001[Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] good morning I will now call this work session for August 22nd 2023 to order and we will start by reading the who are we statement we are the Polk 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 high quality education for all students the four most important things to our governance team are operating with Integrity respecting our students staff families and each other establishing a culture where our stakeholders feel valued supported and have opportunities for personal and professional growth and supporting an approach of continuous Improvement to ensure student outcomes
002collectively we need to work on behalf of the children we serve and find Avenues of agreement so that we can govern The District in an effective manner there is no acceptable alternative we will always collaborate in a respectful manner in order to enhance opportunities for each student and staff member we will not disparage others our students will Thrive because we will remain committed to supporting the whole child we hope to engage and Empower our students and stakeholders to create a community of lifelong Learners and with that I will turn it over to superintendent Hyde good afternoon Madam chair members of the board members of community and staff thank you for being present today during today's Workshop the first item before us is Mid Florida Credit Union where again we maintain our current practice of inviting
003in some of our Community Partners so they can share what they help contribute to Polk County Public Schools and so before us to see this afternoon excuse me we have Mr Ryan Rogers and Valerie dollerson both regional managers thank you thank you superintendent Hyde afternoon ladies and gentlemen my name is Valerie dollison and I am Senior vice president East Polk regional manager of Mid Florida I have with me my partner in success Ryan Rogers who's also senior vice president he's in charge of the west region of Mid Florida I'm also honored today that our chief of retail delivery is with us she says she's clearly in the background but I want to acknowledge her today her name is Vanessa Hernandez thank you for joining us we greet you on behalf of Mid Florida our President
004Steve Mosley our senior managers employees and all the members that we serve we are proud to be a community partner of Polk County Public Schools and we would like to provide an overview of this partnership some of you may or may not know may not be aware of our history MidFlorida Credit Union was established 69 years ago in 1954. the Polk County Superintendent at that time saw that there was a need to provide Financial Services to the teachers of Polk County schools and acts a history teacher Miss Rebecca Keith to manage the credit union and serve as its first treasurer the Polk County Teachers Credit Union began with only 10 charter members some of whom served on this very board we ended the first year with 273 members and seven thousand dollars on deposit and
005many people joked that Miss Keith kept those deposits in a shoebox on Gary Road from those me meager Beginnings to now Mid Florida has grown to 65 branches 13 over 1300 employees serving 470 000 members across the state of Florida although we have grown over these past 69 years we are proud to continue to serve this special population of Educators and support staff that provide valuable resources and growth for our students watch a short video this is Miguel his son Julian and their Abuelo they're fixing up a car for Julian's 16th birthday which is not for a few years but if they work on it little by little it'll be really ready to rev before they know it that's why he's taking his son to get a savings account with Mid Florida to show that
006when Julian puts in the time and work his digital piggy bank will also build little by little which means they can kick those financial worries to the curb Mid Florida your life your money your credit union [Music] just as our Educators pour into our students daily providing tools for our children to become valuable productive citizens in our community we also provide resources for young people to understand their finances we promote savings budget budgeting and investing it's a way for them to find their financial Independence our financial literacy program provides Financial Resources for students plus classroom management tools it includes a high school a high school curriculum geared towards teens and adults the online courses provide each user with personalized calculators various exercises and content that focuses on each user's future goals of being financially independent
007and they should be able to take control of their finances as they reach adulthood the money minute is free from it for Mid Florida users any of our partners any of our schools and there's no I.T support required for use these resources are being used in your schools today we partner with Miss Wallace at the Polk Academy of business finances and Technology at the Lake Gibson High School we have our management team using this and sharing the tools across Polk County including Mulberry High School Winter Haven High School as well we are excited about the mid Florida money minute and we look forward to more content being added to it and interactive activities coming very soon now I will turn this presentation over to Ryan Rogers that he will outline our corporate initiatives thank you
008Valerie and thank you all for the opportunity to be here this afternoon as well corporate initiatives are we're very proud of these Partnerships some of them go back many many years in fact I might not even know how far back Inspire award as Platinum partner goes back for us as it was formerly the teacher of the year but we're very proud of that and proud of the Innovation that you all have brought as well as you know through the pandemic and whatnot having the prize patrols we got to see firsthand visiting the schools with many of you on the board throughout the various districts on the caring and the compassion and the celebration that your teams have for each other throughout the various schools and it was wonderful to be a part of that we're
009also very proud of the volunteer of the year and being a title sponsor of that as my wife is a teacher so I know how that goes with volunteers make things happen and make it easier for schools and our teachers focus on Excellence is a newer program that we are a part of and glad to be a part of because it really recognizes those employees that are throughout maybe not in a teaching aspect of the school board but in the schools and other various capacities whether it's a bus driver or working in a facilities or just all the various areas so to highlight those is very important because they serve our children as well and finally tpg cultural exchange teacher resources and sponsorship we've partnered with tpg in the schools for onboarding and providing resources
010additional resources such as loans and banking services and sponsoring events that they have for meet and greets to help on board and retain those teachers as they come in um to the district other initiatives we've since 2006 we've had the gift of reading program where our employees go out to kindergarten classes and provide books so we love to inspire the gift of reading and this goes throughout all the kindergarten kindergarten classes throughout all the elementary schools in Polk also as Valerie mentioned one of our founding members Rebecca Keith there's a name scholarship for her that's been going on for 20 years and each year one student from each Public High School in Polk County is awarded one thousand dollars per year for four years of college tuition so we're excited about that the picture you
011see on screen is one of our managers who attended to award this gift at Kathleen High School and scholarship to a well-deserving student there extra credit for schools is a really neat program where it puts it puts the support and the ability into the hands of the school because many of you may know that if you swipe your debit card with the mid Florida debit card as a credit you can build up points that turn into Cash Back Rewards but did you know you can donate those points to a school of your choice so many ptas or different School administrators have adopted that and raised hundreds of dollars for their schools because they have an initiative of parents teachers even students using their debit cards that just build up those funds and the school can
012use them however they should choose we provide new teacher resources such as new teacher welcomes new teacher loans also commit Commitment Day celebration financial and gift support for the high schools where High School seniors were committing to their schools of choice so just helping celebrate them and make that special for them and there's many other things so we kind of broke it into corporate initiatives that Valerie and I are involved in and also Grassroots initiatives we had to go digging for these though because our staff and our managers out there they're involved in schools and sometimes we just don't know how they're involved but they have kids in schools as well that we are entrusting to our teachers and our administrators so this is just a small sample of what we collected back from our
013Managers from Great American Teach and support to providing classroom supplies to sponsoring different symposiums so the list goes on and on and even involvement in Sac committees as well so throughout the county there's just a snapshot of some of mid Florida's involvement on more of a Grassroots level but that's a brief overview of you know one of our honored Partnerships with the school board so we thank you and love what you're doing for our children because we have children in schools or grandchildren and uh we honor and cherish that partnership over the years and glad to be here today to kind of share a quick overview of all that our partnership has done for our students so thank you for the opportunity I just want to point out and I know we'll have other board
014members I see some lining up now for coming I want to continue to say thank you it has been incredibly impressive over the first two years of my service here in Polk County to be able to partner with you and to see the extent in which you partner with our schools you are absolutely right the list you provided is a very short list and it's just a snapshot you're everywhere you know and and both of you I get the opportunity to see you at multiple events and I'm just so appreciative of how you have that profound respect for our profession and for our Educators and that you provide so many unique opportunities everything from our teacher induction program to our International teachers to our veterans staff and it goes beyond just the services you provide
015as a credit union your sincere commitment and re-investment in them is incredibly impressive and I just want to say thank you on behalf of our school district and as the superintendent and I look forward to our continued partnership I've already made a note that I want to follow up with you on a few things because I I don't know that we are taking full advantage of marketing the debit card credit card aspect of your organization and how that can directly benefit our schools and so I'd like to have further discussion with you in a very near future about how can we help you get that message out and and provide information in those tools to our to our families and to our schools so so thank you very much and I see Ms Fields as
016next I said I've been on the school board now for 21 years and from the very beginning you guys have been involved and I just can't thank you all enough and I didn't know about the debit card either and I think that's something that we definitely need to be sharing and then the new teachers alone I know someone who's wanting a loan for a vehicle that's a new teacher so then I can tell her that so I think it's just knowing more about what you all do beyond what we see and just thank you from the bottom of my heart and it's true that that debit credit card option is very unutilized under utilized and it could be expanded yes ma'am absolutely Dr Allen yeah and just to follow up I mean a lot of
017these initiatives it's so exciting to see y'all there present and engaging on those situations as well as we go out and obviously we have prize Patrol uh coming maybe soon and we look forward to yes indeed and it's a very exciting time and you know you speak about some of the Innovative things um you know Polk's doing and obviously Mid Florida is doing some amazing Innovative things real quick story I remember 20 years ago we have Spectrum in the house but before them it was bright house and before that was Time Warner I was producing commercials and Mid Florida had three commercials that were produced 20 years ago and you were open from 7 A.M to 7 P.M so even back then you were innovating in a sense to be more accessible so I really
018appreciate what you do for our students and the district so thank you for being here thank you our pleasure let's not miss the point they like seeing us at prize Patrol they love seeing you at project sick makes it makes us look I wish I could walk around with a four foot check everywhere I go but and again that's sincere appreciation because they just the fact that you go above and beyond to recognize them financially as well is is a huge Testament and then ultimately with a car and all those kinds of things in partnership with Lakeland and others so it's just really sincerely I you know anyone who takes that amount of effort to recognize what is arguably one of the most difficult and essential professions in our in our nation is I I
019you have my undying gratitude and thanks so thank you appreciate you we'll continue to see our support absolutely and I see no further comments so thank you very much the next item board members I'm going to invite Carol Griffin principal from Rochelle School of the Arts forward she is going to present to us this evening a request for naming one of their labs in honor of Mr Herman Jenkins Miss Griffin good afternoon good afternoon that the school board of Polk County approved the renaming of our fabrication lab to be known as the Hermann Jenkins Fab Lab Mr Herman Jenkins who is of today 104 years old is a 1937 graduate of Washington Park High School the school became Rochelle High School in the 1949 1950 school year the school transitioned to an elementary school in
0201970 and eventually became Rochelle School of the Arts in 1992. Mr Jenkins is a World War II veteran he was part of the second wave of the U.S troops to come on to the French Coast in 1944. after leaving the Army in 1946 Mr Jenkins returned to Lakeland in the early 1950s Mr Jenkins taught himself photography and set up photography studio in his home where he took pictures and did his own developing work Mr Jenkins had many jobs in Lakeland after he left the Army but his legacy to the African-American Baby Boom generation is that of a photographer he took many pictures of young black kids in their new Easter outfits I happen to be one of them school pictures and pictures during the holidays for most African-American kids in Lakeland during the 1950s and
02160s Mr Herman Jenkins was the first professional photography photographer that we knew at our SAC meeting held May 24 2023 Mr Terry Coney shared that the Polk County veterans Council would like to recognize Mr Herman Jenkins who is 104 years old an African-American World War II vet and Washington Park High School alumni by naming a building after him because Mr Jenkins was one of the first African-American photographers it was suggested that we named The Fab Lab after him Mrs Van wieren who is on our Sac committee she moved to name the Fab Lab Suite in honor of Mr Jenkins and Mr Gautier who's also on our Sac committee he seconded and the motion was approved unanimous unanimously sincerely Carolee Griffin principal of Rochelle School of the Arts thank you very much Miss Griffin I don't
022see anyone at with any questions or comments so thank you so much Miss fields that about Mr uh Jenkins Mr Jenkins is very well known in the Northwest Community and he and his wife both his wife used to be a preschool teacher so she's been very much involved in in shaping lives as well and so it is a a privilege to be able to be in support of this yes ma'am thank you the next item before us I'll invite Carrie Barkin down barquin excuse me director for Head Start and before the board is the Head Start Administration Grant application while this is a reoccurring Grant the board had previously requested some background information for any grant that exceeded a million dollars and so Miss Martin is here to provide a short presentation and answer any
023questions you may have good afternoon thank you for having me the Head Start has had the the grant side I just needed some background information I did submit a slide on do I need to do this or does someone do yes ma'am okay it's interesting so if you advance it it should take you to your last time I advanced Advanced to that oops Judd we have phone a friend right here with you that's not us so while he's phone A friend is helping me the district has had the grant since 2016. we served 942 children each year we have to reapply with our intent to continue to draw down the funding and off our head start to the children and families of Polk County the grant Head Start Grant runs January to December so it
024doesn't run school year to school year so we need board approvals to apply to continue offering Head Start and then we are preparing all the documents required um which are in there is it enough I got some really cute kids in the video during the presentation too board members a copy of the four slide presentation was provided to you and it is an attachment in board docs I'll highlight a few of the areas that the funding provides or covers obviously it helps us address and ensure that we have high quality learning environments it also provides Health screenings and services for our students and families nutritious meals social emotional supports it helps us further parental engagement at a young age and to ensure that we have inclusive cast classrooms in the families that we serve through
025this grant is based off their income eligibility and they have to be before the be below the federal property late rate it provides for public assistance foster children and homeless families also all qualify homeless children also all qualify and those are the primary target populations that we serve we've as Ms Barkin indicated we've had this grant successfully since 2016. it's funded enrollment serving over 942 children at 25 School schools and 57 total classrooms so again we just wanted to make sure that we brought this forward to you to provide you any opportunities to ask questions as we renew the Grant I see Ms Cunningham has signed up Miss Cunningham uh thank you sir and looking at the budget impact analysis um and the backup information I see that the total funding is 12 hold on
02612. 12 million 910 but in looking at the funding guidance letter they only they only talk about the 9.5 million so then I noticed here that it said the local match of 2.3 million when you add all that together we get to the 12 million it took me a while to find that yeah but it's in the budget impact analysis and that's what I was looking for so I appreciate that we're in kind with our VPK of course the Head Start classrooms okay just want to say thank you that's great appreciate it [Music] thank you sir yes ma'am Mr sharpless first just got to say head start's vital program thank you for doing what you do um you know and and administering this grant I appreciate that um you know when students start school prepared
027it sets them on an upward trajectory to excel um my question is uh do we have a plan to increase this early childhood education for Polk County Children through Head Start and in a second kind of follow-up to that is is there a way to get a historical enrollment to be able to see the growth in this over the years and I don't need it right now I'm just sure those are great questions we've always been funded for the 942 don't know where they came up with that number but because it's odd number especially when you're trying to put it across classrooms to make the classrooms balanced we are on the list if they expand and give us expansion money um the grant my program specialist is very aware of our intent and the focus
028on Early Childhood with the district um they did offer some additional funding for some counties in Florida but Polk County was not one of them at this time but that that changes and we're ready to go as soon as they offer that opportunity we've served the 942 one thing we're very proud of is we've stayed fully enrolled even with the challenges of covid a lot of Grants did not have the children the children were staying home and Staffing so working with Kelly in the district of to provide subs for the vacancies that we do have has helped us stay fully enrolled with a waiting list so that's been great some of the programs across the country still aren't fully enrolled now because they're trying to rebound from covid so we're really proud that we're able
029to not only keep it full but also have a waiting list so if a child drops because their move we fill the spot the next day thank you so much the board to Mr sharpless to your one of your questions the board will receive a presentation in September um with a focus on expanding not necessarily just VPK but Pre-K we have well over I believe over a thousand students currently on a waiting list um we I serve on the board of the Early Learning Coalition and what we're finding is there's a lot of available seats for VPK in particular but we're they're we're struggling to figure out at the ELC side why more families aren't taking advantage of it but they have a sincere and rigorous commitment to partnering with us and I think that
030Pre-K is an environment that we have to continue to expand to address those and provide those early interventions rather than always waiting until grade three which has historically been what we've had to do because of the testing but now that testing and Administration has been actually pushed all the way down to kindergarten will be getting much better data on our students so that we can address any academic deficiencies I need learning disparities or quite honestly any social emotional needs that they may have as well so the board will be hearing a comprehensive presentation in September with a request for us to do some further investigation about the possibility of expanding our Pre-K footprint on several of our campuses thank you you're welcome next is Miss fields uh superintendent I'm happy to hear that because I
031was basically going to say the need is great and I don't know how we can make parents more aware I don't know how many of you all know how expensive it is if you're paying for child care once a week I mean it is very expensive depending on where you live so whatever we can do to to make the uh the services available to the kids that need it the most is something that we definitely need to pursue thank you I'm excited to bring it back to you in September then yes sir I was barking there are no further questions thank you so much great job thank you thank you for you you're welcome next item we have Mr Andrew Baldwin he and Allison Dort are both here today to provide a presentation and a
032summary of our s esea Consolidated Grant application for 2023-2024 and answer any questions that you may have good afternoon I'm Andy Baldwin senior director of four Federal programs today I'm presenting to you the Consolidated application for 2324. in the past each one of these programs have had individual applications and then this year FLD we gave us opportunity to combine them all into a Consolidated application so I'm presenting them to you today as a package instead of individually uh the first part of all of our Federal grant applications is what's called a comprehensive needs assessment I wanted to recognize what our federal programs evaluator uh Karen Kami ojedo Rodriguez she has been a tremendous asset to our team whenever we were allowed to add an evaluator a couple years ago she helps us with this comprehensive
