recommendation is
005no more than 20 minutes without then a break um for the students to disengage with the device, do some other learning activity for reinforcement and or redirection, and then they can subsequently come back to the device. Uh but again, it's important to note that there are no national standards nor are there any recommendations for screen time as far as actual minutes of usage during a an instructional period. Instead, what we rely on is, okay, what are the best or most common practices or best practices that are out that we should be referring to and referencing. Part of what becomes difficult is we're still in the collection process. So, the reason I provided you with this comprehensive list of our instructional materials is we are currently going back to all of our providers to identify if
006there's any um if there's anything from the um from the publisher that outlines specifically the need or what the recommendations are for utilization. So, let me explain what that means um because I I think the way I just explained it's going to be a little bit muddy. Essentially what we've done is gone back to the publisher and said if you have an online component whether it's a lesson an activity some type of enrichment some type of engagement an assessment what is the required amount of time that you find is is needed for that assignment to be completed or what's the recommendation for time being allotted so that students could complete that assessment or assignment within that specific lesson or or period of time. What is going to be the requirement? So, we're waiting to get
007responses on it. It's going to vary by grade level. Not all content has online materials or lessons. They always have an online component, but they may not necessarily have lessons or activities that are going to fall within what we're trying to do. So, again, we fall back on what the research states that essentially there are some best practices. I've provided a list of those for you. This will be an ongoing conversation and then ultimately will be one where not only do we engage the board but we'll provide we'll gather feedback from our instructional staff from our building principles and from parents as well. But we do have to make sure that we start with an explanation as to what's expected for the curriculum or what's needed for the curriculum to be effectively implemented if it
008relies on a technology aspect. Right? So in a reading intervention course, it's not really primarily a concern in the primary grains, but it would be a concern when we start to get into secondary where students are using online utilities such as I station or they're using an online utility such as Achieve 3000 where we're focusing on reading comprehension. And while there are typically books that go along with that, there is a portion of that that is electronic or digitally based. So we want to make sure that we're creating um procedures. What what what I have basically arrived at is at this time I don't know that the recommendation is going to be to develop a policy in as much as procedures. And while the board historically does not typically um when the board outlines a
009policy many times as you're very well aware it stipulates that the superintendent shall or superintendent must develop procedures to effectively implement the policy. As stated, what the board has does not typically include um or has not required is for the superintendent to bring the the procedure back to you. So, in this case, to to ensure that we're being fully transparent, the request would be or the conversation that we're having with the board today is I I I respectfully I believe that should be the expectation of the board and request that once we develop those internal procedures and guidelines that your expectation would be, you know, Mr. Hide. What's the reasonable timeline in which we can see that? We'd like to see a draft brought back before the board and discussed and then we can provide
010you with all of the additional relevant information. But again, you have a comprehensive multi-page kind of summary of what we're able to find. We also linked to here as far as references. Uh we provided you with all of Florida's standards as they relate to 21st century skills or technology skills. We also linked to other research um and other places where if you want to do your own review um for for the purposes of further discussion and development of a of a procedure or influence on the procedure u wanted to make sure again we establish that on page three um just wanted or page four excuse me uh at the top of that page it says best practices. I just want to go through a few of those. I've already mentioned a couple, but I just
011want to make sure that I cover those. Um, the goal is to balance both digital learning and non non-digital learning um to make sure that we're reinforcing concepts, but we're also providing students with a break. But if you look at the second portion of that best practices about mid-page, you see set age appropriate screen time expectations, not limitations, but expectations. Anything that we develop procedurally would not will not have a requirement for strict adherence because we have to continue to provide in our instructional staff with the ability to be flexible in what they're asking students to complete within the classroom setting. However, as a general rule here, what you see in early childhood again preK through 2 grade is short intentional bursts of utilization 10 to 20 minutes at a time and then those students
012can engage in other activity and subsequently come back to that. There will be instances for example um if the students are completing AR or completing something else where they may actually have require some additional time beyond that. Um so that's important to note. Elementary grades 3 through 5 we the the expectation or is what we would do is encourage that students get a break every 20 to 30 minutes to step away from their screen. And then lastly, for middle school and high school, um there's there's something called the 2020 2020 rule that for every 20 minutes that they're online, they have to divert their gaze for at least 20 seconds and look someplace else for 20 seconds. That's included in here because I found it as part of the research when conducting this, but obviously
013we would clarify that further. I don't know that just saying the 2020 2020 rule and I think we could we could we could most assuredly develop something more appropriate than that. Um, we do need to make sure that we're incorporating the healthy use practices and and part of that is continuing to educate students and their parents on the difference between instructional utilization again and social use. Um, our students are not spending anywhere near the amount of time on instructional devices as they are on social social media and and on their phones using it in a variety of different capacities. So, the two are not synonymous with each other. And you know the issues for example such as screen time or less screen time excuse me blue screens and how that may be adversely affecting student
014sleep patterns largely is outside of our control. That's not something we regulate outside of school. Um those are typically done on personal devices as you well know. But it there is an emphasis here that we want to continue to educate families and our students on the importance for them to step away from a screen for at least an hour before going to bed. um as difficult as that may be for some to make sure that they're able to sleep and make sure that they don't have any further disruptions. So um data privacy and safety obviously is something that we we take very seriously here in PK County. We have for a number of years. We continue to do so. Uh protecting our student privacy and their data is an imperative. Um obviously we need to
015continue to emphasize professional development. So once a procedure is developed and these expectations are established, it's imperative that we make sure that our staff understand them and not just hey here's another mandate, here's another expectation, but we explain them as to the why why this is beneficial to students and then we can create some exemplars for our instructional staff so they understand the best way to incorporate it within their classroom. Again, I think sometimes when we establish an expectation and we we send it out to our educators in the classroom without actually giving them some explicit examples of how to do something. They all value the what. It's the it's the how. It's not the why. It's not the what, it's the how. How do I make this work in my classroom in a varied
016instructional setting where I'm doing small groups, individual learning, and whole group instruction. So it's important for us to make sure we spend some time focusing on those areas as well. And then the last part obviously is I think is one of the most important on the next page is the fact that as a school district we need to have a continuous review and adjustment process to our procedures. It's going to take time. Curriculum will change. Um intentionality will change as a direct result of that. So those are one of the things that we highlighted. Next sections that you have there, we outlined for you the state requirements for instructional minutes um for this for the for the year so that you understand how the minutes if we were to come up with any recommendations in
017the procedures for instructional utilization of technology how those then align with the state requirements for students as far as the instructional minutes that are required by statute. So, so I'll leave it at that, um, board members, and I'll open it up for any questions that you may have. Miss Fields, I'm sure you don't really have an answer right this minute, but it'd be interesting to know what practices we currently have in place because I'm sure it's all over the place. probably varies from from classroom to classroom I would imagine. >> Yeah, I I can't I can answer part of that. I know I know we have not provided guidance on recommendations for breaks. I know that that has not come out from from us. Um but that would be something obviously we would want to
018incorporate was if a student's been on a screen for this many minutes, we've got to be intentional in giving them a break from that device. Um and that any use is again is instructionally aligned and not just we're playing on the computer during classroom instructional time. >> Right. >> Yes, ma'am. But Miss Miss Fields to your question, I know Miss Rouse is here. Um she'll take note and we'll have some followup. We'll have a follow-up response as far as what our current practices are, if any. >> Yes, ma'am. Miss Wyatt, >> thank you. And I I'm hopeful that this will come back after we've had a little bit more time to review it because 10 minutes is probably not enough to totally digest all of it. Um the one thing that really caught my eye
019because obviously this is for me at least this is a much bigger concern for our younger students than it is our older students. Um you know there there are so many studies out there that that talk about the the oversaturation of screen time in in our youngest kids. 30 to 40 minutes per content area for a kindergartener seems really excessive considering if you have you're you know you're doing math, science, English, and history. That is where did those originally come from? Is that is if that's something that we're currently is our daily technology time guideline? >> No, we don't have an in we don't necessarily have that guideline that specificity in our guidelines. Um, the 30 to 40 minutes was based solely on, excuse me, was based solely on current practice in known variables. For
020example, knowing what supplements and curriculum we're using and what it takes to complete that lesson. I have water. Sorry. >> Okay. >> Um, and what I have one. We're good. Um, yes, ma'am. Take a sip. Sorry. >> We got all day. So for example, knowing what it it requires presently for a student to complete a lesson or activity. Now what you notice it doesn't say because it is specific to the adopted curriculum. >> It was not intended to be a catchall and assume that every content area requires that level of integration. That's why we're going back to the publishers for those other curriculum areas. for example, science, social studies, what components are there, what would be a reasonable amount of time, and then we can flush this out further. These were just some general guidelines
021that we were able to find um again based off those recommendations. And and then what I just read to you a few moments ago would be so even if students spent 40 minutes in a content area, after 20 minutes in grades preK through 2, the student would be expected to have at least a 10-minute break and then they could return back to that activity. It's also an average. In many instances, they'll probably spend 15, 20 minutes on an activity. But what we wanted to do was provide teachers the flexibility and latitude that if they had students actually producing something, if they were doing something with animation, if they're doing something with a PowerPoint, if they're doing something to present to the class or they're researching um and having to gather information even as young as
022I don't know that our prek students are doing that, but in those environments as we're teaching those 21st century and those especially library media skills, um it's important for us to have some flexibility in there. So, what you would see later is we would add to the notes section as far as recommendations um for how to do that, but it's again it's not intended to say we expect them to be on a device. So, it's a good question. Thank you for allowing me to clarify. It's not that we're expecting them to be on 30 to 40 minutes per class all day long. That's just what should be allowed and then how do we incorporate those brain breaks as we indicated before? Well, and I would encourage us, especially for K5 where they don't you it's
