School Board Work Session | June 13, 2023

001[Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] good morning good afternoon it is Tuesday June 13th and I will now call this work session to order I'm going to start by reading our 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

002personal and professional growth in supporting an approach of continuous Improvement to ensure student outcomes collectively we need to work on behalf of the children we serve and find Avenues of agreement so that we can govern The District in an effective manner there is no acceptable alternative we will always collaborate in a respectful manner in order to enhance opportunities for each student and staff member we will not disparage others our children 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 spam good afternoon Madam chair members of the board members community and staff at this time we'll begin with the first item on the superintendent's report

003which is an item related to a naming request for Lena Vista Elementary School um Regional assistant superintendent Beth Nave is not present today so I'll cover this item for her this is not before the board for a vote tonight it will come back in July however everything has been submitted including the SAC meeting minutes where they made the recommendation there are multiple letters here nominating coach for this recognition of this facility and so at this time I'd like to present to the board that we will be bringing back to you for a vote at the July meeting a request for Lena Vista Elementary School staff and community members are recommending the long lasting Legacy of Coach James Murphy to be commemorated by naming the physical education Pavilion in his honor coach Murphy has dedicated over

00435 years excuse me 25 35 years of his career to Lena Vista having first joined Polk County public schools in 1988. any questions before we move on CE again all items required have been submitted for approval this item will come back before you um in July next item before us will bring Miss Candy Yamato senior director office of charter schools to the podium is in relation to e shadai Community Academy El Shaddai excuse me I need my glasses and so we have received a new Charter application from El Shaddai and they are here to present on their application all right good afternoon everyone all right um my name is getty I'm Saint Germain and I'm just going to give just a brief of our our vision you know for for El Shaddai um first I

005want to say that I'm a graduate of Polk County 1990. um Auburndale Senior High School and uh and it's through those times at Polk County that I begin you know studying French you know as a with uh you know my two years in uh 11 and 12th grade then I went on to college and keep you know I fall in love with the language and study to become a teacher a French teacher and which is where I started my career as I first went to France where I had a opportunity to teach over there yeah so it's through all my experiences is with education as a teacher and later on became an administrator but I came up with we came up with our thoughts you know in different views of you know how we can

006assist you know in in this in Polk County you know with this Vision that we're going to present here so I think we scroll this way okay all right so El shadai Community Academy um well I'm just going to answer some of the questions that were up here a brief introduction to the number and community that are targeted population and we will aim to this not discriminate and aim to gear towards providing education for everyone you know towards uh in the in in the county um who's who will oh I guess uh aim to want to to participate in a program as what we want to offer [Music] and these escs that again you said we aimed for it to be do a charter school you know and um with the hope of you know

007getting you know the you know our students won't have to pay any tuition I mean as as you know that's what you guys uh that's what you know the pro counties who you know uh you know uh make up available so overview of academic design okay so our mission is to make available to our community a modern academic program to train students of great K-12 and give them the necessary skills to compete in the community and globally um again our approach will highlight and and InterContinental element in the subject areas our aim is to ingrain with an all-grade level the classical education and also Blended learning you know approach you know to our learning um also I mean additionally if you really we're further on the bottom here we are preparing we aim to prepare

008Global Citizens where language other language other than English will be unavailable you know for for students we um the immersion in a couple of couple of languages French and Spanish in some subject areas again these are areas where I'm I'm straight I have strength because of my my ground again for my teaching you know in in immersion programs you know throughout whether it's I studied in France and I went to Canada then worked in China with uh with different international schools so okay make this one okay it's not all right am I all right let's see okay you guys got it all right uh why why is there a need for this type of school all right yesterday I will provide an education that is unique to the people County at this time our entire

009program will be based on again global company competencies World languages and culture which will be needed in the 20th 21st century and again with the ability to for languages opens many doors for me you know Bob and also people that were among me among my colleagues and uh where all those were open you know with um with the state you know working you know whether it's an interpretation interpretation where they're working you know for the uh consulates you know those are open you know for not only work but also connection with you know uh globally so and I I I'm so grateful that now I started you know early in in high school you know learning languages and emphasis on uh immersion you know and um and I'm so thankful for Mrs Myers who who

010in in um uh Auburndale Senior High School who pushed who pushed me right to uh to study French and fall in love with the language and uh El shadai Community intend to on providing students the opportunity to relate with again different languages our approach is to provide the student the opportunity to connect with other students abroad and um with a relationship that we have developed you know with um we call exchange programs and different things like that that will enable students you know to develop you know their immersion abilities okay all right our overview of the academic design um again we aim our aim is to use the um the program from Hillsdale College which provide a curriculum which is classical but which can be connected in a sense where we can we can bring

011into our into the midst of that deliver the curriculum our our vision and um so not good with this presentation here I mean this this is not maybe I'll keep my hand behind me so no one touching that's going to happen yeah all right so um okay let me go back in okay why is there a need again as I've stated um I I don't see anything as such you know in in the community and also I mean we have we have such a blend you know in the community you know where you know we are anglos we are Hispanic we are French we are Creole and I know there are there's a great you know need for for for this kind of program um because I I've hear people talk of that I hear

012people that wants to keep you know within their culture a language um but there these opportunities are not open you know uh because school you know students spend more time at school or at home where in other words if we had if they were able to have that opportunity you know it will it will be an opportunity for them to keep you know not only you know family languages but also you know expand you know their own personal you know you know Horizons you know for different other cultures um and what's the benefit of that well um connection you know again Global Connections uh work enhance your ability you know at work and different things like that working for companies that are international and things like that so um explain why the charter model is

013the appropriate again I was I am at first to say that I fall in love with the charter school because I work for shutter school um I like the fact that you as a charter program you can design you the the program you know well for you know the I mean for your vision you know and and one specific thing is classical education you know as I I fall in love again with the classical approach because I do see the outcome of that I mean the strength of it um and additionally uh that's what I intend to be a college prep program that's our aim you know for our students you know we're gonna we aim to provide them you know the base not only in language but also in all subject areas you know

014to enhance them I mean to bring them to a level where they will not have uh they will be ready for college and we intend on using appropriate resources and that ensure that the development of each student and in all areas and we keep will aim to keep track of our and detailed track on our students um especially in the area of reading and the area of development you know in the specific language that they will aim to to um to adapt you know within their time with us Okay so all right so explain why the charter school for model is an appropriate vehicle to address this need okay our vision is to create again in K-12 that delivers an exceptional educational program and prepare students to understand issues of the world appreciate the culture

015and culture different universities uh respect the perspective of others and have the ability to communicate effectively effectively we will aim for our students to be evaluate and to evaluate life experiences and make decisions that will make differences in their home in their community at large and our approach El Shaddai Community is is to nurture the individual and our aim is to ceaselessly provide each student guidance and feedback on reaching their future now our program will see the need of adding students in discovering their strengths and weaknesses we aim to use approaches that would provide students opportunities of solving problems locally domestically and internationally and El Shaddai Community Academy will use the his deleg in a classical curriculum and we'll model After High after North North name of the school North I'm sorry I can't remember

016but he said it's a school in in South Florida um True North that's the name of the the tune of as a model that we also we want to connect with I have some colleagues that works you know for for turn off and their approach you know has been so vital you know in terms of the how they reach you know the South Miami you know community and we will use again uh the steam approach uh to uh to our developed to our delivery um and additionally um the looping which would be one one of our approach um to how we present we keep students you know with teachers so that we can see you know the the model of I mean the I mean the we see the students you know in in other

017words keeping them in a longer you know term of with us with one teacher you know to make sure that um the teacher you know keep a track you know within those years that they are with them you know of them growing in in in their in those specific subjects of looping and the demographic again we are aiming to talk to to assist or to um to present to provide education to all level to all members of of source of Polk County and based on the population we have a majority 64 of whites and 20 are Latinos we have 10 black and that's there are some that are from the Caribbean and the other side of from here and also all the race you know there is 11 so our aim is to Target whoever

018that comes to what to work door and again we will aim to Target a specific program I mean talk that will enhance each individual because we will monitor them you know uh regularly so that we can assist them into their growth right and yes esca will work in compliance with the school district and will always maintain a collaborative relationship with the school district and the school will engage in annual compliance reviews either independently or collaboration with the Specialists assigned to work with you know the school are I mean other measures to assess the quality of the program will include feedback from students parents and staff on the school climate survey and result from the survey of parents of all guardians of students and uh yesterday Academy has entered into a collaboration with leaders in the

019community and it is through this relationship that we will connect with families and also May secure a building to start the school and we were approached by this organization I mean they are a church organization they have building and they and we that dialogue with them and they there was a great need you know for that uh for the our type of school within that area where uh where this church is located and they have a facility that can accommodate you know classrooms and different different uh aspects of school function okay and outside Community oh okay my time is up okay I'll stop talking but in brief that's what we aim our aim is to provide a program that is a little bit different but efficient and and we just would like for your making

020this available you know to this to the students in in our community yeah okay hi thank you for being here today um I just have a couple of questions um I appreciate that you are looking at the community the French Creole Community because there are less supports for those students in general across the district um community-based supports especially and I think what a great language study is French is um to have that available to them I just have a couple of questions the college you referred to and the name of that you're proposing for your charter school is very faith-based would it be a which is fine but Charter still has you know Charter still has the mandates of state standards and different curriculum private schools have so much more leeway with the vouchers that

021have just been you know released and pretty much every family can have a voucher was there a reason you went Charter instead of a private I just think I'm just asking for the faith-based component because that would be allowed I mean you could do that as well with the vouchers that you that you may be limited in a public charter school um because I mean we have had you know our collaborators who already had started you know charter school and would like to we kind of appreciate what they already have started and which is I mean which is where we have more software you know vision and more our Zeal you know to to see the same thing that's happening you know in the area happening here you know using that model yeah so it'll

022be a similar model to what they already have yes okay great yes okay will they be a parent company of it will they have interest financially in it um no no interest financially just um just collaborators I mean that are doing the same type of work here thank you for being here yes okay thank you Dr Allen thank you superintendent Hyde yeah I was going to again say thank you for being here uh and you know sharing your vision at this point um obviously you know there'll be a very rigorous process that you'll work through from here um and you know in general I think it's pretty interesting that Florida is now recognizing the classical learning test um as an optional graduation test requirement and also coincides with our Bright Futures um so you know

023this this is actually the very first Charter from a classical lens so it's intriguing so I again I just appreciate that you're here and obviously um you know there's a lot of uh steps to go from here and but I did have one question looking at your materials um in the new presentation you use the the term Blended learning which wasn't in that initial presentation so I'm curious your definition of Blended learning okay Blended learning is a workstation you know where you will have you know students you know um as you diversify you know they they're learning on the day on under delivery of that of that time where I mean where some will be you know projecting you know with a presentation some will be doing some Hands-On you know presentation so we'll have

