001for [Music] Christmas and Easter D has L bet good afternoon yeah good to see y'all out there today uh welcome to the P County school board's work session we will now call the work session for February 25th 2025 to order um since we are discussing probably our first agenda item today artificial intelligence uh as a policy I thought that I'd start by giving a random pencil fact you may have already heard this one um but the question is why is the pencil um hexagonal right so you know a lot of people typically think the pencil is hexagonal because um the desk were sloped so it wouldn't roll off the desk um however that is not correct so the large pencil manufacturers actually uh could get about 10% more pencils out of a slat of wood
002uh than um basically the round pencil so efficiency is what the key to the hexagonal pencil was so there you go there's your random pencil fact to that was from Henry Petroski uh he teached or teaches he taught at Duke University and the his history of engineering uh so I would like to thank everyone for being here today uh thank you to our staff who uh you will be available and accessible to us I really appreciate that and your time that you've carved out to be here so thank you for that um basically we're here to serve our students right and we're we're happy and humble to serve alongside the most educated Workforce uh in the nation and I would like to start by reading our who are we statement and it goes like this
003we are the PK County leadership governance team if we were to pick one phrase to Define us it would be student centered because when 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 one operating with Integrity two respecting our students staff families and each other three establishing a culture where stakeholders feel valued supported and have opportunities for personal and professional growth and then lastly supporting this approach of continuous Improvement um to ensure student outcomes collectively we need to work on behalf of the children that we serve and find Avenues of agreement so that we can govern The District in this effective manner there's no acceptable alternative
004to that we will always collaborate uh in a respectful manner in order to enhance opportunities for each student and staff member we will not disparage others our students will Thrive because we will remain committed to supporting the whole child uh we hope to engage and Empower our students and stakeholders to create this community of lifelong Learners at this time I would like to turn it over to superintendent uh to lead us in the rest of our work session good morning Mr chair members of the board members of staff and committee members thank you for being here our first item that we have before us I'll I'll bring up Miss terresa Griffin assistant director for policy and public records along with Chad Davis uh general counsel to the superintendent's office um and they have three new
005policies to briefly describe for you that again we will follow our normal process of reading them here providing multiple readings providing a time for Community feedback and then the board will ultimately move to adopt these policies Miss Griffin thank you Mr Hyde um as Mr Hyde mentioned we have three new policies IES today the first one is policy 9271 which is students receiving scholarships and this policy um is in response to um legislative changes that um relates to students that are enrolled in a state scholarship program and so it just allows the district to recoup some of the FTE like for students that receive state scholarships like the family empowerment scholarship um but take courses classes with the district so this um policy is just in response to those legislative changes and there'll be um
006more specific um procedures that'll outline like what that looks like um How we'll work with families to do that um does anyone have any questions on this particular policy Miss Wyatt is that the are you I was trying to push the button but it it's because it didn't clear from the last time you spoke I apologize go ahead um so and this is probably more of a question on the scope of this so it applies to anyone receiving a scholarship we've had this conversation before and I know several of us when we were in Tallahassee year before last I believe met with um Commissioner of education and he encouraged us to look at a pay forplay model for any of our um additional offerings to students who were not enrolled full-time with P County Public
007Schools will this include students that are um that may not be receiving scholarship money will they will we also have a mechanism for charging them for any the extracurriculars they're participating in or um if they're taking one class or things like that so extracurriculars for so there is a a bit of a clarification need you made within our current student progression plan we allow homeschool students up to to take up to three classes that has not normally included fees for extracurriculars however we have discuss that so in the procedures you will see a fee guide for those students for extracurriculars and any coursework that goes above and beyond what our student progression plan currently allows for as well as a carve out specifically for scholarship students um so that's the intention so yes there will
008be a fee structure for both they will be the same but we are treating them as two different groups so and then just to followup question that The Homeschool students that are taking up to three classes we are not getting any FTE for those students not at this time correct no ma'am can we get some data on how many of those students there are how many classes were yes ma'am including those students in that were not compensated for by the state thank you and just as a reminder for the board there were 750 scholarship students yes that are currently taking at least one class we're still verifying how many of those students are taking potentially two or more classes through us and not paying any fees to help cover our costs for those courses thank
009you Dr Allen so when you look at that data is there any particular are that's in more high demand um from these different groups no I don't have a course list so I don't know it is safe to assume the 750 are largely secondary students high school students and more than likely are taking coursework uh more rigorous coursework that they could not necessarily access through other mechanisms right through a traditional homeschool structure environment so I'm making that assumption but I can provide that breakdown for the board yeah and you know do we foresee any uh growth or we at like a capacity uh for this I mean just curious what you're thinking around around this area in this policy well enrollment is typically for certain courses is predicated upon class size and availability of a
010course based off the number of sections we can teach which then subsequently is is a direct um link to how many teachers meet the certification requirements so at some point there may need to be a discussion that should a fee paying student come in conflict with a a regular enrolled student for class space I would assume that our students would take preference or get preferential scheduling versus students on a scholarship um but we'll have to work through that that's not currently the case at this time that I'm aware of okay all right thank you m Griffin go ahead um the next two policies um are also new policies and they all surround artificial intelligence and natural language processing tools so it's policy 5505 which is academic honesty and then 7540 a artificial intelligence and these
011are just new policies um that neol provided language on just based on the continued growth of AI and um administrative procedures are being developed that will have more specifics of um what what things um students and staff can do with AI which programs that'll go through the peer process um um you know through a pasco's department so the procedures will be more specific to that these are just the policies that give us the authority to offer AI the use of AI any questions on these Mr sharpless I don't have a question I just want to say that um I like how uh there's flexibility in this um we're not what at procedurally superintendent you can certainly determine um punishments or or violations and all that we're giving more of a guidelines here I and I
012appreciate that not having to get down into those weeds because really that's I believe more for the superintendent but I I do like the fact that we have we're giving the superintendent flexibility now based on this and I think it's important because this is our next step right we're artificial intellig I I I I teach at a University and we're dealing with art artificial intelligent use and we've had to develop our own procedures there so it just makes sense that we're bringing that to the school board Miss Wyatt thank you um I too am thrilled to see that this is moving forward um I think AI is is the future and our students need to be equipped to to know how to use it safely and well and that it's not designed to write papers
013for you but to be able to help you filter resources and um that they're really are a lot of opportunities to use it as a tool um and I hope that we'll have some um curriculum and things around how to use it as a tool um and that that will be our Focus thank you and then Mr sharpless and and somewhat to your point procedurally this would become a code of conduct infraction so we would cover it there rather than trying to embed it here within the board's policy but the policy at least deflects or directs that requirement to my office to make sure that it's being addressed in our student code of conduct and in our our AUP or acceptable usage policies that students and staff both are apprised of potential ramifications for inappropriate
014usage um and there is a lot of opportunity there for it not to be used appropriately so it's an educational Focus primarily um we hope not to have to discipline anyone for those things but unfortunately it is a tool that right now is largely misused by many um to to provide misleading information right misrepresent certain things so we want to be very intentional and careful in that but that will be addressed in the student code of conduct Miss Wyatt I saw you I was trying to press it again yes ma'am I know you're still there um the just kind of a followup on that I know that the sheriff's department recently created an AI task force under their cyber security is have we had any conversations with them of if there's any trends that they're
015seeing that we need to make sure that we're capturing in Code of Conduct or anything like that I just would be interested to date we have not but it's a good we we typically confirm with them quite quite regularly especially about these things because there are instances where these tools largely could lead to a criminal investigation and and require their involvement so we will definitely reach out and make sure that we as we develop our policies we're we're focusing on what lessons they've learned or to your point what trends are they seeing and they're also a great resource for us to find out not just what's happening locally but what's happening across the state what's happening Across the Nation that we should be paying attention to as well thank you yes ma'am Dr Allan thank
016you superintendent U just as the pencil changed everything in society I do believe that uh AI will do the same um so I do like the just going to give some brief comments here there I could speak a lot more on this but the 4.08 I love that one I think that policy is generic enough it's broad uh but it it gives you know some direction um I do I do think that the other uh policy new policy on academic honesty is too punitive and just to give my um perspective on this the very first line where it says student uh use of artificial intelligence and natural language processing tools um it's it says it's strictly prohibitive um for the completion of schoolwork so um now it the the language lightens up a bit more
017as you move deeper down into the policy itself um but I think it runs counter to be honest I think it runs counter to the um first policy because the first policy I think is accepting it as you know that Innovative tool and um it it's it's more broadly speaking and whereas I think we're too specific and narrow on that very opening line um and just by looking at example um policies from Neola I know that there's quite a few things that's missing in our policy recommendation that's in in front of us today um like for example uh the educator portion of the policy that I think Neola creates um there's not anything that relates to Educators and it's more student focused and like responsibility of teachers in the classroom and so forth but I
018I can understand yes it going to the code of conduct but I did see Neola has specific policies around that um and then secondly there is a phrase that I've noticed in the other policies from Neola that actually starts that paragraph and I'll read it it says to ensure the Integrity of the educational process and to promote fair and equal opportunities for all students comma then it goes into um the statement about um let's see where am I at this would be in the academic honesty section okay but I don't it would just be I'm referencing other Neola policies that have been approved by other school districts across the state the na um and it was in the like the Neola template is what you're saying I'll have to go back yeah you know how
019sometimes language so I'll I'll have to go back and double check cuz I know we didn't we didn't remove I don't recall REM moving that language so I'll I'll double check on that and if it's not I was just wondering then maybe you know those that language would have been added in another District you know yeah now that that is possible that other districts could have added language to their policy I don't but I will go back and look again yeah yeah I don't know if superintendent if you have an opinion on that as well but you know your main policy 75 4.08 I love that one uh in agreeance with that one but the academic honesty part just um if you go down where it says student use of artificial intelligence and natural language
020processing tools the very opening statement almost um rebuts the way that the other policy is reading so since you asked I I I don't necessarily see it that way um because this had to come through my office as well before It ultimately came to the board because I have to ultimately work with staff to develop procedures I think what it does is it very clearly defines what the expectations are and what what are acceptable behaviors and what are unacceptable behaviors I don't know that you know the policies um the previous policy provides a general statement as to the Bo's position on the use of AI but without establishing a policy expectation for students and to your point for staff um as far as the appropriate use and I and I think beyond that first sentence
021the rest of that paragraph does a very good job of actually clarifying further because it does says it does state that the use of the AI n LP tools without the express permission and consent of a teacher in accordance with the district policies and procedures undermines the learning and problem solving skills that are essential to AC mic success I we nobody here and I know the board and I know your heart when it comes to instruction nobody here is going to support plagiarism or students efforts to plagiarize many of you several of you serve at colleges and so you've been dealing with this on the Forefront of this for for at least a year and a half two years at the most um or at the least at this point trying to figure out how
022do you ensure that what's being produced and submitted as a student sample of their work and understanding Andor learning is their work and not that of someone else and so I I think it if the board would like to to if the board wants to offer some addition some some change in the language happy to bring that back to the board for review um I I just think that it needs to be strong language so that I can build upon that as far as the expectation for the student code of conduct as it outlines there um I do think that we outline where we do believe students can use these tools effective L and that can always be modified as new utilization or New Opportunities become available um but I do think the board from
023my perspective I would always urge the board to be more restrictive and then open it up either in the code of conduct or revise the policy rather than trying to strengthen the policy at a later date I think it's difficult to go in that direction versus coming in a little more strict and then becoming more lenient or more accepting with the language um but as as Miss Griffin pointed out I don't see a significant deviation in this language than what was shared with me and we vetted through right our our staff and attorneys um but again Dr Allen if there's something you or other board members would would support if you could point us to some of those school districts where that language was proferred from we'd be happy to kind of revise this and
024include it and bring it back to the board for additional consideration yeah and you know looking at that first sentence under student use of artificial intelligence by rejecting that opening statement um it still stands on its own and you know just the again the more prohibitive statement is to me it it's stifling creativity and Innovation and and it's focusing more on the reversals within the context of the statement itself so where as you know the remaining portion of the paragraph and the the sub points you know I I think again it's putting it in teacher hands as well and empowering the teacher which I think is important through this process as well let us tweak it revise it bring it back okay um Dr Allen if you would or any other board member if you
025have found a similar policy that you'd like us to reflect further on and include the language and and I I'm interested in bringing it back only because I now caught another area and I know that we had discussed how we would address this in procedure or we would need to address it in procedure but I am wondering if we shouldn't add it as a bulleted item here for the notwithstanding the pro the proceeding students can use the tools in the school setting if they receive prior permission what's not listed there is graphic design Andor video and so I know that that's a big component in that an evolving area within in Ai and we want to discourage the inappropriate use of that to make fictitious posts and things of that nature but I'm curious if
026we need to consider providing some inclusion under the right guidance and supervision or parameters of the teacher so let's talk about this and we can bring back a a a revision for the so um I can bring it back to the March the next um work session in March the original plan was for the policies that were presented today um Mr Murphy would ask for Authority tonight to advertise for a public hearing that public hearing would not take place until April just because of the amount of days that we need to adverti we don't have enough days between now and and the March meeting um so we could still have it you know tely slated for public Hearing in April that'll give me a chance to bring it back in March um with some of
027these tweaks if that does that give you enough time as far as the code of conduct though as well to get well the code of conduct will come to the board closer to the end of the summer we won't be launching these tools during this academic year so we have plenty of time to bring you the revisions to that plus the student code uh the student progression plan we'll also have to have some tweaks and revisions to it pertaining to this policy okay great thank you Mr Keys yeah I'm going to need AI just to kind of gather my thoughts after all that um so the first thing I would say is that I'm glad to see this come to policy um coming from the corporate world we've we've been using this forever now in
028banking and and finance and to see it come to policy finally is I love it um I'm assuming that any kind of AUP would be updated as more technology comes out so um this isn't what we'd say an act of Congress we put policy in place where you have to have all these things to to to change things so I'm happy about that um and going back to what Dr Allen said you know that statement on the the the first part of the use of artificial intelligence I think if I'm not mistaken the way I read it that statement goes back to the aforementioned a through n and kind of in those those points in there and saying this is this is what dishonesty is and the acceptable use is kind of going against all
029those things um but I will say that is is the the intuitive nature of of AI is that and I play with it extensively in in banking school and we were trying to get some thoughts together on presentations and you literally can put in the same question or give it the same instruction and come up with a different results every time so I I think having policy in place is is great but then the follow-up to that would be um wow um the procedure in place to enforce discipline on that to be able to interpret what is the student own work I think is going to be the challenge on the backside of it because as these tools Continue to update I'm amazed at just the the little time I've had to play with them