023obviously it's harder in middle and high school where your science teacher and your English teacher probably haven't had a lot of communication that we're both going to be on a device for this period doing a lesson. >> But K5, they typically have the same teacher or the same two teachers that finding a way to coordinate a minimum for the day, I think, is still important at that age. You know, four content areas at 40 minutes each is really quickly. you've been on a device now for 3 hours and I can guarantee you they're if you have a kindergartener on a device for 3 hours, they're not coming home in a a pleasant manner, whether they're doing educational things or not. Um that it just looking at the full scope of the day. Yes, I understand
024it's an average, but then let's average let's truly spread it out throughout the week, not not um put it all in one day. that I think the way that it's currently worded um in the guidelines at least for the elementary level may need to be clarified that the goal is an average for the day not an average for each content area for the week not for each content area. Yeah. >> Um and then my last question I think was um are how are we utilizing this in curriculum adoption going forward? So is that becoming part of our process for curriculum adoption is looking at how much of it is technical is technology based how much of it is analog based. >> It has not been outside of the requirement that we have a digital copy
025of the text because the intent to move to away from a traditional text is you don't lose the license. So if you lose a device, you don't lose the license. You lose a textbook, you're out $200 $300 and then that family has to reimburse us for that cost. Textbooks also very quickly as states adopt new curriculum, new standards, they revise things. Um the content of a text, a traditional text becomes outdated very quickly and then you're left with one or two choices. You either keep that text and make no changes to it and just trust that we're going to make um notations as we go along that okay this is incorrect in it now and you know please keep this in mind or there are insertions that you can buy that can replace pages in
026our text but then you're it doesn't always stand up well. Um wear and tear on books as well. So part of why we moved to the digital footprint was to eliminate a lot of those issues plus storage and and all these other factors and weights and backpacks and all the things we used to hear about is my child's backpack's too heavy. Um, so but we can definitely make sure that outside of that initial requirement that it's a digital not a digitized but a digital copy that's interactive and intuitive that we could look to see if there are any supplemental components that staff will be using during instructional time for example those lessons activities enrichment what's the typical duration of that and does that fit within the standard that we've established yes we can incorporate >>
027that's what I would be more curious to obviously having an online copy of the book is great, but I don't want it to be a, you know, an ice station or something where they're literally just >> Yes, ma'am. >> going through a digital lesson all the time. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. >> I'm sure I'll have more questions, but not today. >> Okay. This will be a reoccurring topic as I mentioned um at the start because it's important that we keep bringing you back updates. And then this table in particular that has the instructional materials, I will continue to update. I'll add a column to it and then there'll be notes off to the side for each one of those adoptions. Specifically, back to your question, Miss Wyatt, just a moment ago, is is there a component
028in there? And if so, what does it require? Um the only thing we've ever noticed in the past was there were times with certain um interventions in particular that there are break points in it um where if the student disengages from the lesson before a certain threshold they lose the entirety of what they worked on. Now we we have in the past worked with the the U publishers to reset those. So instead of the students having to complete 60% of the lesson in order for it to trigger a save feature, we've worked with them to reduce that to 30 minutes again to make it more age and developmentally appropriate so they could actually chunk the assignment over time. But that's a lesson that we had to learn in real time um when I implemented onetoone
029previously. So, um, those are things that we can work with the publishers on to make sure that that functionality, the save feature, so kids don't have to keep redoing the same lesson over and over because I never get to a point where I actually get to where it triggers the save. We can we can definitely take care of that. Yeah, cuz that's a big point of frustration for families is I worked with my child on this for 40 minutes last night and it didn't save and we've now had to redo it three times and it still hasn't saved. And so we have to be attentive to those those things. >> Yes, ma'am. All right, board members. Next one is also mine. We have our turnaround option plans. I know that we have Miss Collins and
030Mr. and Joe are here with us. U M McNotton um Mr. Joe, Mr. McNotton are here with us. They actually just left a state IR at two of our schools. So board members and you're all familiar with this because you've seen the turnaround option plans in the past. Um you may recall I think Mr. Sharpless you came on the board a year after we had submitted the turnaround option plan for Griffin Elementary School. The school district had exhausted its turnaround options that are available to us. So in statute and in rule under differentiate accountability certain schools are required to implement um certain aggressive turnaround strategies, transformation strategies to move a low performing school, especially when it's demonstrated a historical pattern of low performance. Um and so the first option that all districts utilize along with
031ours is district managed turnaround. I think you'd all agree that the progress and of of what we've demonstrated over the last four years as far as exiting schools, improving student outcomes, those types of things is is is commendable quite frankly. Um and un I would argue unparalleled in in most districts. Um but we still have to turn in a top plan. and the the timing of the top plan and the reason it's coming to you back to back was we did not receive the final iteration of our top plan or the powerpoints um until just very recently. So the state has changed the process slightly. Uh previously they would just provide you the template. We would send it back but the department has in integrated or implemented now several steps where they go through and
032they verify any any data that we include. Um, for example, when we were, if you recall last year, we had to go to Destin um to meet with the state board of education to request an extension of our district managed turnaround plan. And we only requested that we were able to show that the school had demonstrated significant improvement, just fell a few points shy. Um, the state agreed and they ended up approving an extension of our district managed turnaround and lo and behold, at the end of the year, they improved to a C. Um, so these are the types of things, but the state because of that vetting process, it takes a little bit more time now um for them to respond and return those to us. There's there's a back and forth that takes
033place. Um, I did speak with um staff from the Bureau of School Improvement at the Florida Department of Education over the last couple weeks, as recently as just last Friday, I was on the phone um working through and making sure that everything that we had was approvable. And then that's why it's coming to you back to back. And unfortunately, there are times, as you know, where mandatory reports and/or submissions aren't always perfectly aligned to our board meeting calendar, and we just have to make it work. So, in this case, the turnaround option plans are for Crystal Lake Middle School and for North Lakeland Elementary School. The strategies that have been implemented at both schools are those that are proven turnaround effective strategies. We're meeting with the team today to finalize some other um to address
034some other strategies to address staff vacancies. I'm not going to say much more other than that because quite frankly, respectfully, we have to finalize the conversation today and then I need to meet with pea to get anou drafted so that we can go ahead and get that started. Um but outside of that, our coaches are there constantly almost daily. Um, we are supplementing vacancies with our own staff. So, I'll go ahead and let Joe and Tracy summarize the rest. But the turnaround option plans, um, we'll be submitting those. They both are for district manage turnaround, and I don't anticipate there being any difficulty. This is a first time submission for both schools, so we should be in a good spot. So, Miss Collins, Mr. McNotton. >> So, I Good afternoon. Thanks for having us. Um,
035like Mr. Hyde said we just left North Lakeland with the state team and so we have probably the most current stuff that we can share with you as of this morning and then tomorrow we'll be meeting with the state team again out at Crystal Lake Middle. Just in general I'd like to share as as you well know we have five schools that are D's or labeled as D's in the accountability realm. Three of those schools are firsttime D's and so we're supporting those through our our um PTO office, our transformation office. Two of those schools are what we call top which means that this is they've received two D's and those are Crystal Lake and North Lakeland. And so I am proud of over the past four years we have really worked on strategies to
036best support turnaround work while not just focusing on short game. It is a delicate balance between school grade change and trying to get them out of the while also maintaining an eye on school improvement. School improvement is more sustainable. So part of what Joe's team and my team do is we support those efforts at this level. We watch what's going on and then we know which levers we need to increase or decrease on to hopefully get the intended outcomes. Obviously our first priority is to get these schools above a D and get them out of C range. But we will not abandon these schools after we do that because there's still much work to do around school improvement and we want to look at sustainability. So, um, we can we can go through this. I
037don't know how much we we did go through the data with you guys before. Um, but this is the current data across the board. We're low. We're low in proficiency at both of these schools. We're also low in learning gains. One of the main barriers that we've identified in both of these settings is what Mr. Hyde has said vacancies, staff stability and you know simply the people we have on the ground at the schools by and large both of them are very committed to the kids of the school whether that's the administrators, the long-term subs, the coaches, the interventionist. The only problem we have is we don't have enough of them. And so we want every student in there to have a highly qualified certified teacher. And that's what we're working on, what Mr. Hyde
038alluded to. Um, >> well, one thing I want to say about the instructional review today, it's just a microcosm of what Tracy just said is that there had to have been 35 district people there at that at that school from all different departments, not just DOS, not just teaching, learning, but everything from federal programs was there. Um but it's just to make sure there's all available resources whether it's financial whether it's it's human capital just to go ahead and give the principles and the schools what they need and that's going to benefit the students >> right um along with not just our district team over the past four years we've forged I think a really good healthy relationship with the Bureau of School Improvement as a matter of fact what they use in these quote
039state IRS is our model. They they have allowed us to say let's walk, let's use your tool, let's use your methods. That's unique to PK County and that really has grown out of a respect for what we do, the indicators we're looking at and how they have seen that move student outcomes. And so, um, today was a very good visit. We all are calibrated. We know the support that needs to come from BSI because they do provide support as well as our team. so that that we are um all aligned in our efforts at the school and we're not causing undue stress on anybody and that we're not sending separate messages. So I don't know >> let's see this what we already talked about as superintendent hy said both of these are in year one
040it's the district managed turnaround and this is one of the other attachments that you all received for each school >> again if you want to look um priority hiring they are involved with priority hiring um uh to Kendrick and her team in HR as well as Mr. Warren and his team in employee relations understand that these two schools do take a different priority when it comes to recruiting, placing displaced teachers if we were to have any of those and making sure that they're signed up and supported through job fairs. So, we are doing that um full-time sitebased coaches for English language arts and math. All of these schools, these are asurances that we give the state that we are providing as a district. So, just to update you, yes, they do have the full-time coaches.