033needs assessment as well as our program evaluations and our return on investment evaluations to make sure that we are spending our money correctly and that we are spending money on things that are going to have the greatest impact for our students so we start all of our project applications with a comprehensive needs assessment and the biggest components of that comprehensive need assessment are to engage stakeholders to make sure that we are identifying the needs that we find in our data as well as what the needs of our stakeholders are identified we find that common educational needs across the district so that would be linking in the Strategic plan along with our conference of needs assessment as well as using data to validate the concerns and make sure that all of our decisions are driven by
034data we also because we're using federal funds have to make sure that we're meeting the federal and state guidelines for our grants so we always make sure that we include that in our needs assessment as well first grant I wanted to talk to you about is the largest Grant in this Consolidated application it's the title one part a grant most of you probably know this as the fund that provides funds for Title 1 schools so the areas of need that were identified in our comprehensive needs assessment for title part A where that schools needed additional resources for like staff supplies and equipment they needed additional time for their teachers to engage in professional development and collaborative planning and to get a better understanding of parent engagement and how to make their parents and families more
035engaged on the on their classes and inside the schools for 2324 our program goals include improving the academic achievement of students of course the growth of the Pre-K programs because we in Title One Part a fund Title 1 Pre-K centers and several of our Title One schools to make sure that more students have access to Early Learning increase the parent and family engagement and the depth of knowledge and to evaluate the return on investment so as you'll see on that slide the grant is almost 51 million dollars this year which includes the rollover from the previous year but the vast majority of that goes directly to the title one schools for them to be able to hire staff to buy resources and things that they have identified at the individual School level that they need
036so I want to make sure I emphasize that this is not someone in the district office going telling the schools how to spend their money the schools get their allocations and then they're able to provide input and tell us how they need to spend the money to make the most achievement for their students um included in the title in part A we fund 542 FTE or full-time staff including 187 coaches some of these numbers on here for those that aren't familiar with FTE calculations if it says 0.8 that doesn't mean we have like a part of a person it means that it that person is partially funded by the Grant and probably is funded a little bit in another way too so if you see a half for a percentage that's what that means we
037also have some District level staff that provide support to all different schools that are Title One throughout the district so we have a little over 89 of those District level staff including senior coordinators who go in and provide assistance at the school level and then we also have Title One administrative staff that help us manage this Grant and make sure that the funds are spent in an effective and efficient way and title in part A provides a lot of different services and I don't want to go into detail on those but if anybody has any questions about these I wanted to make sure that you saw a big picture of all the different things that title and party provides for our schools Ali Dort is our director for title one I wanted to make sure
038that you guys put a face to a name so that you guys can see here in the public as well she does a tremendous job her and her team do a great job of managing this Grant and making sure that our students are able to see some success even the students who are in poverty uh Title One Part C is the next grant that I have in here this year is going to be just a little over 1.2 million dollars DD right is our uh senior coordinator for the title one part C migrant Grant and also the title One Part D neglected in Indy grant that I'll show you in just a second uh the more majority of the title won't put part C Grant are dedicated to K-12 instructional services for students who are
039migratory now sometimes people confuse the term migrant and immigrant so I wanted to make sure I clearly Define for the purpose of this grant what a migrant student is a migrant student would be someone who is between who is under the age of 22 who engages or their parents engage in agricultural work and move throughout the year to different parts of the country so we have some students who go up to Michigan for a few months and their parents work up in Michigan picking apples or doing some other things and then they come back to Polk County and spend the rest of the year here so we provide Educational Services for those students to make sure that they're able to succeed as well for the title one part C Grant we have 12 total staff
040including intervention teachers who provide direct support to students homeschool Liaisons who provide supplemental supports and also help us identify who those migrant students are and three paraprofessionals who are in the schools who are providing Educational Services every day to the students again I've listed some other of the supplemental Services provided but I won't go into detail unless anyone has any questions the title One Part D Grant is focused on neglect and delinquent so these would be students that are residing in our residential delinquent facilities or our residential and neglected facilities then we can also after we've served those students provide some services to at-risk students as well the majority of these services are focused on the transition of students from those facilities into regular school facilities Title II part eight most people think of that
041as a professional development Grant but it also has some provision for allowing us to provide support to our high our lowest performing students this year our grant is just over 5.4 million dollars we're able to provide support for 10 curriculum Specialists uh six almost six and a half senior coordinators for instruction some administrators for the grants instructional coaches and teacher Recruitment and engagement staff so if you've seen any recruitment initiatives that's where those positions are being funded from for this next year the title IV part a grant is broken up into three main categories well-rounded education self unhealthy learning conditions and the effective use of Technology this grant is just over 5.4 million dollars and this is one of the newer federal grants it's only about five years old now most of the other grants
042have been around for decades but this one's a newer one it has a little bit more flexibility than other grants and allows us to provide opportunities for well rounded education and then the safe safe and healthy conditions is also another new aspect of the grant which allows us to provide some different types of things last year we were able to purchase some walk through metal detectors for our schools and the effective use of technology is also another key part of the grant because it allows us to make sure that when we buy technology we're providing professional development and support for that technology before it's put into the schools um as part of the title IV Grant um you there is also an org chart change that I want to make you aware of in the
043past we have funded the community outreach program staff through title IV and we're going to continue to do that but we have also this year asked for you guys to increase the number of those staff by three positions two of the positions would be funded through title IV part a and an additional one would be funded out of Title One Part D so we're trying to make sure that the programs are collaborating across and that we're providing support for that program because it's been shown to be pretty effective at getting the students to decrease their absences and to get the students into the schools we also provide in-school suspension pairs we provide 11 of those at our high schools to help with that support we provide Student Success coaches and administrative assistants and then our
044administrative staff we also provide intervention substitutes through Kelly Services to some of our student our schools that need some support in providing some additional interventions for students the last one on here I snuck on here it's not technically part of the Consolidated application the Title IX Grant is a competitive separate Grant but it is on your information items for today so I just wanted to provide you that information as well but again it's not part of the Consolidated application I just wanted you to have the information all in one spot oh I forgot to uh introduce Holly Finley who's our senior coordinator for the title II and title four Grant programs and Joanne Brooks who is our senior coordinator for federal Finance she's the one that helps make sure that we're spending all of our
045money correctly and then all of our balance our budgets are balanced and that we're staying on track so Miss Cunningham thank you Mr superintendent um I just wanted to say this is an incredible presentation that you have given today it is Consolidated like the application is and you've done an excellent job in my opinion of laying each area out what it represents how much money who it serves I think this is one of the best presentations I've ever seen from the Grants Department and of course kudos to all of your team members because we rely heavily obviously on grants and it takes a lot of time and effort to write them to apply for them and of course anxiously awaiting to find out if we receive them so I just want to say thank you
046this is beautifully laid out easy to read easy to understand and I just want to thank you for taking the time to create such a great PowerPoint for at least for me to understand so thank you and thank you to your team a big thanks to Cami Ojeda Rodriguez who put together the the format for the PowerPoint I think she does a great job at data visualization making sure things are easy very easy to understand Dr Allen I thank you superintendent and I would definitely follow up and say uh well done I thoroughly enjoyed reading the needs analysis and maybe have a couple questions just for follow-up data later um but uh it was noted in the PD section of the needs analysis and I was drawn to a few things um let's see I
047don't know if I have how I want to organize my my questions here the retention data was interesting as it relates to teachers and it's specifically in that PD section and I think 88 was well this past year is what the data said 86 86 and in general looking at that that metric it was definitely climbing and I was curious do we have a Target um that you know because I I think 88 or if it's 86 percent is a a pretty solid number in regards to teacher retention rate so wondering like within our strategic plan you know do we have a Target that we're trying to hit as it relates to retention so just you know a couple little things here the needs analysis what's really fun to to read but that would be
048the first one for you superintendent hide um then there was let's see I think a high number of new teacher hires annually who are temp certified without that strong formal pedagogy in regards to their teaching experience and really need some enhanced intensive supports as what it was noted was noted in that needs analysis and I was curious you know what's a high number of teachers that would be new um without that so just a couple things but in general really love the data and made me ask a lot more questions so I really appreciate how the grant is there to fill that need so very well organized great to meet the staff as well so thanks for sharing Mr Baldwin so I can I can provide an answer to the first question and I want
049to seek some clarification on the second one the first question is obviously we'd love to have 100 retention rate but that retention rate would have to speak to eligible retainees and not just assume that we're going to retain 100 of our employees because at some point many of them want to retire so it would only be a calc it would be a separate calculation of those who were eligible to retain I I would give a lot of credit to the district and to the board and to my predecessor that when you consider if I remember the percentage correctly I believe we started in our overall retention rate was the 50 54 and in just four short years to have jumped to 86 percent is a considerable task but we also have to keep in mind
050that your retention rate from time to time is going to ebb and flow simply because of the density in which your population and their age groups and their eligibility for retention so you may see it from from year to year some some dips and value some hills Hills and Valleys however the overall goal is to keep getting I believe if we attain 90 or higher then we've reached our goal um because 100 is going to be very difficult with retirements and other things the State of Florida did provide us some opportunity this year to increase our overall retention rate and we were very successful in doing so when they extended the drop program and so many individuals who are looking to leave change their minds thankfully and said we'd like to stay on with the
051district for the duration that the drop period was extended and that covers everyone from trades to classroom positions to all the other positions so we were fortunate in that capacity so I we can definitely pull some additional data but the district has seen an incredible Improvement in its overall retention rate and that's an area we continue to focus on that's why we've negotiated as quickly and as aggressively as you have for pay for benefits for other strata other areas to provide supports um I think the school allocation model goes a long way too that when when you can't necessarily provide someone with the level of compensation that we all wish we could um overnight at least providing additional staff and resources at the school level lessens the burden on everyone else which therefore has a
052significant impact on the culture and morale in a positive way so I think we continue to chip away at those issues one at a time your second question I just I just wanted to make sure if you could clarify a little bit further what you're looking for there um well okay so there actually another one as well I'll bring out as well but it says a high number of new teacher hires annually who are temp certified without any formal teaching education and require intensive supports so I was just curious how many what we could provide you with a number of how many new hires do not come from a formal background of an education College of Education and that number continues to grow and has been growing over the probably the last 10 years it's
053it's actually more of a rarity now to find an employee who comes from a College of Education and then then not however I think that the wraparound programs that we provide to coach and Mentor other individuals who are willing to come into education and have that college background and the experience the knowledge and more more importantly the passion and commitment to serve in this capacity we can make them great teachers and I think we've proven that over time so but we can definitely pull that data for you and and find out what percentage of our new hires over the last maybe the last five years came through us through an alternative path and not typically through a College of Education and then that you know allows us to speak to the needs on the greenhouse
054program I I think this is probably the first time that I've seen the actual number of our employees that are involved in the greenhouse program and I think the data said 10 and if that's right or not but would love to see that number grow as an opportunity to prepare individuals within our organization to possibly enter the classroom in some way so loved what you've done with this so appreciate it and I will not pass up the opportunities you just presented a great opportunity for me so eligibility for the greenhouse program previously required seven years of employment as a paraeducator before you become eligible very recently in the last two months we actually modified that it is now one year because there's no Rhyme or Reason as to why seven years made any sense any
055more sense than one year or two years or three years and we will put those individuals on a trajectory so you will see an increase there are a lot of really talented para Educators who have an interest in pursuing that college diploma and a teaching certificate and we are going to support them now we will put some safeguards in place that if there's any tuition reimbursement it's contingent upon three consecutive years of successful employment prior post-graduation if they choose to leave before then then they will have to reimburse us for any cost that we that we had so there are some Protections in place and I think that was initially what was intended when that seven year requirement was that these people now are committed to Polk County they're not going anywhere we want to
056invest in them but there are other strategies that we can use and in this era where we need to make sure that we are again growing that Cadre of Educators then we need to take advantage of all opportunities that we have before us so I'm proud to share that that that's a change that we've implanted very very recently Miss fields thank you I had a question on Title One Part C the migrant Grant thank you for clarifying migrant versus immigrants but it really shouldn't matter because we're trying to take care of our kids um but I wanted to understand the current budget amount and the anticipated budget amount is less what you are anticipating so is there any reason why you have decreased your budget requests the the we did receive a decrease from last
057year into this year and those the money for title one part C is calculated based on a formula and it's directly related to the number of our migrant students and then the number of services that we provide through in the summer program we've seen a very dramatic shift in our migrant populations and we've seen a sharp decline in our migrant populations so I do anticipate that our migrant allocation will continue to decrease year after year as we're seeing less and less migrant students and a lot of that is not necessarily some of it is due to students that are no longer coming to Polk County Schools but a lot of it is due to most of those are several migrant students are no longer moving during the school year they're staying here in Polk County
058and their parents are moving but the student themselves is not moving so after three years they're no longer longer eligible for migrant services and then they're not used to generate money for that program either so it's kind of a good thing almost to for the for that allocation to decrease because it means that we're not having that as many students that are experiencing that change in Educational Services throughout the year and possibly experiencing some learning loss there so it's one of those grants where ideally we would get zero dollars because that means we don't have any needs and the students don't have any needs but we do anticipate a decrease next year as well you know that was my other question and you answered it about the stability of the of the kids so you
059were saying that it's getting better that they are actually staying in school for the duration of the year for the most part yes the the the data changes a lot but some of the trends last year didn't indicate that when we look at recertifications the students who are still here in Polk County schools that were previously part of the migrant education program are no longer eligible because they're not moving they're still here in Polk County they're still our students but they're just not eligible for the micro program well that's good thank you there are no further questions sir thank you very much board members the next item is the annual comprehensive financial report and audit we initially thought we might be delayed because of some individuals are stuck in traffic but everyone is here so
060at this time I'd like to introduce Heather Jenkins associate superintendent and our CFO and Elaine Nunez senior director of accounting good afternoon we have Lance Schmidt with Clifton Larson Allen today to do a presentation for you all regarding our audit and Aline and I will be here to answer any questions good afternoon uh for the record my name is Lance Schmidt I served as the engagement principal for your audit for the year end of June 30 2022 and so with that I wanted to I've got a short slide presentation here just to kind of keep us on track and in lieu of reading 200 pages of the financial statements to you we'll try to give you the highlights in a short presentation here uh jumping right into it I'd like to recap exactly what you've
061hired us to do you've hired us to to do an audit but there's several components to that that I just wanted to briefly touch on the first one is a financial audit that's what you typically think of where we're auditing the numbers the the disclosures the footnotes within the financial statements the second thing that we also do is we also perform a compliance audit you've probably heard this referred to as a single audit or a uniform Grant guidance audit this is where we go well beyond just the numbers and we actually look at eligibility requirements other Federal rules and regulations and go pretty deep into into whether or not you've complied with all material requirement compliance requirements associated with those federal and state grants third thing that we do is an examination with this examination
062we're actually making sure that you've invested or you're holding all of your cash deposits in qualified public depositories with the state of Florida we also issue a Florida management letter which has various compliance requirements that if there were any issues noted we would share those as well within that management letter and then lastly there's a data collection form which is basically a public record of the financial statements the results of our audit that becomes a public record with the federal audit Clearinghouse so just real quick just to kind of paint a picture for the the scope of the audit and give you a couple of very high level um uh summary first of all you can see the cover of your annual comprehensive financial report on the left hand side there but we analyzed over
063a million transactions as part of our audit we'd perform a lot of data analytics use a lot of different methodologies to try to identify those anomalies within all the various transactions that that occur within the district again it takes over a thousand hours roughly 1100 close to 1200 hours that we took in total we had eight different team members four different reports that we issued and total debits and credits for the entire entity were north of 33 billion dollars so again not that you had that much in revenue or expenses but when you look at all the transactions coming in and out there's a lot of moving parts and so pretty pretty big lift and it takes a lot of effort on behalf of the school district school district as well as the audit team
064so a couple things that we are required to communicate as part of our audit we're going to touch on some of the qualitative aspects of the audit when we get further into the slides one big one just to preview is we did have a new lease standard this year that went into effect that was a considerable lift for the school district so you'll see that I mentioned later um any corrected or uncorrected misstatements that we have are communicated to you in a governance letter that you should have received we did have a couple of significant audit adjustments which we'll talk about briefly and then one uncorrected misstatement and we say uncorrected misstatement simply what that means is if we we see something that's minor that that wouldn't impact decision makers decision that they would make