030um to to put in a simple task and every time I put in the same task I tried it I get a different response every time um it's it's it's one of those things that it's wow this is awesome and as even as much so as I've and I'm not going to you know name any names or any we won't even tell an institution but man if I would had this to write some of my memos um four or five years ago my life would have been a lot easier but uh all that to be said that I'm excited to see this com into policy I'm sure we can update as we go along but um definitely some exciting times um coming for us and I'm glad that we're on the Forefront of this good
031job thank you Miss Fields well thank you I am learning about artificial intelligence and it's amazing I think it's an a great tool however I agree with Mr shopas the honesty piece to me is very important and not just for the students but also for the uh employees and so my question is once we get the policy in place how are we going to roll it out how we going to launch it how we going to make sure that everybody understands what's expected even though um um commercials sometimes make jokes of using uh the artificial intelligence when they're trying to re uh rewrite whatever they have have drafted so I I'm very much interested in making sure that we do it and we vet it and and make sure that it's done um properly yes
032ma'am so in at the next meeting the board will actually during the workshop receive an additional update from Miss pasco's office I intentionally asked that we separate the two topics policies from next steps Miss pasca will cover the different types of AI she will also highlight the different Pilots that we're currently running or anticipate running between now and the end of the school year how we're going to analyze and collect that data and then much to your question how we're going to roll out the training for Staff first and then for students and families after that so we'll be prepared to share that information with you at the next at the next Workshop thank you yes ma'am there are no further questions thank you board members the next item before you is a followup to
033a conversation we had recently about the clay cut building um clay cut building is a a building that we currently own it is arguably Beyond economical repair um or at least what we would consider to be a reasonable economic investment to re repurpose that building um and so the staff several months ago began working to work towards the sale of that of that parcel um so Mr lore I will turn it over to you sir good afternoon Mr chair members of the board superintendent Hyde again uh what this agenda item entails is just more to serve as an informational item there are no active actions being requested at this time this is just more to give you a status update as to where the uh staff is in the process for those who are unfamiliar
034uh the subject site that we're going to be discussing is the clay cut building the clay cut building itself is a part of the Daniel Jenkins Academy which is located at 701 lead withth Avenue in City the building itself was built in 1950 and is on the National Registry of historical buildings with that inails additional requirements uh that if we were to uh make any modernizations or changes to it there are additional requirements that you would have to abide to just by the year nature that the building is listed on the historical register uh the subject site uh that we're in uh looking at uh selling off is approximately 1 92 Acres that includes the building and some Associated parking spaces that would be required in order to meet hanne City's uh development uh standards
035for parking the building consists of a it is a two-story building approximately 29,000 Square ft in in size we ran an estimated appraisal back in March of 19 of last year it came back at around 600,000 and again this is based off of the existing condition of that building which again it is in it is in rough shape uh and again uh what staff's analysis has has come back with and what it would take to rejuvenate that building is not economically feasible at this time we're talking tens of millions of dollars but again we also have to adhere to uh because the building is historical in nature there are additional requirements that would be imposed if we did anything to it the third part the party that has approached the school district uh they are
036the central Florida Academy Corporation they are a private school uh institution that currently operates in southeast Florida um what we are currently at in the process right now is that we are working on getting an updated appraisal uh we are currently under contract with manzal Appraisal Services we have just received the uh actual survey and legal description of the area that we've car uh we look to partition out which is outlined in yellow this has actually probably been the hardest in this entire process because there are gaps and Records within the city of Han City to ensure that we know exactly the meats and Bounds and legal description of properties so we we justed uh the actual survey work this past week so we are in the middle of reviewing it to make sure it
037is consistent and accurate looking forward as to the way ahead moving forward some actions that would be required of staff and what we would be asking the board to do is before we can Surplus or sell any property we would first have to deem the building to be Surplus and that requires us to amend the district's plant survey and that is just pretty much a document that ex explains how the district is using all of our real assets and buildings so if we want to sell one we first have to deem it a surplus and unusable and then we can go down the contract process of selling it and to go back to piggy back more onto the contract negotiations we are still in uh working through the contract uh of what we received you
038know closing costs commission who's paying commission fees so again this is still very early on in the process so a lot of those items we are going to address uh we will work with the the district's council with Boswell and Dunlop to review this as they will be serving as our agent in this process and once we get through all of that this is still going to come back before the board for a final determination as to approve or deny with that I stand by for your questions M Miller hello thank you for presenting today I just have a quick question I know this is gonna come back to us but um and I the contract that is on the record is out of date they're going to fix the date um also it shows
039that we're paying the Buyer Agents commission and as of last year the N had a ruling that that's not what automatically happens it's not you know it was assumed that that's what the practice was for such a long time it automatically was included that's $18,000 that we should negotiate and I and I would stand and not approve if we're going to start paying buyers agents commissions we have cost in this uh the attorney's cost is substantial it's probably more when they get done with all the work then agents commissions would be um and so I would like for them to work on that before it comes back to us um but I appreciate you doing this I'm hoping the building can be restored and used for kids thanks Mr Keys I will tell you that
040this is something that I had multiple requests on even before coming onto the board in November what are they going to do with that building it's sat there for so long um and I'm in an agreement you know this is something for being very amiliar with it I've you know probably passed by it 30 times a week um it's one of those assets that um is just going to be a drag on us and a drain on us so I'm definitely in favor of of getting rid of it um one of my concerns though is being it's being in adjacent to Daniel Jenkins Academy is is how we limit access in between the two because it is so close making sure we have you know the buyer understands that um the other part is I
041think that I'm going to do more research on it but they did I believe if I'm not mistaken the buyer had a location in hanne city um on Marley Drive I want to say and they shared a building with the old pallet Factory and the office space I wonder if they're still an operation and what the transition would be there not it's it's out of our purview I mean but for the good of the community letting them know that this is you know who we're selling it to is a is a reputable institution and this is what they're the intended use is for because I I found differing kind of um historical records there but again going on the record saying you know I I've had community said hey we want to use this for
042a um a community center and do some some gardening there and all those things will well yeah but you're putting the cost back on you know the school district to to upkeep the building and you just kind of want to use it um wasn't in favor of those things and conversations but again to reiterate the statement I already made kind of sound like a beating a dead Hors her but I am in favor of us you know kind of getting rid of that because it it would be to to rehab that building and all the things to bring it up to Cod would be you know such a financial restraint or constraint on us that we would lose in that overall so um anxious to see something good happen with it um and want to
043hear more on that as as it agrees and thank you to Mrs Miller for bringing up um that contract as I seen the same things in dealing with commercial real estate that we need to do our due diligence on that side further questions on that item sir next item board members we still have the dynamic du of Mr mmore and Mr Fix um this next item is an update for the Florida Division of Virg Emergency Management and as you recall we received a grant and Mr Keys this would be new to you prior to your arrival we were very fortunate to receive a grant that would help us place a larger uh permanent generator at the tenar Rock High School site the intention is to um make that site the special needs shelter the second
044special needs shelter and close to mckel site for various reasons including the fact that um it's it's low-lying um it flooded during the last storm and so we'd be relocating so Mr mmore well superintend so um uh what we're looking at right now is that we did just receive a rough copy of the uh the grant there are some errors that we need need to correct on it signators Etc uh but this has been something that staff's been working on for probably nine months back and forth with the state uh but we are happy that it is finally at the uh looks like we're about to cross the uh the Finishing Line with this um I will say that uh initially the initial timeline with lead times for permanent generators uh based off of some
045vendors and their estimates we're talking 33 plus weeks uh so it's going to take some time it's not going to happen this this year at least with a permanent generator um but at least we're getting this grant one step closer to actually transitioning toar Rock High School to serve as a special need shelter um we anticipate to bring this back for official board action during the march uh board meeting with that stand by for your questions just for some additional clarification for board members um we are relocating the current generator from mckel and installing it at tenar Rock the concern at tenar rock is we would require two facilities um we would need one generator to maintain the operational functionality of the cafeteria kitchen area and a second for an ancillary building for people to
046for people and or pets because tenaro will actually be phased out as a pet friendly shelter it'll simply become a special need shelter but we need to make sure that those those two facilities are operating so as as Josh has pointed out the lead time means that we would not have that second generator on that campus in time for next hurricane season and so we've been working with the county the county is exploring the opport option that they would lease a generator and then do the hookup with us for the duration of the hurricane season or we are currently seeing if we can get a better price in partner with the county on a lease based off of who we're procuring the generators from they may have a lease option for us due to the
047lead time um for us to get our own permanently installed so just so you're aware I'll keep you apprised of the updates of that um because we may while that building should be functional for next for next hurricane season we might have to restrict its capacity depending on whether or not we have two generators on site or not um so I just want to make sure you had that additional background Mr Murphy thank you Mr superintendent I was just curious on this grant agreement pardon me uh I been hearing the last couple days where there are some federal grants that are being you know either terminated or repurposed or what have you do you know if this particular Grant is a state Grant or is it a pass through for federal dollars do we know
048I'm not sure if this is a pass through from FEMA or not but this is originating from the state okay I just didn't know if we'd had any recent communication some of my other clients that have relied on federal grants have been informed that some of those grants are no longer going to be uh available we have not received that notification thus far no the grant manager hasn't expressed that at all okay we're trying to spend our money as fast as we can probably a good idea before they take it back all right thank you Mr Keys my only my only question is I see the grant uh amount and I saw in the document some some totals and fixed capital outlay and and all that but what is the anticipated cost we have anything
049kind of ballpark would it be for now we're talking about that second generator if that would be absorbed into this grant as well so this grant will not uh front the entire cost of both permanent generators at this site uh but again as superintendent has U alluded to we are in talks with the county to almost do like a cost sharing for whatever difference Still Remains outside of what can be covered by this grant excellent um initial costs are around 1.7 they've been great Partners to date they recognize you know by Statute we have to Avail our shelters but what we don't have to do is Staff them and we do every time we have an amazing team of dedicated employees that do that and give of their own time and their own family safety
050to be with us and be with our residents and I think the county absolutely values that and recognizes that commitment so they're they actually approached us with this grant initially saying they would provide matching funds and so we're just working through that process the second generator though is already is already owned it is we're relocating it from mckel and now at some point we may look to replace that that is a 7 50 kilowatt um generator if I recall correctly um it may be larger than that but I I know that our team was exploring how to trailer it and disconnect it from mckel and relocate it and and the mckel group is very happy to not be included in the shelter list for this upcoming school year um so but that means tenar Rock
051will be a viable option for us and and we're excited to be able to provide that opportunity to our community especially on that side of town well I think the centrality of that too uh speaks ler that's it's very kind of um in the center of the county and able to be accessed by by many so excited to see that Dr Allen yeah I me just minor question I know Citrus connection has a a big part in um moving special needs right U with their um transportation system so I was just wondering if they've been a part of that conversation as well so they will be once the map is finalized we met with the city sorry the county and so once that map is updated because currently reflects tenar rock is just a friendly
052shelter and still list mckel so they'll have to reprint that update that at least on the website in other areas and then Citrus connection when all of that coordination takes place pre-storm planning they're brought into the loop at that time because again all of their drivers and vehicles then become dedicated to relocating those medically fragile individuals in our communities the the nice thing that we've been able to work out though and the reason why we've been focusing on our high schools for this type of enhancement is we're allowed to we're able now to isolate the gymnasium and rather than having to close schools even earlier to Stage these individuals we can now maintain the functionality operational nature of those schools without disruption with additional law enforcement and with some perimeter fencing and some other things
053so we are able to bring those in those individuals into the shelter without disruption maintain a school day allow parents and everyone else more time to plan and then we can close whenever we need to but it it's it's very hard hard to justify closing when it's when it's sunshiny blue skies and people don't understand there's a storm looming um parents get frustrated very easily with that but this allows us to do that safely without again without any potential safety risks to our students because there'll be additional law enforcement on campus and we've worked through this at Ridge and some other sites so it it's turned out to be a very good process and proposal for us to to pursue right thank you there are no further questions you're off the hook gentlemen Mr pittz
054next item uh board members as you know you wanted regular updates and more information about The Fortress secured proposal um Mr Murphy has been party to this conversation he's been on multiple phone calls with the attorneys and the groups involved I participated in at least one um and so really what Mr pittz will share with you is just a brief update you'll receive additional information on March 11th and I'll I'll speak with you about that later today um so on the 11th we may need since we already have a r Treat we may need to convert part of that to a special board meeting to allow you to do some further discussion and review of The Fortress contract with that will come the timeline that many of you requested for those hard timelines those delineated
055key points and deliverables to make sure that we're keeping Pace with the contract delivery and the beginning of the construction and ultimately the ability to open a school in the near future Mr pittz this will be the quickest update I ever give we've been working daily uh with uh Fortress uh their attorneys and their staff to work out this interim agreement as you know when attorneys get involved the timeline gets a little longer um so we will bring you back that interm agreement the final draft as soon as we have it um we were hoping to have it here today but but we should have the draft for you at the March 11th Retreat super is that am I good yes sir um thank you yes and we have been um working very very closely
056with staff I want to compliment staff in particular um on bringing to the table a lot of the information that we need we have also been working with Mr Brian Williams who you may remember is helping us was assisting The District in going through the whole P3 process and we had a very very comprehensive meeting yesterday going over the the the edits that were suggested by um the the Fortress folks and so it is hopefully going to be soon that we're ready with with a contract but we're we're really getting very close um there are some issues that still need to be addressed and and we're going to address those but it is moving along and and the interim agreement will define those activities that need to start immediately such as surveying planning property acquisition
057uh so it'll be a small dollar amount uh compared to the final comprehensive agreement that we are starting to work on and then that'll come back to you in a in two to three months that comprehensive agreement the nice thing about this process if there is a nice thing is that it doesn't marry us to any particular thing um in so far as if if if the Milestones if the guidelines are not met by the by by the contractor or by the the design professionals or whomever is involved we have options we have off-ramps um that allow for us to be a good Steward of the Public's dollars because at the end of the day the monies that we spend on are coming from our coffers um that we are the stewards of for the
058public so we have to be real you know mindful of that um P3 is very you know statutorily recognized as being an option we're engaging in that but it is important that we have um the flexibility that is uh part of it's inherent with the P3 uh pro project and in particularly the statutory authorizations for it so we're working real hard on making sure that we are being as clear and as specific as possible but at the same time making sure that you know we have a good product at the very end and the board will continue to be involved as appropriate thank you thank you see no further questions or comments thank you Mr Pitts thank you board members next item before you for today's Workshop is just a reminder and an update as