041We do have support from the senior coordinators because these schools fall within the PTO region. That means that Miss Bennett and her team are focused on the instruction at that school. the operations are handled by Miss Canangelos um because she is the regional and that by dividing those two things that gives Miss Bennett the opportunity to not worry about all of the things operationally going on and really hone in on the instruction and then Miss Cangelos is supporting on the operational and both teams Misselos and Miss Bennett have senior coordinators that are there in the on the around working with those teachers. >> Uh also for the attendance intervention support and it really goes with the bullet ahead and um Miss Baron over at North Lakeland uh she offered she has uh not only the
042senior coordinators there at her school that is their office but also attendance personnel. So there's that relationship because that's one of the her key features is work on attendance. can't students can't increase performance if they're not there. And so having district staff on the campus that is their home base has really uh that's one of her key really features that you'll see within the top plan. >> One of the other asurances that we have made the state and is built into our uh school improvement plans is thisou that we leverage for our top schools and our turnaround schools. Again, we have five that we affords us one extra planning day per week. As you may recall, schools really by collective bargaining only have one day of planning per week. This additional gives us two days
043a week with these teachers to help support the planning and PLC process. So, that's one thing that Joe and I or Mr. McNotton and I have been supporting is going out and actually participating and making sure that not only are we getting our return on investment and that we're actually doing those, which I'm happy to report that we are, but that how can we support that work to make that more impactful at the classroom level. So, that is something that's going on. Um, obviously instructional walkthroughs and monitoring, we do that in all of our schools, but there's an increased intensity. Um and that again includes us walking together and independently with the school leaders alone. Again, what we don't want to do is not be calibrated and one the the people there seeing stuff that's
044maybe not happening or seeing things that missing things that are happening and so we continue to support them through their walks. One one thing that we've started this year is that we started asking the schools what do you expect our numbers to be and so they're actually using the tool and we can actually calibrate and actually today was rather close of what they thought they would see and what we did see. So we're making sure that as you talk about the calibration if we don't keep on monitoring that and if we don't have calibration they're going to think they're doing great and they're may not or vice versa. So again that open communication and then how to make real-time adjustments on it. And and the last the district mentors for new teachers. Uh we both
045have that through uh teacher recruitment is helps with teachers that have their education certificates. We also have teachers that are new to the field of education never went through an internship. That's through professional development. That's with the full release mentors. So we have support on both ends at the schools. >> Mr. Sharpless. >> Are you guys done? >> We We can be >> We can be um I uh I have a comment and a question. So, um my my comment is >> I think this starts all the way at the top. Uh, Superintendent Hyde, you know, I know when I was on the citizen screening committee looking at all the 52 applicants for the superintendent, one thing that really stood out to me in your applica in your resume was your experience in uh, school
046turnaround at the state level. And so, it starts again, district culture starts with you, goes down, great leadership here. And I think that that speaks highly of of how we've improved the schools, especially the lower performing schools, and turned them around. The fact that we only have two of these I think is is I mean we don't want any of obviously but the fact that we have two you know we obviously a area to focus on right um so just as Mrs. fields would say it's a poor frog that don't croak for his own pond. Right. So, y'all did y'all have done a good job. Um I one thing that I know that Lee Lee County has done, this is a question. Um and I know this has to be um this would have to
047be bargained. Um is they've offered incentive pay for hard to fill positions. Um, and I know it has to be bargained with with pea, but when we talk about stability, um, we talk about, you know, that being a major factor in school performance and you and you've identified today, um, would that be potentially a recommendation from from you and the and I guess the superintendent that I again, I know we have to bargain it, but to help maybe with the stability would be potentially incentive based pay. >> I'll let Mr. Hyde speak to that. I mean, again, this is what I alluded to earlier, so I'm not going to say much more beyond that. Um, but and the only thing is that's a mixed bag. >> Okay? >> I I I I have to say
048that again given my my experience. Um, there are districts that have mandated high performing teachers to move into low performing schools. Um, and the success is a very mixed bag. um teacher retention rate is not going to be high. Um so for example in Orange County when they did it a number of years ago and they incentivized teachers to move to lower performing schools because they had higher student outcomes um there was minimal impact and then the staff turnover was fairly consistent because as soon as they had completed their time at that school they left and went back to the other school. Not all teachers are meant to teach all students. It's just it's not because they don't have the capacity, but all of us connect differently with different different populations of our students. And
049so I don't think it's a fair assumption sometimes. And I know that's not what you're saying, but there are people out there would say, "Well, just put your highest performing teachers in with your lowest performing kids." Doesn't work like that all the time. Um they that's a very unique skill set to work with struggling students for a lot of reasons, both social emotionally, behaviorally, academically. Um but that is again we're having those conversations right now and I'll leave it at that. >> And so then will will we um be presented e ever with or with opportunities and what what what strategy will we will use to in incentivize stability? I'll just put it at that. Not necessarily even pay, but how do we how do we tackle the problem? I guess that's my bigger. >>
050Yeah. So, after our meeting today, the board will receive an update and we'll go ahead and begin the process of negotiating a bargaining andou um with our collective bargaining unit leadership, Miss Yokum and others um to make sure that we've got a comprehensive plan in place. You can't just You mentioned something earlier and I just want to make sure I clarify. Um this is not a hard to hire area. This is a hard to hire school and there's no way to differentiate between the two or to to use the same practices for a hard to hire position at a hard to hire, hard to fill school. So, we're going to do something very different, but whatever we propose will have to impact all staff. It can't be limited to just, well, we have a third
051grade vacancy. Can we do something there? And I'm probably saying more than I should right now, but it has to apply to everyone because part of this is teacher retention, too. So, yes, sir, you will see a proposal. You'll see various proposals actually. Um, the funding w is not something that comes from the general allocation. We are very fortunate in Pole County that we will be receiving some additional funding from the Florida Department of Education that we can specifically use for this strategy. Um, so we will have no net costs to the district and these dollars are meant to do things just like this. So we're we're in a good place with that and again you'll see that very soon >> and just again thank you for all the hard work uh in the turnaround
052schools. I appreciate it. >> Thank you. Are you done? >> They weren't they were just going actually the presentation that they're reading from is the presentation I will actually give to the state board of education in September. So, but the last slide was the most important one, Miss Fields, which is what's the district doing um specifically to support those schools. So, yes, ma'am, they're they're at the end. So, if you have any questions, >> Miss Fields, >> I didn't want to be um interrupting what you guys were presenting. >> No problem. Um, I'm I'm going to be very mindful about my comments because I understand what the superintendent is speaking of as far as u bargaining some of this. um in my uh in my viewpoint as it relates to North Lakeland and um having
053having been around for a minute and I've mentioned this to Superintendent Hyde as well. I think uh it has been an opportunity and a challenge when leadership changes and I know some of the leadership changes had to happen. You didn't have any control over that. So, I think stability is going to be very very important at North Lakeland and probably at Crystal Lake Middle as well. Uh, but I can only speak right now about North Lakeland. I think um getting feedback from the staff, honest feedback on what they think that they need and uh including the family engagement uh folks on getting the families uh somehow involved because I think it's a it's a a very unique situation at North Lake. >> Very unique. It's a great school and there are so many committed uh
054employees there and I think they have just been beat down and they have got to be lifted up. So I don't know what the answer is. I don't have it right this minute. Uh but I know that with the leadership that we have and with the team uh Miss Barryian is going to do a great job there but she cannot do it alone. we want to make sure that we support her and her team and she doesn't just beat get beat down and then we have a opportunity for another u leadership there. So that's just my take on that. I >> I I I appreciate you saying that because you're 100% right. I will tell you I will make two comments. One, the spirit out there today was really pretty amazing. Just things that a
055lot of people overlook, she doesn't. um school identity. You know, they've been the navigators. The question was, "What's a navigator?" And people didn't know. So, they came to together as a staff. Now, they have a mascot. He's so cute. The the media specialists crocheted the little um Na'vi the navigator, so the kids are all on board. There's just a different spirit on campus. And, you know, is it because Miss Barryian understands turnaround work in schools? Maybe. But is it because she has a passion for what she does? 100%. The only other thing I can tell you is to your point when we're firm believers when we have high expectations and these are really high expectations because to your point this school has kind of there has to be an equal or more increased level of
056support. So I can't just have high expectations without the support. And so our goal really every day is to make sure all of our schools, but particularly these two schools, the teachers, the staff, um, and in particular the administrators feel the support and when they don't, they know exactly what they need to do to get an immediate response. So, >> and the other thing that I would say uh I looked at the um the um the goals uh for this year and I think that all things are possible. I just hope and pray that we're not putting too much pressure and stress on the staff going from a very low percentage to what is an acceptable percentage if that makes any sense. So, cuz I don't want them to ever feel like they have failed.
057um because they did not meet because if you look at some of the percentages to me it's relatively high but I know we have high expectations but again I think that goes back to making sure that we provide them with the support with the staffing uh and everything that they need in order to be successful. >> Correct. And and the one thing I will say about the goals, they are lofty goals, but particularly when you're working with a very small school like North Lakeland, those big swings are not easier to make, but because your denominators in each of your grade cells are so small. For instance, we talked about science today. They only have 80 kids. That's that's about 1.2 percentage points per student in the fifth grade. And so when you start to break
058it down and you look at students and and all those things, that's part of the school grade change mentality. Um, and those are things that when you break it down, teachers go, I can do that. I really need get to know my kids and where they are and how they're moving. But when you just say from 20% to 60%, that sounds like a whole lot. And so those are things that we're working on. Just kind of the data literacy pieces as well. And there's some shared uh belief uh because it wasn't just the principal I mean just working in isolation. It's really a communal that there was a different feel out there today and I think that's hard to measure but it's it's there when you see them all wearing shirts and it was all
059proud of the school. I mean the the pride that was there and I think that's one thing that is understated is the is the pride they have in the school and making that better and making it the best school for their students and I think that was evident today there are no further questions or comments. Thank you all. >> Thank you >> board members. The next item is the proposed rule development for schoolboard policies. Uh board members, you received communication from me earlier today. Um an item was removed, policy update um was removed um after further discussion with Mr. Green. Um he found some relevant case law in another state at the federal level that he believes could create some conflict. But additionally, you we have you have existing board policy that already addresses this
060to a certain extent. I find it more problematic than actually a new policy. Um because I think it's very ambiguous and it's going to require a lot of work on our behalf to make sure I I don't believe that there are existing procedures around them. Um so I'm going to have to go back revisit that board policy and address that. Um and unfortunately it puts the onus on my office to make the determination as to who's allowed, who's not allowed. Uh Mr. Mr. Green and I are still in conversation now about defining instructional time. Um, you know, and I know at least two of you have asked me, what does that mean for lunchtime? Um, well, right now there's there's discussion about whether or not that's considered instructional time. other school districts and I I
061know you talk to your colleagues. Um Orange County, for example, has set the standard that no one's allowed to visit during the day and that these groups or individuals are only allowed to visit before school or after school as part of a club or an activity and that requires parental consent and parental permission in accordance with the policies and and legislation that passed years ago. So, I just wanted to provide a little bit more clarification and and and address that and then we can come back to that in questions if need be. Um, but Mr. Green, I saw that you I don't know if there's anything you wanted to add to that or um just on the point of instructional time, I did a quick search of the education bill. It's not defined as far