065based on the financial statements we note that we disclose that and then we can pass on that and we keep track of those year over year to make sure those don't become larger over time we did have one of one of those that was again definitely immaterial if we had any disagreements with management we'd be required to report that to you as well when we talk about disagreements we're talking about things of a accounting or compliance matter that we simply wouldn't agree on and come to an impasse I'm glad to report that we had none of those we do receive a representation letter signed by both your accounting director CFO and also the superintendent stating that the financial statements are true and correct to the best of their knowledge um if there were any consultations
066with other CPA firms I'd be required to communicate that to you as well think of this as kind of an a second opinion in the medical field that other CPA firm would be required to check with us and make sure they have all the facts before they issued an opinion we were not made aware of any consultations with other CPA firms and then lastly if we had we hit our dirt in the audit I'd be required to report that to you as well I will say that normally we would be having this meeting much sooner than now your audit was due to the state by March 31st 2023 and I think you guys are are well aware of that I think we've laid that out in the previous governance communication just some of the challenges
067that we had communicating the audit a couple of things that I think are important to note as it relates to that particular audit is just you know kind of what our um you know what are we doing about this moving forwards or and there's one other thing too first of all I think it's important to note that additional time was necessary for your financial statements to be true and correct if your audit was late and you received uh anything other than a clean opinion that would be very concerning you did receive a clean honored opinion which is again good news the second thing that is also important to note is we've already met with management we have already discussed a game plan with the first due date you know associated with that actually happening Friday
068of last week with the submission of the AFR carrying all the way through until the the timeliness of this presentation next year which we're projecting right now to be in February of next year with issuance and in January so I think those are you know two important things to note is that one you did receive a clean opinion and then secondly we've already started working on next year and X Factor will be beginning our audit next week actually related to the June 30 2023 audit and so with that before I go on I just want to ask are there any questions associated with some of the required Communications that were required to have with governance I see Ms Cunningham but I don't know if you had questions or I do but I'm going to save
069it till the end of the presentation I will I will turn off your mic by hand and I'll recognize you again that'd be great thank you sir sounds good uh just quickly as far as the audit approach just a high level summary there's a variety of things that happen throughout the audit process starts with understanding the school district a risk assessment we're looking at internal controls then we perform substantive tests you know pull a sample of transactions or in some cases all the transactions of a certain population if it's especially risky and again that Circle kind of keeps going two important risks that we identified during this year's audit one was management override of control so that's basically all the controls can be in place but if management decides they just want to override it
070and just you know say I want you to push this entry through or I want you to do something that's not appropriate no internal control is going to stop that so we developed specialized procedures by looking at journal entries especially those made by management to make sure we didn't see anything that would be indicative of management override the second thing that we look at is revenue recognition just because you you know so much of what you receive is tied into taxes and federal grants and other types of Grants we want to make sure those are being properly reported and we do spend a considerable amount of time making sure that that is that revenue is correctly reported I want to make sure we clarify again because since you pointed these two things out information can
071easily be misconstrued or taken out of context you did not find any incidences of management override of control that is correct that is what that stated for the record thank you very much certainly thank you and the same thing with Revenue recognition we just have some moderate adjustments there but again no you know indicative of abuse or fraud or any other thank you items I just want to recap the results of our audit on this one slide here I mentioned earlier we issue an opinion on your financial statements you received an unmodified opinion again this is the the best report that you can receive what this means is we're and I'm going to highly summarize this it's three pages long we were able to say that your financial statements are true and correct materially true
072and correct and we don't have to say anything else after that hence why we use the word unmodified so again we're able to use our standard opinion to say your financial statements look good second report that we issue is our independent Auditors report on internal control with this report we don't issue an opinion but if we had any internal control issues that we identified I'd be required to report those and we had two items that we reported within this section and they're they're somewhat related both of them related to some significant adjustments that needed to be occurred there were only four of them that we identified but those four adjustments were were a material and one of those adjustments also impacted your schedule of federal Awards which we rely on to perform our testing in
073the office management budget at the federal level has us rely on that and so you know with having that roughly half a million dollar adjustment that was needed on the schedule of federal Awards and then the other four material items anytime we have that we have to report that as a finding because without those being major financial statements would have been accurate again the important thing is that those adjustments were identified they were recorded and they are reflected in the financial statements the third report that we issue is that single audit report on compliance we had one significant efficiency to report here one one finding it's important to note you still receive an unmodernified opinion and I want to explain that there's two things we look at first is did you materially comply with all
074the federal compliance requirements of the programs that we looked at and the answer was yes you did materially comply with with all those requirements that's why you have a clean audit opinion on your single audit so again that's very good news however we did note whenever we were doing our testing of payroll that certain time cards and specifically the allocation of time between Federal programs and non-federal programs we did note some time cards that did not have supervisory approval so while all of the you know timesheets that we looked at we didn't find anything that was indicative of you know misspending any federal funds or anything like that it obviously is best practice to make sure that you know every single time sheet is reviewed and approved by a supervisor to ensure that you are
075correctly coding time between the various programs and then lastly we do issue a management representation or I'm sorry management letter this management letter um you know we will note if there's anything you know kind of less significant we did communicate we did have one of our I.T cyber Specialists come in uh perform a kind of a review high level review of the I.T environment did make some recommendations I don't have those listed here but with those were communicated to management any questions so far all right just a couple other slides here again just looking at kind of a high level overview I don't want to you know become too much of an accountant and get too much in the Weeds on these numbers but I think what's important to look at here is that dark
076blue bar represents your unassigned fund balance so essentially what's left over reserves if you want to call it that and I'm using that term not in an accounting way but very Loosely what's important is that that's trending upwards if that was training downwards there you know might be a bit of a concern or something we want to talk about but again that upward trend is a very positive thing and then secondly just another slide here the policy or the district has a policy of maintaining a reserve that's five percent or higher of the revenues of the school district you can see in 2018 you were at 4.5 percent and in 2022 you're at 9.3 percent so again that's been a positive trend continues to increase which is indicative of the health of the school district
077from a financial standpoint so again very good news there and then lastly I want to wrap it up with again I mentioned earlier and you can find this in footnote 9 of the financial statements gasby 87 which required all leases to be capitalized as a right to use asset and then a corresponding liability be recorded in the financial statements you can see all of that in footnote nine if you want to know more about that that's that's the place to go look and then next year we do have a new accounting standard that's also going to impact the school district and that is for subscription-based it Arrangements currently that's just an expense to the school district going forward that you will still have to pay for that so still cash outflow but it will be
078recorded as a right to use asset and a corresponding liability for the life of that contract so again a little bit of a heavy lift and something that I know all the the accounting Folks at the school district are happy to implement and comply with that for next year and so with that again I just want to publicly say thank you you to management of the school district it's you know it's a two-way street when we're doing an audit you know we can't just come in and do it it takes cooperation on both sides so again we do appreciate that and again again congratulations on a clean audit report again with a couple findings in there which we discussed but again overall clean audit report on the financial statements and single audit so any questions
079Miss Cunningham thank you superintendent Hyde um I just want to say thank you sir for being a part of our audit process and I want to give a huge thank you and a shout out to our financial team obviously it starts with the leadership at the top but I know that it takes a lot of people doing a lot of hard work to be able to have an unmodified opinion on an entire annual audit and I'm just so proud we've been able to maintain that now for a number of years and with all the things going on in the world and with personnel and you name it I'm just so pleased that we are a transparent company as we are as a school district and that we take our finances to the utmost importance and
080I just want to thank all those involved because each person plays such an important role in getting to this point because I've been on the board a while and I can remember when we didn't come out of these with unmodified opinions so I'm really thrilled I do have a question in reading your correspondence under the financial statement disclosures this is in the backup material it's as difficulties encountered in performing the audit we encounter difficulties and you touched on it very briefly in the timeline so my question really would be to staff do we have something I noticed you you touched on it that you're going to be starting the audit soon so that we'll have some information quicker is that something that's been taken care of so that going forward we can do this in
081a more timely fashion yes ma'am as you know last year we had a significant turnover in accounting and we've had close to a year with our new team so we've met with Clifton Larson Allen we've laid out our timeline and as Lance spoke to we've already begun so we plan to bring that to you in February awesome thank you so very much for all the hard work we appreciate it Miss Fields I think my question was similar to Ms Cunningham's question and I I guess the the added question would be do we have the Staffing in place to make sure that we're going to be able to provide the information in a timely fashion yes ma'am um we we reorgan organized Finance accounting last year so we put a new team in place and actually
082our assistant director has moved to to Carol's area so a line has hired a new assistant director he's in the process of that now but we have everyone trained and the Beautiful part is that we've worked through this process and we've discovered things that have needed Improvement documented how we we got there where we got the data from and we know exactly what the Auditors are looking for so yes ma'am it I anticipate it'll be seamless this year it's good it's never easy so yeah especially not this one when you look at how many records you looked at yeah so I have a question and then a follow-up comment um on slide number 11 when you talk about the GSB 87 regarding leases is that just for physical property leases or is that going is
083that now going to extend to it leases as well yeah it's a it's a good correlation you made between Gatsby 96 and 87 uh so yes uh one way to look at that would be that any type of service agreement that you would have with an IT vendor would become a essentially a right to use asset or think of it almost like a capital asset we were going to lease devices in the future correct yeah so it's a combination of both leased physical assets as well as it service contracts perfect that lets me at least signal to my team if we move in that direction that they need to prepare for that make sure they have the appropriate appropriate documentation in hand as well um I I do want to point out you know and
084just say this generally to the board it's amazing to get this kind of feedback on our audit considering the budget that we have we have maintained uh Dr Allen I have had these conversations previously you know when I first arrived here our fund balance in our budget was significantly lower than where it is now and so with the growth comes opportunity as well as challenges but I am proud of the fact that we have seen a three percentage Point improvement in our overall fund balance in the last two years and that's that's a real Testament and consider at the same time the number of contractual agreements we've reached with our Collective bargain units we've you know we exceeded the state requirement and are attained that entry level teaching salary of forty seven thousand five hundred
085a year well over a year prior to its requirement for implementation plus you know two pay raises reorganization and all the other things we've done with reevaluating job duties and responsibilities you know the board thanks to you for the school allocation model but even with all of that all the new hires all the new expenditures our fund balance continues to go up and I think that's a strong Testament to our ability and I'll provide this you know the year in review at the September board meeting and I'll highlight all of the financial savings that we have continue to do to do and to benefit from as well as all the competitive grants that we continue to compete and bring in new revenue and there's a difference between competitive grants and other grants and so we'll
086we'll highlight that as well but thank you for the feedback um Miss Jenkins and her team know full well what the expectations are as far as hitting those deadlines for January and February and I do not anticipate any delays in the future so thank you I see no further questions or comments thank you Miss Jenkins board members I will turn to you and um basically Mr Bridges if I may by show of hands do we want to take a break now or would you rather we go after the capital presentation okay we will take a 10 minute reset we'll do 15 minutes we'll come back at two o'clock [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music]
087foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] working for Polk County Public Schools as a bus driver or bus attendant is just a small yet important part of what we do to serve our students we want to thank all the unsung heroes of our driving force our dedicated trainers assist every day with educating new drivers and bus attendants preparing them to be the best they can be train to shine in assisting new hires to become safe and efficient drivers and they teach bus attendance the essentials of their daily responsibilities it's more than a job our CPR trainers and instructors teach life-saving skills keeping everyone's certification up to date with continual training
088trainers help with CDL licensing making sure candidates know the ins and outs of a bus preparing them to take and pass the commercial driver's license test putting out Stu first is all top priority the transportation team thanks everyone for their hard work and the dedication that they give to make sure the job is done the training department would not be where we are today if it wasn't for the devotion of our trainers [Music] if you are a dedicated we responsible respectful patient person with a positive attitude and a desire to help others succeed then you are exactly who we are looking for in a trainer please contact the training department if you are interested in making a positive difference in someone's life foreign good afternoon and we are back and I will hand it back
089over to superintendo hide yeah I'm thank you madam chair at this time I'd like to introduce Joshua McLemore director for facilities planning he's also joined by Mr Harry fix assistant superintendent over facilities of Maintenance and at this time we will do a presentation on our five-year Capital plan and work plan that lays out our future projects and schools that we have planned over the next five years we would like to start off by first highlighting some of the successes that the district has experienced over this past year the district has committed to providing various gymnasiums across all of our middle school campuses and this past year Denison Middle School was the latest campus to receive a new gymnasium another project to highlight would be the recent Auditorium renovation for Rochelle School of the Arts that
090renovation provided improved accessibility Carpeting and upgraded fiber optics to help better showcase that school's talented students I'd also like to highlight that the district also made various improvements to the Lakeland employee health clinic that allowed that facility to expand and improve the services that provides our School District employees all these projects are geared toward help helping to support the district's Mission by providing a high quality education for all of our students we're able to accomplish this by providing facilities to help facilitate an effective and efficient learning environment while we are proud of our accomplishments we are not slowing down by any means on this on the screen before you list some of the projects that are currently under some stage of either design construction or nearing completion some of these I will just highlight include
091Garner Elementary which is underway with its master plan phased modernization project Southwest Middle School is also currently in the middle of its modernization effort as well and lastly the school district saw its latest Elementary School open with the opening of South Point Elementary this this project will be clear will be completed later on this year as they close out some last some other items still need to be closed out for that project and looking ahead these are this slide summarizes some of the projects that we have outlayed over the next five years the following schools have been identified to undergo modernizations Renovations and additions to help build and increase their overall student capacities these schools include Albert Elementary as I've already mentioned Alta Vista Juanita Vista Lake Alfred floral Stambaugh middle and Crystal Lake Elementary
092now with Stambaugh middle and Crystal Lake Elementary those we have those are all listed in chronological order our last two schools with Stambaugh middle school and Crystal Lake Elementary we anticipate having the funds on hand for Revenue to begin the due diligence and planning but not necessarily breaking ground and commencing construction that year looking a little bit further in year six if you will we do anticipate to have sufficient funds on hand I actually commence construction for those projects yeah the next school is to receive gyms under the board's commitment of providing gymnasiums for middle schools include Lake Gibson middle school Lakeland Highlands as Bartow middle school and Blake Academy and again these the next series of slides I'll break this down year by year to give you a little bit more detail on each
093of these projects in year one in the first uh first year of this proposal for your consideration we will continue working on the modernization efforts for Albert Elementary whereby we're also adding additional student capacity for that School site with an anticipated future overall student capacity of around 900 students Southwest Middle School in a similar situation is under construction and we'll have a future estimated capacity of just over 1300 middle school student stations we will also begin the due diligence and planning aspect for adding a gymnasium at Lakeland Highlands Middle School with construction anticipated in commence in year two so as you look on these these years they're broken out you'll see projects listed listed but in parentheses planning when we start undertaking these projects we'll break them out we're going to bring forward the due
094diligence and planning and the design work one year with anticipated construction happening the following subsequent year moving on to year two the planning and due diligence will begin on the monetization and added capacity at Alta Vista and Juanita construction will also convince that this year on the new gymnasium Edition at Lakeland Highlands Middle School this year we'll also see the planning and due diligence for the new gymnasiums and Bartow middle and Blake Academy in year three we'll see the actual construction commence for the modernizations and additions at Alta Vista and Juanita Elementary School this year we'll see the planning to the planning for the auditorium Edition at McLaughlin Academy of Excellence in year four and five we proposed to begin planning and constructing our District's new newest additions and school sites in year four we
095propose to begin the planning and design effort for new elementary and middle school up in the Northeast part of our County we already own property up in that area and it's generally located south of I-4 just west of us-27 right off of Massey Road if you're familiar with the central Heart of Florida Hospital it's in that General vicinity which again is experiencing tremendous growth new subdivisions are coming online so again those sites are actually well suited to support that growing Community up there and then and year five actually looking to actually break ground on both of those sites so again years four and five things are really going to experience an uptick in growth additions and construction for new school sites and just to highlight real quick is that in year five we will begin