024different stations within the classroom and uh that way teachers can you know accommodate to students you know specific needs yeah okay I think the way I was interpreting it was more of a virtual um delivery mode uh in a sense and not like butts in the seat type of delivery um so yeah I appreciate you clarifying on that okay but yeah again thanks for being here that's all I have superintendent there are no further questions thank you okay thank you next item is agenda item is the charter review team's recommendation to superintendent on Navigator High School of leadership High School Miss Amato hey good afternoon again so um I'm going to turn it over to somebody who is no stranger to Polk County Schools um she's actually worked with us for the past 10 years

025on doing our Charter reviews so we greatly appreciate her expertise and the knowledge that she brings to the table um she also provides that third party Viewpoint to ensure that nothing is skewed and she does have extensive experience so without any further Ado I'm going to turn it over to miss Vicki mace I'm not used to your new platform so my notes and the notebook is not going to work so let's just work something out thank you Dr Hyde and fellow board oh don't thank me yet oh okay which okay out in the universe it's completely in the summer okay I apologize for that superintendent Hyde and board members thank you for allowing me to work with your board as well as the fabulous folks and Candy's office it's been a pleasure to work with

026the um the charter application review team for the last 10 years I've actually been doing starter evaluation since 2002 and started in Brevard County similar position as Miss Amato so I've been working on these for a long time so it's a pleasure to be able to share my expertise with you today so see I knew this was going to be a problem because I'm going to hit everything as Miss Amato said earlier now Charter Schools can um give the district at any time their application so that's why I'm before you today used to be in the past that we had specific time frames but we're no longer working that way the charter review team is a great team it's filled with District staff that work very hard very diligent also very diligent to the mission

027of their organization and so for them to take the time out of their busy schedules to help us with the charter review team is commendable community members three community members we have a charter school representative legal counsel always enjoy working with Mr Bridges we go back probably about 20 years together Charter Schools Department always I can email text anytime and I get a very quick response and then I'm the external evaluator and I try to remind the board and for new board members I think it's good that you bring in an external evaluator because I look at the Merit of the application I simply take that application and like a question by question and I'm able to look at it through a different lens I don't know the politics I don't know the history and

028so I think that basing it on the Merit of the application is helpful in this process it's an extensive process each team each team member reviews the application and then we have two meetings at that meeting we discuss the strengths the weaknesses and we do spend time on the strengths I do want to emphasize that because what I probably bring to you the most are the concerns also we have group discussions lots of group discussions the members get to Advocate to approve a charter recommendation before we take that final tally and then they vote anonymously or don't vote but they recommend an honest anonymously whether to approve or deny their Charter recommendation there are lots of Florida Statutes that guide us through this process I have them there for your reference but we don't have

029the time to go through them but those are statutes that guide us we just can't make decisions we have to look at these statutes and I try to just remind the board in the audience that it's easy to get excited about Innovative projects in this case it would be a seamless K-12 education which would be fabulous on the same campus it's it's easy to get excited about all those things but we have to remember the balance and look at those statutory requirements when we're making a recommendation there's also a capacity interview process you learn a lot at the capacity interview it's an opportunity to ask questions that are not clear and sometimes it it creates more questions and I think we'll talk about that today there was some more questions that were established at that

030meeting that we are trying to still resolve so detailed process we look at the Merit of the chart application we look at the capacity interview what we learned there we look at the applicant's capacity to govern and we also do a lot of due diligence that's my favorite part is digging in and finding a lot of information I try to provide you links so that you can go right to those links and see that information because you need to have the most information the most facts to make an informed decision so this year we've got Navigator Academy of leadership high school it's going to be a 9 through 12th grade school it proposes to open July 2024 it's located on the vacant land of the campus of the current Navigator K-8 school so we they

031would be at the same campus in previous years just some history for those that are new to the board Navigator high school did apply in 2021 they were denied at that time they did submit another Charter application in 2022 but withdrew it before we went through the application process and now we have the application before us for 2023. there are they're projecting 650 students the last application they submitted was 875 students but this time they lowered their student population there are a lot of strengths about this and I don't want to sell those strengths short there are a lot of strengths about this application I think there's what I'm understanding from the charter review team there is a need for a high school in that area Poinciana as well so that definitely is a strength

032they're replicating a model that you're familiar with because they're doing the same type of educational model and so you've seen K-8 educational model in the works it's a seamless transition from your middle school to your high school I know that's enticing for parents they like that and familiarity with the same campus that would be a very strong selling point for the school they have the smart curriculum they have their NASA partnership and they did have evidence that the community wants this lots of parents support if you'll see that in the application as well as a letter from the man at city manager of Davenport but there are some concerns that we need to just bring to your attention today some of the concerns can be dealt with contractually if you go to a charter appeal

033they will say go back figure it out contractually and there are a lot of things that can be there were some concerns in the curriculum with not having the most updated um oh what do you call the the best standards when they did the curriculum scope and sequence there were not there were some things that were could be improved but those are the things that can be worked out so what I'm going to share with you today are some things that takes perhaps a little bit more of our attention just so that you understand so I do want to tell you that the members of the charter review team had nothing but kind words to say about the existing Ka that they're very collaborative very transparent but there have been some concerns with the ELC

034Staffing those students um so that we feel that are the team or the school district felt that they were serving them effectively um I think that you'll find those similar concerns with this High School application and one of the things the applicant States is that teaching staff will begin with one certified ESC teacher that can act as both the specialist to maintain the ESC program paperwork and provide Direct Services since the first year we will have a smaller enrollment this ee teacher will also oversee the gifted EP students contrary to that statement if you look at the Staffing plan they're only Staffing a 0.5 ESC teacher they're projecting 12 percent ese students which is approximately 30 students the first year and so that's probably a pretty good load for a half of a unit they

035are going to be sharing that teacher with the current K-8 school um the other thing too we're looking at their contracted Services the K-8 school has speech and language currently but when you look at the budget there's only budgeted in line item 6130 for 19 275 dollars this is where the applicant told us during the interview that that would also be for a half of a nursing physician speech services and a mental health counselor so there's some questions whether or not that's budgeted appropriately as well similar concerns reservations regarding the Staffing for the Esau students to serve them effectively the K-8 school just I I learned during this process they have added paraprofessionals to make the Staffing more appropriate at the school however they are also only Staffing a 0.5 ESL unit so they're going

036to share that unit again 12 about 30 kids are going to share that unit with the K-8 school Miss Amato asked well will that impact the k-a school if you take a half a unit their plan is to hire another unit at the K-8 school and let the current Esau teacher serve both schools because they're familiar with the students oh I'm not I'm tapping that's not working um government governance this was brought out by one of the board members at the presentation they have currently three members they've had the same language since their K-8 application in um 2019 2021 2020 to 23 I don't even know if I got all the dates right I apologize but all of their former applications have the same language that they're going to have five maybe seven but they

037have not added those um and that that language Remains the Same they did say at the interview that they are going to be vetting some perhaps potential board members at their summer workshop so that'll be something that the district will need to monitor transportation services um I just need to be honest with you you can't deny a charter school because they're not going to provide transportation that was decided in a court case about 2015. however it does still remain a concern will that be your barrier they haven't had transportation in the past because they said they haven't been able to find providers in that area Ms Amato did ask did they did they try to find a provider prior to submitting the high school application and they said no and so concerned that it still

038may be a barrier so Mr motto asked well how do the parents know whether or not there's not going to be any transportation they said that it's at the bold lettering at the top of the registration paperwork I've submitted that as part of the application that is not the case they also said that it is apparent on the school's website I searched the website quite extensively I couldn't find it so if it is on the website it would be difficult for parents to find so Transportation not required but they don't have any Revenue they don't have any expenses do have a concern whether or not you have some ESC students that might be eligible for transportation they said that would be a case-by-case basis but again there's no expenses no Revenue so that would impact

039the budget Food Service they claim that it is a is a break even Enterprise the first year for the school and the second year it was not a break-even Enterprise however the 2022 Financial audit does show that it was a break-even Enterprise they did have to do some transference some funds to help it out from the special Revenue to the general fund it might be that the high school will have an easier time because they can come under the umbrella of the national school lunch program but it might be something to monitor as well because it could negatively impact the the budget supplement and planning that's another thing that that didn't get scored in the application but I think it's pretty relevant to a high school they do say that they are going to offer

040Florida High School Association Sports when asked which sports they said soccer basketball and perhaps baseball um what I think that needs to be mentioned here is that they're only going to have one JV coach for all five years and they're not going to have a varsity coach until year three this is significantly less than what they allocated in their last application so that would be pretty difficult especially as Miss Amato reminded him with Title IX with Equity to have one JV coach and to be able to offer at least girls and boys sports might be difficult so another area that would perhaps impact the budget that needs to be discussed today the management company um there's there's just some language in the application that makes it interesting as to whether or not there's going to

041be a good relationship between the management company or perhaps they're having the right amount of power and authority and one of the things on page 71 the applicant shares the faculty and staff of nal003 which is the high school will report directly to the principal who shall report to the governing board and the ESP generally the principal reports to the governing board in this case it's not even a principle it's going to be a director of schools a half of a unit but they didn't change the information in the application and also on the same page they State the ESP will make all school-based decisions establishing and implementing procedures for the day-to-day operations again that would be something generally that your administrative staff would be doing where your board makes the policy but you depending

042on your administrators to implement the policy Staffing Staffing as I mentioned with the ESC and the eel L students also they're going to have 10 teacher units they are both core and electives last time they had 12 so I'm not sure if about the reduction there's also no funding or expenses for substitutes they will be sharing some services and these services that they're going to share are ell Esau facilities which is their Landscaping cleaning they're a director they're co-principal there will be no teachers shared is what they did explain to us there's some Physicians that we were not able to find in the budget which are with maintenance 0.5 curriculum Specialists and 0.5 it Specialists so there are some staffing concerns that might impact the budget as well funding the facility throughout the application the

043applicant discusses a lease and and and there's a couple pages on the facility and every reference is that they're going to have a lease but as you look through the document there's kind of some conflicting information regarding what that lease is going to cost and so the the review team was unable to distinguish what would the actual cost of the lease be there's another thing that um I'm going to try to take you back with some history now and I know I'm doing this very quickly and I apologize but the application does include a letter and that letter was dated September 21st 2021 and basically what that letter tells us is that the current K-8 school closed on some tax exempt bonding which provided the school money so that they could purchase their facility so

044they now own the facility well that and that same letter It also says that those bonds would be eligible for 12 million five hundred thousand dollars for the expansion for the high school and that was back in 2021. well this application was submitted in 2024 and so there's no mention to help the charter review team or the district understand what they were going to do even in their board meeting minutes they stayed on September 14 2121 that they closed this Bond deal and that as soon as this Charter application for the high school is approved they would move forward on the construction and it would be beneficial if they had explained some of that in this application but instead they reference having lease payments and as you can see provide conflicting information regarding the lease