059promised um altav Vista so we had a conversation about the use and reloc location of altav Vista to the current Scenic Terrace location which is a K8 facility um this would serve the needs for that school based off its original design and intention to provide relief to Boone Middle School um and the numbers were provided for you here in your presentation we covered them last time what I'd like to cover with the board today is the timeline for conversations within the community and with staff um should the board give us the authority to move forward with this you are not voting on this today this item will come back to you again for further review and I'll send you the complete summary of the timeline but on March 11th we would seek to meet with
060staff and have an initial conversation with them these conversations typically cover how we relocate staff um when they can expect for boxes and things to be delivered we send additional staff out there um to basically help them understand how to label their boxes how to label their materials whether it's a personal item a school district procured item so we make sure we get all those things transferred work with the administration to identify their room placement and then we deliver those items to their classrooms um and hopefully get them there in a timely and safe manner on Wednesday March 12th at 5:30 to 6:30 we would host a town hall with students families at the school I will attend that meeting as I have these meetings in the past on Thursday March 27th we would host
061a town hall at Scenic Terrace to allow families to get a tour of the facility and get to know how the how the facility functions drop offs pickups bus Loops those types of things plus get a chance to again like I said to tour the facility and look at all the improvements that their students will benefit from there and then immediately following those meetings we will provide a pcps survey if you recall one of the things I was most Keen in getting feedback from from families um given us proximity to the to facil to the these two facilities are to each other I don't think there's too much of a disruption there as we shared with you before the question is the sixth grade go to that school next year um I'm I'm reluctant to
062say yes and to make that recommendation at this time because I believe that the school administration is going to need some additional time for Staffing hiring position placement those types of things they may want to grow into a middle school but we'd like to at least get some feedback from our families as to the possibility if they would have an interest in their students attending there so we'll provide that information to you um I've also outlined and the team have outlined for you a communication plan um so that you see all the steps that we're taking I know the board members to all each of you brings up uh repeatedly are we making sure that we're using every possible mechanism to share information with our stakeholders I think you'll be pleased with the outline we've
063provided and i' I'm providing you with a copy of the draft um announcements and information that we'd be sending to families and to staff so all that information will be provided for you so again today which just an update really again to cover for you those timelines and give you additional information so that when this comes back to in March for further discussion and approval Andor consideration for you to to provide approval then we can move forward because you'll had all the background information required if there's any additional information you'd like to see please let me know we'd be happy to provide that for you at the next meeting or see if I can answer those for you today Mr Keys I'm going to be very very short um how timely was it that this
064particular um location was built when it was and that the the size and the scope of what it was and and what it's going to um how it's going to serve the students in that area I will tell you that again this is one of the things that I feel like I'm speaking a lot today but this is all my area right and and I love the way that this we're going to transition into this um I guess the question I have and if we have to answer it next one is at at what point or if are the attendance boundary committee going to be involved in that um and any recommendation they give I I wouldn't think so immediately if they're using as just out to visas during that during the the portion of
065we we're doing construction I wouldn't see it so but for the future of that I guess a timeline on when we'd actually look at zoning and that how that affects Boon yeah initially I think the proposal we we we briefly covered this last time during um the initial presentation we would use the existing attendance boundary for alav Vista and then expand or modify that once that replacement site is is fully completed um because we believe based off the projected growth for that Community we will need another school there in the near future I appreciate you for refreshing me on that thank you Miss Wyatt thank you so I just want to I have a question but I also want to make sure I understand first so the thought would be that altta Vista would move
066there permanently and then once the current altta Vista site is rebuilt that that would be the new school that is where Fred Height Elementary School will go yes ma'am I can't wait um that does have to go through several approvals correct okay just just making sure I'll save my piece for I want have the mascot though I'm worried about what the mascot might look like um thank you I my I think that you know to Mr Key's point this school was built very timely and to allow us to we do have a few um landlock schools in that area as I think Albert has has greatly benefited from being able to to move their student population there um we had a similar concern when we did this with Elbert because it was announced about the
067same timeline which took place after all of the um academ and choice schools Applications had closed um so I would like to see a plan of if there are students that you know I thought I was going to altta Vista Elementary School where it is currently located we're now at the 13th Hour changing what that looks like um and making sure that we are providing other options for those um those families does that make sense it it does I just I think from our perspective I believe it's just over a mile between the two and I don't know that that's going to create any significant disruption but we'd be happy to work with Miss ever and her team to determine and identify any students who made a choice selection for that campus and then revisit
068that topic with them to see if it's going to become a barrier to their attendance thank you I don't know when the last time was you drove just over a mile in Northeast P County but that uh that may or may not be a a longer longer timeline than um one may think so I just want to make sure we're working with those families and and giving them every opportunity especially if you know they've been happy with Alta Vista the location has been great for their family um what does this look like for busing did their you know their student was eligible for a bus and now they're inside the mile R the two mile radius and making sure that we're we have a plan to work with those um those families as such absolutely
069thank you Mr sharpless um a couple things uh first the timeline you just shared with us uh can we get that in writing you have it right now it's in your inbox oh excellent perfect I'm not checking my email during this meeting so I didn't see it appreciate that second thing um uh you know with with Boon Middle School being over capacity right um I guess just the question I have is could it help to actually have sixth graders in there next year to relieve Boon some um I I understand I understand the issue with being such a tight window however if families elect to go there it might it might be a good thing I it's just my it's just my thought I know Boon is just over capacity and if we could have
070any kind of relief to that school it would be helpful yeah so it's it's a tough question to answer with a direct answer so I'll put on two different hats for you as a building principal I would prefer another year because there's a lot that goes into developing a master schedule for a K8 facility and then making sure that my Staffing allocation is appropriate based off my enrollment projections number one number two being able to hire enough staff to ensure that I can offer the spectrum of of courses and classes that we need to um so from that perspective as a former building principal I would have a great deal of heartburn trying to get that done between now and the start of school um that but part of this too could be you may
071only find that 10% of the current six fifth graders would prefer to stay there so it might be attainable I I can't say no to that now as a superintendent looking at how do I best address the needs of our entire Community how do I offload some of that overcrowding at another school it makes a great deal of sense um and also from a perspective of continuity for the families it may make sense so rather than having them start Moon as sixth graders and then be offered the opportunity to come back as seventh and eighth graders once a child's out of school it's very difficult to uproot them from those from those schools and their friends and the teachers and the other staff that they've grown and develop relationships with so there's a lot to
072be considered here which is why we want to be considered and and get the feedback from the parents who are going to be directly affected by this and to miss Wyatt's point making sure that anybody who chose to be at that school can continue to attend that school without disruption um or or that that distance becoming a barrier to their child participating in any instance if if Transportation were the barrier because much as Miss Wyatt pointed out the 2- M radius does shift and so transportation is already involved in reviewing that to make sure that we would relocate bus stops and and assign students appropriately for transportation needs but I'll I'll bring that back to you as as a followup thank you sir I see no further questions on that topic board members the last
073item I have for you today as it relates to a workshop item is an update on VPK um as I presented to you previously we did ask and did search and partnered with the Early Learning Coalition as well as connect ed to determine and identify some high quality High performing uh providers in that VPK setting we have three applicants who submitted their interests with backup documents um when working with the ELC I provided this for you previously just as a reminder here we looked at their scoring rubrics as far as performance outcomes and performance indicators we also looked at their financial status and their stability we also looked at just general feedback that they received to identify what we consider to be a high qualifying high high pro a high level provider those three I
074sent out the invitations earlier today um actually just as our meeting was starting Miss Wyatt If you recall from the last meeting volunteered to be a Schoolboard representative on that interview panel we will interview all three of those uh I believe during the first week of March and then we'll bring to the board a final recommendation for a provider to move into that five room building on the mlin campus as a satellite campus um and so that's that's the update for the board um and again we're seeking and developing a contract because we don't currently have a contract of this nature with with an outside provider um but it does m it is very mutually beneficial to all of us and in part of those contract terms would be as we talked about before a
075potential car out so that certain seats are set aside for pulp County Public Schools Employees that would obviously have to be based upon proximity to that location for for availability for staff to utilize it for their children and obviously then depending on the demand it may have to be a lottery based process and we'll outline that for you as well okay Miller just um just to make a statement if we haven't had any other Frozen money but if that happens is there a plan to move forward with these kinds of uh VPK programs if funding is stalled or delayed or disappears I I think good question thank you for teeing that up I think it is the model if if the school district faces potential cuts that are adversely going to affect students receiving services
076and you know and as a superintendent as an educator and as a along with this board I think we have expressed repeatedly our commitment to Early Learning and early childhood education um for a lot of reasons right social emotional development behavioral identification academic supports all of those things if the funding were to go away or to be reduced any further we will have to look at these types of Partnerships in order to make it sustainable in P County and maintain the affordability for our staff because what I think sometimes people when they initially look at these things and look at the potential impact they may see or they may they may immediately go to what they perceive to be a negative impact but think of it this way if we already have the facility and
077we're covering the facility's costs and an outside provider can come in here we just reduce their operating cost by 40% nearly 40% which now means they can adjust their rates and they can adjust their pay scale for their employees commensurately which should result in lower fees for our families because if and some of you do if you're paying for Early Childhood care right now it can equate to a mortgage payment so there are opportunities for us to do this elsewhere and I think this started as you know with Oscar J Pope and the Bezos Foundation now we're doing it here at mlin and we're continuing to seek out other locations across the county that this might become a more viable option for us um so it it's a great opportunity but to miss Miller's question
078I think it's the only way to sustain programs like this in the future should funding go away or be reduced any further Miss Fields I know you gave us a presentation on this at the last work session but can you refresh my memory whether potential providers given at that time I don't remember I have kept those close to the best but I can absolutely provide all three applications to the board and publish that here okay thank you there are no further questions I see Mr chair that concludes the superintendent report for the workshop today I will turn it over to you sir all right thank you superintendent board members we're going to now uh transition to our board meeting agenda for tonight and we will step through that so I'll give you a moment to
079transition to your agenda and your comments all right so uh any questions we're going to basically go from the top down uh and move from a to F so sections a through F if you have any comments on those sections excited about our our guest tonight if y'all had a chance to read uh her bio she her goal she wants be an English Professor if you saw that who's leading Us in the pledge all right so I'm moving down to section g through J G through J if you have any comments or questions all right Miss Miller you recognized that was preemptive all right section K through m all right I see no comments on I think Miss Miller was indicating that's the area she wish to speak to oh perfect Miss Miller you recognized
080trying to be as good as techn with technology as um chair Allen I'm not quick enough to that sorry I just had a question and um I had sent an email and I the superintendent can give us feedback or give me feedback later just looking at K1 because it's in my district with the re-roofing um I just looked at the attachment on how the request was made and then the person had to come back and re-quest it just seemed to timeline lapse is there a is there a timeline for how these things will be answered um because what I hear a lot when I'm in the schools is you know we've requested that or we asked for that and and the getting back to the person on the process is there a written process I
081can share with schools on how this works to request a work order or well like when we have projects like this so this is different than a work order right so no I mean yes there is a process by which they submit these requests um however in most instances in this case like with a roof replacement it would more likely be submitted directly by faciliity staff and maintenance staff because they've been going out there consistently either trying to patch or or make temporary repairs and you reach a certain point where just the recommendation is to replace either a portion of a roof or the entirety of aof roof depending on the type of facility um so there is a process for that to take place and then there is a timeline um facilitated by Mr
082pittz Miss J Miss uh Jenkins and the Regionals they actually meet to review facilities requests throughout the year and then rank prioritize those um so we can I I I forwarded your questions to the team to figure out why the school felt the need to have to come back and ask for the proposal to be resubmitted because it's not it's not common for a school to submit a request for them to do a facilities replacement like for a roof outside of Maintenance identifying that as an issue to begin with yeah I just want to clarify it wasn't the school um but when you go to the school they usually initiate the facilities to come look at the roof and they come out but if you look at the attachment even within our own Department there
083was a request from facilities from from the director of construction that the request was made it went to the budget supervisor and then months later he comes back and say says can I get an update I'm just there's there was months in between that so I'm just curious to what that looks like because in the end the school didn't initiate it I did because I'm thinking when I show up to the school and I say how's that going and they say we haven't heard it's probably because these months laps in between our communication but that might have been a special reason there could have been other extenuating circumstances so I didn't know if there wasn't an actual timeline for how we communicate looking at evel's copied on here I would tell you and I can
084ask Mr canel to be here this evening along with Peggy to address the specificity of this of your question but more than likely there's I and I think I briefly touched on this when we talked about this there's an engineering aspect that has to be done then there's an evaluation and estimate we have to put it out for bid um so I can get you the timeline as to why but to your point right the question Tim me comes down to how how is this communicated with the school with others to keep them a breast of the timeline how it's developing um and to your point where's there a Gap in the process here where it took longer than normal outside the norm we'd have to identify that so yes ma' I'm happy to do
085that yeah I don't I don't want to bother Mr Connell to come in for that but we can if you can send me that then at least I'll be prepared thank you ma'am yes ma'am thank you Miss Miller we are uh moving down to sections n through P any comments there on that section learning support and support services all right sections q and R teaching and learning and Workforce okay that takes us down to the action agenda for tonight we have three items uh we do have some policies I'll basically reference those policy numbers uh before we take any action on those Mr sharpless you're recognized um on S3 I would like the opportunity to speak the bio the bio for my nominee to the half cent sales tax oversight committee great thank you thank
086you Mr sharpless all right and then we uh move from there to the superintendent's report I would assume you have something for us tonight superintendent yes sir I do all right and the attorney's report just to request the advertisement perfect thank you and we do not have an Auditor's report tonight all right good to see you out there Miss Matthews all right and then we have our board member reports uh public comment and then adjournment very good I don't see any other comments on the agenda I'm pop back over to our work session all right no other questions comments on tonight all right at this point we're going to now move to uh old business which is uh one E1 and that's the retreat not sure um if yall have any feedback questions why this
087one's still sitting out there miss Wyatt you recognized well I think it's still sitting out there because we don't necessarily have information about what the retreat schedule is for the next four sessions um I know superintendent HD sent us what we're looking at going over on March 11th um but beyond that I think that's why that's still sitting there yeah I know it was asked uh just to gather more information as well from board members so not sure what the will of the board would be we do have two we just had our first uh board r Treat and superintendent has proposed uh his schedule and agenda for the next one and then there were the two uh remaining dates that were out there and I think that's what we're asking about um so not