096the due diligence and planning process for the Jerry Stambaugh middle school as well as Crystal Lake Elementary so in by adopting an updated plan this comes before you each and every year these plans are very fluid because they have to be they have to adapt to the market demands and changes that we experience as a County but by adopting a five-year work plan we are meeting the statutory requirement by providing and operating off of a five-year plan which is outlined in State Statute under 10 13 35. now typically uh once you have approved a five-year work plan we will then take the information and projects that are outlined here and we will add that and then submit that to the state into the state's educational facilities information system that is the Department of Education System
097that tracks all of the districts five-year Capital Improvement projects typically the state opens this system at the beginning of October so again we're trying to be proactive here bringing this plan before you so we can begin this dialogue and discussion for this five-year work plan I've already reaching out to the state just to see if it's if they anticipate having that system online any earlier but as of yesterday they're still working on it but typically historically for the last two years they won't even open the website up to allow us to submit until the beginning of October with the deadline of the end of October so we'd like to go ahead and have a plan in place approved that way we are ready to go ahead and submit to the state on time thank you
098these next series of slides are going to cover you know if we're looking at our Five-Year Plan as what we plan on doing tomorrow I consider these next a couple of sides to to amount to what do we see on the horizon and then what do we see Over the Horizon so in our 10-year projections we are projecting the need for three new elementary schools one middle school and one high school I've already covered that new Middle School component that would be breaking ground in year five as well as the new Elementary School in year five and again we already own those two sites up in the Northeast part of their County and we also own another site that is intended for an elementary school site it's in the west southwest Lakeland area just on
099the north side of the parkway the uh the third elementary site that is outlined here is just for generalization purposes based off of the new subdivisions that are coming online within that area and again the Middle School site we already own and a new high school to serve somewhere within the Northeast part of our County to help facilitate and provide enrollment relief to Ridge Davenport and Haines City Senior High School yeah another way to look at that map I've just put it in more of a table format here again we're looking at trying to bring on three and at least three and a half elementary schools now that half we're not going to open a half an elementary school where that half comes from is that we when we're looking at added capacity at an
100elementary level we're looking at at least 900 student stations so that half could come from added capacity that will be like with Lake Alfred when we add capacity to that school so that's where that half is going to be coming from and again uh We've we're projecting again that one new Middle School comes online but again that second Middle School that we're showing up here could come from various additions to existing Middle School sites to help make that bring on that added capacity so now to look over the horizon at 20 years out and again how we've arrived at this projection here is that we are pretty much looking at the growth trends that all of our cities and the county are experiencing we all know that the Northeast part of the county has grown
101tremendously over the last decade and the Northeast part of the county is reaching a part to where they're pretty much reaching saturation and build out so we are slowly starting to see a trend to where that growth is slowly migrating South down us-27 and we're also starting to see some in additional and New Growth around the Auburndale area so again in working with our local municipalities working with the various land development directors and City councils again this is how we're arriving at okay 20 years South this is where we're thinking we're going to start seeing the next areas for growth areas we need to start looking at for additional School sites foreign now for the big money picture snapshot here so again here in the the top row here we're presenting our Revenue projections and
102there are I'm presenting four Revenue pots of money if you will but these are our main Revenue sources that we use to help carry out and implement this Capital Improvement plan our impact fees are derived from the new developments income online they're your new impact fees for when new homes receive their certificate of occupancies uh the half cent sales tax initiative that one again brings in Revenue to help us modernize and add additions for school sites we also have our LCI and Co and DS what I'm proud to present is that again the plan that is proposed before you for your consideration is sound where basically we are able to plan for all these projects and based off of the projected revenues there will be enough revenue on hand and also provides some flexibility throughout
103the course of the five years so again in total based over the course of five years in terms of Revenue we're looking at just under 1.4 billion but again if you look on the bottom side of our expenditures here over the next five years we do anticipate expending or have planned projects in excess of 1.1 billion and again at the bottom you can see our remaining revenue balance as it goes over year to year now certain pots of money can only be used for certain types of projects so again it is very well suited that we have that flexibility and roll over from year to year to help address any other projects as they come up now this next Slide the superintendent has directed facilities staff to take a more aggressive approach at addressing the
104district's deferred maintenance plan and I'm pleased to report that again based off of A Five-Year Plan and the projects we've already presented we're still able to take a more aggressive approach to the district's deferred maintenance plan but before we get too far into uh the financials regarding the Deferred maintenance plan I think would be best if we go ahead and have a discussion over what is our deferred maintenance plan our deferred maintenance plan is a very holistic comprehensive look at being able to identify certain systems at campuses that again nothing is built to last forever we know asphalt pavement striping those are all things that have to get done after so many years after after it has been put down so again instead of being reactive starting to get more proactive and identifying these areas
105to again accomplish the district's mission of providing the highest quality education by providing the best facilities that we can possible and here I've broken up our deferred maintenance plan over the next five years and again it will be funded primarily through two funding sources and again our first year we are presenting or proposing now this is in excess in addition to what our maintenance maintenance department currently receives in terms of operating budget this plan proposes an additional 14.4 million dollars to address some of the Deferred maintenance items that are broken down in these various subcategories here and each year we're allocating more and more funds to try to take a more aggressive approach at a really taking care of some of these life cycle component issues again being proactive and not reactive so in a
106grandson total at the end of five years we're proposing funding the Deferred maintenance plan an additional 92.7 million dollars to again start aggressively tackling the district's deferred maintenance plan I know that was a lot of information and I'm sure you have questions so if I may just add on a deferred maintenance plan this was one of our strategic plan goal areas board members you'll recall the goal was to put all of our deferred maintenance on a regular reoccurring schedule rather than just addressing these issues as they present themselves with available budget in a more proactive manner what they've done is they've developed cost analysis for each one of these areas and so the timelines might vary for example seal coating and parking lot striping may take place every eight or ten years for a campus
107because we have so many campuses whereas pressure washing and painting may occur on a different timeline but you will be you will receive those timelines for your for all of our schools and it will take us several years to catch up which is why uh to Mr McLemore's Point each year we're adding some additional dollars so that we can play we're in that catch-up period now because many of our schools other than our new campuses are right now an immediate need of track refurbishment landscape refurbishment Roofing repairs other issues and so we we have to be a little bit aggressive on the front end during the first five to ten years just to play catch-up and then we'll have a stable environment and platform in which we can move forward so I just wanted to
108add that for the boards background in the Public's background that this is a great opportunity for us I'm excited restrooms are a huge concern for many of our schools when you think about the way bathrooms were rent were actually built initially with tile and grout year after year after year it becomes incredibly hard to clean those areas because the grout and the tile have have spaces and have gaps and those voids end up you know collecting material and so over the years we've moved now to a much more aggressive strategy in our restroom new guest rooms are built differently but our existing older restrooms are being sealed with an epoxy coating it's highly attractive many of our schools have had it but it's a great strategy for us to essentially encapsulate what's already there at
109a reduced cost but also get a better quality product outcome as a result so they've done a really good job of exploring these things and we'll I'm sure we'll talk more about HVAC Investments later um but the district has benefited under Esther dollars we've already procured almost 550 scholar units those are the Standalone units that go into as many of our older buildings that are not engineered and have traditional chillers like you know many of these rooms with ductworks so it's it's easier for us to address those um though that number is actually going up and again we'll talk more about those issues in the near future but a lot of this prevented maintenance many of you when we walk our campuses we want them to be conducive to teaching and learning and some of
110that starts obviously with the environment making sure it's conducive to teaching and learning so I'm appreciative of the team and the effort they put into this I see the first person that has a question or comment is Miss fields my question is as it relates to the the capital plan that you all have before us today has the sales tax oversight committee been involved in this and how does it work with them I have an input and the projects that were a part of the sales tax referendum in 2020 did we do any referral back to some of those things and is anything being bumped in order to have these things done I know that's a lot so dancer in terms with the identified pre or pre-identified sales tax projects as it relates to their
111initial referendum those were those are captured here so those are just some of the like for the modernizations for uh Albert Garner uh Lake Alfred those were already identified with that initial referendum but how this will move forward is based off this board's Direction and if the adoption of this plan as that as we move into that planning Year we will definitely take these projects again before the sales tax committee for oversight for their uh for their approval as well before it comes before you before we bring a project to create a project necessarily but yes the sales tax is still going to be actively involved in this and no yes our next sales tax meeting is September 12th you are all more than happy to attend sure we are the bottom line is you
112you do refer back to the uh improvements that were a part of the sales tax referendum and nothing is being bumped in order to achieve the item that's on the capital Improvement plan you answer that today and if you can't today tomorrow is fine there is one project that has been it's been pushed to the year five and I highlighted or I alluded that to Crystal Lake Elementary when we identified those projects that would benefit more from campus modernization we looked at adequacy of the facility the conditional facility as well as the utilization of the campus and we're closely monitoring the utilization or capacity of Lake Crystal Lake Elementary and they're currently we're prioritizing are those campuses that are having an absolute need for capacity additional capacity and currently I'm looking at Crystal Lake as
113not having an immediate urgency need because they're sitting somewhere around 60 to 64 percent utilization so again we we've not dropped them off the radar we're just constantly reassessing uh that project it might be just add one thing to that and the other thing is it's the flow of money so how that funding pot the flow of money comes in will also helps to dictate that that has to go into the year six thank you Mr sharpless first just want to say thank you for your hard work also board member Fields I was going to ask the same questions about the sales tax committee so you beat me to it um but the question I have is another question I have is um you know this is a great uh you know plan that you've
114submitted or presentation you submitted to us but I was wondering are we going to get an actual copy of the plan that you're going to submit to Tallahassee so we can review that prior to voting on it yes we miss a good summary yes we can absolutely provide it go ahead and provide A draft copy um but again yes like you said this uh presentation helps it's a little bit more it's easier to digest than the report that's submitted to the statement we can absolutely have that in your hands I would appreciate it before I voted on thank you Miss Cunningham thank you my question is this question may be statement we opened up a brand new school in the east side of the county which is now being called Scenic Terrace it's nowhere even
115on here number one I don't understand that I understand that it's currently being used to House Winter Haven students for a year but I want to know when can that school which was originally voted on to be used for overcrowding in East Polk County to be used for my students on the east side of the county I quite frankly did not know that that school was going to be used to move another entire school from Winter Haven to basically Haines City pretty much until the thing was close to being built so I had no clue I went out and publicly um you know told people we were doing this to relieve the overcrowding and guess what we never did that and so I've had a lot of people in comments different places say when's it
116going to be our school and I said I said you know what I'm going to bring that up at the next appropriately public meeting to ask when will the scenic terrorist number one get its actual name through a committee which is how it's supposed to be done and then secondly begin to have students from the Northeast section of Polk County be redistricted properly and be able to utilize that school there's so much overcrowding it's shocking that we took an entire school from Winter Haven and relocated it to that school that we just built and it's not even on here I I it would not be on the five-year Capital plan because it's already been concluded um there's accomplishments I'm sorry and the first thing it says accomplishments it's not even on there and it should
117be let me address a few of your other questions because you and I have already had this conversation we have not um respectfully we did because you called me about this and asked me about this and I recall in great detail so the school was used as a release school for Albert for several reasons number one there was no physical space to relocate Albert students in a phased renovation on that campus number one number two there were concerns on Albert's Camp current campus with asbestos and a potential exposure to most staff and students would remain on a campus during a phased renovation the third issue was the reality of electrical issues we would have inconsistent power and I.T connectivity and so we agreed to relocate Albert to the temporary location this school year the committee
118will be formed and the community will have input as to the school's name we'll adopt the mascot we'll do all of those things so so that it's ready and prepared once Albert transitions out of that facility into their new facility the demolition at Albert is is about to take place if I recall correctly we have all our permitting and so there will be an expedited timeline to try and complete Albert so the question is can we get that done within 18 months or 24 months and so we'll provide you with an update of that once we get the final plans and a transition but that school again given the issues that we have within the Albert community that made the great amount of the most sense for us and we held several Community meetings at
119the time when we were relocating the school to ensure that the Elbert Community was well informed of this process and we reported that back to the board on several occasions following subsequent to those meetings and so this was something that we messaged well and I appreciate in your advocacy for your community as well noted and you and I talked about this that you'd love to see it done in the next year to 18 months so that we can go ahead and get that school rezoned middle school and elementary schools zoning will come in phase two you'll see High School zoning here in the very near future the recommendations and then you'll also see before the end of the school year the recommendations for elementary school and middle school comprehensive rezoning which will include that School
120site and so you will see the relief zones change so that we can provide and accommodate for those students however in the in the interim if we find that growth continues to be an issue and overcrowding becomes an issue there is more than enough capacity at Scenic Terrace for us to do the middle school expansion respectfully we could actually add Elementary School students to that school so we could look at some rezoning of current students within that Community now that would become part of the Albert Community for this short duration but would remain in place once Albert relocates back their general staff back to their new building and so that was the process so I apologize if if you didn't feel it was well communicated but I do recall you and I having a conversation
121about this so well I've just been asked publicly by absolutely and I think it's appropriate you know one minute I hear two years then it's 18 months then we'll try to get it done in a year but yet we went out and sold it to the public as this will be for overcrowding for the Northeast Polk not for Winter Haven we've never taken a school from one community and relocated it to another just because it's available and not do what we said we were going to do it's the first time um and I'm saddened because I've gotten enough calls that's why I'm bringing it up you know and it's not even on here accomplishments I'm like really I thought that was a great partnership that we did uh with those folks and I'm excited that
122the school is there I just want my kids to be able to enjoy it and get some relief and overcrowding because that is the fastest growing community in Polk County and yet we're taken to school from Winter Haven and putting it in that school in Haines City temporarily I know but temporarily is several years you just said that and I think I just don't think we communicated on the front end properly if this was the plan all along let me just be clear I hope this doesn't ever happen again so um just saying so everybody knows I'm on record because I've gotten enough phone calls and emails about it that I want folks to know that I'm not pleased and I'd like that school to be returned to Haines City like it was supposed to
123be and that's what we went out and sold at those Community meetings what you had with the Albert parents I have no clue because I wasn't invited and didn't know about that or maybe what it was about but our Haines City meetings at Lake Eva with all the questions we were like oh we're going to relieve alleviate the overcrowding in Northeast Polk and then no we take an Elbert family and put him in Haines City I get it's temporary but with the growth that we're experiencing it just seems ridiculous that we did that but that's all I had and my second question sir was what is the current impact fee rate for a new single family home do you have any idea I know we got them on a tiered level I've just lost track
124uh I don't have the number on me but I will write it email me whenever you get a chance thank you that concludes my question sir I see no further questions or comments oh Dr Allen superintendent hide yes sir yeah and I think with that public sentiment as noted from Miss Cunningham I appreciate you bringing forward the Crystal Lake um elementary school because that is a district one school and as as we see that bump down the list just a point of reference and and Clarity for those individuals that are serving at that school is much appreciated um you know again some great celebratory things there but from a um a sentiment standpoint that can impact when we see that go down the trajectory so um you know we don't necessarily see the data when
125a committee meets as it relates to the utilization and um so and I think when we see that you know more in-depth document come forward that's submitted to the state that really helps us um and I love the um secondly I love the deferment plan right I think this is uh something that's extremely needed High need as we go out and we visit schools we visit we go into the bathrooms we hear about the playgrounds all those big um you know High needs in a sense for our spaces and as we move forward I hope that we can be included and that you know as a as a sit down with with our district one schools or each district that we represent to be at the table to be able to advocate for our principals
126and so forth and just to really enhance that communication the process for the Deferred maintenance one thing and again I brought this up last year and I I will continue to advocate for our technical schools and I know a superintendent Hyde you gave a brief response to my email on on this one and if you wanted to speak to this because I know you do have some broader bigger initiatives that you're working on but you know I think the timeliness of our AC discussion around the district to me resonates with the high need within some of those trade skills so every time that I've seen the five-year Capital Improvement plan within the last three years now um we're not including our Ridge and our technical in this broader vision for the district and I think
127we're missing out we're missing out on opportunities and again last year we had about a million less students enrolled in college um we you know anticipate what that's going to look like for this school year for higher education so I think there's a need right there's a conversation switch that's happening culturally as it relates to the trades and I want to make sure that we're Innovative we're thinking about that and especially I think the timeliness of the AC situation Travis had a great celebratory thing in regards to their AC auto mechanic reaccreditation I don't know if you've tried to get a car repaired lately man I mean it the the timeliness of that I mean it's like three to four weeks out just to get a car into a repair shop so I would love