045payments and so some of the history we're going to talk a little bit more about what happened at the um the interview where some other information was brought to our attention but I do think that there was an opportunity to help the district and the charter review team understand what was transpiring as far as them obtaining their first facility budget budget is always very weak probably spend most of our attention I also like to thank JD that's that is the piece that where most charter schools and their Embassy don't do very well if they're going to have problems it will be with their budgeting and so we spend a lot of time on their budget just to let you know that the last budget that they provided us was a lot more detail there were

046only really three areas of concern one was a 350 000 loan how it was guaranteed because it was someone from campus that was going to guarantee the loan also they didn't use the correct startup balance they didn't transfer it over from the startup balance to the to real budget they didn't transfer that correctly so that created a deficit right off the bat and the third thing is they didn't transfer money correctly from their revenue their revenue estimate worksheets that they work on that didn't get transferred over to the budget so that impacted it negatively this budget has different concerns and so I'll try to share those with you today foreign this budget contains the CSP Grant and the CSP Grant is a competitive Grant normally applicants do not put unguaranteed budgets as part of their

047revenue because chances are that it will be good they might get it the K-8 school got it but if they don't get it then they're already going to be in some trouble because of the amount of money that they project so the applicant told us at the interview that they wouldn't have to use those funds they were going to use something called development fees in its place and we're going to talk about that a little bit more in a few minutes the other thing that they did is that they use Capital outlay funding the school is not eligible for Capital outlay funding and then the application evaluation I provided information so that you can see they're not eligible and that the K-8 school did not receive Capital outlay until year three at the charter capacity

048interview the applicant did admit that the school would not be eligible so it budgeted 250 000 for the first two years again that's not guaranteed income um the revenue also includes some other unguaranteed Revenue um the budget I mean there was 75 000 for pre-planning and 275 000 for the first year of operation in the last budget they presented that was under gifts this time it's under project advances for development it includes sixty thousand dollars for the first year and a hundred thousand dollars for years two through five for something they're calling other local miscellaneous Services basically what they explained to us are these were fundraisers and they told us about the K-8 school earning twenty thousand dollars they did say they could get some more Revenue if they did get a grant for their

049after-school tutoring program um it includes 37 500 for a technology fee what that basically was was they were charging 150 dollars for every student for their one-on-one device and so at the interview they decided that that would be voluntary and so that the children would not have to pay that so again here's thirty seven thousand dollars that is not guaranteed Revenue expenses it includes expenses for food I used to laugh as a principal I've got a raise when I went to the district because I didn't have to buy donuts and breakfast anymore you don't buy you don't get to buy food and they included that in their budget they probably don't accurately reflect Food Services as we're talking about supplemental program the facilities we don't quite know we have some better understanding now perhaps what

050their cost might be with a facility and their Staffing those continue to be expenses so this is the part that I need to and I don't know how I'm doing on time am I okay Health bad okay I'll go real fast sorry I'm five minutes over I think um basically let me just do this real quickly what we learned at the capacity interview is that what was discovered we believe and it was after the fact that the evaluation included the capital outlay and the CSP Grant at that time what happened basically is that the applicant went and and went to try to find a different way to try to help with that problem and so what they're suggesting now is that they're not going to have to pay their Debt Service for the first two

051years and that it would be postponed to year three we have some letters and again I and if you read the dialogue in the evaluation you will see in the dialogue that this is pretty much after the fact okay after the budget has been presented and after it was discovered that these these two items were included as Revenue so so basically they said we're going to get this is a new development and that we're going to get you a letter and so that letter we were meeting and um we hope to have the letter before our Charter review team group met but they didn't we didn't receive it and in time once the letter was brought to the district that letter does not have any guarantee that the debt service is going to be delayed

052two years and so this school the district just moved on if that had been something presented and this Amado gave that opportunity to correct to remedy the situation we would probably have met again and had taken a different route the other thing that I just quickly want to show you is that the other thing they keep on telling us is that project development fees are going to be like the cure-all for everything anything that they don't have the money for they're going to use project development fees and we really do not have a good understanding of where that money is coming from who is supplying that and how that will work so the budget right off the front you can see that when they include the um capital outlay and they include the CSP Grant

053they have a healthy budget they present you a healthy budget but if you look right off the bat you take out the capital outlay they're already in a deficit fund balance the first year because they were not able to provide any evidence we went through the whole exercise and that's what I'm giving you today we went through the whole exercises okay what if they did get to delay their their Debt Service what would that look like it would look great until they didn't get the CSP Grant but right now they were not able to provide us with that evidence and so we have to go with the budget presented which will be an insolvent budget because of right off the bat the capital outlay fees so there are other things that we talked about and

054so the charter review team recommendation based on the facts at the time because we had no letter the letter didn't prove to be significant but at the time based on the facts the charter review team recommended to deny the charter application to to approve eight to deny okay questions I apologize for going so fast a lot of material to cover Miss Miller that was a lot of material and I appreciate your voice in this and all of the applications that you review or the team reviews because it's very helpful thank you you know I um I appreciate that you gave the qualities of the school up front because I know a lot of people would like to see that school grow there are several concerns mainly with that budget I'm concerned for the students who

055may be receiving Support Services in the in the lower school who will not be able to continue them because it's not budgeted so when we go back my question is that's a lot to do contingent on contract negotiations can I don't know Candy may be able to talk about that process can can there be an agreement before this is approved or you know before the vote to approval of how this will how these many budget concerns will be resolved budget is one of those sticky subjects because there was a lot of a lot of decisions that have to be made based on Staffing and Personnel Transportation if that's going to be a concern um serving the ese students serving the ell students those are those all require big dollars so without having that Capital outlay

056when we remove that from the budget budget is very difficult to pinpoint because it's all about money at the end of the day don't they have about this isn't they have other schools so this budgeting process shouldn't be so they have they operate their K-8 here in Polk County and they also have a K-8 in Hillsborough County okay so this isn't a brand new Charter they understand the budgeting issues did you share with them that Charter students are welcomed um to Sports in their Zone schools so they may be able to use the money they were allocating to sports I'd rather see ell services or ese Services provided than pushing money to a just a JV Sports don't remember offhand but there was not a significant amount of money attributed to the to the sports

057program they or the stipend it was minimal just a stipend and they were picking sports that did not require football where it requires an extensive amount of money to be spent on uniforms and and safety equipment they already are going to be building a gym and a softball baseball type field is their goal so they were picking sports that they could already accommodate have they given you a written response to this lengthy report yes they have I have shared it with Mr Hyde I'll be more than happy to share it with the rest of you please thank you Dr Allen great thanks superintendo Hyde I was just going to commend candy a motto massamano thank you for the transcripts I mean as we're working through this we don't have um a glimpse into what's happening

058behind the curtain so I think the transcript really helps us through that interview process and uh I had a couple questions and I was curious we had 10 votes I believe on the from the charter review team is that correct yes how many total members do we have on that team I think that there's been as many as 17 but that last meeting took place right there at the end of the school year and I think there were other commitments and so we had 10 for the vote that day okay so 17 total is on on the charter review team yeah from the curriculum sometimes curriculum not to pick on the curriculum department but sometimes they divide and conquer and so one representative although there's three curriculum components one will represent all three of them

059if they have other duties they divide and conquer okay so it's not a fixed um person in that role as a voting member it's not just not always the Departments if they send a delegate there is uh they are encouraged to have open communication and conversation with if they're sending a delegate in their place so that everyone is very well informed all participants get access to the electronic version of the application so whether they are participating in the meeting or reading it on their own they do have access to all the information okay thanks Mike and they do provide comments if they cannot attend they do provide their own comments all right good new information for me thank you in regards to how many ESC students do they currently serve in the K-8 do you

060know you know that's something we can get I just know what they're projecting they're projecting 12 percent so I don't know what their current ka yeah I think that would be helpful and then how many students are currently enrolled in their K-8 I their their goal is a thousand and I know they are close to 900 at one time I think um again that's information that we can get to you but I know their goal is a thousand and just thinking about the amount of students that are rolling out of that K8 into our schools as well and just thinking about capacity um was really at the heart of that question in particular um is there there K-8 budget is it solvent uh do you know what the fund balance is currently on their K-8

061framework they do their K-8 budget is solvent they have an unrestricted fund balance currently they have an unrestricted fund balance of one million five hundred ninety eight thousand five hundred and sixty nine dollars and the can I and the reason that I believe that they have that balance is that when they got their bond their proceeds from the bond they were able to purchase the building for over the bond proceeds were over 15 million the purchase of the building was over 14 that gave them a little over a million combined with the about 900 000 2021 fund balance which gave them a very health healthy fund balance and so say within the last five years I mean what would their fund balance look like within the last five years um their fund balance percentage-wise would

062be helpful I don't have the percentage but I can tell you that in their first year of operation I am I have their unrestricted fund balance three this is from their financial audits 347 289 dollars their first year 929 719 second year and then third year they're unrestricted as one million oh I have it's I think it's 1 598 600. yeah it'd be helpful to understand the percentage like within the last five years I to me that's a a factor and a decision um the solvency of the organization and in regards to them scaling I don't know if that was data that was presented um during the charter review teams um you know uh look at this the school opened the first year of operation was 2020. so we only have those three years of

063History gotcha their next financial is due and they'll the district will get it in September but it's my understanding that it continues to be a healthy fund balance and how long has the Hillsboro School been in existence same the same time frame okay good to know and I have not looked at the Hillsborough I was just looking at the K-8 but if you need me to I can um I don't think I need that one okay at this point yeah thank you I think that's all the questions I have superintendo hi thank you thank you sir Mr sharpless um I was wondering if you could answer uh what evidence there is for for demand for this school is there the parents in the area seem to want this there's Pages if you look at the

064application which is about this tall and the uh there's pages of notes comments from parents there seems to be a real desire to have the school from the parents that are attend to have children attending the K-8 school so the need is there I think they did a good job presenting that need okay and I'm and I just want to put on record I I somewhat concerned that less than 60 percent of the committee actually voted on this um 10 out of 17. that is a concern of mine I just I would like to see a better participation in our Charter review team and you know generally we do um and the meet the first meeting I it was a fabulous meeting where most of the dialogue and discussion takes place um unfortunately the timing

065because you have a statutory deadline to have this before you as the board to make a decision the timeline was just not beneficial this round unfortunately in my 10 years I've never had us have to come the last week of school and try to gather your your folks who truly have a their own job and their own mission to the organization and so the timing was just most unfortunate but please understand the first meeting lots of great dialogue lots of participation in the first meeting and that's generally where you get the idea of what way the committee or not the committee of the team I'm sorry is heading and you get a really good idea and sense at least I do to go back and then dig in deeper in some different areas where they