088sure what the will of the board would be but uh that's the master board program that's in front of you uh I did reach out to fsba and basically you could see that it requires 20 hours of training so on those two remaining dates if superintendent needed um half of those dates on the other two they could do two blocks of 4 hours on those last remaining Retreat dates and then we would have to then schedule out the remaining um time that would be needed as it relates to the masterboard program specifically if I can address part of the question Mr chair so I having worked with the board to go from just one Retreat date to five or at least four um based off availability right and everybody has conflicts in their schedules but
089the work still needs to be done and I appreciate the board conceding the fact and and agreeing and and Miss fields and others have expressed concerns about the fact that a retreat um everyone should be there but the retreat dates that have been scheduled thus far only have at the most have one board member missing again the these Retreats are not decision-making Retreats while we may reach consensus on things all topics will come back to a general board meeting and workshop for further discussion and approval before anything takes place what I did for the first two meetings was as you took as the board members completed their interest surveys and they rank prioritized the topics that's how the first two meetings have been structured to try and get those topics addressed in particular on the
09011th board members had expressed concerns about and we've talked about this already publicly several times some of you would like to have more flexibility with how you want to pursue your own personal professional development and so I'm trying to afford the board that opportunity to have that discussion at that time beyond that the board has also expressed multiple times an interest in board training um and self-evaluation and those types of things so I left that third meeting which I believe is the full day meeting available to try and work with either fsba or another facilitator that we could bring in to facilitate and have so you could we can all participate in that training together or if that's a board training um but that's that's why the third date was not provided with an agenda
091at this time um and board members again I I tried to make sure I worked within the parameters that we that you basically mutually agreed to that these are your rank priorities as far as your concerns I did update the 11th as we discussed yesterday during the retreat um you will notice that under governance and roles there was a bullet added regarding board budget for travel memberships professional affiliations and consumables there's also contract review based off of your inquiries there and then um so that's your update for the next meeting on the 11th um Mr chair if you'd like I can work with you and the rest of the board and fsba pul vision or others to see who might best facilitate a board training um but again this is I'm just providing context to
092the question and background based off the question that was asked by Miss Wyatt and others thank you superintendent Miss Wyatt anything else I have other thoughts but you can go to other people all right Miss Fields you're recognized okay I had mentioned this to the superintendent um I think that the environment that we need to have for retreat um needs to be a different venue a different scene because when I'm sitting here uh in a board retreat I'm thinking that this is a work session or a board meeting uh and I mentioned that to the superintendent and he he responded and so um I think that we have other places that we can meet and U I can't even see your faces when we're having conversation cuz I'm back and forth um as it relates
093to the master board uh program I would appreciate knowing what subjects we have to choose from we typically would have that if we're going to make a decision about the master board program uh I think and I think the superintendent just said this is going to be on the March the 11th agenda and will be at that one but I know at the 11th I will not um so I appreciate you considering my requests about the two items that were of most importance to me you cover we covered that on yesterday ma'am thank you thank you m Fields Miss Miller you're recognized yeah I think um kind of along with Miss Fields I think we need to get in the to a retreat and talk about the biggest needs of the board there's some organizational
094pieces that I think are much more um import right now of how our office runs and those type matters I have a lot of questions um again I I would like to know what what the topics would be and this might be a great program for us to do um it is extensive program some of us have done some of these so we would have credit or are we going to redo programs we've already been set through um I think that needs to be the conversation so I'm hoping that a retreat where we can sit down and talk about the vision of the board um our operational pieces of how our board off office operates how we report how our attorney and our auditor and our staff report to us and what those needs look
095like to me that is critical um before we get into what trainings we need but I think that needs to be a group discussion on on what I and I I was thinking when the superintendent or someone sent out uh ranking that we ranked what those look like and so that needs to be addressed and my this is my um my input I think we need to address those things before we talk about additional trainings on top of that because we have such limited time so I'm looking forward to that Retreat where we can discuss our our priority and need um I would not be in favor of of stacking more onto that right now when we haven't met those priorities thank you thank you Miss Miller Miss Wyatt you're recognized thank you um I
096tend to agree with Miss Miller that's one of my biggest concerns is I don't think that all of the topics that we disussed wanting to cover over these five sessions are going to be covered in the next two sessions um I don't think we have enough time to cover each of them in the March 11th session um I'm not really sure why we're pushing doing masterboard so hard um when we haven't covered the things that we need to that we've all requested um I don't see anywhere on here talk governance en rules looks like it's more our the district roles not necessarily the board staff um and I think that that's a topic that we desperately need to to talk about um I don't know that an hour for governance en rolls in some of
097those topics is going to be enough on the 11th um I would prefer that instead of trying to rush through the areas that we have already set our top priority that we take our time in talking about them um I would love to see the five days we had already set out what that full schule would look like um and if there are areas in that that we feel like we need to bring in um a facilitator that's great but we can't bring in a facilitator until we know what we're asking them to facilitate um so I don't know even asking for others to look at a proposal what we would ask them to propose um which has been I think the frustration from the beginning um I know superintendent Hy and I have had
098this conversation and I I think we need a full schedule of what we're looking at talking about on those days before we look at who's going to talk about them thank you Miss Wyatt Mr Keys you're recognized thank you chn I would want to um Echo Miss Fields when I when I think of a retreat and we sat here at the dice and kind of having that conversation I was like you know this doesn't I imvision sitting around a campfire and maybe somebody playing guitar um jokingly but no no um you know I think the the spirit of what we're trying to do here is and especially in doing strategic planning and seeing with the board of the direction of the board going forward um it needs to be one of those kind of situations
099where we can see each other set a table around each other and I will say I mentioned the same thing to the superintendent before that meeting and he heard the concern and echoed that um he would be addressing that so I think that's part of it I think we we definitely need a list of topics where we going discuss but if we're constantly doing this and we feel like we're in a board meeting the whole time I I I think it's necessarily conducive to getting anything done um as far as the direction of the board and what what we're going to do so um I would like to see that change and looking forward to those things but um it is always a challenge I I wonder and as technology permits um looking at a
100time that's not perhaps um I mean what's prohibiting us from doing it on a Saturday when everybody can get together you know what I mean and having a a really spending a you know a day together you know anything I've done a corporate retreat we're we're I'm not asking you guys to do on a whole weekend but we've sat on a Saturday and we've had you know seven eight hours and we really you know um do a deep dive into topic so I guess that's where I'm end it because I'm rambling now but thank you Mr Keys Mr sharpless you're recognized sure I would I would say um the only other time I've had a a retreat as a school board member was whenever we went to poke State College on Highway 60 um their
101their technology campus and we had our half day Retreat I felt that that was really conducive we got to see each other and um to Echo a few of the board members sentiments I felt that was more of a um an atmosphere of uh where we could talk like board member field said where we could see each other face to face um so I definitely agree that maybe not the dis be the place for this um I'll also say whenever that email was sent out um about ranking our our preferences on the different topics I didn't take that as we were going to address every single topic on that list I took that as we ranked the our preferences and then we could address the ones that as a board rast the top first and
102then if we wanted to address the other ones we could um so that I I don't NE necessarily think that we have to go through and and check all the boxes all the way down that list um that being said uh I do think some more information um about uh various um people that might provide those kind of trainings I I feel like I mean the first one we just had superintendent um and some staff I thought I was very productive thought it was a good one um and right now with the financial constraints we have I mean we're going to be talking about um close session here in a little bit negotiations I don't know spending more money to bring different um presenters in would be the Optics I would like to see unless
103there's a very valid reason for that so if we can get a list of our topics that we want to address how the professional development could match that in a cost effective fiscally responsible way then I think that's important that's all thank you Mr sharpless Miss Fields you're recognized thank you I think that there is much value in the masterboard training however there's no value if we don't know what the subject are that we can choose from and I think that when we have an opportunity to have an honest discussion in an open area not behind the disc but in a I think a more conducive environment I think we really need to have discussion on it's it's evident that everyone does not want to do training with the Florida School Board Association and why
104why is that I think that that's something that we all need to hear because they might have a Viewpoint that we don't have uh I've never had any uh thing that was I would say not of value coming from the Florida School Board Association but someone else might have not had anything of value and I think we need to hear from everyone and then make the best decision that we can and at the end of the day as superintendent H said we have a budget for some things and I know that things uh that we might have done in the past uh now is completely uh different for others uh so I think we just have to be open-minded and do what is best for the overall good of the school district and our students
105I think that's why we all are here and I think that's what we need to keep in the Forefront of our mind thank you Miss Fields Miss Miller you recognized I want to mention another Retreat location that we had was at our Clinic remember years ago they met at the clinic in that uh conference room because we want to keep it low cost as much as I too as a new board member was asking what hotel would be hosting our Retreat Travis I'm sorry Mr keys that um we are you know we usually find a good spot and our fiscally conservative with our dollars and that's what we need to be reminded of and I think to miss Phil's point being in a room where we can talk about the needs of our board um
106at one point communication was very difficult on this board communication with the superintendent was very difficult on this board I do not find that right now um and so I think that luckily we have seven people from seven different Avenues of life and we all bring uh we all bring quality um expertise and we're able to communicate that I think my only um my only input is without being you know without going into details are how we function organizationally within our Board office is probably not at its best and that's not to anyone's fault other than the expectations have not been laid out the job descriptions have not been reviewed things like that the organizational piece and if I was to say where you know that would be a lead for me and that's not
107anything that pul Vision or Board of our fsba um in the past we reached out to fsba to help in that area but that's not something that they are having expertise in um and so we need to talk about our our vision for what our board and how it functions together um is the organizational piece and so I think the transparency of dollars is really the main factor here what do we need and how much are we going to pay for that we've talked about fsba I see that you've listed the prices here we've talked about the money that's spent and we need to be in a room together and discuss um our vision and our expectations of how we spend the taxpayers dollars and so so I think having a retreat to talk about
108that first before we go on further is probably ideal and we can I don't I also do not love it here I actually thought we were going to be in the old boardroom which was a little smaller and closer together um but and I know they're open to the public I do not know there's a requirement to film it so I don't know that that's necessary I I don't I would um I came as a public Community member and set at the ones at the um at the clinic and it was valuable and I just came for a short amount of time so that's always aail able to our constituents um so I do agree looking for another venue is probably important thank you thank you Miss Miller Mr Keys you're recognized nothing just some
109some playful banter I didn't say anything about hotel I mean we can meet in a cow pasture you know anyways all right very good Mr Keys Miss Wyatt you're recognized thank you I would request that before we meet on the 11th that we have a full outline of the topics that we're wanting to talk about for the next four sessions so then that we have 30 minutes of that on the 11th that we can delay something that's on there till the next one but we need 30 minutes at that com at that um Retreat I think to discuss what the plan is for the rest of the Retreats I don't know how we can you know I think Mr Keys kind of alluded to this I don't know how we can find a facilitator for
110something that we don't know what we're talking about um but I think that we need to make sure that we're not just hiring a facilitator to hire a facilitator but that we actually have something of value for them to to facilitate um because I think much of that could be done by by staff or even really is just a matter of us needing to have a Frank conversation amongst ourselves um so that's my thoughts but I would ask that we have the time on the 11th to have a full conversation about it with all of the information because I don't know that we've been provided that to date all right thank you Miss Wyatt any other comments on this all right very good so it sounds like uh we can again approach this conversation our
111next Retreat date and uh all opinions will be heard and then at that point we'll just come to a consensus as a board the direction that um we would like to move at this point Miss White You're recognized and I'm sorry can we get the information before the 11th so that if we do have want to look at other facilitators we can do that before we can have that information available on the 11th to talk about not it's just going to kick it down the road again right and who are you directing that to as far as what are the chair I would think no I think that is not my responsibility to gather so you're asking me to gather research on other facilitators no on the we need to know what topics we're wanting
112to cover which that was the survey that was sent out they were what are all of these topics that we're we're planning to cover before MH over the next five sessions what are we wanting a facilitator to cover to just bring in a facilitator to what are they facilitating yeah know I I I hear you I think that probably needs to be directed the superintendent I mean at this point he's handled all of these topics and have taken feedback from you all on what those topics would be if if you would like to direct the superintendent to do that but I don't necessarily know that that's his role so okay so what are you asking besides the agenda that we have in alignment for our next Retreat agendas for the what are the topics that
113we are going to cover on the 11th on the and the following three meetings that we have set aside um you okay so I'm going to jump in since part I'm being pulled into this conversation anyway so you have the agenda for the 11th now I I'm listening to the board I made the modifications to and and again these first two meetings were based off your rank prior PR ization and keep in mind board members you had the option to fill in a blank if one of the topics that you are not interested in was not listed and I only received one response from one of you adding that to that topic although I will say that another board member spoke to that similar topic with me but did not submit it electronically so is
114there it was not ranked high but it is there um and so I did take the top ones I left that full day one in case the board wanted to pursue additional training specific to um masterboard training I can work with Miss Vega and we can work with fsba I've already emailed fsba while we're here asking them to send me a list of Topics by each day of training because it seems more like the the board may have an interest and if it if that's a way to unify the board in this initiative is to have you look at all the topics that are typically addressed that training and then rank prioritize those again as far as what the overall board finds of value and then other board members can pursue whatever gaps were left
115or whatever topics were not addressed on their own and that's that's something we can do I don't know any other facilitators that are out there and and and respectfully I don't know that that's a good use of my time or anyone else's time so let me look at those topics first happy to bring those back to you as far as the 11th I'm in the process of modifying it based off the the request I just received so you still have to cover governance and roles in the morning that was a place where several of you wanted to address and I think Miss Miller spoken to it today specific about how the board office functions and the employees that the board supervises function and what your expectations of them are there have been performance concerns raised
116from time to time and it's not it's not appropriate to address an individual if the job duties and responsibilities are not aligned to the board's interests evaluating someone because they don't perform a function that you feel they should versus what's clearly delineated in their job duties is unfair to the individual that's a gotcha so it sounds to me and I know Miss Miller and I and others have had conversations similar to this there's an opportunity to review what your expectations are ensure that those are reflected within your job descriptions that the board manages including my own There's an opportunity so that was going to be covered in part under governance and roles and responsibilities as as well as the request from the board to have a discussion about some contractual things with me um so
117those there are topics that are already listed I sent you the update then I would move School culture and climate because we were not able to address that as under the whole child when we did strategic plan review yesterday and we looked at academic goals so my hope would be to incorporate that in there for us and then what I can do is move that last period of time to provide at least 30 minutes for the board to have 30 or 45 minutes for the board to have additional discussion about other interests other topics before we populate the remaining meeting agendas that was really the intent um I did try to do the best I could with the information I had to create those schedules for you sometimes there's going to be too much time