128for that to be a part of our discussion especially as it relates to last year's bill as well that our technical colleges can now serve as an AAA and a as environment so associate arts and associate of science degree yielding institutions so I'll put that out there and then superintendent high if you want to speak to that in any way there is and so on you know the half penny sales tax did not seek to address those campuses as you well know and I think what they have tried to do in the five-year and ten year Capital plan is to incorporate The Happening sales tax initiatives and priorities as well as their own evaluation of Aging out buildings Travis and ridge both could use some renovation as could many of our other facilities but this
129then has to become a conversation about debt um I am proud of the fact that they are able to address all of these Capital Improvements under budget under their under their revenue allocation to go beyond that and those of you who read the efficiency audit recognize that as a school district we probably have the best debt to loan ratio in the state if not we're in the top five because we don't have a history of borrowing to build and that's important because you don't want to go in debt when you can avoid that and you can generate enough local Revenue but we are getting to a point where many of our buildings are getting to a phased roof Replacements alone are incredibly costly other types of space Renovations are incredibly costly and so what I'd
130be happy to do at a workshop in the near future is work with the team to develop another needs assessment list and identify what that might look like if we were to take on debt and what that repayment might look like and again obviously we have lots of options on how to do that we have the new lease to own option we have a traditional building and loan debt option either one of which you know we may be able to to support to a certain extent financially but I'd like to engage them with the board at a specific Workshop where we will spend a considerable amount of time on this topic because if we're going to come up with another list of priority projects outside of the happy sales tax and outside of what's already
131been identified I'm in full support of that but we are going to have to take on and borrow to do so now the benefit we have because we do not have a lot of debt is that our borrowing power right now is considerably High and the interest rate that we would get is very good very strong it's four percent as of our conversation roughly four percent out of our conversation yes if I recall correctly Mrs Jenkins um and so as the economy shifts and moves obviously that number may move to our in our in a manner that benefits us but I think that's the conversation we need to have long term we have had some I won't disclose too much but we've been in conversations with similar to what we've done at Denison field where
132we now have that public private partnership where we're both investing in an enhancement we've looked at Travis in particular there are some opportunities to look at a technology-based campus that or Tech bait campus and Career Tech campus that actually might let us partner with one of our local colleges universities and share that space and I think we need to look at opportunities like that rather than just always looking to build our own Standalone and then are there other facilities that are newer that could be easily renovated to make that space usable to US versus always looking to build new and you know because the costs are exorbitant to build new and buy land so there's lots and lots of options it's a great question I appreciate it and I know the team and I have
133already had some preliminary conversations about if we want to go deeper this is what it's going to cost and this is what we're going to have to do so I'd love to bring that back to the board in September October for further discussion great thank you Mr sharpless I had one other question I forgot um when I was looking through this plan um I didn't see on the capital Improvement plan anything about our homeland project that we just received funding for from the state I was wondering if that was going to be included on this Pro on this plan uh because you know I'm a big advocate for agriculture education so absolutely so the the projects that were presented before you in this presentation are really funded by our Capital dollar so our impact fees
134our sales tax and some of the lcis so that the Homeland project site was funded through another state Grant but again as I understand it would move forward it's just not captured in the projects as we've outlaid them as they relate to our Capital Revenue sources but we can certainly add them to lists but denote that so that people see all of the projects that are being completed thank you you're welcome Miss fields I would just say that we purposely have not wanted to enter into debt so I think that we really need to have a long discussion and not in a work session but it's maybe a part of the planning that we're going to be doing in whenever whatever month we can all agree on the calendar and then the other thing is
135just just just sitting here and listening and thinking in the future maybe if a school is built for one community and it has to be used for another maybe the presentation needs to be given as to what happens to the school if we don't allow them to use the space so that everybody can be educated now they might not agree that the school is being used for one purpose and it was supposed to be for another but at least it might be uh better understood because what would have happened to Elbert as an example if they had not been able to uh to use the the school that was designed for the Haines City Community just a question no great question actually and and the alternative for that school would have been because again I
136would not have recommended we place Portables on that campus there was not enough physical space to do so given all the concerns I listed what would have had to have happened to Albert as those students would have had been had to be rezoned to all of the other campuses that were non-magnet non-academy programs and that would have made it incredibly difficult in Winter Haven alone and it would have also been very disruptive for those families and so this was not something we entered into lightly and it was part of my um of my community Forum meetings in fact we highlighted this proposal the least to own and we talked about the utilization of Albert so as I made the Rounds Around the different communities so but again if Miss Cunningham has expressed some some legitimate
137concerns you've brought up some suggestions as well as far as how do we over communicate these issues um you know and I think that's important for us to do that so absolutely we'll take that into consideration moving forward the end of the day they're all our students absolutely absolutely and again for safety reasons I thought we were well positioned to do what we did but you know Miss Cunningham and I previously discussed you know her frustration with this this school was built for her community you know Boone Middle School is is reaching it's it's not exceeding its capacity this year um and so there are just as with just the demand for the new high school we are in a position where our growth is exceeding in certain communities our our current capacity in space
138and so I I completely respect the the concerns and we'll see what we can do to make sure we have an expedited transition um the only thing the only concern we've ever had with an 18-month project is do we really relocate a campus over winter break because that can be incredibly difficult to do but we will cross that bridge and I will be happy to come back and share an update for the board we also need to give you an update on bellacita and the progress being made there I'm pleased to share and I don't you know we're going to steal a little bit of Thunder but I'm pleased to share that bellacida will be completed by next August and so be the Middle School aspect will be fully available to our community including the
139gymnasium space because initially we were going to do that in phases and the contractors come back and said that they want to do it all at once and it's actually easier for them to do it all at once and and more timely so I think we're going to be in a good place for that we're also going to be talking to you about revisiting some of our existing programs Southwest Middle is another good example where because of value engineering we did not address the locker rooms because the costs were rising at the time due to covid and materials costs and delays and other issues but we recognize that that locker room needs to be redone so we will be coming back to you to show you two different options one is if we put it
140back out for bid or number two do we do a change order and do it within the current contractor because there are some inherent savings to do it now with that contractor versus putting it back out to bid but those are those are good examples of places where we've tried to save money we did it was done smartly and wisely but now we're realizing after the fact that it's going to cost us more in the long term versus trying to address those issues now so there's a lot to talk about with our future I am not a proponent for taking out debt I that always makes me nervous and I never want to saddle whoever comes in behind me with debt and a and which impacts their overall General allocation and budget and limits their
141their spending potential on our students so we we do have to enter this very very carefully and um with a great deal of intentionality so thank you I see no further questions or comments sir thank you very much to you and the team next up is miss Ann Everett senior director for acceleration Innovation she's here to provide you with a summary of the student progression plan I would typically refer to as pupil progression plan but student progression plan you did receive a summary page there Miss Everett there was one question in regards to a letter that's typically attached do you know there's an executive letter word oh that's for the audit I apologize I thought you were pointing to the student program I had no idea I was like oh I'm not prepared for that
142one so you received the documents last month um because the changes in this spp are pretty extensive for so we needed we knew you would need some extra time so I also have colleagues in the in the audience ready to answer any questions that you have we can open the Florida questions we can kind of go Section by section if you prefer I'm here at your pleasure action by section okay so are there any questions a lot of it is legislative updates um that we have every year and I anticipate we'll need to do another one sometime during the school year to capture additional updates as we get guidance from the state so I do anticipate we'll be back there were some substantial updates to different sections that quite honestly hadn't been reviewed kind of
143to give you a process just so you know and how how it works during covid because we weren't meeting you know things were just hey make some changes do what you need to do and update what we have to update and that happened this year we went back to a more formal process where we convened the committee which is approximately 50 to 55 people representatives from all the major departments that have content within this document and there were discussions and there were great discussions high quality discussions to make sure that we were capturing and ensuring that the language that we share is policy with our students and our our families is accurate and precise and I think that was accomplished and the group did a tremendous amount of work in a short amount of time
144and I'm super proud of what was accomplished but if you have have any questions happy to answer them and I'm happy to go away Dr Allen okay I do have one okay um so in the school zones and oh by the way thanks for the context and the background and the progression of that on the progression plan so the school zones and the controlled open enrollment section did I send an email to superintendent hide on this one as we approve the policy Alaska around Miss Griffin is in the audience and which was based off of SB 2524 which was two sessions ago and we just approved policy on that basically it says we were to update seating capacity every 12 weeks and it requires schools to accept students throughout the school year as capacity becomes
145available so I know in in the progression plan now we still have it listed as that April is the only time window for controlled open enrollment but based on that new statute that controlled open enrollment is year round so I'm just curious if we'll update that to reflect the policy mentioning that so we'll capture that I'll get with that team that does that and we'll have that noted in there I know that they are actually you know implementing it as because I talked to her so I know that they are implementing it following those guidelines so I'll make sure it's updated before we go to Pub the carrying before we go to consent thank you for bringing that up great thank you catching that Mr Bridges good question Ann um just looking at the provision
146on school physicals is that should there be no more than 12 months it should be only because I know that and if it's not in there I'll correct it thank you man do you know the page now we're by any chance I'm just looking at your summary it was a section three thank you entrance requirements a it is no yeah so I'll update that thank you thank you eagle eyes I love it there for the board's um background again this will be coming to you in the very near future it won't impact students for this year unless we expedite it and did something second semester we're currently doing the analysis and the board had based off my conversations with the team this topic has come up previously we already do work release we already do
147some other options for our students however what we don't do is late start early release options for any Junior or senior who are currently on track to graduate on time and maintain a certain GPA it's a common practice and quite frankly we're doing the analysis now to determine how many students might be eligible for that so in essence a student who is a junior or senior would be able to apply and request either either an early start or a late release again they must be on trajectory for graduation one of the other criteria that we've discussed is they must maintain a 2.0 GPA in their core academic areas to qualify for this and um the benefit of this quite honestly if you think about early start and late release is that it will actually allow
148us to maximize our staffing um the number of students and this was a common practice in my previous district and we've seen it in other school districts the fact that students would be off campus during that period of time obviously they have to commit to their own transportation there's a lot of factors that play into this however think about the impact that two or three hundred students choosing a late start or early release option has to allow us to different differently optimize our staffing because those students would not be in class during those periods therefore those teachers become eligible to pick up other sections of other content and so there is a unique opportunity here for us it benefits our students benefits our families but it also benefits the district so we're doing the analysis
149now but you will be seeing that as a recommendation if the analysis proves proves proves out then I'll be happy to bring that before the board but I didn't want you I didn't let you know that that would be one possible late addition to the student progression plan and again I anticipate that this would be more of a 24-25 implementation versus anything that would impact this school year obviously there's a lot of people that have to be involved in this discussion but again we wanted to do the data analysis first to be able to bring that before you to determine number one how many students would be eligible assuming certain percentages took advantage of it then how many teaching sections does that free up for us to then maximize and maybe reduce class sizes everywhere
150else at the high school level it would be of an interesting concept to see how that would work to our advantage so I'd be I'm excited to be able to bring that to you in the near future but that's the only other change that I'm aware of outside of any other legislative mandates or the edit that Mr Bridges has pointed out so Miss Everett I see no further comments or questions thank you next up is Linda King senior director for risk management employee benefits who's here to talk about our vision policy yes ma'am have in front of you is the um our vision insurance renewal this is the first time after going out to bid several years ago I think that's the first year I started with the school board and what we have is
151a plan that is very rich like a lot of our benefits which is wonderful for all of us to be able to take advantage of but the current rate structure is not supporting the product meaning the renewal came in the utilization came in at over 106 percent compared to premium and cost now those of you know business you can't do that and still pay your employees and operate so they did propose an increase this year but along with the increase what we asked for was another plan option so what we got was a low option and a high option and if you all know on the dental if you remember we have three different options for that reason different benefit levels and different premiums and this is the benefit the employees pay for 100 percent
152okay so what we proposed was actually the plan that we have now would continue to be a high option the difference really is the lens options that you get you're still going to get an exam every year you're still going to get benefits every every year as far as lenses and frames every two years but the amount of benefit you get is going to be different so um we've done this with a four year rate guarantee um and what will what the insurance committee will be doing is every year they'll be taking a look at the performance so the insurance committee will make a recommendation as they do on all of the benefits that if they want to renew sooner go out to bid they certainly have that option to do that before the four
153years is up questions yes ma'am are you gone he was Cunningham thank you in looking and comparing the two the base plan let's say for a family would be whatever 1609 a month times 12 months 193 per year and the buyout plan would be the 29604 if you multiplied it by 12. so my question is are you are we going to have that option are you going to present both for employees to be able to choose are you looking to narrow it down to one of the two no ma'am we will have two options available this coming year and we'll make sure to make that available to employees and highlight it within benefitfocus and actually what we'll do is would you faulting them to the lower plan premium because if they don't log in I
154can't authorize an increase in their payroll deduction without them reviewing that so that's how we'll handle that thank you thank you Dr Allen thank you Miss King uh superintendent high thank you for the presentation Miss King the uh the term you know the the rates are reasonable um do we have any feedback from our employees on the services rendered well the feedback from the employees other than the fact that they wish the network was a little bit larger at times they do have access to a lot of the larger locations like LensCrafters and things like that um optometrists tend to do very well in the marketplace we found during the pandemic especially a lot of them have dropped out of business so the network isn't quite as robust as it used to be but overall
155the employees love the program and do utilize it obviously because we have the claims to support that nice in three years is that the standard for I four years four years is what we have as a renewal Yes actually that's really good to be honest and they have guaranteed those rates of course they are asking for an increase because they do need that to support the support the benefit okay and about how many employees would you say would be on on the I plan I'm sorry but I don't remember right off the top of my head but quite a few do purchase this okay and this is the first time that I've seen the superintendent's Insurance committee noted as this was a new formation and I do remember Miss Sarah Beth you know back in
156May was trying to put me on that committee when I was absent but it didn't happen but uh Miss Miller is our board representative is that correct yes and she attended the last meeting okay perfect do we get access to those minutes or how how does that work as far as report back and I don't believe they're reported back so okay I'm not sure if I that's always the way it's been done I would think that your member would bring back any comments to you certainly we do have notes as far as deliverables and the things that were discussed that my consultant helps me with so all right very good those were my only questions so thank you so much well if I could clarify further because Miss Fields also indicated an interest so what
157we've done for the insurance committee is there's actually the split so Miss Miller serves on the superintendent's committee but as we start to go into looking at alternative plan options those fields will have a part of a say in that and be a member in that committee because we had agreed to do that previously and I think that's actually a good strategy to have two different board members sitting on two different separate committees looking at options and being able to speak to them at a subsequent board meeting and I know that this is something that Ms Fields has really tried to Champion over the years and realizes you know all of you do as our costs continue to rise we need to look for other Alternatives while maintaining you know the highest level of support
158we can for our employees and their families but there are more cost efficient more cost effective strategies we can we can utilize and there are some that I hope to be able to share with you in the near future because we are in some preliminary discussions right now about those opportunities that will largely benefit our employees because they would have access to multiple Care Centers versus unfortunately being limited to the two that we operate and they do an amazing job but with 14 000 employees and two you know sites your ability to service all of our employees adequately just isn't there and there's no there's no negative comment there the quality of care that we provide the level of support we provide the services we provide are second to none but how do we then
159create more opportunities and you know I look at it from a standpoint that if an employee can find a Health Center or an opportunity closer to their home or closer to their school versus having to take an entire day off they may only have to take half a day off um or are we just making it more convenient to them to their home or to their place of work so I think there's some great opportunities that we're exploring and so miss Fields I have not forgotten nor has the team about your interest in that so you will definitely be a party to that second committee so I want to make sure I highlighted that and as a follow-up to that um so the report backs to the board in regards to our committee work for
160clarification is typically during the work session okay all right thank you that's all I have thank you all right thank you so further questions next item up is Miss Teresa Griffin senior analyst of public records she's also here with Chad Davis attorney to superintendent's office or Council to the attorney superintendent's office they're here to provide you with a brief summary of policy updates and recommendations from Neola good afternoon thank you guys for having me today to present these policy updates um today there's only one policy update before you and that is policy 5330 which is use of medications and treatment the main additions to this policy the main changes to this policy um relate to allowing students to carry over-the-counter headache medication and then also the administration of naloxone which is like an opioid reversal