066voice their concerns during that first meeting all right thank you you're welcome I want to interject I'd like to say I appreciate the fact that you recognize that the calendar is what created an issue this is not the fact that staff did not feel committed to the process and respectfully I would support that and Advocate aggressively for my own staff at that last week of school they do have better things to be doing than to be sitting in a charter Review Committee because we're trying to close out schools we're trying to finalize testing we're trying to do all kinds of things not just to close out the school year but to start to ramp up for the upcoming school year already and so I think that's important to note that scheduling these is incredibly it's

067an important process and one that we need to be a little bit more thoughtful about even if we have to help you with getting some other dates and times available for staff to meet with you Miss Wyatt thank you I know it's a timing issue that's been caused by changing that there's not a deadline anymore in February is there anything that we can do in the future if we let them know hey this is you know you can have this review in May however there's not going to be that many people that you know we realize that it's a challenge with scheduling that they could they could grant us an extension or is that not allowed under statute so we can ask them most certainly for an extension however if they do not agree we're

068still Bound by the 90 days now just so you know they did based on the board the how this work sessions and board meetings work in the summer we are actually going owing going over our 90 days by the board vote in July they did graciously extend to meet that that deadline so that we were not out of compliance it does become very tricky with limited board work sessions and board meetings in the summer and then meeting board agenda meeting deadlines um it is very tricky and we all have competing priorities and it becomes a challenge okay it may just be something that we want to let them know in the future if it's planning to come it you know it has to come before the team in May this is the challenge that we're

069up against would you do you want us to move forward in May knowing that there could only be nine or ten people there would you rather do it in June to at least give them that option so that they understand the timing issue and they currently had 916 students enrolled last year thank you and approved for 1 000 for next year Bliss fields thank you I just want to thank you for your objectivity and being able to look at the entire situation and showing the positive and the negatives and I want to thank the charter school Review Committee for their work as well because I know that's not an easy thing to do um I think one of one of my concerns was the fund balance and you talked about that with Mr when Dr

070Allen referenced it so I'm thinking that even if they were to come in in a negative I'm just assuming that they think that because they have that fun balance they'd be able to to draw from that I don't know that uh so so I I guess my question is when when you make your recommendation and you look at the whole situation in this in its entirety it's a standalone application it's not based on what they might have in another area does that make sense it does I mean I think that Miss Amato was really lenient to allow them to submit a letter after the fact if that letter had said yes we are delaying that debt service for two years I would be standing here giving you a very different presentation but because they could

071not provide that and written evidence we have to go back to the facts and the facts at the time were they they submit you know I mean to put capital outlay and CSP grant money in a budget none of their other applications have included those two areas those I mean I've been doing this 20 years you just don't put on guaranteed Revenue in your budget and say trust us we'll we'll take care of it the other thing is if they do rely and the law does rely them to allow them to rely on their other um funding balance at the K-8 school there's some parameters that are set forth in their bond that they have to adhere to they have to have 45 days of cash on hand they have to have a bond ratio

072and I don't have this in front of me I hope it's 1.5 no one to one I think one I don't know what it is but there's this currently 1.52 they're not within the range of what the bond is expecting I'm sorry my notes were over here and there was a third thing that they also had to do though they had to have a special Revenue fund for their bond so there's some things that if they were to take some funding which they're allowed to do from their k hey how does that impact their bond well we don't know that we don't have that discussion you know we don't have that understanding but there are some parameters in which they have to operate in order to keep that bond in compliance as well so back

073to your point Miss Fields the i i the recommendation was made on what the team saw at the time what was presented to them in the application and again I go back to the fact they could have provided in the narrative a better discussion as to what was happening with the bond activity but that wasn't even mentioned um and that would have probably given the team a better understanding but after the fact to say we have a fix for it is usually not something that's allowable in this process thank you yeah you're welcome there are no further questions thank you thank you Miss Amato is up next the charter administrative Services guide so this is um good afternoon again this is super quick so as you know we collect um Charter administrative fees from all

074the charter schools based on where they fall into the statute language so the guide that you have in front of you as a revision the last revision came to you in 2021 it outlines what services we provide to the charter schools at no additional expense because we collect that administrative service fee there are also things outlined in there that if the charter school wants to participate they're more than welcome to but there will be a separate fee and it will be a contracted service so we provided you an up the actual page and then a summary of all the documented changes Dr Allen thank you thank you Ms Amano uh looking at the documents um it says that we can collect up to five percent and up to two percent so where are we at

075as far as percentage-wise and administrative fees that we're collecting so it's a it's a variety based on statute language so ese schools we only collect two percent High performing schools we collect three percent so it is a sliding scale dictated by Statute I mean I'd be interested in knowing uh the amount of funds that we collect so last year we collected just under 1.1 million okay all right and we report that annually to the state thank you this model there are no further questions next item before the board is Charter renew contract renewals Ms Amato good afternoon again all right the last one I promise all right so we do have five contracts before you today they also will be coming to the board this evening please know the first four Janie Howard you approved

076back in January to renew for five years Polk Avenue approved to renew for five years Buck North and Lake Wales High School approved for 10. these are standard template contracts provided by Doe we fill in the blank and then we move forward with any specific negotiations so for example in Janie Howard Polk Avenue in Lake Wales we ensured that we put um that they're going to Target the greater Lake Wales area to ensure that they are honoring the purpose of their Charter for buck North back in their very original contract there was language that said that their targeted population would be the Lake Wales students and they would not seek students outside of the Lake Wales area until they've exhausted their wait list for Lake Wales students so in conversation with the principal she was

077still in agreement so that language was transferred from their previous contract to their new contract and then the final contract up for this evening is the Polk State Lakeland um contract it was renewed for five years please note this contract does reflect a name change so their new name will be Polk State Lakeland Gateway to College Collegiate High School so after the approval this evening they are at new msid application form will be sent to the state so that the state recognizes that they do have an official name change Ms Miller I just want to take this opportunity to once again thank the new superintendent of Lake Wales and all of Lake Wales for the relationship that we currently have with that District I think this is more collaboration than I've ever seen and I

078love that Polk County students are one so I just wanted to take this opportunity and thank you for the work you do with these multiple applications there are no further questions Miss Amato thank you very much next item board members is the comprehensive evidence-based reading plan at this time I'd like to bring Victoria McKenzie senior director of K-12 literacy forward afternoon good afternoon brought a partner with me this is Diane plowden she is a secondary literacy curriculum specialist she has worked diligently in making sure we capture everything in the document that we're doing so I just wanted to have her up here and thank her publicly for all she's done for it today we're going to review briefly I know you have a packed agenda the K-12 comprehensive evidence-based reading plan for the 23-24 school

079year historically it's outlined by the Florida Department of education's just read Florida a District's K-12 serp is submitted annually and is the district's plan for improving student outcomes and reading and includes the district's approach to leadership professional development coaching assessment instruction and intervention as it relates to reading this year there have been revisions to the rule that outlines the requirements of the serp first the requirement for having the fdoe reviewer approve the plan has been removed and has been replaced with School Board review and approval the fdoe requirement to use their provided template has also been removed although this year we have decided to continue to use that template within the fdoe template there are eight sections and they are on your screens I won't read them to you but it takes a look at

080all of the things that are comprehensive and what we need for a reading plan moving forward section ones contact information it has a slick at the main reading contact who they need to contact in terms of that data piece who's been assigned to think about and work with the third grade promotion and then the mtss contact as well section two reflects the district's budget for the evidence-based reading allocation currently the fdoe is asked that we submit our plan based on last year's budget using fast pm2 data our assumption is is that once they do standard setting at the end of July we'll get a better idea of what you know including that pm3 data the allocation is created to provide comprehensive reading instruction to students in pre-k through 12th grades and can include salaries and

081benefits professional development assessment programs materials tutoring and incentives Section 3 asks that clear immeasurable student literacy goals for grades pre-k through 10 are established based on Fast these goals should increase over the previous years and once again as a reminder this data is still reflective of pm2 until fdoe requests that we make the change and include pm3 this portion of the serp also outlines literacy leadership at both the district and school level including the requirements for the establishment of school-based literacy leadership teams part four of the serp looks at literacy coaches school-based requirements for school-based literacy coaches we use the just read literacy coach model school-based coaches engage in activities such as modeling and training of effective instructional strategies coaching and mentoring teachers engagement in the school's leadership team literacy leadership team they collect and

082use data to inform and Implement professional learning activities and they ensure that evidence-based reading strategies and programs grounded in the science of reading are implemented with Fidelity at their School site yes the next section of serp asks how we as a district will work to implement Florida's formula for Success which is six components of reading plus four types of assessment plus tier one core Plus tier two intervention plus tier three intensive intervention the intervention piece will get to in just a slide or two and that's the section of the plan that has seen the most growth this year moving into the 23-24 school year Section 5 also asks districts to develop an assessment curriculum decision tree to demonstrate how data will be used to determine specific reading instructional needs and interventions for students in grades

083K-12 additional information regarding assessment data is on pages 11-27 of the plan that I believe was attached for you all to review so here we're into the good part um the last portion of Section 5 looks at curriculum and instruction currently elementary schools use Florida wonders in K-5 is their Core Curriculum and secondary schools you study think as their Core Curriculum the intervention piece is the truly exciting part moving into the upcoming school year last year we implemented corrective reading in roughly 51 schools throughout the district as a reading intervention for schools or for students in grades three through ten in the 23-24 school year we are adding an additional 21 schools it's where it currently sits and I'd like to take a minute just right now to thank the senior directors and the senior

084coordinators of the division of schools they've gone to roughly 72 schools and administered diagnostic tests to students who were identified as possibly needing corrective reading it's been an enormous undertaking and they have just risen to the occasion and done a phenomenal job to ensure that students are appropriately placed in the correct interview invention currently there are roughly 16 000 students that have tested in at these 72 schools moving into the upcoming school year we are going to be implementing language for Learning and reading Mastery or sips for students in grades K through two language for learning will focus on the development of oral language skills and the other two programs really master your sips will work on teaching phonemic awareness sound letter correspondence progress into fluency vocabulary and moving into comprehension from there section 6

085asks us to talk about professional development professional development for reading intervention will continue to be a big Focus for this upcoming school year last year there were 25 training sessions offered for corrective reading to ensure that teachers were appropriately trained on this intervention as reading intervention continues to be a priority Focus we'll once again provide professional development and follow-up to teachers throughout the year and continuing to fine-tune our practice to meet student need we will ensure that teachers are trained on the right interventions whether it's language for Learning and or reading Mastery or sips which includes follow-up with classroom observations coaching and modeling and currently the kindergarten camps throughout summer camps throughout the district those teachers were all 133 of them trained on language for learning so we have a good foundation moving into the