118sometimes there's not going to be enough time but it sounds like you want to spend more time especially on this day and so what I would say is to anyone and and I have been in touch with staff we are not required to record we're not required to provide minutes for these meetings we do quite honestly because my old eyes and memor sometimes can't keep up with all the things you guys thre out there even with help I want to make sure that I'm following up on all the things so we typically try to and so what we're looking at are alternative locations we can go and these are not there's no cost to these venues so absolutely we can reloc the intent could be to try and find one within each one of your
119respective areas which I think would be a deal for each of you right minimize your travel and impact and so let but let me work with staff to see what we can do to you and maybe you guys become a pilot group for one of the AI note taking tools um let's be honest we got to Pilot it anyways so we might as well use this as an opportunity um to capture those that information so and that helps with Miss Winchester and Miss Vega to make sure that they have an accurate summary of the discussion um and we can always reference that if we need to so let me work from that so so to miss Wyatt's Point M Mr chair what I'd like to do is let me tweak this agenda further and send
120it back out to the board for a feedback and then once it's solidified you and I can discuss that and then when Miss missina responds to me I'll share that with you we'll put that out in a survey to the board to see what specific topics they may want to pursue and then we can schedule that that full day around that um but I know we we can talk about that further all right thank you superintendent I just encourage board that you do want to have minutes of of of any of the meetings that you have whether they be work session or special meetings or regular meetings I do think if you're going to have a meeting of the school board under whatever you call it I think Sunshine would require you to have minutes
121indeed of a meeting I think he just misspoke yeah no I I'm I'm I'm sure of that was I just encourages required to it's I'm still encouraging that's why we want to use the AI tool or or that's why we've had the Retreat here is so that staff wouldn't have to relocate all the AV Equipment to another site but if if the board wants to have that and I don't disagree with Mr Murphy we should have that record well I think but we're talking about two different things maybe we're talking about an audio recording that is not required minut but minutes of a meeting and a summary and form I believe that the law does require there's three things notice minutes and available and open to the public those are the three things they're not
122taking any action correct okay so I think you know and but the audio and all that other stuff I agree with you I think that's above and beyond certainly Sunshine Law it might help our constituency and the public to you know County as big as Pope County um might be helpful but I I do think um that we need to have minutes of any meeting whether they be not necess audio recorded minutes I don't know we're very technologically advanced um but we still need to have minutes whatever they may look like at any meetings of the board in my mind thank you Mr Murphy Miss Wyatt anything else I just want for before you go into your dive I think my understanding of what when we were going to talk about the topics was that
123it was going to be a deep dive into our budget and resource allocations not an hour but we were going to spend a couple hours going into each of those topics um because think they each are justified by a couple hours so if we don't have topics to discuss beyond that uh then why are we meeting is my question um so I look forward to seeing what you're bringing back but I do think that each of those topics justify much more time than they're currently allotted for then I would appreciate more timely feedback from the board you've had this for some time and you had the PowerPoint presented to you back in January about what the rank prioritization of topics were and again so it I'm not I understand and and I'll take the criticism
124in the feedback but to do so here in this venue at this time when there was an appropriate timeline even though I sent out an adjustment yesterday after our Retreat I should have received that information aside from this meeting so that I could have better prepared for it it's not because I'm caught off guard the reality of it is these topics will come up and that's not the issue is I'm trying to assist the board with having conversations that are pertinent to the operations of the district so that I have a clear understanding what your goals and objectives are so I can fulfill those my job is not to create those my job is to meet your expectations I cannot do that if we lack effective communication and so this is an example though my
125contract's an example of ineffective communication and that's one of the reasons why it's on the agenda it's not a salary discussion it's a discussion that I haven't had a timely evaluation in four years months at a time I don't get the appropriate feedback in my evaluation as stipulated in my contract so these are not things as we discussed yesterday in Retreat that I should have to bring to the board's attention this this is your contract to manage with me as an employee it puts me in a very difficult position to have to self- advocate for something that can become adversarial and contentious so I'm just going to ask for better communication of expectations because I don't know that this is the venue where that this needs to be brought up and I just would appreciate
126that moving forward so if I send you things and you're looking at the agendas please take the time to provide me the feedback saying I don't think we have enough time here I'd like to see more time carved out because I then won't be prepared to bring the right information or have the staff there to address the topics that you very well may want to address I don't disagree a deep dive on the budget could be an entire day but I don't know what specificity you're even going to be looking for so I need that feedback in a timely manner so that I can start positioning my staff to pull that information um because something as simple as trying to figure out what the timeline is when the board authorizes a pay increase for a
127group of employees how much time do we require to reprogram our system to make sure that we can cut that check by a specified date so that's part of the discussion you know title dollars federal funds how they're allocated there's a lot to that just we could spend an entire day on federal funds alone on federal allocations so if you'll just give me more specific feedback about what you would like happy to meet that expectation for you because the retreat is not for me ultimately I I rephrase that the retreat provides me the guidance I that's why I've been so insistent upon having these Retreats we can't just rely on Workshop sessions to accomplish the work of the district because there's not enough time to do that so I apologize Miss Wy if that came
128across as rude at all because you're an amazing board member and you and I can have honest conversations so that it was not that I was not intended to come across that way well and I apologize because I thought we were still waiting for agendas for the last three so you are you are we don't have those so your feedback would have come had we gotten those and they weren't appropriate yes ma'am Miss Fields you recognized I would say this is not the venue superintendent H is correct this is not the venue this venue was yesterday when we had the retreat at the end of the uh the the morning I believe you said if board members had comments or Reflections and I think superintendent I did as well and so I think that we
129need to to be mindful of uh of what where and when we have conversations that will carry us to where we want to go without anybody's feelings getting hurt or possibly uh feeling like something is not uh going to go down the right path cuz we're trying to build a team I believe we are we should be building a team and sometimes team members don't have the same thoughts but I think at the end of the day we always have to come back to the centerfold of why we are here which everyone here know why we're here and I believe deep down in my heart that you all are here for the same reason I'm here which is to make sure that we provide the best quality education for our students and to take care
130of our employees as best we can thank you Miss Fields Miss Miller I think before um we go on to keep scheduling things out that because of how packed our agendas are and they can you can take a whole day to talk about budgets and we might run over I think we really need to start meeting and just and then talk about what from those meetings like Miss Fields just referenced there might be conversation of where the need is for the training to start talking about we don't we don't know what we don't know and until people get in a room and start talking about the needs you're going to learn that there might be seven completely different needs um but we need to align the goals of the board which should not be difficult
131I I and I'm struggling with why it's so difficult so maybe by the when we start meeting we can have that conversation and then decide what the trainings will look like I don't there's not a rush to start booking people to come train I don't you know that's not we need to meet as a board first and decide what the needs are so I think tomorrow or the ne when we start meeting with the first Retreat that might or the second Retreat it may be helpful um because like I said we haven't when we start talking about BG budget and and what that looks like and contract reviews we might need a whole day on contracts um but we won't know that until we start meeting so I'm not in for booking anybody else or
132even getting suggested bookings before we know what we need before we know what we need thank you thank you Miss Miller all right I don't see anything else on that one we will move down to number two which is the 504 Federal litigation and Miss Miller you recognized I'm recognized again thank you chair um this is a topic that I asked to be added to the agenda and it's and like most things that are happening right now um especially things involving legislation it can change day by day um as of recently this um Texas lawsuit I'm going to I'm going to say the other party's name incorrectly but this is an reference to a lawsuit that is currently underway and as recently some of it has been stayed or at least part of it has
133been stayed as what I'm what I'm getting from our resources but I get a lot of calls on this so I just want to give a little history on what the 504 is how many students have a 504 and then I'm requesting that our district attorney or staff kind of watch what happens with this lawsuit because it will affect us um based on the outcome and so Florida has joined a lawsuit with seven 17 States total 16 States the original lawsuit had a lot of parts to it one of the parts that they focused on was um concerning adding a disability so 50 let me tell you what 504 is very quickly for people listening who don't know what the 54 is um a long time ago kids with disabilities did not have to be
134allowed in your schools in 1973 the Rehabilitation Act was passed and Nixon it went through Nixon's Administration and that's uh it created The Five 4 which was part of that it's accessibility 504 says anything that gets Federal funding has to be accessible to people of all abilities it's not Ada that didn't come until George H bush in 1990 this is in the 70s so what that that came in it wasn't like sometimes happens good intended laws but they're not carried out so by about 1976 is77 Carter Administration was coming in that might that's about around that time um some Advocates were disappointed that none of the laws had been implemented so there was a huge thing Across the Nation lots of ciens and protest if you have not heard of Judy human you should look
135her up the documentary on the protest inside of a federal building for 30 days I learned a lot from just watching that I saw what people were going through Judy was a lady who used a wheelchair in the state of New York denied her right to teach would not certify her to teach because she used a wheelchair so this is in the late 70s so most of us on this board this is when our within our lifetime so what that did was open up Congressional conversation about why it hadn't been implemented so that's when you saw schools being everything being implemented where schools or anybody receiving Federal funding they had demonstrations of getting out of their Wheelchairs and laying on the ground in Detroit in front of buses city buses that would not allow them
136to ride this was a huge Rights Movement for people with disabilities it said that every child is entitled to free and appropriate public education with their peers this is my soap box if it sounds like I'm on a Brant so what happened was through the 80s there were more lawsuits you know you saw institutions closed these people weren't in schools because they were in institutions um you saw the IEP come into effect the difference between an IEP and a 504 is an IEP gives you Services an IEP ends at 12th grade 504s go to college so when I started pulling data on how many kids we have with 504s I also reached out to pulk State these are accommodations made these are accommodations such as more time on test these are accommodations as you can
137um you have an inhaler that you need to use you have an accommodation for visual you need Braille these are all accommodations these are not in an IEP these are accommodations to give you access to the material that your friends peers typical students have these can be a short term you break your arm you need a 504 because you need a note taker if you've ever seen our lat team we have devices that kids can read into that will will speak back to them those kinds of things are your 504s um it's giving you everything you need to put you at the same level as your peer sitting next to you the extra time test is what the College Board recognizes so if you have a high schooler and you've looked at our data here
138most of our 504s are in that nth and 10th grade year that's because those are your test taking years so you have a high schooler they may have ADHD they may have another disability and they need that extra time on a test they need a quiet room to take their test in these are all 504 accommodations so you can imagine when this lawsuit started I don't think they understood the intent because there's a section of the lawsuit and section D and it has nothing to do with what new administrations have added which I'm all for going back to revising how people can qualify for supports because we deal with that all the time but there is a section of it that requires that says that the entire 504 is unconstitutional and they want it to
139disbanded and so luckily they and this was filed in October luckily there's been a stay and I think it's because they've heard from people and now they're saying we're going to go back and revisit it but as someone who works in this world and with legal documents nobody's come to take that section out yet and until they do I'm very concerned um we asked for the we asked for the information from the superintendent we have over 7,000 students with 504s so what I I wanted to bring that knowledge to light because you will get calls and I've gotten several calls even people in colleges now asking if their 504s are going to be taken and I'm requesting that we have staff watch this lawsuit and if it does move forward with dismantling the 504 talk
140about budget decisions like that is going to be a time where we have to talk about who's going to step in for those supports uh will no longer be mandated to do it um but those kids will be you know 11th grader you take all their supports away and make them sit for the college boards I don't know that we would want to do that as a district so I'm asking that if this moves forward that we have a work session on what the 504s look like in this district and what how we will step in or I hope decide to step in to continue supports if the 504s are removed thank you chair thank you Miss Miller all right we are moving down to uh sgr General Council applicant pool review and I I
141was yeah I think the proposed time for this was 90 minutes nice I tried to get through my portion quickly yeah I think that's a good recommendation I know that you need have some technology needs as well so we can transition that as well so let's take a 15minute um break and we will be back at 2:30 that [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] la [Music] oh [Music] to [Music] all right [Music] n [Music] d [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah o [Music] make it happen there Shar we make it all right board members welcome back to our work session on February 25th uh we are now moving to E3 and we're going to ask Mr Thomas to
142come forward so glad that you are joining with us today good to see you Mr Thomas thank you appreciate that you are recognized thank you well um it's been a little over a month I think since we were last together to talk about the recruitment process associated with your general Council position and so uh following that meeting uh we received consensus and direction from the board as far as some minor changes to make in the brochure and then proceeded with marketing the position and so today the opportunity is to meet with you to bring you up to speed to uh identify the various applicants that have applied for this position and the goal here as we work our way through this process will be ultimately for you to help identify those candidates that you feel
143there is sufficient interest that you want to learn more about uh and then I'll talk a little bit about what those candidates will then go through in the process and then I also want to always anytime I'm before the board as we have several meetings and events going forward I always like to tell you kind of what's Happening next what to prepare for next and then just confirm dates and times and things of that nature as well so with that as a background um just as I've mentioned most of the time we are involved in searches rarely do we have candidates that reach out and talk directly to you as board members or to um any of your staff if that happens we just ask you to direct those individuals all back to me so
144that we can make sure that all the information and all the candidates get the same information same sort of time information things like that as well so um I want to highlight today I know it's it's everyone once to the minute we start to see candidates want to get to the Finish Line um but I want to just kind of identify a little bit about where we are in the process and what comes next and the and the roles that uh the candidates as well as you as the as the governing body who have a chance to go forward and I I used the slide before really we're at the point of a funnel process with the front end we've got candidates that have applied for this position we know a little about a lot
145of those folks only because they're telling us what they tell us about their their background and their experience now some cases I may know a candidate from another search or I've the candidate have reached out and spoken to me and in that case I'll be glad to inform you with whether were additional insights I might be able to provide uh on that regard but at the point recognizing right now we're just learning about these folks the The Next Step we're going to learn a lot more and that's that point of once we've identified who you want to go forward as semi-finalist we're going to be learning much more about their management style their background why they left their other positions why this position is of interest to them either personally professionally and we're going to
146also ask about their background and skill sets as it relates to some of the challenges and opportunities that we identified in the position profile brochure and so at that point it gets a lot easier to kind of digest what these candidates bring to the table than simply a cover letter resume so please keep in mind you're not selecting your final candidates today the goal is just to get them to the next level to then learn more about them and at that point those semi-finalists will then be considered ultimately become finalists now we will certainly do some work as they become semi-finalists in terms of media searches and I'm much more engaged with each of the candidates at that stage of the game as well and recognize that after they have completed their work as semi-finalist
147information is all back to you you've had a chance to digest that information I'll be back with you and we'll select the finalist at that point we even do a deeper dive we get into much more deeper media searches we do criminal history credit background reference checks and all that so that's later right now we're still towards the top end of that funnel so just try to keep that in mind we're not going to know everything about these candidates at this stage nor is it appropriate for us to know that at this stage of the game so um so just in terms of what we did after we uh we met with you last uh we got Direction and on how to make a few tweaks and adjustments to the profile those were done we