062as, you know, what that means. Um, so reasonable minds could differ on is that during the school day, is it during school hours, is it during math class, that sort of thing. But happy to work with um staff council on developing some procedures to kind of further define what the parameters are so that we're in line with current policy. >> All right, Mr. Griffin, having said all that, it's all yours. >> All right. Thank you so much, Mr. School Board members. Um we have 10 um bylaws. These are your um schoolboard bylaws that we are bringing for rulemaking today. And um I'll just go through them all. And if you guys have any questions, feel free to jump in. The first one is bylaw 100, which is the definitions. And that's just this isn't based
063on any recent legislation. It just um modifies a few of the definitions in the policy. Bylaw 124, standards of ethical conduct, is revised to incorporate provisions from Senate Bill 348 regarding stolen valor. And then there's some additional revisions regarding self-reporting requirements um that aligns with the principles of professional conduct for education profession bylaw 131, which is our legislative and policym bylaw. It's revised to incorporate rulemaking notice requirements from state statute and it also includes amendment to the content and publication requirements for notices. So it's all around notice for rulem like what we're doing today bylaw 131.01 technical corrections. It incorporates new definition of technical change and then it also includes options for when a technical correction may be made to policies. Um I didn't say this at the beginning before I um started today, but
064myself, Mr. Green, and um Mr. Davis sat down to go through all of these. And so for some of um the ones that had options, we went through and selected options for you. So the one that for technical corrections that we selected in there is the way that we currently handle policies that just have a technical correction. we put it on the consent agenda if it's just like a name change for a department or um a spelling error or things that aren't um like substantial to the policy bylaw 143.1 residence areas. This is from Florida statute 101.361. And so it's just providing clarity around um defining the resident residence areas for schoolboard members. And then there's also three legal references added to that policy. Bylaw 164, notice of meetings, is incorporating language from um Florida
065statutes regarding the method for providing public notice for regular meetings, hearings, and workshops. And then our last group of policies are our meeting policies. So in order to streamline the policies related to board meetings, Nola is suggesting rescending bylaws 165.2, 165.3, and 166 and putting that into 165. So, previously we had a bylaw for meetings and then a bylaw for regular meetings, a bylaw for special and emergency meetings, and then a bylaw for exempt meetings. And so, this takes all of that language and puts it into um our meetings policy. And there's also a few legal references that were added to the policy. Those are all the revisions for today. Does anyone have any questions? Miss Fields. >> Um, Superintendent Hyde, I want to thank you, um, and Mr. Green for working together on the
066policy that was pulled because there was no way I was going to support that. Uh, I think it's very, um, challenging for anyone to define what a patriotic organization is. There's so many organizations in our community, in our county, that's doing great things. and to me to to just identify nine and I know it's not anything that you that we're doing as a body but it's a part of so just thank you for pulling that I I really appreciate that >> ma'am and Mr. Green deserves the credit for having found a federal case to substantiate the fact that that is difficult because there was a case. Um, and we can share that with you offline. Um, that seems very clear-cut to me, but I was surprised to see the ruling from the federal courts saying,
067"Oh, no, that's that's considered a political group." I find that interesting. Um, especially given the nature of the group. Um so patriotic sorry not political patriotic um given the nature of what that group what how they're embodied right and what their focus is. So it seems and it seems that there's no win in that and and it's going to require a great deal of conversation to figure this piece out. You you do have a longstanding policy but I think Mr. Mr. Green and I would agree as would others that it has not been defined procedurally and it has resulted in at times things having taken place that we now need to rectify. And so when you hear that a change happens and this will come back before the board, but when you hear that there
068are changes and that we're being more restrictive, we should have been all along. And so it's not that we're changing per se, but we are adhering to your adopted policy that is dated well before 2014. 2014 in fact was the only was the most recent revision or the first revision and then there were six subsequent revisions after that. Um all the way up through 2022 or 2023. Um and that one was a language revision but um there had been subsequent revisions all along the way as we normally do, right? based off legislative changes or recommendations from Neiola. So, it'll be an ongoing conversation. It's Mr. Green, myself, Mr. Mr. Davis, and Miss Griffin will need to spend a little bit more time reviewing the existing policy and then making sure that, you know, we create
069a procedure that can be adhered and applied in the best possible scenario or or set of circumstances. So, thank you, Miss Fields. Sir, >> Miss Miller, >> I just want to follow up with what Miss Fields was saying, and I had reached out to Mr. Green. I appreciate I'm sorry I wasn't able to follow up with you again, but um a little context to this. In the past, we have changed the policy even for people who would come in to talk to our high school students about voting. They were no longer allowed in the classroom. To encourage people to register to vote, they had to go to the library or to the lunchroom. So, I've watched it evolve over the years. Um, I had a lot of problems with what we were presented only because
070it was so ambiguous and it would leave it open to staff having to update it all the time. Um, I don't want us to farreach into they leave it I'm not going to say it's left vague on purpose, but I want to believe that it's left some of it is left vague so districts can interpret it for what's best used for their county. We have community groups. We have faith-based groups that go in during lunch. Um, we have groups that meet that help feed our kids. Um, and so I don't want to overstep as you're reviewing things. I don't want to overstep and trying to be very start limiting people because what we believe the law to be or the rule change to be. I think we need to look at what we've done in
071the past, what's historically worked for Pulk County. Um, when legislation is made, it's made, you know, for the entire state. That's my answer a lot of the time when I'm talking to our delegation members. And so, obviously, there was a reason for them to do this. we have not had an issue here and I don't want to create one just because we have to be um because of how we interpret what's been handed to us. So I'll look forward to the conversation that you all have but I do not want to limit our community from supporting our students and that to me this felt like it could do that. Um but we'll see and and looking at what other districts are doing I think is important. Thank you >> Miss Wyatt. >> Thank you. I
072have two points and I hate when I go after Miss Miller and have to agree with her on everything she says, but they're very similar to Miss Miller's that we have several groups that have been um supporting our campus for years and years. And I want to make sure that we're taking into consideration as we're developing procedures how to continue to the allow the to allow the community and to support our students. Um whether that's things like Great American teaching that typically happens during instructional time. How are we continuing to allow groups to h how are we avoiding limiting student opportunities um that happen during the day? Because the reality is we have a lot of students on our campus that they have to catch a bus home and there's no way they're going to
073be able to come early or stay after for special events. Um even for things like college visits and you know when how are we giving students access to those opportunities? Um, I I appreciate and understand managing the risk. Um, but I don't want us to get so caught up in trying to avoid any risk that we eliminate opportunities for students. >> Well, and I'll clarify, there's no one trying to manage the risk. >> I'm the one that kept insisting the policy come back and we expand the list to be more inclusive. But based off Mr. Green's findings and based off comments from the board, I pulled the item because it's very clear. But so there's no one trying to manage the risk. In fact, if anything, we were opening it up and that's what created
074more concern on the behalf of the legal department. But we're not always going to agree because I'm going to look at it from the perspective of how do I manage a district and how do I continue to ensure exactly what you're asking for can take place. But in the context of that legislative legislation and going back to the initial conversation, the board did not object to the policy at all. The board objected to a restricted list that the federal government provided and I provided some really good examples during that last meeting when we had this discussion and God bless the Marine Corps. I mean that wholeheartedly as a f as a as a son of you know parents who were in the military and active and served and family members that served in the Marine
075Corps and the in the Navy and you know different branches. How is it the Marine Corps was the only group list included on the list? You know, I think that's what concerned me. I what but what I do also want to clarify though is in the absence of my knowing that we had a pre-existing policy, that policy is restrictive >> and we've not been adhering to it. So, it's going to get more restrictive before it loosens up again because we've got to establish now the procedures to substantiate how we're making the decision as to whether or not a group's allowed in or not. And quite frankly, as I mentioned before, it's not what we're recommending. It's not what my office is recommending. But other school districts have gotten to the position like, you know what,
076we're not going to get in the habit or in the business of trying to differentiate between groups. We're simply saying you can't come in during the instructional day. And now whether or not they included the cafeteria as non-instructional time, I don't know. We'd have to go back and look at that. But we do want to make sure and and I'm not opposed to restricting many of the groups that are in our schools. But the rule and the policy is the policy and and I've got to enforce it and then work backwards from there. But we we'll bring something back to you as soon as possible and I'll keep the board updated as I do with regular updates as to any progress we're making or any suggested language so that you can stay a breast of
077it and it doesn't have to come all to you in a package at the end of October. I don't want to wait another month to get something to allow us to allow groups into our schools if that's the if that's the direction or recommendation we're going to land on. So, >> and I I just want to clarify I am thrilled that the policy came off because that is not something I would have been supportive of. However, um you know, I greatly appreciate any updates that especially if there's letters or things going out to our schools or communities in the meantime of these groups are all of a sudden not allowed. If we can be copied on those or at least receive a copy of those. so that we're hearing about it from the district and
078not at Publix. >> We'll meet after the great app. Well, not after today, but we'll meet sometime this week and draft some communication to provide clarification to families and our partner groups and to our school leadership >> and a timeline I think too would be helpful just of as we're getting it cleared up >> best we can. >> Um the other I also and this is sorry I know you've been standing there for a really long time. um for policy, where's the number? Um 0143.1 the residence areas. Okay. >> I believe that state statute changed in the middle of while we were revising our last ones that it used to be it used to be odd number years and now it goes to so many days before an election cycle that you can change them.
079But I know that it changed from whatever it was in 2009, like in the middle of us redistricting. >> Okay. >> So, if we can just get clarification that we're whatever we have, it's and it doesn't necessarily need to stay what the rule, but as long as we're aligned to what state law is. Um because I think that it change I know when we were trying to get it done before the end of 2023 I think it was 2023 that it was um we found rule that it could the law changed so that it was so many days before an election so we got a little bit of an extension. >> So you're not referring to um anything that's >> No, it's the part the part in the old language I think has changed since
080>> I >> we last adopted it. >> Okay. Okay. And I can try and find the um state statute, but if we can make sure that policies align to what the state statute is now. >> Yes, ma'am. I will check into that. And just um to provide um clarification on next steps for these tonight, um Mr. Green will ask for authority to advertise. These would be public hearing in October, October 28th. So, I will check on that and anything else that's discussed today. Those uh revisions will be made before public hearing. Thank you, >> Miss Miller. >> I think I lost my question, but that's okay. I'll come back to it. >> Okay. >> Um, it was about what we were discussing earlier. I just with us talking about a legislative update. If this is
081something that needs to be revisited, like we often do to legislation that's been passed, we need to have that discussion soon so we can include it. if this is something that we can give our opinion on. Hopefully that they may be able to clean up with legislation uh regarding the visitors to schools. They may need to hear from us through that update. So I would encourage us to think about that if it's truly going to be a an issue for us having to create something. Thank you. >> Okay, Miss Griffin. There are no further questions or comments. >> Thank you. Board members, the next item that we have is the purchase of the Lake Marian site for district development northeast area. This is for land banking purposes uh for a proposed high school in the
082future. And we have Mr. McLemore. >> Good afternoon, uh vice chair, members of the board, Superintendent Hyde. Uh so I really am actually going to be mindful of your time this afternoon uh and just focus on the two main items that were uh mentioned during the last time you saw this item and they related to traffic concerns and soils concerns. Uh so the presentation that was included with the work uh session agenda item pretty much is identical except we added some additional information regarding soils and uh traffic. So with that I'm going to move forward and just focus on those items in terms of soils. So the question became came up well what are the soils are they conducive for development and u by and large they are conducive for uh for development. Uh those