086next school year for teachers that are already trained and ready to go section seven we're almost done outlines a few of the district-wide tutoring options available to students and families Varsity tutoring provides one-on-one virtual tutoring reading Pals is provided in conjunction with the United Way Americorps readers is in partnership with the Polk Education Foundation and teen trendsetters is in coordination with the Barbara Bush Foundation and finally Section 8 is family engagement the serp focuses on family engagement strategies that the district will use to engage families in literacy and includes resources from just read Florida the Florida Center for reading research Media Services resources the new world's reading initiative and Title One family engagement programs Miss Miller I just have a couple of questions yes ma'am um the interventions that you have are those also used

087in our Center Schools are they differentiated instruction if there is I'm sorry yes yeah we're working with um Miss castles and Miss Peters to ensure that they are being implemented within those yes my other question is I hear from third grade reading teachers that use corrective reading that it's helpful but not for students that are multiple grade levels behind um can you talk about how sips how they partner how they prepare a student for third grade there seems to be from from teachers who are giving third grade reading tests that we're having to give tests to students who that we have to make up that Gap and their learning um loss for a lot of reasons but can you just talk about how that interventions that are going to happen in K1 and 2 will

088support what's happening in K3 so I think that historically you chase a reading problem you get kids in third grade and then all of a sudden we're trying to remediate and make sure that they're on grade level so when backing up to K2 we'll catch kids um before their deficiencies become something we're actually chasing so if we look at kids who have going into kindergarten or first grade and oral language deficit that's the foundational piece for all reading so if it's an oral language deficit we can address that through language for learning then get them into that reading Mastery piece well they'll work on you know the phonics and the the fluency and those types of activities and become better readers before they get to third grade the idea is to run corrective right out

089of of the district quite frankly and we need to do that by intervening early I'm glad you said the whole phonics piece that seems I don't know there was a time where we didn't apply that and we are seeing the results of not using that I'm just Statewide so I appreciate that this is going to focus on that phonics piece as a kindergarten previous kindergarten teacher that gay one and two is so important are these the only interventions that are allowed I know we've have people that have used other programs they're really you know this might be a hide question and I've witnessed the programs and I've watched the students interaction and yes it looks very successful but as a district is this what we do for data collection that these are what's going to

090be available to students and teachers so I think historically his schools have been allowed to kind of pick their own interventions as they've gone and that hasn't allowed us to have any real idea of what's working because there's been a wide variety of students and a wide variety of data coming in I think we're trying to like par down to some that they're successful with students so we can kind of just get a gauge on if we Implement effectively if we follow up effectively what are we seeing from students as a result of that the board will recall that last year the assessment accountability team led by Mr Green Deputy superintendent conducted a thorough analysis of all of our interventions we had over 17 many of which were not even research based um so we

091did eliminate all of those the only reading interventions at tier two that were retained were those that actually had an effect change or really resulted in an effect a change for our students and supported again through research-based methodology moving forward to one of your earlier questions um Miss Miller that there still are tier three interventions being reviewed for specific students such as Barton and others but are very time and Personnel intensive because they require one-on-one between an adult and a student so there's a lot of intensive training has to take place as well as you know Staffing and flexibility and scheduling needs that we addressed which is why tier three interventions and the manner in which we assign students interventions has to be very carefully reviewed and analyzed all of these programs we capture and

092analyze their data corrective reading I would I would love to have a conversation with any third grade teacher that says it doesn't meet the needs of students who are multiple years below grade level because the benefit of corrective reading especially at our elementary schools right now and feeding into middle and high is that for example if a child requires a certain level of support and corrective reading that child can very easily be assigned to a different classroom that supports that level of instruction the teacher is not being asked to support corrective level a b B1 C1 C2 that's never being asked of our staff so in fact back to the point that Mrs Mackenzie pointed out earlier our staff proactively go out at the end of every school year and reassess students to ensure adequate

093and proper placement prior to the start of the upcoming school year and we've identified as she noted over sixteen thousand students many of whom weren't even on our radar and weren't receiving any intervention previously and so the only thing that has to change and we had this conversations mid-year when we went for Datacom and I was very proud to hear that a handful of our schools had already adopted this philosophy but that corrective reading is not a stagnant program and students are not relegated to that class at that level for the entirety of the school year as students start to demonstrate progression and Mastery they should be allowed to request to be reassessed and then reassigned to a higher level ultimately exiting from the program and just focusing then at that point on comprehension strategies

094within a different type of reading environment so the program is intended to incentivize students so they can pursue that the more investment that they make and more effort they place and the more learning that takes place they can exit that reading classroom much faster but it does allow for teachers to differentiate it every single grade level for those students and so I'm again if that's something we need to help clarify for third grade teachers that you've been speaking to be happy to do so we're happy to have Miss Mackenzie Circle back around and have or her team Circle back around and have that conversation with them because the the manner in which it functions in the manner which we've established it here in the school district is based off years of research and successful utilization

095elsewhere I think if we have pockets that are doing that that we probably should make sure that that's extended to the other schools because we don't it's just like the whole mtss all the way through you don't stay in a tier for a long amount of time you have to move on to give them the right supports so I appreciate your explanation today thank you Miss Mackenzie I see no further questions thank you very much I was going to do one more item on the technical changes and then we could ask for a break I need to respectfully I have to give the IT team several minutes notice so they can set up the system to go to break so I'm doing that now virtually we will be taking a break after item number seven

096at this time I'd like to bring up Mr Steve Cochran senior director for career Pathways he's also joined by Hunter Gambrell senior coordinator for Workforce operations uh they're here to talk about the technical technical refund College refund policy um go ahead gentlemen good afternoon uh I'm gonna let Mr Gambrell has done most of the lab work on this so I'm going to let him speak to us afternoon board members were asking for a change in our refund policy for our technical colleges currently we have it set up to where students can get a prorated refund up to the 30th day of dropping we want to bring that more into industry alignment and say that after the fifth day of enrollment students will no longer get a refund so what it would initiate if a student

097initiated to withdrawal prior to the first a class they get 100 refund if they initiate it after the first day class but before that fifth day class they get a 75 refund and there's no refund after that we're also asking for credit card fees to be added into our financial transactions we're asking for a 1.55 plus 22 or 22 per transaction and that'll help us bring in some credit card fees that the banks uh the bank is currently charging us sorry any questions hey Mr Gabriel if you would at the end at the bottom and I don't know if you have the same notifications in front of you I think it's important to note that during the school year 21-22 we were charged over sixteen thousand dollars in Bank fees and that during this school

098year we were charged over almost eighteen thousand five hundred so the reality of this is is we need to restructure we've also had and a board has we'll vote on this but they also had to write off certain uh failure to payment as well and we have a process in place where individuals are referred to collection agency because they've committed to a class and part of the difficulty we have with providing and I'm pleased to see a change in the rain fund policy because after day five we've committed to those class sizes and so we really need those students to remain committed to the courses um that they're in because that's how we staff the schools so it's incredibly important for us moving forward to have a policy that's a little bit more reflective as

099he said of the industry standards so I just wanted to add that that you know there has been almost a twenty five hundred dollar increase in our bank fees just in the last year alone so and per state statutes this has to come back before the board for Action so it'll come back in the July board meeting for action I see Mr sharpless um I just wanted to say that I appreciate you including the links to the at the bottom to the policies from Manatee County Orange County and Osceola County just to show us that this is actually industry standard and you guys are following you know what's out there so I just want to say thank you for that absolutely yeah Miss Wyatt thank you I just wanted to ask on the credit card

100fees is that what we are charged does the 1.55 or is that a discounted varies it varies based on the actual card so like Visa Discover it varies based on that so it's a average of those two yes sir yes thank you and we'll be looking at that too as we move forward so next year it could change if we're if if those fees go up Miss fields when is this effective and how we're going to roll it out so that everyone will know the change because this thing's significant change from 30 days of withdrawal notice to divide yes ma'am so all of our programs are set up I should say that most of our programs are set up to complete in a year so it will affect the students that are coming into this

101cohort that's starting in August so once we roll it out any any invoice that's created after the board approval date will include those credit card fees and this new refund policy it'll also be printed on the bottom of all invoices thank you no further questions gentlemen thank you very much board members members of the audience and staff we'll take a brief 10-minute recess at this time our 15-minute recess let's do that it will come back at 2 15. class of 2018. please rise Haines City High cheered on a pint-size student in graduation this year to Abel joining his mom Maria Hernandez Abel's been a part of Haines City's on-campus Child Care Program since his infancy he woke up with me every morning a baby of three months shouldn't be having to come to school and

102waking up early in the morning and I feel it's it's a big thing for him too you know open the door he came to school every day with me and had to go through everything just like me tired and frustrated every day or there was days that hours crying in the parking lot I was crying in the parking lot wondering like should I just be done with this like should I just leave go to work and I'll just go back to school and just seeing him like looking at my face I'm like why would I leave school and then come back when I can just finish right now oh Abel's been with us since he was a little baby a little baby and he's now in our two-year-old classroom and he is a pistol [Music]

103again again again ready the school's free Child Care Program offered Maria a spark of hope with on-campus Services putting her education Within Reach without it I was already living with myself so that was another big thing I was wondering how expensive was a baby how hard was it would I have to get another job I have to leave school my husband he's in college and he had two jobs already so I was wondering how we're going to Tumble having a baby in order we would have time for the baby or anything hey Mom I love you more he'll say know me more me more I'm trying to give my son a better life most moms don't make it through High School even and it's something that statistics say all the time saying that once you

104have a child you leave school I didn't want to be there I didn't want to be another statistic well Maria is amazing this is my third year here so I've known her for three years now to see her as a senior what she's accomplished is just amazing and her dedication to be here every day her commitment to bring her son to Baby Hornet care and to come see him at lunch pick him up after school like her son is truly a student here that they try to teach them like the basics colors letters he's very smart he starts to walk in this daycare yeah he did he yeah he came here at three months and exactly at when he started walking and I stood there and just watching him and he grew up here basically

105this is like his house because he's been here all his life every day every day it does help us to build their parenting skills because they are young so we get an opportunity to be a part of that and helping them as the child grows they may be questions that they may have or they may need advice but that does help us to be able to assist them as well the value of having the team parent program is they understand the importance of graduating high school and they instill in their own children the importance of graduating high school because Mom did it so I can make sure or instill in my baby that I you can do it as well not every girl fits a Traditional School setting not every girl fits a location here

106at one of our centers like Travis Technical College we've had girls that go into our Fresh Start program we've had girls going to our celebration Academy and I believe because Polk County has so many options for these girls to be successful it is their only option she'll say it's hard you know to raise a son on her own to have not only one job but two jobs and to get our homework done and to come to school and to go through testing and meet graduation requirements there's so many things but every time she said she felt like she couldn't do it all she had to do was look at her son and that was inspiration enough that I got to get that diploma and I got to get this done you know the same faces