148went ahead and marketed those positions this slide identifies how we marketed those efforts through our internal efforts and through our social media platforms and all the state and National advertisements that we taking place above and beyond that and I mentioned before this is a unique position there's only a handful of obviously in the State uh po count or County um school jurisdictions and so there's only a handful of people that do this job uh but above and beyond that we said we think that there may be some other skill sets in other qualified candidates that are members of the Florida bar that might be interested in this opportunity that work with cities and counties and administrative functions and Personnel type functions as well and so uh what I did is I I scoured through the
149Florida bar uh material to get a sense of it we identified about 400 candidates that were either board certified in state local um State local and County government uh also identifi those that are involved that are certified in education uh and other types of administrative law that we thought would be a ideal fit to at least be aware of this opportunity so I sent individual emails to each one of those candidates with a copy of the brochure the links to the information to the brochure talked about what we were looking for and said listen if you're interested please you know consider it and give me a call if you'd like to learn more about it but also if you're not interested please let me know or if you could forward it on to anybody in
150your network that you think might be interested that for whatever reason may not be aware of this as well so that was part of the Outreach as well and then above and beyond that I went back to all the different searches that I've done in in City and County attorneys here in the state and reached out to those folks to let them know of this position as well and so that was kind of our out Outreach we knew that uh you had not had much success in the past so hopefully we figured with that additional shaking of those respective trees uh that we'd be able to to round up some additional candidates as well so with that in mind uh we ended up with a pool of 14 candidates that was about what I thought
151my sense was we'd be in the neighborhood of 20 I had a few other folks that were kind of on the on the limb I was trying to get them in and out for one reason or another they just it wasn't the timing wasn't right or what have you um I want to highlight the fact as you'll see in this case uh clearly um one of the requirements in this position was to be a member of the Florida bar so that automatically reduces some candidates of state but that being said as you'll see from this list we have some folks that are uh members of the Florida bar but are residing out of state they either went to law school they took the bar here or what have you uh unlike other states uh Florida
152requires you to sit for the bar there's not a reciprocity where you take an ethics course and then you can come into the process so that has a way of impacting that so we have out of these 14 candidates one candidate that I'm not going to be presenting today but you have seen in the background is a candidate from the Virgin Islands um who has expressed interest in the position but did not indicate that he was a member of the bar was not eligible to practice nor did indicate he was ready to sit for the bar at anytime soon so I did not include that candidate in your material although you've seen you've seen them in the material I've sent to you uh previously um we have um one other candidate that I have included
153um because I particular we'll get through that he the last candle as we go through the the process but he has a pretty extensive background in educational law up in New York state um and has indicated that he was planning on sitting for the bar and has registered for that in July so I've left that in for discussion purposes at the end of the day you can make a decision doesn't technically qualify but I felt has given his background there was sufficient interest that you might be interested in in at least learning more about them but that set your call at the end and then unfortunately we lost one candidate U Mr pegler uh Jeff pegler who had just seen in the material I provided um he uh on Thursday of last week had reached
154out to me and indicated the timing just was not right we played some phone tag back and forth I tried to see if there was something we could do to assist in allowing him to stay in the in the pool in some way shape or form um he was able to to Circle back with me and just said the timing he's interested in the opportunity but the timing just is not right for him to pick up and consider a relocation at this stage of the game so at the end we're have a few less candidates than what you had originally seen for those reasons as well so uh a little bit of the background I've left the entire demographic pool just so you got a snapshot of see what happened there 14 applicants 10 were
155male four were female and then you can see the breakdown in terms of the uh the racial and ethnic backgrounds of those candidates as well so as I mentioned at the front end of this presentation um we are looking largely at the material that the candidates have provided us and whatever understanding we can get um from any conversations we may have had with them or any other information we may have from if they've been involved in another search that we have been involved with in the past and might know them so as I said we're we're back at the top end of that that funnel that I described earlier we're going to learn a lot more about their style and their background and attributes uh Beyond what's included in the material that you have before
156you today so just recognize that'll be forthcoming so what I'd like to do next is um we've sent you the candidates in an applicant book with their cover letters and their resumés those are in alphabetical order that's how I've set up this PowerPoint presentation so don't put any Credence if somebody's first or last it really is first alphabet alphabetized by their first name as well so as we'll work our way through this so the first candidate um is Adam Patton uh Adam is a resident here in pul County as you can see his current position is General council at the the Florida Department of citrus uh here in Barto has been in that capacity since 2023 uh so serving obviously as a lead in a organizational function that would serve with elected boards and appointed
157board members certainly governance issues things of that nature would be um involved public records request uh collaboration with state and federal agencies a lot of the type of work work that your general counsel would be involved with here as well uh prior to that position he was an owner and attorney at patent law his own law firm up in Lakeland uh from 2017 to 2023 um at that stage um he was involved with u largely um uh personal injury family law bankruptcy civil and small claims court activity uh handling depositions mediations and presentations of witness evidence a traditional kind of a uh individual owner operator of a of a criminal and personal injury type law attorney background uh prior to that uh was also with a firm of Patton and dicks in Lakeland Florida for
158a year uh similar type of work that he had would have done in the patent law uh position I just described and then also prior to that in private practice was a u an attorney with mckendrick law from 2015 to 2016 small legal firm basically similar types of of experience and and uh activities that he would have been involved with in that role uh as many candidates as you'll see in this process start off um especially if they're involved on the criminal side will become assistant State Attorneys that's certainly the case with Mr Patton he was an assistant State Attorney in the 10th judicial circuit here in BTO uh served in that role from 2011 to 2015 and traditionally that would be in the criminal processes associated with the the uh the prosecuting attorney's Pro
159efforts in the state attorney's office here as well um as a jurist doctor background as all your candidates will have a bachelor's degree in political science and also as a Florida certified contract manager I've tried to identify if they have any particular certifications or skill sets above and beyond what you've seen just on a sidebar note he's indicated that all his children are currently attending or have graduated from your P County public school so he's very familiar with the operation and certainly welcome the opportunity as a as a n as a resident here in P County going forward um so what I'll preface I'm going to work my way through this hopefully you've had a chance to kind of uh review this material before so I'll do this at a high level if there's questions
160I can certainly address them if you want me to wait to get to the end if you want to come back to a certain candidate that's fine the goal here is I'm going to be asking each one of you to go through a rating process so as we go through these if you've not yet done so they ask you to assign a number a numerical value of a one this a candidate that you'd like to learn more about in advance to as as a semi-finalist to go to the next step uh a two is a numerical order of a candidate that you might be interested in if just you're not necessarily feeling they're the strongest but they're you certainly welcome to learn more about that candet in the next step and then assigning a value
161of three for any candidate that you just don't think has the right background or skill set that you're interested in learning more about as well and I'll walk you through a tally process we'll do as we go forward uh before we wrap up today to try to help you uh narrow this pool from the pool that I'm describing to you to something smaller that would be semi-finalist so your next candidate um Alero auko um this is a candidate that U comes from the Henry County School District in Georgia he is a member of the Florida bar as you'll see he is uh is certified here in the State of Florida uh currently he is also a Florida native so he he he certainly comes looks to come back to uh to the state uh in
162his present position is director of legal compliance for Henry County uh he's working with school district members and uh board members Associated Regulatory Compliance issues on litigation matters uh generally works with the school district employees and community members concerning State local and federal laws regulations and policies also working with outside counsel as your your general Council has done here handling U managing outside litigation and outside uh contract attorneys uh and also does a lot of work specifically with the Florida Department of Education and the office of civil rights and any investigations that might take place as well um he was also um prior to that a position education Advocate as state attorney in Fulton County Juvenile Court up in Atlanta served in that role for a few years in that capacity uh was involved in
163working with juvenile CL cents related uh dealing with um uh Medicare disability Social Security benefits drafted various memorandums and associations legal permit processes dealing with youth and and some economically challenged U uh clients that it would be involved with there uh prior to that he was a state a staff attorney with Clayton County State staff attorney's office in Jonesboro Georgia uh for a year uh in that handle basically was involved uh working with the Clayton County Board of County Commissioners department heads and other County officials in various County state and federal agency matters General litigation type General uh administrative type functions as well and then was an assistant director district attorney with the Henry County District Attorney's Office in MCD Georgia uh from 2018 to 2022 2020 excuse me uh handled uh specifically juvenile criminal
164cases there so working with youths as well and then um has done some uh teaching as assistant uh Professor with Argus University online in a remote capacity uh and uh has also been a special education attorney with a group called LEAP program director Black Rose foundation for children in Atlanta uh Georgia uh that is associated with um special education and school discipline laws for low income and Foster Care children uh and also worked on children working on individualized Election program meetings um determination meetings student Tri tribunal hearings things of that nature dealing with student um disciplinary actions as well so it does come from Georgia but brings a wealth of experience in um local government and some criminal aspects but also specifically uh working in school systems uh be it in the state of Georgia
165next candidate is Adrienne treasure uh Adrienne treasure is currently an assistant City attorney with the city of West Palm Beach down in South Florida um and has been in that capacity since 20123 she's been an attorney for about 24 years and brings about 13 years of uh specific um in-house legal council um for government attorneys both state and federal type activities um had served as a senior attorney I'm sorry as assistant City attorney is involved in basically um associated with challenges to ordinances bid protests property operations litigation um handles legal research federal state local laws city ordinances Court decisions assisting in Human Resources Finance public kind of the gamut that you would anticipate out of a City attorney or assistant City attorney position with with a a large organization uh with the city of West
166Palm uh prior to that was a senior attorney um with the Florida rural Legal Services also in West Palm Beach for a year and worked in collaboration with the with the Palm Beach County Emergency rental assistance program and providing eviction inovation and homelessness uh prevention options had done some work as an attorney with the YMCA and West Palm Beach uh dealing specifically with uh domestic violence and shelter protection and survivors and was also an assistant County attorney um in Broward County uh attorney's office in Fort Lauderdale uh for a short period of time handling um basically that work human and Social Services departments within Broward County handling contracts memorandums of understanding personel Services contracts and interlocal agreements and then was a director of compliance and of government relations and Licensing with a group called The
167Learning Center Incorporated in Deerfield Beach um that's a a group that's involved with Foster CH foster care children and they were a community-based um organization to assist in in helping uh and and providing legal capacity and helping parents that want to be foster children and being linked with foster children in their program so once again working with youth in South Florida I was part of that an in-house legal council with a group called Child net Incorporated um Child net was a similar type of of um a program in terms of working with uh Youth and and uh that that program was also a um um uh uh uh training uh daycare center type operations as well facilities across the the lower part of the State uh had served as a senior attorney with the Department
168of Children and Families in West Palm Beach and also in Tallahassee fer uh so basically some DCF experience work and then also a senior attorney with the Department of Children and Families in West Palm Beach I'm sorry that was a duplication there that should have been eliminated um the last piece was an assistant City attorney with the city of Rivier Beach a local City attorney position um for three years down in South Florida working with all sorts of different traditional functions and board government types of activities as well next candidate is Bradley or Brad Butler Jr um Brad is uh currently serving as a senior attorney with the Florida Department of Health and office of medical marijuana use in Tallahassee and alacha Florida he been in those roles since 20124 uh basically uh as you
169can see from the background uh handling legal counsel advice to the A genc in terms of Medicare working on um um programs Integrity resolution of overpayments rule regulations things of that nature uh was a senior attorney with the Florida Agency for healthc care administration the office of general counsel also up in Tallahassee and a couple different capacities or a couple different times in his career um basically working with um uh operations of um Integrity administrative payments functions like that uh next position was a research Contracting officer with the office of clinical research with the University of Florida up in Gainesville uh in that capacity um was dealing uh confidentially disclosure agreements data use agreements uh clinical trial applications and agreements for human subject medical research things uh PRI prior to that served as the assistant
170general counsel for the Flor Department of Environmental Protection the office of General Council in Tallahassee from 2016 to 2018 um and was also involved there uh doing with litigation sections so basically enforcement litigation and then uh was a legislative analyst and attorney with the Florida house of representatives from 2013 to 2016 as well uh has a jurist doctor's degree and then a bachelor's degree in Business Administration and he is also board certified in state federal and administrative practices as well next candidate Carl Brody uh Carl is the assistant City attorney with the city of Tampa Florida has been in that role since 2020 uh handles his responsibilities uh in in uh Encompass Human Resources fire rescue Parks and Recreation neighborhood and Community Development public records equal business opportunity human rights arts and culture and Ada
171coordination also certainly handles public records uh meetings transfers uh trainer for City staff in terms of Records requests things of that nature so uh Municipal type functions there I was a team leader with the US uh small business administration as a virtual position for a period of time in 2020 uh basically overseeing Disaster Assistance and loan applications for fraud potential fraud detection work uh prior of that was an assistant County Attorney at pelis County uh our neighbors to the west of us uh from 97 to 2020 uh the Departments he was involved with there are human services Justice and consumer services Communications Economic Development the 911 system Emergency Management the county sheriff and civil forfeitures uh and also handled um specifically work with the construction licensing board so have understanding of contracts for construction and
172and contract disputes things of that nature as well and then um you can see some of his earlier work he had been an edun professor and also um uh working with a staff attorney at Illinois Senate and minority leader uh earlier in his career as well uh as I mentioned uh jur doctor as well he is also board certified in city county and local government law has that additional credential okay next candidate is Jim green currently general counsel to the superintendent in Pasco County schools at Lando Lakes Florida uh similar position that you have with your uh Council uh working with superintendent Hyde here uh basically involved um with uh working specifically in um um comparable size operation um obviously a little smaller than pulk but comparable size and function uh handles responsibilities as a
173staff attorney would for for a superintendent and would certainly be uh well versed of the operations of of a day-to-day function of a school system similar to yours uh his background prior to that was with the Florida or the Federal Bureau of Investigation uh served as a chief General division Council uh in Tampa from 2009 to 2023 uh comprehensive executive management Insight programs skill sets all that largely with the investigated associations with the FBI and then prior to that served as a deputy chief counsil of the Federal Bureau of Investigations uh in Washington DC for a couple years as well from there um and part of that he was involved actually as an agent in the FBI so kind of has worked his way up through and is now in the education Arena next candidate
174is Jasmine uh Gibbs uh Jasmine um is uh actually located here in Florida you'll see she's doing work in in Washington DC it's a remote type operation position she identified that to us so we're aware of that so she uh hails from uh the Orlando area um she has done a variety of work with US Department of Education Office of civil rights largely as working as a supervisor attorney and also a general attorney um had done work specifically uh dealing with planning analysis evidence and ensuring resolution and negotiating settlement agreements programs uh dealing with their office of civil rights um and and Title 9 type issues and concerns similar type work as a general uh attorney uh in that capacity with the the US Department of Education I previously served as associate general counsel or