083areas that were outlined in red where we see the our prior uh map look you know very uh disheartening but those are as it relates to um a rating if you were relying on septic and drainage. However, all um state laws now require that uh school campuses and facilities, new ones, have to be on centralized water and wastewater. Uh so any new school that would be or facility uh that would be located here would be connected to centralized water and wastewater. uh they would still have to apply with all uh storm water management design criteria as mandated by the South Florida Water Management District uh based off of you know your your 100 uh storm your 100year storm water event uh and and the outfall related to it. So, but u and those areas that
084are uh really not conducive for it are those where all the wetlands are existing and those pretty much you can easily identify uh by the massive uh uh tree out uh tree line. And lastly, uh there was a concerns regarding traffic. Uh following uh this uh the last workshop session we had uh reached out to the county uh the director for the P County roads and drainage uh director uh Jay Jarvis uh did share with us that the county is they've already started the design work and re-engineering to realign Lake Marian Creek Drive. Pretty much if you look on the uh the map shown before you, pretty much where you see that red D1 where the road begins taking that southwest jog, the county is envisioning realigning that and having it directly tie in uh
085to the county roadway there. And it would actually become a signalized intersection. And with that, I stand for any further questions or comments or concerns you may have on on this particular item. This item is not up for a vote this evening. board members. This isformational only. >> Mr. Sharpless. >> Um, so I'm looking at the soils report. Uh, it looks like u, you know, most of this is fine sand, which is great. Uh, but that, uh, where the 13s are, uh, that is Samsula Muk. And so that be our wetlands area. It says, uh, it's only 13% of the whole acreage. So it looks like about 87%. then uh would be buildable. >> Yes, that is correct, sir. >> All right. Thank you, >> Miss Fields. >> Thank you. I'm I'm looking at the
086the last part of the slide. It says, "Will a high school fit?" And it says possibly. And so my question is, what if it doesn't fit? So uh when staff first started this process and again we've been in uh top in discussions with the property owners for well over a year now and at that time uh no final decision had been rendered regarding where we were going to site a new high school in this area. So some of the ana uh analysis that we were reviewing in terms of looking at this property is again without actually investing dollars in actually getting engineered drawings put on the ground. What we did was a rough analysis of pretty much two scale drawings of taking Davenport High School and seeing if we could fit the key components of
087our high school on this site and they do. But again that's be that's relying on pretty much aerial photography. That's before we start getting into uh engineered drawings and designs. And again, that is the most intensive use that a school district would have for a piece of property. So, we we did our analysis on the most intense use that uh we could foresee being cited on this property. >> And I think another part of that answer, Miss Fields, is while slated potentially for a high school site, it could become a K8, it could become a 612, it could become any number of things. Part of I think what we were looking at, Josh, remind me if I'm wrong or correct me if I'm wrong. Um, part of this was we would use a portion of
088it for another um, site for our facilities and maintenance team to have supplies stored and equipment stored to to better facilitate their access to that side of the school district. So, there are a number of uses and so what we initially label it floor as you well know Miss Fields could change 15 times between now and by the time we go to build, we do. Yes, ma'am. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Thank you. Mr. Mlemore, there are no further questions or comments. Thank you, sir, for coming back. Board members, if you have any further questions um following this meeting, please let me know. Please let Mr. Mlemore know. Um he has been incredibly responsive and since I have you at the microphone, I am going to take the opportunity, Mr. McLemore, to praise you and your
089team. I have heard nothing but amazing things about the community forums that we are providing. Um unfortunate that we've not seen greater attendance. Hopefully, we'll see some change and we'll see what the virtual attendance looks like as well in the future. But at the end of the day, it's not for lack of effort. It's not for lack of communication. It was in on every major news outlet. It's been in social media. It's been in every print option here, um, the ledger and others. And respectfully, you know, but what I've heard from members of the community who come back to me and see me at other events, they said that your team was very well prepared, the information was easy to digest, and they appreciated all the resources. I've heard similar comments from board members who
090have been in attendance as well. So I I I don't get an opportunity to praise you very often publicly. So I wanted to make sure I didn't miss this one. Um so thank you for the for all the hard work you guys are putting in because this is as you know a very difficult topic and one that can become very easily hyper emotional. Um but you've managed it very well. So thank you. >> Good. We have a great team and we really appreciate that sir. Thank you. All right, [Music] board members. The last item up on the superintendent's report, although I'm going to take a little bit of liberty after this item and talk about item B4, if I may. Um, or excuse me, sorry, not B4, D3. Um, to provide further clarification. You you
091may recall an email about it, but I want to go ahead and address it while we're here. So, for Zen City, if I could get Mr. Giri and his team, who's coming up? Miss Crowley, Mr. Giri, >> good afternoon, vice chair and board members and superintendent Hyde. Thanks for the opportunity to be here today to talk about our our Zen City partnership and where we're currently at. You may recall that over in the spring um retreat, we talked about our new partnership with Zen City. Sen City basically is a company that is going to help us to do more intensive surveys that will allow us to get uh community feedback and help us guide uh decisions that our district is making on various initiatives and help us to better target our stakeholders and better utilize
092our communication tools. There are three just as a and I'll do a real quick summary of just the three tools that we have as part of this partnership. The first one is called the engage partnership. We're going to talk about that the most this afternoon. That is basically like a uh a survey tool that we can have as many surveys as we would like through that. Um it's a very simple system to use. Um and we have a uh I think we've done two different surveys then and gotten some pretty good feedback on them and now we're ready to move on to a more uh intensive more in-depth survey. We wanted to talk with you about that before we launch that. Uh the organic tool is basically a survey monitor is a monitoring tool for
093social media and it's also helps us to be able to look at various uh news articles and things. It helps us to basically get a sense of what kind of feedback is out there in in social media and online. Um it helps us to weigh and kind of see where things are going. You mentioned the reasonzoning um issue that that uh for our high schools. We've been able to look at that and as stories and things have come out, we've been able to gauge whether or not the coverage has been positive or whether it has been negative or neutral. So, it's been very helpful for things like that and it will continue to be. So, the poll survey is the last thing we'll talk about this afternoon and I I really needed some guidance from
094uh you on that. There are actually only eight different surveys we can do through the pulse tool. It's a much more intensive, much more complex survey. It actually is something that the company Zen City takes a lot more um hands-on approach to designing it and helping us with it. They have their staticians and their their folks there that actually will target specific demographics and it's a much more scientific way. It's less like a um a survey where folks can uh volunteer to take it and they're actually seeking out people uh to take it through um mobile devices and things like that. The engage tool is what we'll talk about mostly this afternoon. This is basically a a tool that we can use as many times as we would like. We're very mindful of survey fatigue.
095Obviously, folks are very busy and we don't want to necess we don't want to bombard them with surveys. At the same time, there are various ways that we can use this tool both at the school level and at the district level. And we've kind of sampled and done two surveys with that to kind of get some familiarity with it. And now we have a larger district-wide survey that we would like to to launch. It's the closest thing to a climate survey that we haven't done for several years. So, this would be the the what we're talk about this afternoon is the closest thing to that. Um, but specifically designed towards our strategic plan and in particular trying to get actionable um ways or feedback from the community on ways that we can improve as a
096school district. >> Again, we talked a little bit about the monitoring tool. It's been very helpful. We are getting used to using it. It's been really uh very nice for the the reasoning issue. We are able to develop reports. We can work with different departments if they would like to gauge feedback on various initiatives that they're doing. And the poll survey is the is the final tool where we would really like some guidance on how you would like to use the very limited eight surveys that we can do through a 24-month period. The engage survey is the one that we've used the most so far lately. A very small one would be for Lena Vista Elementary when they did their rebranding. We were able to put set up a very quick survey and be able
097to gauge the community support or opposition to their branding. It was overwhelmingly uh in support of it and it was a very simple survey to be able to put up. The other one that we've done is a school choice showcase survey. We provided those results over to the to the folks who have been planning those so that they can kind of look at that with their efforts as they go forward. Both of them were very easy to set up and we felt like it put us in a good position to be able to move on to this larger phase, this bigger uh engagement survey that Miss Crowley is going to talk about now and the process that was in place for putting this this larger engaged survey together. >> Thank you, Jason. Good afternoon. Thank
098you for the opportunity to be here. Um, as Jason mentioned, we're going to go into a little bit more depth about the public perception survey, which is one of our engagement surveys, um, which we want we're going to be launching soon. Um, so just to recap, uh, it does it is based on the five, um, strategic goals, um, of the strategic plan and so you can see them there. But it's also the purpose of it is to help us better engage with our students, preparing them for the future, engage with our community, too. So the this survey would um help us to make improvements, but I'll show you the creation and the timeline. Um the team has spent a lot of time working on it and crafting the questions and we've gotten feedback so far
099about that. Um but we've been working very closely with Zen City getting their feedback, our committee's feedback. Um our goal leads feedback as well and then our district advisory council has also given us feedback too. But the the the goal of this survey is to gather the feedback and then but keep it open for the entire year. So you'll see in a little bit the timeline um would be launched in September and then would close in April. So it would give our community um all of our stakeholders opportunity to um share their feedback with us. So the creation of the survey um the strategic plan goal leads were involved in this process along with Zen city team providing feedback along with our um committee also providing feedback. um they submitted questions. Um so we have
100different stakeholder groups here. So approximately 10 questions for each stakeholder group, but we'd have um students we'd get their feedback four through six, 7 through nine, grades seven through nine and then 10 through 12 and adult learners. Our teachers and staff would be able to pro provide feedback. Our parents, grandparents, guardians would provide feedback. And then our community members would also be able to provide feedback. Um we will have this survey uh like I said available throughout the year but it would be in multiple languages as well. So in addition to English it would be um Spanish and Haitian Creole as well. Data will be um collected and pulled on a quarterly basis and reviewed by the teams. um when the creation of the questions uh were drafted, we wanted this to be actionable. So
101what can we take action on as a district and make improvements on? Um so that's the the from the questions that we created. Um that's what our thinking was is we want this how can we improve and how can we do better as a school system. I just here's a sample list of questions. Um now like I said there was about 10 questions per stakeholder group. So we just wanted to give you just a sample an idea of what some of the questions that we've created for the survey. Um they're all aligned to the strategic plan in each goal. So they'll each have questions um for each stakeholder group on the survey. As I mentioned, the team's been working quite a bit of time on this um with the Zen City team. We've been working
102with our um survey team and we've also been working with our goal area leads team. Um you can see here um we've gotten feedback from each of these areas and then updated the survey questions based on the feedback. Um DAC you can see here we piloted it with our group there and they provided some really good feedback for us because we want to make sure um that the community can is understanding of the questions like we know the intent of the questions but we just want to make sure from their feedback. they're such a diverse group um of individuals for us and so we just wanted to make sure that they understood the questions and then their feedback that they gave us we implemented some changes into the draft questions. Jason's going to go over
103the communications plan. Do we have any good >> so you could see from the timeline the ideal goal would be to launch the survey next week if possible. One thing we do want to take um an effort to do the survey can be translated as Janette mentioned into Spanish and Haitian Creole but that is an auto translation. So we would like to do is take the extra step of having the Esau department actually test it and take it. uh we've spoken with them and they're more than happy to do so. It's mainly just to make sure that everything translates well enough so that we can get good actionable feedback from folks. Uh the communications plan, there's a couple different pages of these. These are some of these are various uh techniques that we've used for
104lots of other campaigns. I'm not necessarily going to go through through all of them in there. Um but um basically a lot of these whenever we're ready to to launch and go, a m a majority of these would be something that we would do initially. A key thing would be to since as Janette mentioned, this is going to stay open so we can continue to get feedback quarterly on it. We would continue to do reminders and do some of these tools throughout the course of those those quarters so that we continue to try to get folks who haven't responded to respond. The final thing I wanted to just mention was the the poll surveys. So, as we've been talking with our Zen City team, uh they've been uh they've been anxious to to try to