107you see every day they become like family to you like even not my blood but they're from your family honestly they're taking care of my son you know they're taking that responsibility you know they give me the opportunity to come to school and I really thank them every day about it for more information about the teen parent program and to discover ways the Polk County Public School is putting students first visit our website at polkhyphen fl.net and keyword search teen parents [Music] thank you just want to take this honor to address our drivers and attendance it takes a a special person to do what you do on a daily basis and you are special people there are very few that have your gifts you are transporting our most precious cargo and that cargo may not

108be so precious while they're on your bus but you do it with Grace and honor for that you need to be commended many of you transformed some of our most fragile students and you do it with attention to detail on each of their individual needs as a bus driver and attendant team please know that what you do on a daily basis doesn't go unnoticed and to have a family trust you to transport their child to and from school safely is a wonderful honor you operate your buses transporting over 47 000 students to and from school to give them the opportunity for a great education so they can become contributors to our society each and every day do this safely with the challenges that you have with traffic patterns the seasonal traffic and the expanding exploding

109growth of our community we just want to say thank you thank you for everything you do and thank you for your dedication to our communities [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 trainers help with CDL licensing

110making sure candidates know the ins and outs of a bus preparing them to take and pass the commercial driver's license test putting our students Safety First is always our 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] you are a dedicated 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 [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] I am a breast cancer survivor yes I'm a college professor I

111am a bilingual Sunday school teacher I am a foster dad I was saved by adoption and brought into a loving family I speak four languages Romania Russia French and a little bit of English I'm Nigerian and I'm also from Nigeria sure yes now my parents are missionaries hey I'm a refugee immigrant from Santa Clara Cuba I'm a Seventh Generation Floridian I am from the corn State I am a dog Mom I'm the mother of a golf walk veteran I'm my first time Mom I like to de-stress by playing the classical piano I am a half marathon runner I am a Latin dancer I'm not ashamed to say it but I am a selfie queen I'm training for the escape from Alcatraz triathlon I'm a grandmother I have four grandchildren and one grand angels I am

112from Gambier I am Muslim and back home I have a tribe for a family I am a retired Hispanic naval officer I ride motorcycles and rescue animals I was first one in my family to graduate from college I'm a New Yorker and a veteran I'm a proud Army mom I I am the wife of a veteran I coach little league baseball and softball in my community I'm obsessed with monogramming can you tell Yaman I'm from Jamaica I love it all right so your name Peter McDougall [Music] I put students first [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] Y and I am living my best life teaching first grade at Willow Oaks school I became a teacher because I honestly could not even handle the idea of leaving school when it was time to graduate because I had such

113a great experience as a Polk County student and I wanted to be able to pay forward what my teachers did for me I want my students to have experiences that are Unforgettable I want my students to live for the school week instead of living for the weekend so I work really hard to create experiences for them that will make them excited about coming to school every day when people think of teaching I think the thing that normally comes to mind is it's a lot of hard work and it's a lot of hours and sometimes you can feel underpaid and you don't have the resources but really at the end of the day none of that stuff matters because what matters is the impact that you can make on your students The Blood Sweat and Tears

114and everything that comes with it is totally worth it because if I can give my students an experience that will change their Futures forever then I think it's totally worth it foreign [Music] four years graduating I graduated and we are back I will turn the meeting back over to superintendent hide my chair at this time I'd like to bring Steve Cochran back up the next item we have is Florida post-secondary comprehensive transition program grants for today seeking uh support for a proposal for developing at Polk County Public Schools Florida post-secondary comprehensive transition program this is a collaborative effort between the workforce education department and the exceptional student education department so a little background on the Florida post-secondary comprehensive transition program act it was approved by the legislature in 2016 uh it had four crucial elements

115one it established the center for students with unique abilities at UCF and that Center really acts as the governing board and the guidance up for this grant it provides it establishes a post-secondary comprehensive transition programs it funds scholarships for students uh to a to attend the approved programs and it funds the initial and continuing grants for institutions of higher education so the purpose of the grant is to increase Independent Living inclusive and experiential post-secondary education and employment opportunities for students with intellectual disabilities through post-secondary education programs to be eligible for this program a student must have an intellectual disability as the term is defined by this U.S statute they must physically be able to attend the institution they must submit documentation regarding their intellectual disability and they must have exited High School um requirements for

116the grant is that the school has a method for determining that the student is making satisfaction satisfactory academic progress that the student is enrolled no less than half time that it is inclusive in context and and meaning that the students are part of the school and are part of the program and they're not set aside uh the focus is on employment outcomes and uh having the student earn a meaningful credential or industry certification it requires that the federal comprehensive transition and post-secondary program have an application and that is what we're working on right now so here we are in the process we have created the application uh the one thing that we're missing for application at this time is a letter of support from the superintendent and from the school board that is on hold

117till we could present to you today it will then go to the Center for uh students with unique abilities at UCF who will review it and forward it on to the Florida Department of Education if we are approved and considered to be eligible our students will be eligible for scholarships up to seven thousand dollars which can be used for transportation tuition industry Certification testing technology and equipment and the school system will be eligible for the Florida post-secondary grants which we'll pay for personnel curriculum material equipment travel and other the grant Awards maximum up to five hundred thousand dollars and it is renewable so this program can be sustained um we have written into our proposal a model that we were shown in Fort Myers that included a coordinator a teacher and a paraprofessional the reason

118I have two is we are are planning to do two grants one for Travis and one for Ridge so that we are serving both sides of the district we have given this program a name we are calling our program the steel program which stands for specialized training empowerment of exceptional Learners program uh we to for a student to get into the program and what we've written into our proposal there will be an interview process student will then be accepted depending on on the interview and whether they meet the criteria uh the program proposal is for two full years however it could be uh it could go longer or shorter depending on the student's ability and the progress that they're making within the first year we project that they would receive specialized career instruction working on

119all those soft skills working with them on uh on how to interact with other employees how to do interviews and in the second years when we focus on their Career and Technical education program additionally the students would be uh would be able to participate in our commencement Ceremonies for Ridge and Travis um for the steel program we are proposing two offerings currently at each school one for Ridge is the network support services and the second one is the culinary arts and Hospitality program at Travis we would operate under the administrative office Specialists and Automotive Service technology um additionally it should be noted that we can work with our local business partners on special district correct uh certifications if a business partner comes to us and says I need a student that has this particular skill

120can you train them on this skills and we will bring them in and give them a job so we can work on a specific skill with a student for a specific job give them a district certification and guarantee that student employment based on that specific skill okay additional parts of the program we will work with the student again on the soft skills conducting mock interviews building resumes public speaking building self-confidence with the students the major factor in this program and how we will decide how successful it is is will the students be employed that coordinator will not only be responsible for bringing students into the program but also for seeing that students are placed once they've learned that skill or have that industry certification and finally again they will be able to participate in all

121of the things that are offered at the school not to mention uh we've got the commencement ceremony here but we expect them to be part of the ctsos uh the Career and Technical student organizations and any other thing that we offer at the school that all the students participate in they will also participate in so in order for us to uh to roll this program out again we need the board support I personally think that this is I know we've talked about win-win scenarios this is a win-win win uh there's there's nothing but win about this proposal it is great for the students it's going to be a great opportunity for our technical colleges it's going to be a great opportunity for our business partners and and it's going to be great for the community

122because we are going to be working with these students who may not have earned a skill and get them a skill and get them back into the community so we're excited about the possibilities of this Grant and I'm ready to take your questions at this time Mr sharpless just want to First say I've got a couple questions but I really feel like this program has the opportunity to change lives and that's what we're in this for trajectories giving students an actual you know career path which is exciting so my first question is how will we Market or promote this to the intended population because we have a great program but people don't know about it it's not going to help anything right we will utilize some of the money from the grant should we receive

123the grant to have a marketing campaign a lot of it will start with social media but but we're also we have a very targeted audience um and we want to go directly uh you know one of the reasons that this is done in conjunction with the um special education department is uh those are the students that we are going to be reaching out to to bring into the program so we will uh obviously uh reach out to the organizations that support students with disabilities to bring those students into the fold we will let it be known uh on at our high schools when our students with disabilities that that match this profile graduate that they would be eligible for this program and even though uh you know the the student that we're looking for is

124within a very narrow window we do want the public to know uh about the service and what we're providing so we will make sure that it gets out on social media to uh the entirety of Polk County right and my my last question I said the presentation states that the CTE programs areas that were selected were based on high need areas in our local Workforce I'm just wondering what data was used to determine these uh High need areas that would be completed by the local Workforce Development board and the areas that were done identified by them as what we need jobs at are in high need in this area okay thank you Miss Miller hi Mr Cochran thank you for presenting this um can you tell me if we've applied I've known about this since

1252016 have we applied for this before um I had been working on applying for it two years ago I did not get the same support that I'm getting with the uh the current leadership of the special education department so I'm very pleased when they came to me last year and said hey we'd like to do this I said I was ready to go um so uh we had talked about doing this before we didn't get the same traction that we needed got this traction now and and we are we are literally uh your letters away and and a few weeks from having this grant you know nothing is certain in this world uh but uh I have spoke with the director at the center for students with unique abilities he has reviewed our application even

126though it's not been submitted until you approve but he has reviewed what we've written and he feels very confident that we will receive this grant thank you I have a question this seems a lot like project search is this going to be similar in the delivery model um you talked about working on soft skills will these students be graduated or will they be deferring to get to this program they can be graduated they do not have to be deferred so we would prefer that they would bring their high school diploma okay but I think that the difference here is we we're going to have so much support for this program with the with the coordinator the teacher you know we envision the teachers going to be working with the student on um on on the

127soft skills the para is involved to go out into the classroom and help the students if they need additional assistance and there's something else that is done commonly with this grant that we didn't uh put into the presentation but money can be used to pay students within the classroom to be tutors and mentors for the students in the program so we can actually yeah we can actually pay Mentor peer mentor we can actually give bonuses to the um the Career and Technical education teacher based on how many industry certifications that they provide for the program with the students so there's a lot of incentive money built into this program to help make it be successful we'll have money for the support needs of that will be added by bringing these new students into the classrooms

128um like you said the Perez that may need may need to be in the classroom to help support the learner that will all be covered in the grant okay and I know that we have the buy-in which is great I've been at Ridge and I've seen that they're very excited to have students with unique abilities into their programs I did meet a parent from the other school last night who had concerns with what's available for her daughter it's very limited and transportation was an issue which you just mentioned that this grant this scholarship could help cover to help students get to their to their internships or to the program um I'm really excited to see where this goes you mentioned you had visited an area that was had this implemented um which I think is