175Equity officer and title N9 coordinator for Santa Fe College up in Gainesville uh obviously Title 9 is something I suspect you deal with pretty regularly in this operation uh brings that experience um working specifically with Santa Fe College and also a similar type program working uh with Harvard University up in Cambridge Massachusetts earlier in her career from 2014 to 2016 as well um just as a sidebar note if you may have seen it's not we didn't do all the deep dive in all the the overview that I'm providing here but recognize that uh she started her career as a teacher in the Miami Dade County Public School System uh back in 2006 and served in that capacity in 2010 so I think that was potentially an interest for this opportunity returning to her roots in
176education uh next candidate um Ray P or Jerry uh Ry goes by Ry um Ry C currently serves in a very similar capacity to what you're looking at here a chief legal council with Duval County school system up in Jacksonville um I will tell you Ray reached out to me shortly after we launched this position I was very much interested in the opportunity want to learn a little bit more about it um as a sidebar note his spouse is actually employed in a position here in P County um she's doing that remotely but they have talked about potentially relocating so when this opportunity came about it was a a good fit in that regard and just as a sidebar note uh he you know really was very much interested in learning about this this particular
177position and the opportunity potentially relocate here to P County um so um in that capacity obviously he's doing something very similar to what you're what you're looking at in this capacity here as your general council member um uh he also served in a previous position as chief of legal services with the Nassau County School District up in Fernadina Beach uh for a period in time so brings that local uh local experience as well um certainly um handles Administrative Hearings labor arbitrations I've been involved in those types of conversations that that would be very similar to what you would face here in in the P County District uh prior to that he was a partner in uh con Brooks uh Smith and profed um that's a firm based in Jacksonville uh they also have some local
178operations here in the Tampa area I've worked with a partner of his and some Lego and previous work that I've done as city manager when I was in Lakeland um so we know a common a common member of that particular firm um but he was involved largely at that stage working with private or working with school districts representing superintendents and labor negotiations collective bargaining negotiations labor disputes things like that so coming from the labor aspect in that Arena and then um he is your only candidate that is actually board certified in education there's only about 40 of those candidates I think Statewide so you have one of those of the 40 and then he's also board certified in labor and employment law and as you saw in his cover letter uh that puts him in
179a rarified uh category in terms of board certifications for your your pool that you have before you here as well uh Kevin Henson Uh Kevin is a candidate that I knew from a most recent search I had done a search I've done a number of of City attorney and assistant City attorney searches for the city of Northport Florida Uh Kevin just recently went through a process uh late last year uh for a position of an assistant City attorney for a police legal adviser position with the city of Northport so I've gone I've met him personally has been through one of my searches and he had expressed an interest in in this position as well he currently serves as assistant State Attorney at the State Attorney's Office in the 12th District down in Sarasota it's been
180in that capacity from 2020 to present and then prior to that was working as a private sector law um in with the um Daniels and Hannon Attorneys at Law in Lakewood Ranch uh both before he got his law license and then also afterwards uh that particular firm specialized generally in um they did some criminal law work family law and uh dependency type cases as well uh Kevin's got an interesting background um as you can see he had worked with basically um some public relations and private sector prom tional opportunities including working with NASCAR um had an interest in pursuing law uh so you can see that background he is now you know obviously is an attorney now and and and looks to continue in leadership roles in that area so he brings a different type
181of perspective than some of your other candidates on board but as I said uh Kevin was one of our finalists of a chance to see him and and he was definitely interested in being considered for this opportunity as well uh next candidate is Matt kappus uh Deputy commiss consumer counselor at the Indian indana Office of Consumer counselor U oper operations up in Indianapolis Indiana he been in that role since 2023 um he uh is a little bit of the background he had indicated in his cover letter because his his background doesn't really relate to education as much as some of the other candidates but he wanted he wanted to point out the fact um that his wife's career has been in public school teaching and that was his interest in potentially looking at this position
182they've been considering relocating to Florida be closer to family and this one felt like it might be an opportunity of consideration for him so the role that he feel deals with today up in Indiana is representing rate payers and proceedings before the IND Indiana utility Regulatory Commission and handles negotiations and transactions and and uh consumer relations that might take place with the uh the Pu up there uh prior to that served as an attorney um with various positions with poer and bueri in Indianapolis you can see the various capacities but basically a law firm that provided legal support handling largely a state Administration and business planning and handled trust accounting things of that nature kind of a general General shop and then also held a variety of positions with a group called Gem City Spirits
183a distillery in Frankfurt Indiana and different capacities as well uh and lastly was uh identified as assistant legal and administrative uh component at Rosal stovel Jr and Associates uh that was a uh client relations type firms dealing with technology uh telephone costs and and operations and in uh assisting um uh their operation internally to the functions of the law office uh the next candidate Michael fuo um Michael fuo is a I I've had him as an applicant in another position for uh a City attorney type position or assistant City attorney type position in another uh search that I had done but I've not met him personally but I've certainly seen his candidacy in that that capacity uh currently servicing serving as a senior assistant City attorney with the city of Clearwater Florida I've been in
184that role since 2018 to present uh basically in that function he handles uh community redevelopment agency also their Downtown Development Authority he's also their Chief litigator for any of the lawsuits that are involved with the city that they handle internal um he's handles um uh code enforcement type boards and a variety of other kind of overall General government functions with the City of Clear Water uh and prior to that was a senior associate um attorney with weeder law in St Petersburg Florida for about eight years uh and in that capacity was um serving basically as an assistant County attorney and specialized uh uh areas assisting Hillsboro County and the City of St Petersburg handled litigation disciplinary motions uh patory functions as well for those cities uh another certification is also board certified in city county
185and local government law and your last candidate is uh tan Delaine uh as I mentioned uh tan is not currently a member of the Florida bar he did indicate that he has already registered to sit for the bar and July of 2025 so I was reluctant not to include him but especially because uh his background specifically in in educational law albeit in the state of New York and in New York City um so um I just wanted to make sure you saw his candacy and if there was a desire to consider that we could we could uh we can discuss how you might want to deal with his his application uh but as you can see from his background uh basically uh currently servicing serving as an associate council with Achievement First Achievement First has
186charter schools in a variety of different states up in the Northeast area so certainly working with educational functions from a private charter school and pirate parochial uh and um and public quasi public uh operations up in New York uh New York New York uh also served as an agency attorney with the New York City public schools in New York City from 2017 to 2018 so working directly in the school system as an attorney working with due process complaints filed on behalf of students and parents with special needs things like that I was an agency attorney and policy writer with the New York City Administration for children's services up in New York City as well um was involved with drafting new policies procedures memorandum and other materials related to child welfare or Juvenile Justice and there
187was also a staff attorney within neighborhood Defender service of Harlem Incorporated uh in New York City from 2012 to 2016 in that capacity represented in indent residen of New York County um litigation facing criminal defense practices all aspects of hearing trials criminal operations as well as I said um is a JD but is not uh currently a member of the Florida bar but will not know that till sometime after uh July I would defer to uh your esteemed Council I don't know how quickly you get results after you take the to the bar October and the July exam okay so yeah so it would be that that's a factor of consideration you might not know the results of that until later in the fall at that stage of the game so so those are the
188candidates that um you have in your pool and what I'd like to do is uh I guess I I'll stop there and say was there any questions about I went through those kind of high level and quickly but are there any questions that anyone had about any of those candidates and if so we'll address those if not what I would like to do is is basically bring up a spreadsheet that has all the candidates names and we'll try to get some rankings and see if there's some direction on where you may want to go from there so all right thank you Mr Thomas uh Miss Miller you're the first one you're recognized thanks I and I understand that Mr Thomas had given us a timeline but this is was a lot to get at Friday
189late um and so I've had I'm not super confident in this today only because um I do know people that live in some of the areas that work in the same fields and I would love to have reached out to them and had that time I I think it's more of us the delays on our end to get this process going that I don't want to delay it any longer but this is this is is um it's definitely definitely not the most ideal but I we have several that I think are doing really well in the um in the overview so I look forward to moving along because we can't delay this any longer um I would just have liked to gotten get gotten this a little bit earlier to do more of a not
190a Grady search but more of a background on the grounds questioning I just wanted that on record thanks thank you Miss Miller Miss Fields you're recognized thank you I had a chance to uh review this as Miss Miller said U getting it on yesterday I did but I I know it's very difficult with everybody's schedule but I did find the time got up early this morning just to make sure that I had done my uh due diligence I do want to make sure that it's acknowledged that candidate number two is a female she's not a male I did a Google search on all of them have misrepresented that I apologize Mr no problem um if you can can tell me again the one two three sure so um what I what I'd like to do
191and if I can bring up let me um Escape here for a second I kind of make this make it a little easier to understand with me here so what this is is a a simple spreadsheet of all the candidates that um that are that are qualified or position with the one exception potentially of t who does not currently is not currently a member of the Florida bar normally what we do is we ask you as as board members to place a one by a candidate that you're definitely interested in learning more about a two is somebody you might be interested in learning more about you're not necessarily feeling the strongest or the weakest but you're okay learning more about that individual and a three is someone who just don't feel has the right background
192or skill set for the position and then this works like a golf score basically it's not it's not high scientific ever it's just low score the low scores typically are the ones that would be advant in terms of um the semi-finalist and at that point we'll learn more about those Folks at that stage thank you and I think that in looking at what we have we have some uh some potential candidates that I think would serve us well yeah I I I think you've got some folks here uh certainly there are some that are stronger than others but there's there's there's a there's a pool here to be considered in my in my my opinion but at the end of the day it's your call but in my opinion yes I think you've got some
193folks that are certainly worthy of consideration here all right thank you Mr Thomas I don't see any other comments on the list here so as far as your process do you want to go through roll call on this sure I think that's the easiest way and and I apologize this may seem a little bit clunky but I think I mentioned and and uh and uh Mr Murphy can certainly identify there's been a change in um based on a Florida presidential search process that really requires you to do this stuff in public and ranking people in public and so I realize it's clunky but we're all kind of following a an attorney general's opinion that it work through and and Mr Murphy and I have kind of talked through the approach we feel pretty comfortable with
194the way we're doing it at this stage of the game but I'll let him comment if there's any concerns there no just that we're we're in work session so we're taking consensus on a you know this is the process is on a spectrum and you know at the end of the day a decision will be made and so we want to make sure that at each point in the process we're in a public setting duly notice meeting Etc so although we're not voting today uh in a traditional sense or taking quote official action we are by consensus at a public meeting with minutes and notice moving this process through the funnel and getting it distilled to a point where you can make a decision officially that make sense indeed yes all right uh I do
195have a question for you as we do our rankings um ideally how many are we trying to basically distill down in this first round sure um the way our agreements that we have with most of our clients is we typically select up to about 12 semi-finalists uh which would give you more than enough but I'm not forcing 12 upon you I encourage you that not get to get too selective and only pick three or four of these folks because invariably what happens is there if they're candidate in your search there'll likely be a candate in another search and if you only pick three or four folks you could quickly find yourself back out of out of luck with candidates as the process goes forward so um you know I'm not saying that you select everyone
196here that if that's where you want to go that's fine uh because that's certainly up to 12 is typically where we we land but my suspicion is you'll probably be at a little lower level from there and and to your comment uh uh Dr Allen normally what will happen is we'll kind of take the scores and we'll kind of see where there's a natural break off and if anybody is just below that kind of cuto off list whatever that looks and feels right to us um I normally allow you to advocate for you know a candate that may not be right at that at that cut that you want to learn more about but at this point as I said we're at the High high level with this you're just learning more about them so
197if there's a debate I normally say leave them in and learn more the next round okay okay very good thank you so normally what I would do is just uh go through the names and ask each of you um individual by individual to give me a one two and a three this is all self- populated once I do that it'll it'll populate the score they're not weighted averages is really just a way to help us kind of screen the process if that all makes sense everybody everybody clear with that direction okay all right um to work this touchpad here so I got to figure out every once in a while I may have your technology guy come up cuz I'm not seeing my cursor move around anymore I got to navigate the screen oh there
198it is okay it's come back gotcha all right I don't want to get charged for breaking your equipment here right so um it's up to you you want to just in the order I've got them or do you want to I'll take whatever way you got um whoever would like to go first with Adam Patton just a one two or three we start yeah we can go by District number' be fine uh we'll start with district one uh I would be a one for Mr Patton one okay two Mr ni is not here's not here so it' be Miss Wyatt next right two one two I didn't get for some reason didn't register it's not it's not uh allowing me to have staff do that can we potentially just have staff do that then we
199give it later think you have to do it public we have to do it in public we have to do it in public yeah it has to be done while while we are in yeah okay I I thought maybe I think he might mean the tallying part typing it into a spreadsheet still doing we're still public record we're we're voting but to tally them up actually we're not voting we're just giving we're not voting I apologize I'm sorry was that a one or two okay one one okay gotcha okay two two okay gotcha M Miller one all right okay um Alero puko a two for for me two two not here it's what two is Travis right oh sorry I didn't hear you say yours um one three two okay um is the one that
200is not U not a member of the bar right as I recall correct so we'll pass on my bad that okay uh Adrien treasure next candidate sure three three two three three three three two okay Bradley Butler three one three one three okay um Carrie Brody car two Carl Carl excuse me me I might might going to goair here Mr three three three one two one James green one one one one one one okay Jasmine Gibbs two two one two three two uh Jerry P one one one one one one Kevin Henson two three three what's that number on that one please uh Kevin Henson one two two okay Matthew capus three three three three two three uh Michael fuo three three three three three three last one is tan Delan three two two three
201two three okay now this is going to be divided by seven I believe I mean six six yeah I know but they the uh if I'm going to be able to navigate this to clean this up quickly here but right now they're all by actually by five so let me do a quick kind of clean this up this by six on that not knowing crap something I think it's 310 of a percentage Point yeah just want to try to yeah this one in the midst of uh emailing documents and that we l lost something here so let me um apologize for the oops look like I make a difference there okay all right so wanted to sort here and go with your lower levels this one Del all right so you've got kind of a
202one two 3 four five six 8 all right so I guess the question is um we could include all of the folks that weren't did not have three which would get you um James Green Jerry P Adam Patton lero Fuko Carl Brody Jasmine Gibbs Kevin Henson Bradley Adrienne Matthew um so from 1 to 2.8 but the question is do you want to go that deep that would give you 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 that would give you 10 candidates for consideration um I'm certainly comfortable with that list if if you want to go that deep or would you like to potentially you know you got Adrian and Matthew at 27 and 28 a little bit of a drop there from your other groups if you wanted to uh not consider
203them so it's really your your call as a board on how you'd like to handle May those last two candidates is leave him in and take him the next step or not members can you put your spreadsheet back up there yes please please I think that's a tech team question thank you okay gotcha all right Mr sharpless you're recognized I think uh going from 25 and lower would make sense because that is lower than the average between a two and a three and so that still gives you eight I believe candidates and I think that would be a good breakoff point so it would be Butler and let's see is that Butler yeah Butler and lower Butler and above yeah yeah that would be where I see the natural break that's yeah I I I
204get that yeah from the 23 to the 27 all right thank you Mr sharpless Mr Keys you're recognized you beat me to Mr Shar I I was going to say the same thing all right anybody else any other board members so consensus wise are you uh any other feedback are you comfortable Miss Fields you're recognized I'm comfortable the only thing that I would say that if any of the board members had a two on anyone that's below the uh 2.7 uh and wanted to have comments on their thoughts I think that would be appropriate thank you Miss Fields Miss meller so are you saying 2.7 or they 2.3 2.3 suggesting 2.5 was the recommendation which would be a cut off so Adrian treasure and Matthew Kaos would not be included under that that approach if