105move forward with the eight pole surveys that we have. Again, these are much more intricate, much more complex, uh surveys. They take they take 5 to 8 weeks to basically um to do. So, they do take some time to to put together. Um they're up to 20 questions. And basically, this is a this is different than the engaged surveys in that you can't volunteer to take it. They're actually seeking out various demographic groups and targeting them so that they can try to get as much of a representative sample as possible because there is a limited amount of them, only eight over the 24-month period of our partnership. We wanted to get some feedback on how you wanted to perhaps be able to use these. Some ways that you could use them, and again, we're, you
106know, this is new territory for us, but you could get, for instance, you could get feedback on budgeting priorities. If you wanted to seek out that kind of that kind of data, you could do that for specific initiatives or programs. If you wanted to gauge support or opposition to certain programs or initiatives, those are the kinds of things that you can use for this. You could theoretically take the public perception survey that we have right now and try to convert that into a pulse survey so that you have both a volunteer-based one where people are taking it, but also one where they're seeking out that information. if that if you think that those two data sets would be useful for your for your for your uh for your consideration. >> Miss Miller, >> thank you
107for sharing today. Um I think when we first discussed this, my biggest priority was this district is very large. We are housed in BTO. We are growing most quickly in the Davenport Hane City area. And so when we reach out to the community, you know, the places that feel less connected to us sometimes don't show up to give us that return of um their thoughts and opinions on how we're functioning. So I thought this would be a great way. Um I enjoyed the fact that you explained all these options. I had no idea you were working this many avenues, but this is a way not only to get information, but to educate. Um I think that's very important. You mentioned budget and I think the audience. We want to make sure we're reaching a variety
108of people through the community, not just our parents, but our community partners and just citizens in general who may be retired and not um involved in our in our school system. So, I don't have a lot of opinions right now on what that needs to look like. I'd love to get the see the results of what you've done um with this presentation has been helpful, but I think this is an opportunity for us to really target the people that are involved day-to-day that have students in our system and what they're looking for and then the business community for what they're wanting to receive as these students graduate out. This district is is large and I don't know that we've been able to capture that in the past. Um so I'm interested in learning more about
109how we can target these and I just want to make sure that we are we are trying to gather information from every um subgroup that we have every learner you know to to have that total picture. Um I appreciate that you use this with DAC because I think that's a great or that's a great group that's very diverse. Um, and I'm looking forward to the results. And I also if can you clarify how they're going to seek this information because depending on what social media channel you're using, you're going to get a different result in the viewership. Um, and so can you talk a little bit about the diverse options to seek the input? >> The organic uh tool basically we can add any any level of um of channels that we want. So if
110there is a specific channel that they haven't programmed in there, we could do that. It's taking from news news accounts. It takes from if we have if there's a if there's a Facebook group of of concerned uh you know parents, we could throw that in there. You can basically load it with anything that you want. They it comes preloaded by Zen City. They've done like sort of a survey of our community and they've they've helped do that. We've added some other elements to it, some other um folks that we want to be able to to watch. Um and again, it also pulls from traditional media to too. That's for the organic tool. Okay, that was my question because Facebook in general is the user is over 50 and a different demographic than you would find
111other places. Do they target surveys? Do they Google target like with media where people are scrolling their daily news feed, whatever that is? >> That's my understanding that they do. And again, as far as Facebook, it's Instagram, it's all major all major social media platforms, X, anything like that. It's it's pulling from those various feeds. So, for instance, the the reasonzoning discussion, it's pulling from um it's pulling Facebook accounts. If there's if it's on Instagram, it's pulling that. If it's is mentioned in in a news account, they'll it's pulling that as well. So, it it pulls all the all that information in there and it just helps us generally see what is the sentiment out there and helps us to gauge what some of the concerns are. The dashboard is very intricate. It shows like
112a word cloud so you can see what common words are are bubbling up in the conversation just so you can get a sense if there's a particular trend or topic that of interest that's out there so you can kind of address it if need be. >> Okay. Thank you. I think my question with Google or those searches the news media so if they were searching reading whatever they read daily the placement of those surveys embedded in that is what I was asking. >> I'd have to check and see that that's very specific. Let me check with them. >> Thank you. Yes, ma'am. >> Mr. Sharpless. >> Um, so you're asking for feedback and, um, when I think of the poll survey specifically, um, one thing that comes to mind is referendum. It talks about in
113here, um, identifying public support or opposition for specific projects or initiative. That's the first thing that comes to my mind. Um, and so I'm not telling you that's what it has to be used for anything. I'm just saying if you want feedback, that's my that's my initial feedback when I, you know, first see this >> and in preparation for this meeting, you know, I kind of again, I don't pretend to be in anybody's head, but I certainly know that's on your guys' mind. So, I did talk with Mr. Green and just briefly mentioned that to him that that may be something that you would be interested in. I don't know how um the limitations of what we can do when it comes to both discussing and exploring that topic from the district level whether or
114not this could be used for that. But I did mention that to him. So if he wanted to explore it or research it, he could. >> Thank you. >> Yes, sir. >> Miss Fields. >> Uh I'm excited about this opportunity and the uh feedback that we're going to be getting from all over the place. My question is um how will we identify community groups, nonprofits? Are we getting information from United Way or how are we going to how are we going to do that? >> I think I think with working with our strategic part our strategic partnership arm we will go to those folks like chambers of commerce. We're going to invite folks from those various agencies directly to please fill out the form and to and to lock themselves down as a as a
115community partner and a community member. So, it's it I think it's leaning on our folks, our liaison who also are very familiar with our our agencies, too. But yes, we will specifically target them to please fill out. Do you know what I mean? >> Yeah. Well, I was just going to say it is going to be anonymous though. So, we won't know those specific groups if they're filling that out. >> It's going to be what now? >> Anonymous. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> But I think to Miss Field's question, question is how are we identifying >> the potential community-based philanthropic groups to target? And the answer would be yes. We are going to f we'll we'll definitely go back to United Way because they keep the most comprehensive list of all of these organizations non-
116nonforprofits. So we can definitely make sure that they receive it. But to Miss Crowley's point, the responses will not be able to be sorted. Now there is demographic data though and and that's one of the reasons going back a year ago when we adopted Zen City. One of the reasons that we went with them versus four three other companies that we interviewed at the time was number one they had the ability because it was AI intuitive. They were able to pull data for us and pull responses and classify it based off questions that we were currently talking. So even if someone doesn't respond to a survey in in regards to a particular topic that the board may be discussing or have an interest in, they will use their AI tools to scan social media and
117pick up on offline kind of conversations, meaning they're not something that we're tagged in, but they're the conversation about PK County Public Schools, about school safety, about transportation that can come back to us. Um and so then but with the with the surveys themselves there is demographic data um because one of the things that was promised to us and we should we were able to see was we can actually sort that data by your district. So you could see how your stakeholders are responding to certain information. And then there's other demographic data that we can pull um as needed self-reported data, but and they also had access to distribution groups that were well beyond the ones that we had. And that was our primary question was we can only target surveys to the people who
118are in focus. That's it. That's our limitation other than potentially other partnerships. how then do we tap into the other 90% of Pulk County residents that have no touch point with public education and they had the ability to tap into that as a resource and so that was something again these were the primary concerns that we had and interest that we had when we made that selection so Miss Fields we'll be able to get a pretty comprehensive response um but >> yeah I'm not really concerned about the names I'm just wanted to make sure that it's inclusive >> yes ma'am >> and then the other thing is making sure that The questions that we pose are simple and easy for anyone to understand and comprehend. >> And that's part of the reason we reached out
119to Dak after we went through and designed them with the committee. Dak obviously has a a lot of different backgrounds, a lot of different per uh of uh experiences and they kind of helped field test it and they were able to give us suggestions on how to make some things more clear so that they would be better received when we launch. >> Great. Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. And part of what Zen City provides is they have a trained team who know how to write survey questions. So they're not leading questions. A lot of times we'll write a survey question and inadvertently without knowing it, we've written it in a way that essentially leads the read leads the reader to give a response that we expect of them. Um they have tools and strategies and
120experts that prevent that. They also have a large repository of pre-populated questions that we can select from for various topics. Not for every topic, but for a variety of topics. So, it is a really good tool and as we get more comfortable utilizing it, I think you'll see a larger frequency of data coming back to you um or being on our dashboard saying, "Hey, we asked this question. We wanted to know. Here's your responses." I mean, that's good data for us to have on a regular ongoing basis. So, yes, ma'am. That concludes the questions um for the two of you. Thank you both very much. >> Board members, as I discussed, I I'd like to go ahead and take some time here to address item um >> superintend. >> Sure. >> Excellent. So I will
121uh because that was a request and so um of other board members. So, um, if we could at this time take a, uh, 15 minute break, that would put us back here at, uh, 2. We'll just say 2:20. Okay. All right. We're on a break. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] Heat. Heat. Heat. N. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Oh, [Music] hey. [Music] Hello. Hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] and At this time, I would like to call this meeting back to order and turn it over to Superintendent Hyde to finish leading off our work session today. Sir, Mr. Vice Chair, members of the board, as I stated, we're we have concluded the superintendent report with the exception
122of um my taking liberty to make sure that I provided you further information as far as item D number three. Board members, you will recall that on August 15th, I sent you correspondence. At the time, we had become aware that there were some contractual issues with speech thanks for many of our private care providers and our our Catholic schools and others. And so based off of the allowance in the board policy and again I I outlined all of this for you in that email. It is attached here for your reference. Again, um I outlined that I would be using my authority to go ahead and authorize those contracts. They fell well below the established thresholds. um of my spending allowance and so but as a matter of transparency made sure I included you on that
123and the goal was to ensure that our students did not start the school year without those services in place and at the end of the day um I did go ahead and ask that staff follow up and so we did attach each of those contracts here for you um but board members having heard no concerns at the time um as you know I know Mr. Sharpish, you've been on the board now a couple years, but board members who have been here throughout the entirety of my first 5 years here will tell you I think this is the first time I've ever used my spending authority um for contract purposes because it's important to me that we maintain the integrity of that process. But when it came to being able to authorize services for our students,
124um we want to make sure we've done we we took care of that. More importantly though, issuing and approving those contracts is just one issue. The second issue really was the primary focus was modifying the timelines to make sure that this gets approved well ahead of time and comes before the board for final authorization and we don't find ourselves in a similar situation at the start of the upcoming school year. So that has already been addressed and so we've we have modified all of our timelines and deliverables to ensure that that takes place by July rather than waiting for August approvals. So hopefully that explains. So, Miss Miller, >> I just want to say I appreciate this being addressed. This has been an issue. It was an issue previously in prior years. So, the knowing
125that we'll have a plan now so this doesn't happen. Um, we don't want all of our students in PK County, they're all our they're all our kids. And to know that kids were waiting well into October to receive services in a private setting, um, we're not only obligated to to move quickly on these, but I think it when it was brought to our attention, we did move quickly on that. I did have a question because I haven't received an in a it's been a few I can't tell you the last time and I'm sure it's been in our work s in our agenda items but because we have a limit on what the superintendent can approve that's higher than most districts we always received a quarterly report and it's part of our in our policy.