129important to see it working somewhere else and I want to thank again this is the work and Legacy of Senator Andy Gardner um with moving forward people in Florida with unique abilities so I think this is this is something that is going to be great for our district and I appreciate you pushing on even when you heard no you kept going and this will be available for our students soon thank you thank you and I I just want to add we're very excited about this and I know you mentioned that that we're excited about it the technical colleges most of the legwork and all the heavy lifting that has been done to put this together and get it ready for your approval was done by two assistant directors at each site Marcus Franklin did an

130exceptional job at Ridge and Jason Hendricks at Travis did came together went made the visits had been in constant communication with myself and the center for Unique abilities and did 90 percent of the heavy lifting on this project and I just I wanted to make sure that they were recognized because I think there's going to be great for the district and um and that will be due to most of their work Miss fields I had a couple of questions Mr Cochran thank you for bringing this before us today um one of the things you talked about was the interview process for the students is that going to be something very simple uh something that any student pretty much could breathe their way through without stress and all that wonderful stuff that comes with interviews yes

131it and it will be most likely with the student and a parent or a caretaker and the interview will really just be to gauge their interest in coming into the program so it we're not putting that interview up as a barrier that is just to make sure that this is where they want to be and they're interested in being in the program we will need to make sure that they meet those minimum qualifications on the intellectual disability and having the documentation showing that they have that but the interview there is not a barrier it's just to make sure that that this they know what is expected of them in the program and that they want to come into the program willingly thank you and then my other question is um is there a possibility of

132offering all of the certifications at both campuses instead of just one or the other because it just seemed to me like if a student was interested in culinary having to drive from Lakeland to Ridge might be a barrier for them we are this is just our our first year plan we do have plans that if we continue to get interest to expand the program and expand the offerings within the program but we did want to focus on two areas to make sure that we can get it off successfully but we do plan on expanding the program should it continue to be successful I think it's going to be very important that we look at that so that all the students can have an option if they so choose to be interested in one of the

133certifications yes thank you very much Mr Nolte thank you for being here and you've answered a couple of my questions I had previously I just want to thank you and your team for the great work you do and keep up the good work thank you very much and I did mention uh Jason and Marcus also Talia Williams from the Department the assistant director of our exceptional student education has been an invaluable resource and very much a team member on this project thank you sir no further questions all right thank you this time I'd like to bring up Katie Taylor director for school nutrition she's here to speak and present on the reauthorization of our community eligibility provision program I'm sure you guys prevent or gave us permission to reauthorize school nutrition in our tep program

134for four years this year we have been very fortunate to see an increase in our students it's fortunate but kind of unfortunate at the same time an increase in our direct certification qualifications for our students so what this will allow us to do is though we are currently operating at 100 cep at our schools we have 11 programs where we're only receiving the free reimbursement rate for 65 percent of those students if we reauthorize this year with the new numbers we will be able to actually receive 100 free benefit for those students which will bring almost a million dollars back into our program which would be a great benefit for our program and allow us to offer new and exciting things to our students for example we're looking at a new coffee program and some

135really fun incentives for our students it'll help them come in and enjoy our meals does anybody have any questions it's pretty straightforward I just wanted to say thank you for your diligence on bringing this back now that we have more schools that are eligible because there's some yeah there's no reason to stop us so so I appreciate you you bringing this back this year and I will say that's a goal of ours is to monitor these numbers on a yearly basis even if we're 100 next year and the numbers are exactly the same we will continue to reauthorize because when we reauthorize that gives us the ability to offer the program for four years so next year it may be that we're at 98 but we're locked in for four years so we're going to

136continue to do this every year and review those numbers that's awesome thank you Ms Fields I just think it's a great opportunity that we've been doing for some years now so thank you for the continued vision of it and I just think that unfortunately some some people don't understand the value of it and and still confuse it I think with how we used to do things back in the day so just keep encouraging and and making sure that the information is out there and folks understand exactly what we're doing I think is going to be very good for our students so that every student can eventually and will eventually participate yes ma'am thank you foreign there are no further questions thank you very much you guys have a great day thank you next item before

137the board uh is Hazel Healthcare board may require recall excuse me that we implemented Hazel Healthcare to provide both Telehealth and teletherapy resources to our families it was very crucial especially during the time of covid um that year we returned to education or traditional education postcovid there were still high numbers within our community a lot of concern about how do we make sure that students are not exposing others including staff so we provided this and we were very successful in our initial first year deployment and what we found is if you recall was that to primarily utilization occurred outside the school day while this is best facilitated at a school setting where the school nurse is where school nurse can be present we did find that overwhelmingly the utilization leaned towards before school or after

138school with a lot of Parental involvement we also shared data with you last year specific to the fact that the number of fiscal Health visits actually that ultimately translated into actual mental health referrals was quite alarmingly high this year I'm proud to share and there's a date there's a PowerPoint presentation attached in here that has all this data but Total Physical Health visits this year exceeded five thousand total visits for our school year we averaged seven to eight hundred visits on a rolling 30-day basis this quarter towards the end of school year we were averaging over 800 visits physical Health visits have increased by 133 percent over the 2021-2021 school year mental health referrals have increased by 72 percent over the 21-22 school year the second year of pros of our partnership has yielded an

139increase in school buy-in student services has become instrumental as be has become and Been instrumental in physical health success all of our schools continue to be equipped with the mental health iPads so in-school hours would allow for more students to be seen during the school day again all of this requires parental consent and not just consent at the beginning of the year parents can allow or retract consent at any time throughout the year for both physical health and or mental health supports it's important to point out too that the men that Hazel Health Care provides a direct referral process it's alarming the the amount of time it takes to schedule a student for a non-emergency issue for mental health typically in our County and others can range from anywhere from four to seven months to

140get that appointment what Hazel Healthcare can do is cut through some of the red tape that after they're guaranteed three appointments and supports that they can provide for a student or any time during that first initial visit where they deem it's appropriate and or necessary they will make an immediate referral to an outside partnership agency and we've seen a lot of success with that and then if you'll recall some of the initial concern in the community about referrals was that Hazel Health Care would take away from the local supports and local contractors in fact if it's done anything it's served to supplement them one of the other additional benefits if you recall for hazel Health Care especially during the initial implementation was that many of our physicians offices were turning away turning away our students

141and families when they basically said listen if you have covered like symptoms assume you have covid if you're still ill after 10 days then we'll take the office visit and part of that was to help reduce the amount of point of contact between multiple individuals and an ad to possible transmission events and so we were able to fill fill that void for a significant period of time moving forward we continue as I said to see significant increases in both physical health and mental health supports the board was also very inquisitive and and asked me several times was there an option for our employees in this regard now our school district does provide a Telehealth option for our employees we do not offer it a teletherapy option for our employees however Hazel Healthcare has recently partnered

142with another agency that specializes in providing Mental Health teletherapy Services for adults and so we are currently reviewing that for possible inclusion in this moving forward the recommendation is going to be to continue to renew this for one additional year this is supplemented fully by Hazel or by our Aura funds and Esther dollars so there's no cost to District moving forward we'll continue to work with hazel they will identify and provide based off some questions that were submitted by Dr Allen um we'll create a heat map of the school district to identify those schools that have the highest utilization so that if we do make the decision post-grant funding we'll have that make the difficult decision to either go internally and find the funding or to seek additional options part of that may require the

143retraction or consolidation of the utilization and again to Target those schools and communities that have the highest utilization and so we'll be talking with them and I'll providing that information to you so total for this year 2021 to 2022 for Mental Health visits at home visits constituted in 2021 and 20 2022 constituted for Mental Health visits constitute 97 percent of them were done at home thus far this school year for 140 or for 1400 visits they're all hundred percent were done at home so parents are finding that they the utilization especially for mental health is largely done or completely done at home in the comfort of their home and they find a great deal of success with that we've not had any complaints in fact board members over the last two years I've have forwarded

144you on occasion messages from both staff and from parents praising the program and it's utilization because it does not take away from local effort or local Physician Network it simply serves as an enhancement so again the recommendation that I'll be making that the board will vote on in July will be to officially renew the Hazel Health Care Program in its current capacity we do pay a significantly reduced cost I think it's important to put point that out whereas most school districts now pay upwards of 17 per student we pay 10 because we were one of the initial pilot districts ten dollars is what they charge comprehensively for the physical health they charge another seven dollars for mental health so there are districts much larger than ours Across the Nation that are paying that full cost

145of 17 we have a current premium price at ten dollars and again that's because we were one of the early adopters and willing to serve as a pilot district for the company so again any I'll take any questions at this time or not so seeing no questions uh board members as you as you know we have several weeks between our this meeting and the next one so if any questions arise I know that Dr Allen and I have discussed about how to drill down into this data a little bit more precisely and I think if you look at the PowerPoint you'll be pleased with the data they've supplied thus far based off our conversations yesterday uh additionally if there's anything else that you feel that you'd like to see I'm anxious to see the heat

146map to see where the highest utilizations are so that if we do move forward in the board I would make a recommendation to continue this level of support for our for our community although I know we can't afford it globally so we'd have to be a little bit more Target and strategic in how we approach this and there are other grants and funding mechanisms that we could bring to there to help offset this Medicare reimbursement's also an opportunity for us to consider moving forward so thank you for your time on that on that topic next item is Civic Solutions Group LLC learning or learning support for with Medicaid so miss castles assistant superintendent for learning support will please come forward a few good afternoon Miss castles good afternoon superintendent hi board chair Wyatt school board

147members good afternoon Civic solutions group is a fee for service billing company that also provides training to District staff for Medicaid billing if you look at the contract the Civic solutions group is a group that will be a new group to us in the past we have used what's called public Consulting Group and we were we are requesting that we amend that contract and adopt the contract for civic Solutions and I will go over the differences between the prices and what is provided to us so Civic Solutions is also known as Max capture and the price for the service would be fifty thousand four hundred dollars a year and the public Consulting Group is 113 700 per year and it's that's an average because it's based on the amount of billing that takes place Civic

148Solutions will provide on-site on-demand professional development we're at the current time public Consulting Group will only provide virtual and for civic solutions they have a dedicated rep that has been with the company for over 20 years and this past year we had four different reps that provided support from the public Consulting Group and in an effort to make sure that we can we can report on the data that we have and make sure that we understand this the reporting that's taking place at this school we're asking for on-demand reports that's been difficult for the current company to provide to us but we're being told they have reputable data and for them with the product of Civic Solutions the managed fee for service and admin claiming will be completed by Civic Solutions and it's also completed

149by the public Consulting Group but the the difference is is that the random moment time sampling will also be provided by Civic Solutions any questions there are Ms Miller thank you I um is this something that we're going to need long term because my question is I know we're increasing our Medicaid billing we weren't doing that um and we were leaving dollars on the table for a very long time in ESC um and I this is one of the first contracts that I brought to Mr Green I think when I um when he got here because I was concerned that the what we were receiving for the investment we were making because it was minimal um and so my question is at the time I thought this was used to mainly train our staff but