161medication allowing the administration of that to students did you guys have any questions I will try to answer them I also have Audrey Kelly here that if there's specific medical related questions that I can't answer she's here for that as well so the law does not prevent a student or does not limit a restrictive student as to the quantity that they can bring so it actually some of the clarification was if they want to bring a bottle of title and all they can but that's for their own self use and they cannot distribute that to others obviously without parental consent and there's also some contraindications with students with other medications that could become a problem in our form that we're developing Mr Davis and I we're talking about this just as again just as recently
162as this morning because we want to provide additional guidance not only to our administrators and our teachers but also to parents to say you know please understand if you're going to allow your child to bring a bottle of medication please make sure you've talked to them about the appropriate dosaging and any contraindications that there may be so for example some medication needs to be taken with food aspirin in particular can be very harmful to your stomach lining we want to make sure that students are aware of that and that they don't over medicate throughout the day because well I took two Tylenol you know an hour ago my headache still doesn't always I'm going to take two more and you know we've got to make sure that we're letting parents know part of their responsibility
163and we're urging them to have that conversation with their child about whatever medications they're allowing them to bring to school and so I don't know if there's anything else Mr Davis you'd like to add to that but there is a list of medications we've we've submitted provided for schools that we've approved so Mr Davis if you would mind or Miss Griffin if you have anything further to clarify I'd appreciate the only thing that I was going to say in regards to that and this really for you um Andrea to come up with procedures that go alongside this policy and that'll happen with some other policies that you'll see there'll be specific procedures outlined that will be on board docs in our procedures manual as we move forward and those are done in collaboration with the
164Department of Health those are not you know Miss Kelly is amazing and so are her team but she always and I appreciate that as recently as yesterday she was Court you know coordinating a conversation with the health department to make sure that our policy is is well positioned and and will benefit our students so Mr Davis hi good afternoon that's a good segue and what I'm going to talk to you about the headache medicine is actually something that's been put into statute so that was not something we had a lot of flexibility with and in fact we have over 80 newer revised policies that are going to be coming your way uh due to the recent legislative session and then on top of that well first of all a lot of those laws went into
165effect on July 1st this summer so that's why they're new to us now and then on top of that you had the July 19th State Board of Education meeting they passed a bunch of rules that Implement these policies and they also passed a rule that the county came out of nowhere dealing with deviation of names and we're going to talk about that in a second so we have a lot coming our way you're going to be seeing a lot of Me and Mrs Griffin over the next few work sessions as we get a steady stream of these policies and just so you um just to kind of go over how that works each policy is going to have to come to you during a work session right now after we get it drafted through Neola
166our consultation with Neola and our staff and then with your recommendation Mr Bridges would have to notice that for a future board meeting and I think that's what a 28-day notice it's it's almost a month notice and then we bring it to you to approve so that's that's a lengthy process to get each policy in place but in the meantime we are still responsible for complying with the law so what I've been busy doing the last couple weeks having some fund is drafting guidance memos you've received those memos that went out I sent one out on August 10th and that went to administrators regarding facility requirements nicknames and school sponsored events and activities memo also went out to staff on that day regarding nicknames and then on the 14th I sent a memo out to
167staff regarding the use of wireless communication devices and cell phones in class during instructional hours and then on August 15th I sent out a memo to administrators and staff regarding the new nickname form that we had finalized and approved for for use in the schools so that that's where those came from We're just trying to you know we have to comply with the law even when our policies aren't quite updated yet and I want to give you an opportunity if you had any questions about those memos that I can help clarify and explain um you know what we're doing with those individual guidances and also why we we did it the way we did it Miss fields well I don't really have any questions I just have a comment um it is very texting and
168we'll be very taxing for our employees uh as it relates to all these added laws uh my daughter is an occupational therapist for another school district and she was telling me just the other day she said mom she says I can't even serve the students like I want to because I'm having to document almost everything and that if I don't then that could be a lawsuit for me and so that is just sad that we are in a place where we have all these new laws and the the idea that the staff you talk about stand on track for teaching and teaching reading math and arithmetic that's what we say but with all these new laws a lot of the things that the teachers need to be doing they can't do employees can't do because
169they're having to go back and do all the documentation that's required which is very sad I know you don't have anything to do with it but I just think that it's unfortunate that we're in a place where if a child is called like my granddaughter's name is Ariana but we call her Ari so that means that if she is going to be called Ari her Dad or Mom has to complete this form now I'm saying that she can be called her nickname go tell me we had a lot of internal debate and discussion about this topic um you know I I'm Frederick Richard Hyde and to not be able to be called Fred or Freddie without parental consent seems a little out of it's really not what the target was and so our hope is
170that Our intention was never to frustrate staff or parents I think quite honestly the I think the procedure we've developed is does not necessarily thankfully place the burden on the classroom teacher but the registrar and others are having to collect those forms and document it and then Circle background and notify our teachers and it gets complicated even further because you know we're the messenger here and we have an obligation to comply with the statute and we appreciate some of the frustrations expressed by parents about this um and but but to put on a form call my kid anything they want to be called we can't do that the law requires that the parents stipulate any deviation from their legal name and you it can't just be a generic you know brush brush of the stroke
171because again if we even if we were to allow that it's going to create potential difficulties for our teachers because should they should they call a student by a name that would basically cross the line of other statutes or put them in Jeopardy there then they face potential litigation and or termination or licensure revocation so I think we've taken a pretty strong position here my hope would be that we will be able to share some of these issues with our legislators and the State Board of Education and that they will refine and revise this process moving forward the same is true with the extracurricular events right now our clubs and activities and it's important for me to clarify this and put this out there for the public who may not understand how clubs or sponsored
172activities are conducted our teachers don't lead nor do they initiate these clubs these are student-led student sponsored and yet they have to have an adult sponsor for a lot of legal reasons who's there but the teacher or employee who's the sponsor does not drive their focus areas and so so right now with the extracurricular events for Club activities we're having to put out a generic approval letter for parents for their child to participate and then we're going to buy a certain date period we're asking the students to have their entire year of meetings outlined um especially if it includes guest speakers and other events and that's really what what the law was probably trying to Target at the time but the general nature of this if you if you imagine um arguably Sports would have
173required a monthly letter to parents or a weekly letter to parents saying all right do you approve your child to play against Frostproof this week do you prove your child to play against Fort Meade next week I mean these are the issues that this creates for us and so it takes a lot of time and a lot of legal profits to figure out what's our procedure going to be where we are we can say we're adhering to the law but yet we're we're trying to the best extent possible to minimize the impact on staff and on our families because they're frustrated by these issues as well cell phones is another great policy I sent the board our procedures for that the only concern we have with a portion of the law that says the teachers
174shall or may or must I can't remember which term they used identify a location in their classroom where students can put their cell phones we have opted to Simply say let the student retain the cell phone and if the student takes it out and uses it against the approval of the teacher we will address it administratively through the discipline code of conduct because the concern is by us collecting those in any capacity we create a potential liability for our teachers because a teacher's not going to look at every phone that's put in a pouch or put on a table and it has a cracked screen and next thing you know the student alleges that the screen wasn't cracked prior to the displacement there now we hear from somebody saying you owe me 1800 for an
175iPhone and this is these are real issues that we have dealt with historically with cell phone confiscation and so we we are taking a very slow approach to this and a methodical approach to this to determine what other options exist at least one other board member has spoken to me well could we do those pouches that kids put their phones into and then they at the end of the day they have to go to certain stations and use a magnet to open up the phone yes I mean we could explore all those options there's obviously an upfront cost to that um but there's I'm going to be honest I don't think the cost is going to be the limiting factor I think our parents are going to be the limiting factor because they want their
176children to have a cell phone that in the event of an emergency their child can contact them and so if that's locked up in a pouch and they have to go to a place that's demagnetizes and lets it open that creates a conflict so a lot of these things require as ridiculous as it may seem it requires a lot of time on behalf of us and our teams to really value evaluate these what specifically does the law require what flexibility do you have and then how do we problem solve this again to help mitigate and prevent you know the burden from being passed on to our administrators and our teachers who then ultimately have the responsibility of enforcement with all of these issues and so it is a reality um and and my hope would
177be that in the near future the state board and others continue to refine these practices to really address the issues that they I think they initially intended to address so Mr Davis if there's anything else you want to contribute sure I just add that we are in communication with other districts in the state so we are aware of what they're doing and what we are doing is very similar our forms actually were based off of some of the other District forms so we're not doing this all on our own we are following what's happening across the state we're kind of all in this together Dr Allen yeah it we rarely would get a an email like affirming a particular rule or policy but I did get some communication on the wireless communication devices in the
178classroom almost more from a celebratory standpoint as it relates to discipline so um however the flip to that my son came home and we had talked about that law in our household and he was like Dad I broke the law today I pulled my phone out in class and I broke the law but um and we were just discussing yes but discussing during the break you know the growth of of the law book and the Florida Statutes but I mean obviously it's something that's prompting that rule and that law and you know I've I've discussed with several teachers over the last year that there's been a growth of students sort of um wanting different names and right could maybe every two weeks want to change a name with a teacher and that that posed problems
179you know and because we didn't have a policy in place as it relates to the deviation now has is it too far I mean yes my name is William but my mom called me Billy and that's a whole another conversation to have but uh yeah I you know I I think the timeliness of the way that we release this is um is not good right so the the law went into effect July and uh maybe an opportunity to hit that touch point when um parents were on campus could have been a better roll out and I don't know if we could look towards that in in the future to make sure that we make these changes in a little bit more timely fashion so and that's all I'll have thank you sure and I can
180give a little background on that too um yeah so we got that came down with the July 19th Board of Education meeting we're also talking with I.T with uh Miss Pasco about how to incorporate this into focus at the same time I believe it's what 800 data privacy agreements that they're working through there's a lot on our plate that we're working on and uh you know ultimately I think the first memo I sent out was more of a reactionary because there was a lot of misinformation out there we didn't want to create that confusion we wanted to have that form in place have Focus ready to go and then present that information because we knew we had the August 22nd deadline uh obviously yes that would have been a lot easier I think for everybody
181if we had that in place but there was just a whole lot going on leading up to getting schools ready great miss Wyatt thank you and I think that's a great segue because my question was more how are we communicating this with our legislators and I know that we don't have Wendy here every week anymore um but but I would love to see something on our legislative platform just about the timing of some of these implementations um you know for data privacy agreements implementing on July 1st getting the standard contract a week or so later and then saying oh yeah by August 5th every one of these needs to be signed and I mean you're negotiating essentially major contracts with Adobe and apple and bigger companies who just don't it's not their first priority to
182get your contract negotiated on some of these things correct um but making sure that the timeline is realistic um for many of these that especially if they wait to sign bills into law into late late June that we don't know that they're happening until right before um but that's that's less for you and more for I think it's something that we need to look at including in our legislative platform the other thing is specifically for the extracurricular activities that's probably the one that I'm most concerned about just because it's going to prevent students from getting involved and we know how important it is for kids to be involved I don't know how many high schoolers have their week planned out on Monday morning um I think many that attend extracurricular activities after school it's hey
183there's a drama club meeting today you should stay and hang out with me until you know drive yourself home afterwards especially for our students that drive and can just stay after school an hour to be able to participate but making sure that we're not providing any additional barriers for students to get involved because that's essentially what this is going to become it's it's easy to say you know for the kids that are in the club yes sign something at the beginning of the year but it really prevents students from being able to join things if they have to get a parent signature before they can can step foot in it so I think that's something that we need to look at including in our legislative platform is getting that refined to to make a little
184bit more sense for our families that's all I had and I appreciate you pointing out the the dpas the data privacy agreements and we had over 600 that had to be negotiated and I think what most people don't realize is that a lot of these companies don't necessarily have a legal team um they may Outsource their legal supports they may be a smaller operation they may be a subsidiary the document is over 40 pages long and while we standardized it across the state and that was the best move that RIT directors and the assistant superintendents like Miss Pascoe did when they came together said we need one common form for Florida the breakdown and the timeline the timeline was an issue clearly but the breakdown was these companies never even knew that Florida passed these
185laws so when we initially contacted them to say we are going to require you to sign a DPA many of them just simply said thank you but no thank you and we're not going to do it and until they realized that we weren't the only School District contacting them and you know when they look at the totality of their contracts in the state that's when all of a sudden I think it stimulates a desire to be a little bit more flexible and work with us on those but these These are requirements that take a considerable amount of time and effort and so we would hope to be able to we've been collecting the data so we can share the number of man-hours that went into this process and we're not alone but um but I
186think we need to share that information with the legislature to say when we do these things and they're all well intended we want data privacy agreements we want Internet safety protocols in place for our students we must do that especially in this digital age but how then do we manage this process and quite frankly is there some of this process the state should be managing why aren't they negotiating with apple why aren't they negotiating with Adobe because of their the propensity and the EXP the fact that they're in every school district there are some of these that the state could have taken on as as in their own initiative so I think there's an opportunity for us to to put this into our legislative platform just to share these examples and say you know in
187the future please keep this in mind because it becomes unwieldy and truly burdensome for school districts to try and Implement within 30 or 60 days because there's a lot of communication has to take place parents stakeholders you know all of our teachers all of our students you know forms have to be developed and designed and approved and that vetting process we move quick I give Chad and Theresa a lot of credit I give Wes a lot of credit I know we had some delays here and there but 600 dpas data privacy agreements had to be addressed in a very short period of time and that's that's a that's a Yeomans task kudos to the team for having done that so um Mr sharpless first just want to Echo chair Wyatt sediments as a former FFA
188advisor and school sponsor of uh organization you know a student organization on campus this is going to hinder recruitment absolutely not every time does a student um no they're going to go to a you know a student Club organization so my question is in the rule is there flexibility to where we have membership versus participation um can they can they attend a meeting but not participate what is there any flexibility in this rule at all unfortunately I don't believe there is um and and the intent there this is all tied up with parental rights so there are certain activities that some parents may not want their kids to participate in so even attending and not participating is still something that the rule is trying to capture it is it is pretty uh inflexible thank you
189what we are trying to do to address that is creating a form that students can can get signed initially and then the update would just be as calendars come out have a parent sign off on the calendar but not having to keep redoing the form but that's that's about as flexible as we've determined so far that we're going to be able to do with that that's my only question but that's a great that's a great point that you know chair Wyatt and others have pointed out to me privately even our additional conversations is you know there's a friend who says hey I'm an FFA why don't you stay after class today I think you'd like it I can't do that can't do it and that's that becomes a potential barrier to recruitment of students and
190again I think the intentionality behind the law when the rule was was there but why not try to refine that and specify just that issue versus making it so wholesale that is actually serving as a potential barrier to students participating and growing our clubs and activities but we'll track and monitor that data and use it in our legislative platform so Miss fields I just want to go back to the the comment that I made earlier to just emphasize that's what I'm talking about the time and the energy that has to be placed in in all of these new new Bills new laws uh it is not easy so I want to commend the staff for their hard work and just trying to stay focused on why we're here which is to educate our kids I
191did want to know about the uh the nickname form that we're having to uh complete I'm sure it's happened to be entered into some data and some to some portal whatever now who's going to have access to that information does it have to be reported to the state or or just basically like an audit they were to come and want to prove that we were actually collecting the data that's basically what it is thank you excellent question it's it's stored in focus and the state does not have access to focus the only data and information the state has access to is those reports that they require for us to upload on occasion for reporting purposes but they cannot see into our system only our staff and even then staff have some restricted use based off
192user function right administrators have the most functionality and then teachers have the second tier and then others may have access but very limited and so there's a nickname tab in there and the registrars used to be called Tech terminal operators we changed that name to call them registrars more aligned to their duties and to modernize the job description a bit they are entering that information and then we've asked teachers to keep a copy for themselves for their own records but please just turn that in and then at in a day some of our schools have done a really good process that once they approve it and I know that I've had the conversation with Yokum about quote unquote the approval process unfortunately we've had students turn in forms that are not appropriate I cannot call