126Is that something that we still receive or will be receiving? >> I've never been asked in five years to provide that report. I've never been notified that that report was an expectation. Um, so I'm not sure what you're referring to, so I've never seen an example of it either. >> Okay. I'll I'll send the policy and I I and I apologize. We've always we've had it in the past and maybe if it's been five years and that's on us for not asking. It's just good stewardship to um, you know, to follow through with what our policy states. But I'll send it. Thank you. See no further questions or comments at this time. We have annual contract renewals under a million dollars. There are four items there. Miss King. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Chairman members. >>
127Um, thank you for your time this afternoon. You have in front of you the four contract recommendations that we are recommending you approve. Um, and just to make it clear, other than one vendor, these are for one year only. Okay. The standard was a three-year renewal that was offered at a flat rate. Um, was did you have particular questions? Did you want me to cover these individually? What would be your preference? >> I would encourage you to go through them individually, see if board members. >> Okay. All right. So, the first one is review of the um of total administrative services corporation. And this is TASK. This is our vendor for the flexible spending accounts and COBRA administration. And we are recommending a one-year renewal. Just so you know, I work closely with Avale on
128on these contract renewals. I started kind of at the same time they were coming on board, but I did work closely with them on these. All of these contracts, you'll notice in most cases, I did give you the year they started, and they have been here a long time. Okay. Um, we had talked with the health strategy committee about the need obviously to go out for the medical and pharmacy first and spend a lot of lot of time on that which we did. But the goal this coming year was to do all the other services. And so what you see here is a recommendation to renew this for um actually one year. This was a piggyback on Bvard County that we had tagged on to in the past back in 2013. And we do have
129we did have one more additional year on this but we didn't have a negotiated we were we had to negotiate the fees. Okay. So we did that and there was a slight increase as no surprise to anyone here services and and costs have gone up. So there was a slight increase here to that as well. I will say I've had my struggles with the FSA and COBRA administration. So I have wanted to bid this on numerous occasion. It's just been having the time to do that. So, we will be seeking out um a new vendor for this for 2027. Any questions on that? Okay, the next one. >> Hang on. >> I'm sorry, >> Miss Miller. >> Do you have Do we have something in uh procedurers that would help guide us in when these
130these bids go out? because not having time, >> we I need to have a better explanation to the public. >> Mr. Hyde has made it clear that we're most of our contracts are only for a 5-year period at the most and so we will be working through the new fleet um administrative program to be um letting these additional RFPs um because the time required on that, we do have the option to have fleet run those for us following the same administrative rules we would follow. So, that's going to be um staff recommendation will be to use fleet to help us with that. >> Thank you, >> Miss Wyatt. Thank you. This is probably a more general question, but along the same lines as Miss Miller, as we're looking at bidding out um or doing RFPs
131for different contracts that have been long-standing, do we have a master list for the district of what years contracts are up for different departments and just where we can know what to expect and what's coming in any given year? Um, >> where is that? >> I have to go back and reference the list that I've been already I've already been provided of contracted services. Um, I requested the initiation date and the current expiration date. I so I don't know if I have the renewal terms for each one, but as we've looked to prioritize those to begin the RFP process because obviously we can't bid out everything at the same time. Um I can look to see if we have that if we can make a note of that. >> It would just be nice to
132and that's not necessarily just for the health insurance though that is a big piece of it. But um just to kind of see where we are on each of our contracts and what the um my assumption is that you're not going to try and start all of them bidding them out this year that it's you're going to do a slower roll into it. So just kind of to put us on a >> this is what it looks like for the foreseeable future would be helpful. >> Yeah. trying to chunk those by department too because it's not just a matter of managing the number of contracts. It's managing the number of contracts per department or per division so that one is not overly burdened or tasked with, you know, a fairly large significant change in multiple
133areas. Um, for example, just one of the ones we talk about most frequently is substitute services. You know, the goal is not I don't think that there's an expected outcome that we may change providers. I think the goal is to make sure that we're operating with a high level of fiduciary responsibility and if our current provider is the most competitive provider and offers the best price point and ROI then fantastic but if not we should be considering other options and so we have established the expectation that we don't have these legacy renewals much to our benefit though regardless of the timeline on a contract as far as its expectation we do have exit clauses on all of our contracts should we get to a point where we want to accelerate the the bidding for something
134that we currently have in place. We have that opportunity as well. >> Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. >> No further questions. Go ahead, Miss King. >> Okay. Thank you. Um the next renewal you will see is for Etna Resources for Living, our employee assistance program. Um this contract also has been around some time. This was originally Horizon Behavioral, if I remember, long before I was here. I did some research on that. But, um, we do have that in place and we did get, um, we did get a renewal for that as well. They were proposing a three-year renewal, but again, because of the timing of the contract and needs to go out, we didn't commit to a three-year renewal. We committed to a one-year renewal. Um, and you'll see the rates there. Just so you
135know, the district pays this expense. So, this is paid under under countywide as far as that service is provided. Um, let's see here. What else was important about that? We did negotiate um there were some services in there that we weren't using. So, we did negotiate some of that to come back. What you saw common in all of these contracts was we're trying to fund money for the contract effectuator. If you remember Veil's presentation, that's to be the person to come alongside my department, help with communications, problem solving with the employee, and a lot of those services. It's like what we had in the past but much larger as far as responsibilities. They would be coming alongside with benefit focus. They'd be coming alongside on all of those processes which is what I had some
136of that I had in the past with Robinson Bush. So, a lot of this was trying to find some money for those services to be provided because that's going to be one of the first um RFPs that we work on with fleet because we're eager to get that person in place to begin helping us with the next steps for next year. So, um you'll see we got a 1% credit back and we'll be using that as part of the contract effectuation and it was for some training services that we were not using. >> Sorry, Miss King. Go ahead. That's all right, >> Miss Wyatt. >> Thank you. I for this contract in particular, how are we advertising this to employees? Because this is something that actually at back to school, I did a whole thing
137on we included the EAP. Um, Miss Hollis put together a whole power um PowerPoint and we got permission from Mr. McNottton to show that during the teacher workday and I can tell you went through it at the back to school. We went through all of those >> benefits. it. Um, this is just a topic that our employees don't seem to know about overwhelmingly. >> Um, >> I can tell you our utilization is higher than most districts. >> Okay. Well, >> so it it is it is >> depending on what most districts are. That may or may not be super comforting, but >> um but I would love to see us be able to to better utilize um >> even just better message that it's available for employees because I think that's something that we've talked
138a lot about. Um, >> Miss Rouse, can we talk about adding this to the newsletter, >> the monthly newsletter? Um, and we could make it a standing item under employee resources or something just as a reminder. >> I know this newsletter gets longer and longer after every meeting. But, >> but quite frankly, it's all hyperl so it I think it's if that's a need. The other thing just to point out if I may, we we we should not and we do not solely rely on on self >> on employees self- advocating for the for the resource which is why our our administrators and others should be talking to them and making referrals. >> Um and and I don't mean referrals outside of the employee. I mean referrals saying hey you seem to be struggling or
139the or the employee discloses something of a personal nature to the administrator. The administrator then knows hey we have EAP. Do you need that? they can put them in touch with risk, they can put them in touch with others. So even outside of employees searching through the benefits package, >> right? >> It is for it is it should be at the forefront with our administrators and we can make sure we we highlight that again at at the monthly principles and AP meetings to make sure that that's happening. Um there's also a lot of informal counseling that happens when our staff will visit um with school counselors or they'll visit with the school nurse. And so we can make sure that we uh have Audrey Kelly and others touch on that as well that hey keep
140reminding I I don't know that we have the handouts anymore. Um I don't think we print out the trifolds for EAP. >> We do have cards available to do. Okay. >> We do have pocket cards available. And also I emphasize to the manager there's a manager um area Jennifer that I think is a great help new administrators and also gives them some areas for problem solving as well with their teams. So >> and Miss Collins or Mr. or Jason and I know Shay's not in here the back of the employee IDs. Is there still space that we could add something for EAP on the back of the employee ID? >> I'm sorry. What? >> I was joking. I said we did a really tiny print. That may that may be a good idea. >> Well,
141you know, we added the sticker for the QR code. I'm wondering if we can put something else in there. I don't know. We can talk about it. Sorry, we're not shouldn't have this discussion right here, but we we will find other means to make sure employees are aware. >> I mean, realistically, this is probably more important than knowing it's $10 if you lose it. It's just my my thought, but I just, you know, we've we've had conversations even with Hazel Health and things like that of what do we offer our staff? And I think this is a great resource that people don't >> don't know is out there. Um that would be for us to not push more to that are looking for those. >> We'll make a note to make sure we include it
142in the regular updates and the monthly newsletters, but we'll find other strategies and bring bring those back to the board at a public meeting. I'm not just going to put it in an email. I think it needs to be discussed openly. So, >> thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. Miss Miller. >> Thanks. And this is the one thing that u Miss King that I mentioned in the in the um committee meeting and I know you were working on it. This could be done I would like to see this done in a quick video. Um it could be it could lead our you know our meetings here. We need to show because this is not only available for employees but it's also their families. And I get a lot of um calls mainly about our youth and
143the employees do not know that this is available. And I'm not really concerned with stats if I'm hearing a majority of my staff say, "I did not know this was available to me." Um, so we have to look at messaging this. I a quick video on how to access it, I think, would be helpful. Even if it's a a video that you record yourself in some kind of Zoom meeting, um, accessing it that we can share so on public I know our public relations department could do a fantastic in-person video, but I also know they're very busy. I just think this is one area. It's a great benefit to our staff. Um, that's another reason I asked for our new teachers to go back to an in-person training because I think they need to hear
144this as they enter and if that can filter through to the schools, but also the schools um, they get a lot of information. This needs to be high priority for them to share. Um, a lot of our information unfortunately our principles are very busy and it stops at their email, but this is something even working with pea to get out through their channels. it needs to their mental health is a priority and I think this have being a service to them um we would see a higher utilization if they understood how to access it. Thank you >> Miss Fields. >> I think we need to get away from acronyms and say what the program is because EAP a lot of people might not even know what that is and so if it's employee assistance program
145or something else. >> Yes ma'am. >> Agreed. No, that's Well, we might be able to come up with something more appropriate. >> What are you assisting? >> I think the biggest thing for me is just getting rid of the acronym and making sure that they know that this is for them. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Mr. Sharpless, >> I'm going to sound like a re repeat here, but I just got to tell you how important this this is and how critical it is. um you know it's uh it's something that our I I I'm I am glad to hear that we have a higher utilization rates than other districts. I mean that is a good thing um that that our employees are you know the ones that know about it are taking advantage of it and
146um that's good. Uh I can tell you uh personally from my other employment I' I've used an EAP before and I can tell you it's uh sorry employee assistance program. Mrs. feels. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. And it it um and it helped me, you know, it helped me because I was going through some tough times. That's my friend passed away. >> Um and so this is critical for and and mental health it when I was at the state of the county, uh it that's something that is I mean >> it's a big thing right now. And so, um, I just think it's important for, you know, I'm echoing the other board members that our, uh, our employees know about it and the more we we talk about different ways that we're advertising it.