205I understand correctly Michael or and yeah yeah Michael feno or or anti and the others that would B below isn't Adrian the one that from Palm Beach yes okay there's not a lot with experience right here in Florida that's why I had that one to learn more of but I'm in consensus whatever the majority of the board wants to do that's lots of people to interview I would have liked to had somebody from that size of a account from Palm Beach and remember you won't be interviewing all these folks what right I'll talk a little bit they'll be doing some video interviews you'll have a chance to review that but you won't be physically interviewing all these folks from I'll talk about the next step here as we go further about what what to expect
206for us here so I might advocate for adding the candidate from West Palm Beach all right thank you Miss Miller Mr sharpless you're recognized you want to think question I have the the last one tan delain are we sure that's a three 0 at the bottom is that divided by six or because there's some twos in there I'm just confused mhm yeah good comment make sure that I I didn't do that because it it looked I thought they were all three so let me bear with me here once again your touch pad doesn't seem to be [Laughter] responding from oranges C gotta yeah I I think we got there I I knew that didn't look like there was sufficient get that to six to make it consistent there but does make a difference as I
207said he is the one candidate does not currently possess a Florida bar will be sitting in July so there's some uncertainty with that taking in July and results in October all right I don't see any other comments at this time board members so a decision still at 25 everyone still comfortable with that I apolog well we did get some feedback from Miss Miller that she would like to see um Adrien right was that Adrian Miss Miller you're recognized as well if you want to speak to that I just um I just wanted to yes I think that we should include the the person from Palm Beach because we are very similar in and lots of things from that area but my question is the the person that we just changed the score for if they
208take it in July and find out in October can can they what would happen do we offer them a job that they may not have jurisdiction for John Mr Murphy what you would do is be contingent on them passing the Florida bar obviously that we put everybody else on hold if that happens yeah yeah I mean that's I don't know how you navigate through that when you one of the requirements is to be a member of the Florida bar so that is what it is right timing is everything I agree that might be a I might I agree that might be a challenge thank you all right thank you Miss Miller Miss Fields you're recognized okay thank you I I took notes and if I'm correct is it a mister or Ms I didn't Google
209the last one danan is that a mister uh Mr Delane or uh I do not know because I they don't they don't identify the I have together all yeah is all all Anonymous uh we capture that okay tan I think is how you pronounce the first name yes to me and this is just my opinion if we said we wanted someone that had Bor a membership and this person does not but they're willing to then if they don't have it and everybody else have it then why are we not looking at all them out of fairness I don't see how we can bump this person and ignore the ones that have the credentials I'm just saying I said my my so this is where my role as a recruiter to you is to help you
210see as many candidats as potentially you would like to um if you look straight out at the qualification at the time of application that candidate does not possess a Florida bar is not admitted the Florida bar is not technically eligible given the background in education I thought there would be potentially a desire to at least talk about that with you as a board but you are correct in the sense of your requirements specifically say you should be a member of the Florida bar at the time of application is not this particular candada did indicate that he was planning on sitting in July so there and I wanted to at least have it before you I'll defer to your attorney if whether um at some point you have discretion as as board members in an issue
211of this nature but um from a technical standpoint is not not qualify but given his background and education I thought you probably at least to see it and have this same conversation we're having now I mean I think you have discretion 100% discretion on this issue it's your employee you have set minimum qualifications but you can you can do whatever you think is reasonable as a as a majority uh in this situation but the fact is um what Miss Miller pointed out is a potential issue um if that were the candidate that ultimately you landed on and for whatever reason they didn't pass the bar that would be that would be a problem thank you Mr Murphy Miss Fields thank you for your uh advice as where as well Miss White you recognized thank you
212um my comments were similar that I I think going with the above 2.5 so through um Bradley Butler um but I would if Miss Miller wants to advocate for bringing in um Adrien treasure um I'd be happy to review them as well in the semi-finalist process all right thank you Miss Wyatt Mr kees I would say thank you to Mrs Miller Mrs Fields um for bringing that in I think you know we we put ourselves in a sticky situation if we include a candidate and where we've made a standard and we've based on a certain set of qualifications then we take somebody out of those so you know barring the previous recommendation of two and a half I would say that we um not consider that candidate that doesn't currently have the Florida bar sitting
213and proceed with the other ones that um remain with below that two and a half threshold all right thank you Mr keys so let's just do a consensus on uh the recommend from Miss Miller as it relates to Adrian uh being included in in the poll out of 2.7 so Travis will just come down the table this way I I had that individual rated as a two so I don't think it hurts to look so I'm in agreement with Mrs Miller um I would tend not to agree with the statement that we're similar to Palm Beach I think there's a lot of differences there however I don't object to having um that person in the mix so all right thank you Mr sharpas I would be in favor of including as well including okay all
214right so consensus there so Adrian treasure will be included so we're going 27 and 27 and below is what I'm hearing well my my understanding was that it would be 2.3 and above that we will allow for Miss treasure to be included and that the individual that was not a member of the Florida bar at the present time would not be included so T is that be correct right tan is removed at this point regardless of scoring and Adrian treasure is incorporated with a score 2.7 uh in the pool and and it should be noted that Miss measure is the very last you know just below that cuto off so if there's a question in terms of you know systemically why you know there's 2.3 and then 2.7 because I think for purposes of of
215analysis the individual that's not a member of the Florida bar is you know doesn't meet minimum qualification so if there's a question of why are you going to miss treasure you are agreeing as a consent to go for that individual does that does that make sense I would agree and I'm looking at from an outward view you know how objective right I understand so can let then here it's working very slowly sorry all right so basically we're looking at James Green Jerry P Adam Patton Alero aiku Carl Brody Jasmine Gibbs Kevin Henson Bradley Butler and Adrien treasure correct okay MH okay great all right so let me shift back then here talk about next steps current slide gotcha okay gotcha all right okay um so where we're at today is through consensus getting down to
216a smaller pool of candidates that you're considering um we're going to ask these candidates to participate in a fairly detailed questionnaire about their background why they left their previous position the type of scale and scope and responsibilities they've got uh we're going to delve into a little bit of their experience relative to the challenges and opportunities we identified in the brochure um and ask about anything in their background that might be of concern to us as an employer or as a future employer we'll get some more information about salary and benefit information that they may be requesting as part not negotiating but giving a ballpark range and expectations there um and then we will also ask those candidats to respond typically to four different highlevel pre-recorded video interviews what is it about this position that
217interests you personally and professionally so you get a chance to hear what they have to say on that normally ask it just to give a sense of communication I realize it's a one-way it's not a two-way but it allows you all I know earlier talked about how everybody's got a busy schedule you can review that information at your own Leisure on the internet on any internet connection you've got and then we um will do what we call stage one media searches Lexus Nexus type review on these candidates so we're going to ask them about their background we'll also do some preliminary background research as well uh at this stage I'm normally much more involved with all these candidates as I'm talking with them and learning their background as well um so we will prepare that
218material uh and that'll be bundled up with their cover letters their resumés the questionary responses and the links to the video interviews we'll send that to all of you to review on your own time I'll go through that schedule here shortly about when to expect that but then that'll be done in advance of your next meeting that we'll be back together and be with you at that point that's scheduled for March 25th at that stage um you'll be um going through a process similar we just went through here in ranking so at that point it's kind of like being on Survivor and voted on the on or off the island so to speak um and if you're like most of my clients you're you're going to be several that everybody likes uh several that nobody
219likes and there'll be a bunch of conversations about people that are kind of in the middle and we just kind of work our way through that the goal at that point is to get to typically around three to five finalists that You' be interested in selecting to bring in for on-site interviews um those candidates so you know kind of what to expect as they go further uh we'll do a full-blown criminal history credit background reference checks on all those individuals as well we'll also do a separate stage two media search where we actually have people that go through all the search engines and all the public media and social media sites and everything else and we'll prepare a report that will come to you as part of your your briefing materials and that'll break down
220anything that's a finding of issue of controversy versus this is what happened at the last school board meeting and it's just a public public or public um um either a newspaper article or or a story that may have appeared um we typically ask our finalist to do what we call a first year game plan FY GP so we say in essence it's a written assessment if they're selected as your next general counsel uh how are they going to approach the job in their first 30 60 90 180 days and Beyond so it gives them some normative insights about their their approach to the position and you might think those all sound the same I've seen hundreds of them they all will come in differently so it'll give you some other perspectives on the candidates um
221I don't need an answer on this today but we also have assessments like disk assessments personality assessments if you're interested in doing that we can talk about that at our next meeting um if you'd like to learn that and then typically uh at that next meeting I will also ask you as part of preparing for the actual on-site interviews if you would like any um any particular uh presentation that their candidates may be asked to do uh we often have candidates for this type of position that are going to be called upon to make various public presentations um so sometimes we'll have them do do a PowerPoint on either maybe their first year game plan or on the challenges and opportunities in the position relatively short meant to be 10 minutes or less it's kind
222of like a TED Talk discussion if you can't say it in 10 minutes you know it's probably not not important so we want to we want to see how they can carry that and just think about that we can talk about that the next meeting but we often find that that's an important assessment tool that for a position such as this that might be interested for you to do um and then in our last meeting we talked about the dates being April 15th and April 16th being the on-site interview dates um I want to verify that those are still the dates that are on everybody's calendar uh our process is normally a two-day process the first day we would have them someone from your District would be involved in taking your candidates out and seeing
223facilities and seeing operations you're obviously not going to cover the entirety of the district but there may be certain things that you'd like to show them in projects initiatives and things like that um we normally encourage since this person will be working not only with you as the school board but also with your senior staff we typically encourage an opportunity to have the candidates sit down and meet uh each individually with a with a group of your senior leadership team uh there'd be Associated here so they'd have a chance to meet with a superintendent and assistant superintendant and the people they'd be working with um they're not making that decision but we're we want to make sure the candidates feel comfortable about what they're stepping into and the and the organization we're looking for an
224organizational fit so that's a piece we normally require or we we request of the the board to consider um and then that first day we talked about that also for all my searches in Florida because of the public um Sunshine act uh processes normally most of my searches in Florida have individual Council or in this Cas Schoolboard member one-on-one sessions and those are just a round robin speed dating 30 minute type session and that would be an opportunity for you to ask questions and meet with a candidate and talk about things in private as opposed to doing it as a public board um and so at the end of that long day everybody's ready for a break at the end of that day the next day is your session where we would queue up actual
225board meetings in this in this chamber where they would have a public board meeting with you and You' be involved in in a public session during that period is when we often would do a PowerPoint presentation for an example on whatever the topic may be and so those are normally scheduled for about 90 minutes um gives you about 60 minutes for a traditional interview 10 minutes for a PowerPoint then some other time for just exchanges going back and forth uh and then that at that page it's a it's a matter of deliberations on where you land on your final candate and we're here to assist in working with your Council when negotiating an agreement and going forward so uh and then at that stage um we would help you put together package it would then
226come back to you with your final candidate uh for a formal action that you would have to take at a subsequent meeting and we don't know which candidate you're selecting and how quickly they're coming all those will be much more you know much more well known as we go through that process going forward so um the schedule that we have in play we're obviously at the 25th today um at the work session to select your semi finalist we would anticipate um having the candidates complete all their background material and their questionnaire and their video interviews um by Sunday March 9th give us a chance invariably somebody's got a technology issue we like to build an extra day in there to just resolve those issues we would anticipate getting material back to you on the 11th
227of March that would be their cover letters resumés questionary responses and the video interview links uh give you a chance from the 11th before the our next meeting on the 25th and then at that point we'd be then evaluating those candidates and selecting your typically three to five folks and then at that stage I'll be asking to kind of finalize the details so with your on-site interviews so we can prepare appropriate briefing books and panel proposed questions and things of that nature so make sense all right thank you Mr Thomas I appreciate the the time elements there as as it relates to our next uh work session as well um I do have a question just want to make sure as we locked in our calendar it should be should be on everybody's um calendar
228at this point on the 15th we had blocked off from 9 to 1:00 p.m. and then on the 15th or rather the 16th we had from 9: until 5: um don't need an answer now um just as we get closer to selecting the finalist just so you have a heads up everybody's calendar right now is from 9 until 1 on the 15th and then 9 until 5: on the 16th so if we need to adjust that please let us know yeah and once again I don't know if we're going to end up with three four or five and we'll we'll adjust the schedules accordingly to make that work I hope we don't eat you all day but we'll see on the second day but we what time will tell indeed sure that we notice this
229appropriately though so that that's not an issue so that it can be noticed as a as a special Meeting those two days of the board decisions votes can be had thank you very good Miss Wyatt you recognized thank you um as was noted previously this is a very awkward space to do things like interviews um so I would ask that we look for another space to do the group interviews whether it's in the superintendent's large conference room I know when we did um the superintendent in both our our executive assistants we did them at J miles um but I would just ask that we can have a little bit different setting than it's just very awkward to be looking down at someone while you're interviewing them so those are my thoughts appreciate your comment it
230was always always most most of the time because those are often publicized and televised but it is a bit of a Star Chamber concept when you're a candidate looking up at a at the process so um we don't want to be scary yeah we get that we certainly understand does there need to be a seating you know for an audience that would be peering in uh during that meeting so uh for my recommendation when we do this for various public sessions like for for councils and and boards and things of that nature um it's your time with a candidate so they normally they're not taking public comment and asking public asking questions of the candidates you you may or may not want to do a public meet and greet or a departmental meet and greet
231we'll talk a little bit about that the next round as well this is more of an internal position but that's that's your call we can do that where sometimes if you want to have folks get to meet these candidates we can do public meet and greets um and schedule a time and a place to do that if that's desired but we don't normally do that for an interview process because we can't control what questions might come up and you might all of a sudden jeopardize your process in that fashion all right yep any other comments I guess with regard to the Miss Wyatt's comment on the location we're going to need to the board's going to need to decide that so that we can do the proper notice U notices for those meeting so is
232that something the majority of the board is how do you feel about that yeah so and that that's what the question in regards to the audience you know do we need seating uh in a sense I mean it's going to be public noticed they can be present right um obviously no as far as agenda no public comment so that would just be something that we want to have in consideration when we decide that uh I you know I I'll just bring it back to us in a work session we can then um maybe have a couple ideas do you have any ideas as far as locations I would defer to the superintendent to make sure that it's a space that's available but I think we have enough spaces that he could probably let us use
233one all right very good any other comments at this point all right Mr Thomas thank you so much thank you thank you for the work that you've done thus far I appreciate the candidate pool and we're excited so thank you equally thank you so much apologize for the technology issues I appreciate working through it today thank you byebye no worries all right board members uh at this point uh I think we should adjourn for a few minutes before we move into our Clos session and we do have discipline as well so let's just do um let's do about 10 minutes is that okay yep M comments yeah well let's go ahead and we'll we'll wrap through the let's go through our board member comments at this point and then we'll adjourn all right so at
234this time if you have any comments to speak any updates anything like that on committee work all right very good we will now [Music] adjourn e