193a student by a profanity and you know we're we're not going to do that even with parental permission we're not going to call your child by profanity and you know I so we have to vet these and then again if one of them were to cross the line and segue into an issue with transgender students we have to catch that as well because there are requirements then at that point for us to take alternative action and so there is a process to review enter it in an inform teachers because elementaries it's elementary school it's a little easier because the teachers unless they're departmentalized and three through five it's easier because they have their kids they know who their 28 30 kids are 26 kids are but at secondary when kids change periods all the time
194you got seven teachers now that potentially have to be informed six to seven teachers have to be informed of a child's name change and so the schools are putting out memos to teachers giving them updated lists so that the teachers are informed and then the homeroom teacher would be the one that would retain the record but the school also keeps the copy and puts it in the file for our records and our documentation our own protection action in the future so but it's sad that we've had you'd be surprised shocked at some of the names that we've seen turned in so far I don't think the parents signed those forms with all due respect I think I think the students signed it on behalf of their parent but nothing is shocking it's been chair Wyatt
195I apologize one more question on the extracurricular activities who is responsible for if a student shows up to a meeting that they don't have a waiver signed to attend the sponsor would be okay so they they'll have a list of these are the kids who are allowed to be here and that's correct okay and then the sponsor would be charged with making sure that if a student shows up that week and listen it's not that difficult there might be some instances where we can get a parent to fax a form in almost immediately and give permission but again that's the burden of time right and resources and so we want to try and be as Pro I love the strategy that Mr Davis Mr Bridges and Miss Griffin have come up with I think it's
196actually the easiest way for us to address this and get everybody covered um moving forward is there an opportunity to put that on Parent Portal or any type of e-signature or something like that where we can they can quickly go in absolutely initially we're doing everything paper and pencil just to be able to be in compliance but miss Pasco is working behind the scenes to make sure that all of this and then a lot of this will be on the back to school documents for next year so we won't ever have to replicate this again moving forward is there an opportunity that on our back to school documents a parent could check my kid can participate in any after school activity that they or does it have to be listed I don't think individual well
197um I can add a little more and to Mrs Fields Point um I I do want to dispel a narrative that the media is out there kind of pushing the state is not creating a database of names this is not a registry of names this and the activity events form this is all part of parental rights and what that means is the mechanism for enforcing it is a parent can sue the district if we are not complying if there if if the consent forms are not there and they don't approve now what they're going to sue for is not damages it's injunctive relief and that is for us to stop letting their kid participate or to stop using that name if a parent were to sue the district over a name that we were using
198they did not consent to we would just stop using that name you know that's that's the mechanism that's in place there with the events form that's going to be I think a little bit more astringent because there's there's a lot more going on there and I think the rule does address that a little bit more but but as far as the names there is no registry the states now creating some database they're not going after any particular group they they you know made this ruling as part of the parental rights and the parental rights the the remedy there is the sue for injunctive Relief and we have plenty of opportunity there to correct our actions and to make sure that we don't get to that point another way to look at this is the state
199has no compliance burden for this the compliance burden is entirely on the district so nicknames are now a compliant issue participation in clubs in obtaining appropriate waivers are now compliance issues thank you both appreciate it Madam chair the next item up just to provide a brief summary the board has already received multiple written summaries and Analysis from my office in regards it relates to our decision to not incorporate AP Psychology this year while the state continue to change their position on this matter at the end the state failed to be able to Define what age and developmentally appropriate would be we also asked them in writing to confirm that they had had a conversation with college board and that what they were telling school districts they could do so when the state says you can
200teach AP in its totality but that unit 9 has to be taught in a manner that's age and developmentally appropriate they could not Define that or did not provide clarification on that and when we asked them if they'd had a conversation with college board and would College Board accept that we were told that there had been no conversation with college board and so at this time we made the conscious decision to actually reassign our students into other appropriate coursework two of our schools in the summary that I provided you moved to dual enrollment psychology classes that is Davenport high school and Lake Gibson High School um some of our students moved into other AP areas for example AP Capstone seminar um and um APK so AP Capstone seminar was embraced by three of our schools
201Bartow High School George Jenkins High School and mulberry High School initially IB had given us tentative approval to to use the IB curriculum for 10th graders and then they rescinded that later and quite frankly if they weren't going to allow our students to take the test and get the credit for it it doesn't make any sense for us to put the students in that class so Bartow decided to go the route of the AP Capstone and so that actually continues to put those students on a really positive trajectory to receive the AP diploma at the end of the graduation because AP Capstone and AP seminar are both part of that requirement several Frostproof High School had very few students in in the class and quite frankly it may have been canceled because they had less
202than 15 students enrolled so to maintain that section would have been difficult for them so what they did was they reassigned those students to other AP courses and other rigorous coursework as well uh three or five four of the high schools excuse me uh transitioned into Cambridge psychology Haines City Lakeland High School Kathleen High School in Winter Haven our team met with teachers during pre-planning during the in-service day to address this and address any questions that they had we actually got very positive feedback back from teachers saying thank you while they were initially frustrated and and confused about what was taking place we were able to address those concerns and reassure them so the Cambridge psychology even though they may not have taught in the past we are providing resources and supports and Cambridge has
203been incredibly flexible with us for licensure and access to date so I just wanted to remind the community kind of how we arrived at that point but that we in no way Place those students in anything other than a commensurate level course that would give them college credit upon completion successful completion of the course and passing the exams and I think that ultimately is an area of focus for us is to make sure that any of those types of decisions are not going to adversely impact our students Our Hope would be that we can learn from some of the other districts this year who have done this and if they do it successfully then we have already reached out for them to them about copies of their curriculum and how they're approaching this and then
204we would re-institute AP Psychology for the upcoming school year but this is just another example as you recall literally this was evolving as teachers had already returned for pre-planning this was not something we had a long timeline to address and I think we responded under the circumstances in the best possible manner again to benefit our students and our staff we have a commitment that none of our staff would be adversely impacted by this as far as financially because there's a benefit to teaching AP and so we've already committed ourselves to making sure that there's no one adversely impacted financially by this as well and these are some excellent teachers who teach great content and this is one of that you know unfortunately AP Psychology is one of the most popular courses for our students it's
205a great entry level course next to ad human Geo which is tip typically of course we see high enrollment in as well so just wanted to provide you with a summary there address any questions that you may have if not I'll move on to the next topic seeing none uh the next topic just to provide you and again the community a summary we were very fortunate to be selected to represent the large urban districts at the reactor panel so the State of Florida held two different panels to review the existing cut scores and level scores for reading and Mathematics you recall at the last meeting I made an announcement saying you know please understand that our current reading and math level proficiency scores are not final because the state simply adopted the previous tests cut
206scores and level scores while they would collect the data and then form these two panels so one was a standard setting panel it included Educators from across the United across the United States from across the State of Florida we were fortunate to have 17 of our own staff participate in each one of the content areas Elementary Ela Middle School Ela High School Ela mathematics the same thing algebra geometry and they made a recommendation based off their review based off their analysis of the performance indicators comparing them to previous cut scores and levels scores and they made a recommendation I was part of the reactor panel there were approximately 20 of us in the room it was a closed session with the department and several of their key staff their psychometricians and others Pearson was also
207available to answer any questions we have and we were very fortunate to be able to review each one of these we had two opportunities to submit our own feedback at the end of the day lo and behold our feedback coincided with that of our Educators and so the recommendation will move forward if the commissioner Embraces the recommendation for the cut scores and level scores he then has to take it to the State Board of Education and then there's a period of time for public input and public participation like a hearing process like we have for the department and for the State Board of Education so we expect that this should be concluded no later than January it may actually the State Board may actually vote on this earlier than that but then the department will
208require time to work with Pearson to make any adjustments to those scores the overall proficiency scores at that time based off the recommendations from both the initial standard setting panel and the reactor panel if those are if those are embraced and promoted by the commissioner we will actually see our scores go up in several areas and so that's a positive thing as it relates to scores I just want to touch on this the board received this and this is going to be something that we are going to spend a lot of time on as a school district and I want to say thank you to to the previous board members new board members you get to take credit for the new initiative you don't get to get credit for the previous initiative but the strive
209for five program we're very fortunate that prior to just immediately prior to covid we were launching the strive for five program as a school district with Miss Byrd with our sheriff and others and really Polk Vision who did an amazing job putting together this so when we did the analysis this year and we don't you know I want to be very clear we never look for excuses you know we're always looking for where the opportunities lie why did the scores come out the way they did what can we address chronic absenteeism continues to be the biggest plague on our student performance than anything else you receive data from me that showed that in every single area if we were to take students who had 20 or more absences out of the equation that our test
210scores would go up by a minimum of 10 percentage points so from 42 percent in Reading to 52 percent and in other areas it went up as high as 16 percentage points and this is an issue that we have to address and this is not something the school district can dress in another address in and of itself this is a chronic issue many of the board members you were part of the initial dialogue around this so this has been a persistent issue here in Polk County but if we can't get kids in class we can't have positive outcomes what I will say and what's most important about the data I sent you wasn't just to show how you know how chronic absenteeism adversely affects our schools and our overalls test scores what it what I
211meant and I hopefully you took away from was when you saw how those scores improved across the board it impressed upon you what an amazing job our teachers are doing because when you take those students out of the equation who aren't there to learn for the students who are present our teachers are doing a great job and continuing to do a great job and I'm really excited about that I'm disappointed in our overall proficiency rates I've expressed that to you I take ownership of that and make no excuse we've got to do a better job our kids are better than that our staff are better than that it was a new test you know there's a Litany of issues but chronic absenteeism continues to be what plagues us as a school system and quite frankly
212we're going to take a far more aggressive approach in this and I've also asked the DAC the district advisory committee to make this one of their priorities to review with us and so we will be relaunching the strive for five program it will have both consequences and I'm gonna be honest it'll have some incentives tied to it because we've got to get kids in class and we've got and and I'm always cautious to say we're simply going to use the stick versus the carrot because in a lot of these instances what our truancy officers last year have found out is that there's a lot of reasons why kids may be missing school um especially if they're an older sibling and it's it's the parent doesn't have any child care or can't afford child care and
213they have a younger sibling and that student's now being required to stay home to supervise their sibling you know we can come up with alternative strategies and work with those families we just simply have to know the why and the board will be approving uh hopefully tonight the addition of three additional truancy officers their impact has been considerable but let me give you an example of how many students in ela alone because Ela is one of our most tested areas in the English language arts scores starting in third grade the group of students who had 20 or more absences thirteen thousand 13 000 students nearly thirteen thousand students over five thousand students last year alone should have been referred to the court system for chronic absenteeism yet we kept trying to work with those families
214but again we're going to have to take some additional strategies and take some additional steps to address this but I will be highlighting in the year in review what this impact is having on our overall performance because I don't think most people realize that this is not because the district as a whole is underperforming but we have a segment of student populations that aren't coming to school and thirteen thousand students is almost eight percent of our enrollment so we've got to be very very careful with how we're addressing these issues moving forward there used to be a time in public education where you missed more than 10 absences we just withdrew you the problem now is we have we pay a penalty for that because those students still count in our overall graduation rate calculation
215they stay in that cohort for the numerated denominator so we can't just simply dismiss students so we're going to have to come up with some other creative strategies for our students to help address these issues so I appreciate the opportunity and time to share that with you um Mr sharpless sorry I was looking back at the Strategic plan which that was developed prior to me being on the board and I noticed that in some of the target objectives when it comes to this this assessment data was to increase by two percent uh in our our students reading at grade level students scoring on three in the math science and social studies State assessments so my question to you superintendent since the assessment has changed should we revisit those uh objectives or or is it appropriate
216with the new assessment to keep the same learning or Target objectives I'm just wondering I think once we get a second year we have a baseline data set this year we don't have learning gains and indicators this year um I think if the board wants to revisit those and re-establish new cut scores I think the two percentage points per year per growth over the five years was established for two reasons number one the body of research behind School transformation and Improvement says that two to three percentage Point Improvement year after year because you're not tracking cohort you're tracking a different cohort coming into third grade into fifth grade into the test of grade levels differently each year uh that two percent two to three percent is aggressive the other reason why two percent was identified
217when we discussed this with the board was at the time we were 12 points away from maybe in that two percentage points of improvement in each one of those areas would close that Gap um and so if the board wants to revisit those and establish more aggressive goals that's fine um we're happy to have that conversation but that would be required the board as a whole to act one of my my question I guess is with the assessment changing do you think your opinion superintendent is that does that should we revisit those or or do you think it's appropriate even with the new assessment I'd like to see what happens in January um if we see that that closes the Gap slightly then I'm a little cautious but again I think it's worth the conversation
218at a at a workshop or a retreat um to miss Fields point there are some topics that deserve more time and more discussion and I think that that's that's a considerable one moving forward because we've taken a great deal of time to break out our academic areas and report them very transparently by demographic subgroup by grade levels and and I think that's important for us to establish and also you know maybe time to go ahead and develop the cohort trajectory tracking students you know throughout the years so it's if a student's reading at level one in third grade do we really expect that students still be reading at level one by eighth grade no we don't we want to close that Gap and we want to make sure that we're closing the Gap the State
219of Florida took some pretty aggressive uh position back in 2015. the biggest problem at the time in my previous role as bureau chief for school Improvement was a frustration that schools were exiting from D.A based off learning gains but the problem was if a student was two or more years below grade level making a Year's worth of growth never closed the Gap and yet the school was leveraging the those points to get out of D.A in 2015 the state-adjusted learning gains so you have to actually make more than a Year's worth of growth so you can show your closing the Gap over time and so I think it's things like that that we have to keep taking into consideration and how do we want to address those I think other areas like this year we
220did it we did much better in acceleration points and that's at middle school and high school and that's kudos to the Regionals Mr Green for his initiative to do the master schedule reviews to make sure we were scheduling students appropriately and getting them into the courses that would generate those points for our schools we also did a better job in dual enrollment we did a better job in Industry certification so all of this we highlighted again as I said in the up the year in review but I wanted to go ahead and provide that summary for for all of you here while we're here and I think the more I can talk and the more you can talk and the community can speak to the to the issue of absenteeism to Chronic absenteeism because it's
221going to take a community effort to to get those students in class consistently so that's my only question thank you Miss fields so I remember when Dr Gail McKenzie was the superintendent and she had an initiative going around similar to what you are doing and talking about the importance of kids going to school so I think this has been something that we had to contend with for years and then having covet come along and a lot of kids basically been a ghost for the entire year and so it's a habitual offending habit for a lot of these students and families and valuing the importance of Education and I would love to see the impact that the truancy positions are having because I think that's very important how we can tie that back into the absences
222it's not just absences it's targeted too it's amazing to me how many kids are tardy sometimes as many as 30 uh 50 for a year's time and so if they're late for school if they're not coming to school you're absolutely right they're not learning so I think that there's a a lot involved in this and you're right it's going to take the community but I think more than anything it's going to take the parents making sure that they get their babies up and send them to school it's not Burger King you don't get to have it your way and you can't just show up anytime in the drive-through window to get an education you've got to be there to learn and and thank you and I appreciate the support because this is hands down the
223single largest item that plagues us it's not teacher vacancies it's not instruction materials it's not budget it's chronic absenteeism that's clearly adversely impacting our student performance and and that's a sad reality because these students are chronically absent year after year after year after year these are not new instances very seldom isn't a new issue and I think you know with some concerted effort again I'm glad um and chair Wyatt reminded me of the strive for five program so I've already met with Polk Vision they're excited we're relaunching it we're going to redo a few of the videos with the Sheriff's Office and we're meeting with the State's Attorney's office we're meeting with you know the judges who are concerned about the number of students they're seeing because the kids aren't in school they're skipping school
224they're not attending um so there's there's a whole cycle here that we can help address not just the academic issue but a community issue we can address at large and make sure that you know again we're keeping our students on the right track so Miss Wyatt fast because I'm pretty sure we had that conversation like Thursday of last week we did um but I just want to so strive for the attendance committee for Polk Vision was very active prior to covid that kind of collapsed during covet and switched to mental health which is why that was no longer around um so I'm thrilled to hear that we're bringing it back at for a time when we were sending kids home for 10 or 15 days at a time it was hard to say strive for