147The more we can just get it out there, the better. So, thank you. >> Well, we can certainly I know Miss House is making notes, so we can certainly work on that. And I do agree. I remember one night having a crisis at night. It's been some time ago, thank God. But I remember thinking I I had to call the EAP because I didn't know what to do and it was it was a family member and it was very serious and I was very concerned and you know just like you say very stressed about it and I knew I had to get some help with it. So, I called the EAP and I did benefits for a living and I told them I said I didn't think I'd ever be the one calling the EAP,
148but in this situation I really had something that was uh very serious that happened and it was quickly so they were great support. All right, the next one is the standard and that's our group term and accidental death and dismemberment policy as well as they offer our short-term and long-term disability insurance policies. So, the standard has been with us since about um looks like 2016, and they did propose a three-year rate hold. Out of that, we were able to negotiate um based on their margins and what they're earning. I worked closely with the veil on this. We were able to negotiate a 7 and a half% um commission to be paid out of that, okay, to our contract of effectuator. So again, all of the the these funds are come going to be coming to
149the district to be paid out to another vendor to help provide services to our employees and and that will include one of the things on the on the scope of services is days and and office hours like for employees and they have questions or issues they need help with, they would actually have uh somebody to help them solve that. Um like you see here I mean the standard has been a great partner for a number of years with us and they continue to be uh a good partner. So that is something we are looking to continue. We will be checking on the rates obviously services things of that nature but um nothing avail what we're offering here. Any questions on that renewal? Okay, the next one is um group dental insurance with Delta Dental. Um
150we have been with Delta Dental at also I think since 2016 according to my records and um we were up for renewal. So we weren't anticipating renewing this this contract, but due to the timing of bringing a veil on board and the consultants and the timing of open enrollment, we saw it necessary to go back to them to negotiate something. So we did that and um we're able to negotiate um it will be an increase in the rates. As you know, Dennis and Dennis I I tell you, you know, they make a lot of money and it's no different in PT County than it is anywhere else. And it's a struggle trying to get dentists in networks. Um, normally they do that when they're just starting their practice, you know, so they can get a
151following more or less, but it is a struggle um to get um them to join networks. So um what we were doing is we agreed to they agreed to pay a 7 and a half% commission to the future contract effectuator and that um what we did the district was getting some monies for enrollment help more or less like I was getting 1% from Delta. So what I did is I'm converting all of that to the contract effectuator. So no monies are staying within my budget that are not going back out to help employees. And basically the only reason I kept it in the past is we were the one through benefit focus providing a lot of those services for help as far as enrollment. Um let's see. So this will be um so this is
152going to be basically a net increase of 6.78% um with the balance going through um the contract to the contract effectuator and you do have the rates in front of you there and again one-year renewal. We are going out to bid on this. Uh so we'll see what else is in the marketplace as far as plan design and that will be going through your house strategy committee superintendent and they'll be bringing recommendations forward. >> Correct. as far as scopes, but more or less we're going to look to use fleet um for these procurement services just because of the bandwidth available, right? So, because I'll have four likely four or five bids going out this year. So using Fleet and using that resource um and using my own committee to help weigh in on scope of
153services, things of that nature, but Fleet would ultimately be doing the procurement on behalf of the school board. So that's going to be a great resource for us to help us. >> Miss Miller, >> so you're saying that the only way they would do that annual renewal is with a 6% increase? >> Yes, that's correct. >> Was that because it was a short-term renewal? it is a short-term renewal and they were trying to get us to negotiate a longer one, but we just weren't comfortable doing that um with where we were right now without checking the market. Um, you know, we didn't want to tie up any any agreements as far as additional funds um for a longer contract and they were kind of tying us to that with their proposal. So, >> and there's
154there's a strong feeling, Miss Miller and board members, that there are >> more competitive options that still provide, if not the same quality, maybe even a better quality of supports for our employees, >> which is why we were fairly confident just to go for a one-year extension even with the cost increase. >> Um, so that's that's why the recommendation is is there. Miss Fields, >> I want to commend uh Miss uh Linda and her team and the health strategy committee. Superintendent Hind has been attending meetings as well and I think they're coming along quite well. And the consultant that we now have in place, I think uh that was a a a great move on our part. So I think that we're going to see some some uh some positive results in my opinion from
155that. I don't know how Superintendent Heightfield, but that's my feelings on it. I I definitely think it's it's getting better. I think there was some question at the a recent meeting where it was asked how is this different than the other insurance committee meeting because they were getting the same information. But I actually I think you addressed it because we all have to start out with a baseline level of knowledge before we can start to explore. Like the way I perceive the superintendent committee is we're really the research arm that makes a recommendation to the other committees and subsequently to board members. What other options are out there? What haven't we thought of? What can we explore? Whether we choose to pursue one of those obviously ultimately falls to the board and to our collective
156bargaining groups, but at the end of the day, at least we can say we tried and and that we did our due diligence. So, I think it's definitely getting better. I I I think a veil has proven to be an incredible part thought partner. Um, and they've started to fit in very well. And much like Miss King said, you know, in a year where you're looking at multiple contracts, it's nice to have that partner, that thought partner to assist us with that because their bandwidth and their knowledge about across the state through Fleet and others as what other districts are doing, including similarly sized districts and more and more large districts are joining Fleet, um, which is good news. So that gives us procurement power and across the state, especially when you get two or
157three large urban districts in there. So I I think we're headed in the right direction. So thank you for the feedback and in the in the positive comments, Miss Fields, >> Miss King, that concludes. There are no further questions or comments. Thank you to you and your team. Appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Board members, the last remaining items areformational items only. as typical donation report, grants management report, private school contracts for speech and tutoring services, which I already addressed, and I will turn it over to the vice chair. >> Thank you, Superintendent and board members. Um, if we could at this time, I would like to uh go over our agenda for this evening. So, I'm going to give you a moment to open up uh our agenda. Okay. Um, are there any questions
158on sections? We're going to go through section by section or groups of sections A through E. Any questions on a sections A through E? No. Um, how about F through K. >> Board member Wyatt, you're recognized. >> Thank you. I just on K4, I know we talked about this a little bit last time with concurrency, but I just want to note we're releasing them because they have paid for it. That's because they paid for the elementary seats. As soon as we can get adjacency out of our interlocal agreement, they will have had to have paid a lot more for the middle and high school seats that right now is in in adjacency. So, just a a friendly little reminder. >> And that draft version has been going back and forth amongst our staff and it
159will be sent over to the county probably by midweek next week if we're on pace. Yes, ma'am. >> Thank you. >> All right. Seeing no others, um, now we're going to go through sections L through N. L through N. All right. Now, how about sections O through T? O through T. Seeing no one uh our we have our uh action agenda. We have both the turnaround plan step one and step two on our agenda. Any discussion? No. Okay. Then um we're going to go down to the public hearing items V1, V2, and V3. Board member Wyatt. >> Thank you for V1 student code of conduct. I know we talked a little bit about and just kidding. I'm looking at the wrong document. Never mind. I'll bring you back that question later. It's not what I
160thought it was. >> Sorry. >> All right. Any anyone else on uh our public hearing? No. Uh then we have our superintendent report. Superintendent, you have a report for tonight? >> Yes, I do, sir. >> Excellent. Uh then we have uh Mr. Green. Looks like you have something for us. Yes, I do. >> Excellent. Uh, Mrs. Matthews, you have anything for tonight? >> All right. Thank you. And then we will wrap up with our comments, uh, our board member comments as well as public comment. Um, are there any other questions on the agenda for tonight's meeting? Right. Seeing none, um we can go back to uh our work session and uh we have board member comments right now. Do we have any committee or liaison updates? Um I would like to take a privilege of
161of uh starting out if that's okay with the board. Um I so I serve as the board representative um for Junior Achievement and I've had some conversations um here recently uh with Miss Shauna Dykes and it's an amazing organization and I uh I really respect them a lot. Um and I've tried to work through my personal work schedule and it's been difficult to make meetings to say the least for me. Um, and some of these things are, you know, having ha happen, uh, you know, quick turnarounds and things like that. And, um, it's just hard for me to make some of these meetings. And so, um, I'm I'm looking for suggestions for the board. Um, I, you know, I I actually really value their work a lot and what they do. Um, you know, one
162suggestion that there's a few different ways we can we can handle this. I I could I could step down as the representative. I mean, we're in September. Um we could also potentially appoint an alternate um to serve when I can't make it there. Um but I'm going and again, we're not doing any official business. I just am looking for feedback from my fellow board members on how they think that we should proceed with this. Good. >> The meetings are generally on Fridays, but sometimes we, you know, have like an event last week during on a Wednesday. Um, and normally they're Friday mornings for the most part. >> I've served with junior chief in the past and would love to be able to do whatever I can to support. So, whatever that looks like, I'm happy
163to to assist. >> Okay. I appreciate I appreciate you recognizing that um as much as you care for the organization, it's probably good to have um someone able to make the meetings. I think an alternate is a good idea in case you can make it sometimes. >> Um you know that I I have to recuse myself from that because I'm now employed with Junior Achievement. >> Okay. >> It was quick. >> Okay. So, um, we can't take any official action right now. Um, but is it possible that we could add this as a agenda item for tonight in the action agenda? Is it possible that we could do that or not? >> They've let me talk about that with Mr. Green during >> there. there may be an allowance for it as an emergency item
164because you can't attend. >> Yeah. >> And so if if there's an allowance for that for for a committee to be reassigned abs I don't see that that would be an issue but before >> it is the next meeting is the beginning of October. So, >> so we have a workshop, although there's been some discussion about adding a special meeting to the end of that workshop for the purposes of addressing a matter that's before the board. Um, let Mr. Green and I research it in the intermission and if we can bring it back, we're happy to do so. Um, and if not, we could probably address it at that time if the board consensus is that that's a good meeting for everyone and that would get it done before that meeting takes place. Yes, sir.
165>> Yes, sir. Thank you. And um outside of that um my duties with FSBA, uh just want to let let you all know um that in October we are going to have a board of directors uh leadership um meeting for um for FSBA and we're going to be talking about our strategic plan. And so, um, if there's any, uh, I know there was a survey that was sent out to all FSBA members about the strategic plan, um, that, uh, hopefully you were able to give some input on if you're if, uh, it was through email. Um, but if not, certainly um, you reach out to Andrea Msina or Dr. Demetrius Rice who is um is leading that uh he's the he's leading that from a staff's perspective. So um anyhow I just some important work
166is going to be happening in October for FSBA as well. And that's all I have. Uh board member Wyatt. >> Thank you. I also appreciate as Miss Miller said, you're recognizing that we that's such an important relationship with Junior Achievement and making sure that we have um a representative there. Um I was thrilled a few years ago when we made it concrete that there was a representative from this board because I served for a long time just as a community member. Um but I do think it brings up a bigger question too with Mr. Nol's passing. Do we know what committees he was serving on? And have we made arrangements to make sure that there's somebody filling those vacancies? Um, and is that something that we need to to look at in the the coming
167weeks? I don't know. >> Dr. Allen attention. >> He's aware of it. So, he's supposed to be working on it. >> Okay. Is there anything pertinent if we're not meeting again till end of October? Is there any thing we need to make sure is covered? just >> eventwise >> for any committees that he was serving on >> two and I think one is covered. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Are there any other uh committee or liaison updates? >> All right. With no further business to come before the board, this meeting is adjourned.