225less than five but you can't be here so I'm thrilled that a we can keep kids in school and B that we're going to bring that initiative back so thank you for for getting the ballroom well into Miss Field's Point too this will be part of the you know year in review we are going to tell you how the truancy officers did we're also going to celebrate the fact that you know while we had you know student discipline last year we did a much better job these absences are not absences that were generated based off student discipline we did had more students stay on campus in in school suspension than we did home suspension last year consider a huge increase in the number of students we served that way so this is not because we
226are sending students home this is students who just simply aren't coming and there's a difference between them the next item before the board is a strategic plan meeting in today's Workshop so we have provided multiple dates Miss Vega has been working with each of you we need to give you some consensus here on the dates offered and then some additional possible dates uh you know chair Wyatt I don't know if I should defer to you as far as taking a straw poll or so the dates offered originally it are attendance availability was kind of all over the place I don't know that there's any there may have been one date that we could get six people all there at the same time um the rest were all very scattered as to who was available so
227I'd like to start looking at the possible dates um that are listed at the bottom just because they're a little bit further out so I'm hoping calendars are a little bit clearer for a little bit further out um but so does anyone have any conflicts on those four dates March 4th March 28th April 2nd or April 11th and that's with Monday morning okay also I have a question so none of the Fridays that were offered everyone is not available in any of those projects correct they're actually the majority were not available on most Fridays from the list at least from the list that I got back of how many we would be able to have at any of them well I think I think it's unfortunate that we are having to go so far into
228the year before we can have a retreat I understand everybody's schedule is full and busy I just think it's unfortunate as it relates to the power to the possible dates I'm available for any of those dates you just need to know what time are we talking about we're talking about all day we're talking about half a day so the plan was to do a full day retreat but we certainly can look at doing two half days if that as far as time wise that would be easier I know I believe and remind me I feel like one of you has classes yeah I teach Monday Wednesday Fridays Monday Wednesday Fridays and Dr Allen Fridays are available um March 4th would not um work on my schedule but there's three other ones on their 28th April
2292nd and the 11th can we go down and ask what everybody can do or the you're looking at you're looking at the possible dates at the bottom okay the March 28th would any is anyone not available on March 28th it's a Thursday so if we can confirm with Miss Miller she will be here this evening is my understanding um so I can request of her look it's they're from Miss Miller look at the second one April 2nd Thursday sorry bouncing back Tuesday there's a Tuesday would everyone be available April 2nd is a backup date okay so we will confirm with Miss Miller either on the break or this evening and get that scheduled for the two dates right now are March 28th and April 2nd are we looking to do a full day or would
230the board prefer to do two half days full day I would prefer a full day yeah me too this Fields is a full day work for you perfect okay all right and we will reach consensus on those I'll speak to Miss Miller when she arrives this evening if not I'll follow up with her um this is the fsba training or does just us this will be this strategic planning going and update on and it will also give us typically when we've done them in January but there's we've either just gotten in a couple of the data points or one day one year I know we literally got them as we were sitting there the the data came in so it will give us a little bit more time to we where we should have all
231of our data points should have graduation rate and everything else by then the only thing that may not be in depending on the State Board action would be the cut scores and level scores for reading and Mathematics but we have science we have the other areas already reported okay sorry Miss fields I don't remember and I might be wrong we have never had any type of training for new board members is that correct I mean I don't remember here because typically we do the some type of training with the new board members and um and just going over the process but the way that things are done they might have gotten it in some other uh respect but I know that we typically have that and talk about the role of the superintendent and all
232that stuff and maybe I missed it but I don't think that we have have done that we did the onboarding with all new board members they were over about a week period time if not two weeks depending on their schedules and availability every Department met with them and then they concluded I believe with myself and we talked about communication we talked about purview we talked about other things um and then again some of this they are also going to receive especially about board superintendent relations and purview is going to be a conversation through fsba as they work through their coursework there as well but I think part of what we can do during the Strategic plan is just do the reminders but yes man they did all get onboarded and Miss Winchester and a team
233did a good job thank you for the answer to that but typically we do it as a board ah working to do team building and and just getting a sense of how each of us function and in communicating and stuff like that so I don't I don't I'm not saying it needs to be a part of this I'm just saying it might need to be part of something different well to be honest with the two dates if everybody has availability on March 28th and then again on April 2nd it may behoove us to do a half day on one day to do just that the team building activity and consensus but we can talk more about that and then do the full day on the strategic planning but we'll see how that would work thank
234you okay next item Mr Pitts District reorganization good afternoon good afternoon and we are still 30 percent less per student than we were in 2008. just FYI okay so the superintendent and Mr Baldwin touched on the request that I had before you um this uh request comes from Brett Butler's department and the oversight was me Brett Butler got this to me so early I overlooked adding it over the summer so there's two requests that you have before you um one is to upgrade the position of community outreach representative to the position of a hearing officer um attached our job description changes that would support the upgrade at this position there is a pay difference the current position is paid as a salary grade 20 and this upgrade would make it even with an assistant principal
235at the high school level this would also bring it in line with two other positions that currently reside in that department that would be funded from general fund the second request is to fund three additional community outreach facilitators also known as truancy officers these would be funded from available tile for Grant funds there was a request for an additional four but the grant just cannot support that at this time that is a quick overview this will not be voted on tonight it'll actually be voted on September 5th in two weeks at the next at the next board meeting I went over that pretty quick are there any questions Miss White or is that a holdover apologize clear the list Dr Allen minor the senior technician position is that the one you alluded to no certification
236the community outreach representative position is what I alluded to oh okay I'm just looking at the agenda item and you have the description of the senior technician listed so yep the one under gotcha I mean I I think Miss Fields asked the question and already but obviously as it relates to attendance I'm supporting this um but I you know I would like to see data and the impact of some of those positions sure I will submit that data to each of you okay any other questions sorry Miss fields problem under the hearing offices job description uh the education experience why are we adding a master's degree preferred for a hearing officer this is a good question that is to support the additional duties and to bring it in line with the other positions the person
237that is in that position does have those requirements and I would have to defer to the staff that submitted this item for that specific question okay I just was curious as to why uh why it was upgraded which I will get you that information yes and superintendent High just just for your knowledge I I have asked Mr Pitts if we can have conversation about the entire District reorganization so that I can make sure that I'm comfortable with this as we get ready to vote for it in uh September absolutely I just want to make you aware thank you you're welcome there are no further questions or comments Mr Pitts thank you next item is a new counselor pathway implementation board members you've received several emails from me when we talk about HR and I told
238you that there would be some new opportunities for us we had approximately 32 35 counselor vacancies many of those we have applicants for but they're not done with their senior internship or they haven't fully completed their coursework so Miss Everett and the team took on the challenge to say okay these are people who we want these are people who are skilled they're just one step away how do we create some a pipeline or some new opportunities that would allow them to perform some of the tasks and responsibilities of a counselor and respect and honor those positions but would also allow us to go ahead and hire and fill those vacancies so and this was as you recall a lot of these vacancies are because the people of regression planners started school student progression plan allowed
239us in a staffing allocation model has actually allowed us to add more counselors to schools based off student enrollment so Miss Everett if you would thank you Mr Hyde and this also um is kind of forward thinking and that it's not just those staff members who are currently working on their masters in School counseling but will also be a way to recruit some of those folks into this field so just as a reminder I think we've talked about this before some of our challenges when it comes to school certified school counselors is their master's degrees are really expensive and they take a lot of time so in comparison to an ed leadership degree to be an administrator it's a 30 hour 30 semester credit hour degree School counseling is twice that is 60 hours so
240it's twice as expensive and it's twice as much time it's a real commitment by the teachers in addition to that they must have a 600 hour full-time internship and and the schools generally require those Masters students to take a leave of absence from their jobs so we're also asking staff not only to commit the money and the time to the degree but then they're taking a leave of absence for an entire semester where they're not getting paid and they're not receiving benefits and so that's a significant burden on our staff right now I this was done last week there were 37 vacancies and school counselors across the district and we also have multiple schools without one single certified school counselor on their campus and as you know I always advocate for school counselors and they
241are really our first line of defense when it comes to mental health for our students so it's essential that we have that person on our campus so this proposal really provides additional opportunities or Pathways for school administrators to identify staff to serve and support students in this manner obviously we first want a certified school counselor right but when that can't happen can we have an out of field counselor and so doe is also at the same time provided us with a little bit of Guidance with these nine specific master's degrees basically if someone has a degree in School counseling I'm sorry a degree not in school counseling but counseling is in the title of the degree and the state will say that they need fewer than 12 hours and they need that internship to finish
242their certification so we want to hire are those folks as out of field counselors and have them serve in the role while they're getting their internship they're being paid as a school counselor on that student Support Services pay scale and let's get them on board one semester out of field and they're going to be certified school counselors for us so that's the first one and we actually have quite a few of those applicants that have degrees in counseling it's just not specific to school counseling and so I know that we met with our team members in HR and we actually identified quite a few of these folks that were able to onboard through this pathway so we're super excited about that one the next one is the little bit out of the box thinking and
243this was kind of a group effort we collaborated with the Union so thank you to Stephanie Yocum who helped provided some input on this one but basically this allows schools to take not all of their School counseling allocations but one or more depending on the configuration of their school in the student population and convert that School counseling vacancy into what we're going to call a student advisor a student is going to be paid on a teacher pay scale they are going to commit to earning their degree in School counseling but they have a plenty of time to do it there's not a time crunch there you can kind of see that we are asking those individuals to have three years of successful teaching to have that experience dealing with students and dealing with parents and
244all those relationships that we negotiate in that setting they'll they'll sign their earn of agreement their agreement to earn statement and then they'll also be working under the guidance if you will supervision of a certified school counselor that is on their campus so they're not out there on their own they are doing many of the services of a school counselor but there are things that they will not be doing they will not be providing Crisis Intervention they will not be the one providing the mental health counseling there's things that really require expertise and education we're not going to have them do until they're ready through their degree program um and so with that I'd like to open the floor for questions the schools are excited we were excited to be able to do this and
245it did take a lot of team members coming together to make this one happen so I appreciate everybody's support and input and and the dedication of making this happen Mr sharpless I first just want to thank you and everyone that's in part of this to really thinking outside the box and addressing this mental health is a huge issue in our society and especially with our children especially after coming through a pandemic um you know it it it's it's refreshing to see us look think outside the box on this um you know you think of other other parts of our school system where we have similar types of programs like the greenhouse project and other things it's it's just so critical and so I just wanted to thank you and and everyone that's part of this
246we have to continue to to Really invest in our our students and their mental health so thank you thank you Miss Fields I guess my question would be with the uh the counselors that uh don't have direct experience but they have a degree in counseling are we going to assign them a mentor who has the experience yes ma'am and so they'll be working also with a certified school counselor hopefully that's available on their campus and we're looking for so one of the things that we've been challenged with is also getting our certified school counselors their clinical supervision we haven't had a lot of counselors recently to get recertified in that clinical supervision piece we haven't had a lot of interns to be very honest and I think this is going to open the door for
247out of field and then obviously for our interns and so we had a training on the first week that they were back and we had a tremendous amount of school counselors that that volunteered to receive that training and so that's where we're going to have them be those mentors and work with them and supervise them is going to be excuse me it's going to be very important that they have that support especially with a lot of the alarms that are coming down from Tallahassee that I'm sure they're going to have to have some input in I would imagine I don't know I'm just making sure you're absolutely right and one of the things um when you actually read the documentation it's really all about administrative support as well ensuring that we're setting those Folks up
248for success by ensuring that we are staying within the guidelines of what we feel like we're comfortable that they're able to do because we still need to honor the experience of our certified school counselors and their expertise as well there's a reason that they are certified school counselors right now so really working to support our our people that are coming on board and wanting to pursue this area and also honoring the expertise of our folks that are already on the ground right thank you I don't see any further questions or comments okay thank you so much thank you Madam chair the last remaining items are informational only I'll address any questions that the board may have if not this concludes the workshop for today or my portion of the workshop today thank you superintendent Hyde
249so we will now go on to the board meeting agenda foreign items section A one through three special recognitions section B we'll have public comment for agenda items and then any questions on approval of minutes section d any questions on the consent agenda sections F through h sections J through k saying none sections M through o any section any questions on Section P action agenda all right and then we'll have our superintendents report attorneys report we do have we'll need a motion to advertise the student progression plan and then we'll have Board member Miss sorry no report this evening and then board members reports and then public comment for non-agenda items any questions that was way too easy all right so going back to the work session any does anyone have updates from their committee
250appointments Mr sharpless just want to say that last Wednesday I attended as a member of the Pope Vision operating board I attended pokevision's annual meeting I'm going to say there's a lot of really great work that gets done by pokevision if you aren't familiar with it please check them out additionally I just I I'm gonna make another comment it's not necessarily to do with any of our board assignments but I would like to see maybe these board member comments at the end today's meeting we have plenty of time but sometimes we get to this point and we don't get to say any comments at all and so I would like personally like to see this section of our agenda on the work sessions be put first that's my opinion I would like because there's no
251other time we really get to talk and have a conversation that's in sunshine except for when we're in these work sessions so I would like to see this potentially go first in our in order of how we present during our work sessions so that's just my two cents of an issue could you repeat that what do you want moved up sure I mean in future work sessions I would like this section board comment section at the beginning of our work sessions because sometimes we get to the end and because we have such a packed work session we don't really get to have any comments that's just again my opinion and what my desire would be but I'm only one member of a seven person board so okay Miss fields Anna thank you we'll hold on
252just a second sorry I think that if it is relevant to our uh liaison assignments and something that is uh related to the work of the school district um outside of our duties I'm okay with that but sharing things as far as maybe going here and going there that's not relevant I'm not because to me we're here about the business of of what's on the agenda and the agenda is very tight as it is so again if it's going to intertwine into what we're supposed to be reporting back to the board of importance like I go to the Polk County value adjustment board meeting soon Lord help me and I would be uh expected to come back and so say that but then I don't I don't think we need to have four or five
253other people jumping into that so I'm just saying if we're going to make it short and sweet I'm okay with that but I don't want to suspend an hour on on board a conversation when we have so much other stuff to uh to deal with it's just my two cents worth thank you Miss Fields Miss Cunningham yeah I would have to agree with Miss Fields we've never really done that and the other thing is if you have something pressing that you would like to bring up you know that you want to discuss then I think you would get with your chair and ask that that be placed as an item um to be discussed that's really how if it's something that you want to discuss in the sunshine with all of us it should be
254an agenda item rather than something that you know one would just bring up so I would not be in favor of putting that at the beginning of our meetings because they are so busy and so packed but if it's that important to you and you want us to have conversation than I think you get with the chair and ask that that be placed on the agenda thank you Miss Cunningham my um my only concern would be that the the items on the agenda for work session are typically items that are things that we have to vote on often time sensitive that we need to vote on and making sure that we have time to get to each of those if that makes sense um so I that would be my only concern however if there
255is something specific whether it's you know coming back from an insurance committee I feel like we we need 30 minutes to discuss this if you can send that to um Mr Hyde myself we can make sure that we have a block of time if there's something specific on the agenda and we can also add to as we're building out the agenda as far as timing um make sure that we have a time I mean right now we just put boardage board meeting agenda we can certainly put a um put Times by it to make sure that we're staying on track for getting things done in a timely manner sometimes you guys just have such great questions that I try and reel us back in but superintendent Hyde thinks it's only going to take 15 minutes
256to talk about some of these things so yeah Mr Hyde does not set the time for these items any other updates from your liaison positions I just want to Echo a little bit of what Mr sharpless said about Polk vision's annual meeting they also introduced the new inside pcps class which is this is year two for our inside pcps class I believe there's 20 20 to 25 students in that class this year um T Michael stavers with City of Winter Haven is the incoming class chair I don't know that I've ever seen anyone more pumped about public education and what getting to share with the community what's happening in our schools he um is a great cheerleader for all that we're doing so I'm excited for him to be leading the next class through and
257I know that they will be getting on our calendars I believe for the April or May board meeting next year to come back after they've they've gone and driven a bus and done art projects and learned all of the things that they're learning throughout the year about what we do in the district to come and report back and have a luncheon with us again so um I'm thrilled that we're continuing to support that program because I do feel like it's really important right seeing no further business to come before the board sorry I just got a text there are 28 for inside pcps so our class is larger this year um seeing no further business to come before the board we this meeting is adjourned and we'll be back at 5 PM for our board
258meeting one minute early