150this is actually going to be a serve this is going to service the Medicaid billing um it's not gonna it's not just continuous training is that what I understand yeah they managed the fees for the service and then they provide monthly reports so that we can then make sure that it's happening in a on a monthly basis yes ma'am thank you the goal I think this part to extend Miss Miller's question the goal is to eventually through their their professional development support that we would wean off of this company or Reliance on this company because our own internal staff would be better suited to provide the billing correct yes sir and they provide yes so yes perfect yes thank you Miss fields I I would I would I was wondering if we could have a

151copy of the comparison that you just read please ma'am that would be very helpful and then I guess my other question and it might be here and I'm just not remembering it it's when are we going to be expected to vote on this superintendent hike this would come before the board in July okay so if I could have that before I would appreciate it thank you we should have a park Spiel a month Miss Fields between now and that next meeting Mrs castles I know you and I had an initial conversation when we were going through this review the other day again could you just I don't I didn't hear you say it to the board would you just share with them again what our monthly savings would be so the monthly savings would be

1529 thousand averages yes sir thank you you're welcome Dr Allen thank you superintendo hi Miss castles thank you for bringing this forward um I I was curious if you if you have any idea of how much reimbursement we were missing out on I mean when when they're looking at our district as a potential vendor um you know did they give you any any insight into it because obviously they have within that contract right so we're looking at the base 50 000 the scaffold it amount that we would occur right as far as costs but obviously that's offset by how much is being brought back into the district yes sir so for this cost that we would be paying that would be up to four hundred thousand dollars for for the fees for service billing per

153month if it went over that there's an additional fee as well but I know there was also a study that was done prior to my arrival so if I recall the numbers correctly Dr Allen and this was also shared in part of the recent ESC audit that we were not billing sufficiently but I believe the numbers were anywhere from between two and four million dollars are being left on the table each year due to a lack of billing now part of that was complicated because the manner in which we staffed or placed staff within the overall budget staff who are funded out of federal programs dollars are not eligible to seek reimbursement if I remember correctly Miss castles however those that are funded out of the general budget are so we've made that physical change

154for this upcoming school year so that all of our employees who provide Direct Services to students are now in a position to direct Bill back for Medicaid for the reimbursement all of those dollars would be line items back to that department that department is in significant need to continue to increase its overall Staffing and capacity at the schools and so we we have stated and we remain committed that every dollar that's brought in would be reinvested within that department either through staff or through resources to provide the best supports for our students and our staff our instructional staff as needed great thank you I shared with you superintendent Hyde earlier this morning it was just this was actually a point of conversation at the fsba board of directors and I think was within the last

155two weeks the Department of Health and Human Services basically had issued new guidance to make it easier for schools to Bill Medicaid so really appreciate you and the work on this yes sir thank you Miss fields I I wanted to know if there are any other departments on the learning support that are currently billing for Medicaid and my other question is do we have anybody on staff specifically that is assigned to nothing but billing Miss castles yes yes so so there are multiple staff members that are responsible for billing Medicaid and I can provide that information to you as well psychologists social workers we also receive reimbursement for transportation and we and so speech and language Pathologists occupational therapists physical therapist as well and we and then as far as a person who provides support

156yes ma'am the senior manager of Medicaid is akimi mayo and she does a phenomenal job providing support and keeping the data she's she's been basically she's just her by herself she's been an integral part in collecting the data and making sure that we have an understanding of what's going on and then we can actually follow up so it's a collective effort but she is the one that oversees it yes ma'am okay that's a lot she does a phenomenal job I think we should clarify though because I don't want Miss fields or anybody else to believe that she alone is responsible for all Medicaid or Medicare billing what she would do is identify the opportunities or places where we have gaps she would then function through the rest of the senior admin team to compliance monitors

157and directors senior directors to ensure that that then gets pushed down into those schools because again some individuals now are going to have the expectation that they submit billing who previously did not have that as an expectation because of how they were paid they were ineligible to bill for services so that's changing so it's not there's one person overarching but then that individual helps gets to helps Drive the message down through the organization to an ensure compliance across the district I appreciate the clarity but there's still a lot oh yes ma'am thank you and respectfully that's again if we see an increase in our overall reimbursement rates and that's the determination and I have no doubt that Ms castles might come back and ask to expand that department to again because all those dollars would

158benefit us directly and be reinvested back in that department to best suit the needs of our students and families so it's a great question and one that if we can bring in additional Revenue absolutely we'll offset the cost and add staff to help support that yes ma'am could I ask one more thing as part of the change the reason why we're looking into going with a different company is because of the inaccurate reports that have been brought to our attention by Miss Maya can you and you probably can't give an answer today but maybe can you give us a percentage of the inaccuracy is it a a a high percentage is it a when we say inaccuracy it's just been difficult to get the reports in a timely manner and then when we do get

159them they don't align with the information that's being given to us by our providers so um so I don't I can't tell you you're right I can't tell you an actual percent of inaccuracies but it's been inconsistent and difficult to track the data and this Civic Solutions as a reputable company that that provides on-demand reports that are accurate and I don't know if you can answer this and the superintendent might be able to answer this how long have we been doing business with uh with the uh Public's Associates group the public Consulting Group I'm not sure how long well I don't need it today whenever you yes ma'am you can give it to me with all the information please yes ma'am thank you thank you Miss castles there's no further questions thank you actually miss

160Castle's come back I just want to make sure that I have your two back-to-back items you have public Consulting Group Inc Learning support Medicaid on here as well so Civic Solutions is a new company that we would like to create a contract if approved and then public Consulting Group is the company that we would release they would release yes okay perfect so that was there on the attachment then okay thank you at this time Carrie Barkin please come forward director of preschool programs she's here to present on Early Learning Coalition of Polk County in our agreements for a voluntary pre-kindergarten preschool programs good afternoon superintendent Hyde and board the VPK contract is in for approval which is the contract we do with the Early Learning Coalition to provide our VPK services at our 65 locations

161which includes the straight VPK funded sites the Head Start and the title one Pre-K sites that provides three hours of instruction and the ELC reimburses us per child of the 2864 dollars so the contract list each location and we need approval to be a VPK provider and sign for a superintendent hide to initiate the contract with the Early Learning Coalition Dr Allen thank you for sharing I just had one question just going back to the 2021 contract I noticed that the number of participants was approximately 1065 this contract States 1670 I believe a little over 1600 students yes um so did we add some sites or seats within the contract we did increase our footprint at the South Point a couple of other new locations we serve are anticipating serving 600 straight VPK in the

162VPK classrooms 400 of those seats are in Title One Pre-K and we estimate head start at 670 because the three-year-olds are not eligible and VPK is optional if you're in the Head Start program but we explain to the parent the services and the additional supports they get by using their VPK certificate with us that also estimates 24 students with the summer VPK and the summer of EPK was a challenge for us this year with competing with the kindergarten Readiness camps because that has been so successful and we are offering summer VPK at Kathleen and that enrollment is predicted each summer at about 24 students it's great love to see the expansion High need and we recognize the importance of early learning so very commendable thank you Miss Barkin just so I can clarify for future

163planning is the is the issue with the kindergarten Readiness camp you know conflicting with Pre-K that we're hosting them at different sites or should so in the future should we be unifying those onto one site so it's easier for families they have to use their VPK VPK they cannot have used their VPK summer their con their VPK certificate with us during the school year at a private provider anybody going to kindergarten was able to utilize that so a lot of them even if they had not used their VPK they had a third grade sibling going to that school so it's it's a could be a conflict however it's been hard to fill each summer okay thanks for clarifying I'm sorry I want to make sure that we weren't creating no no it's expanded the opportunity

164to make it easier for more children because most of them do use their VPK certificate in a school year program because it's a longer program instead of the summer program is 300 hours and it's you know in the summer so it's a very long day perfect thank you working there were no further questions on that item but I noticed you have the next item up before us Head Start disabilities waiver request yes each year is part of the Head Start program Head Start requires us to serve 10 of our 942 funded enrollment to be children that have been identified as having a disability and on an IEP for any any reason usually uh the 10 we wrote for a waiver back with covid had trouble identifying this year the numbers came up a little short

165we are at 8.7 which is 82 of our 942 children had been identified we are streamlining things that we're doing within our own program as I've been up here Dr Allen and I have been up here Dr Lori Allen and I have been up here um yeah um explain how we're restructuring we're we've already increased the teams working closely with Miss castles and Miss Peters to have additional teams to help evaluate and get children through the being identified and evaluation quicker we've added a second student support manager with Pre-K with Head Start which is Courtney Bridges so she's helping to identify and support that we're reorganizing our classrooms to be more inclusive as we spoke about at a couple board meetings ago the class size will be 16 and we're reserving the two spots so

166as children are identified they're able to go straight into a head start classroom or VPK or title one so that increases 160 slots program-wide for students with an IEP so those are some of the strategies that we're taking to address the Fallen a little bit short this school year we have to we only have to finish it when the school year ends obviously so we do have and it's in the letter there um 80 students who are outstanding six are ready to staff which will those will get stopped right at the beginning of the school year next year so they have the paperwork in place they just did not have the IEP meeting and time to count for this year's 10 percent Miss Miller I just want to say that I think even though you

167didn't make the 10 it's increased dramatically um under your leadership I had a parent that had questions about it and Dr Lori Allen was quick to um answer questions and be welcoming um I think they had they were going to look at Carlton Palmer's placement they had a meeting that parent experience is much different than what I've heard from previous years so I think we are making gains to identify and be inclusive of students and I'm sure you'll hit that 10 or go above with what you're what you're planning I also talking to pre-k teachers I think they I know one specifically the fact that you're going to hold those two spots so students can be added or if they're in the class and identified they'll be able to provide more supports it's very challenging

168when you get Pre-K if you have parents who've not identified yes have not been identified yet and the teacher sees it day one but sometimes it takes a little time for that to develop and you want to make sure they have room for support so I appreciate the work that's going on in your department I've been on the board I think it's increased supporting families at least with unique abilities um greatly so thank you very much in our one application has helped with that the one online application has helped because they're getting a personal phone call and we're able to ask questions and have um a more supportive approach from the get-go so if the parent identifies something when they apply we go ahead and reach out to the ESD department and start with child

169fine and Fiddlers and start the process to go ahead and get them evaluated before they've even started school there are no further questions Ms Parkin thank you thank you next two items Miss Dodge first one up before the board are policy updates good afternoon I'm gonna do this together I don't think so unfortunately I'm not sure this is set up for short people we'll work on that um the first item is as superintendent Hyde indicated is policy updates and there are four policies for you um that are both Neola and staff recommended the first is a board bylaw that basically allows when we bring onboard new school board members to provide the documentation to them not only in a notebook but electronically and outlines some additional items that would be provided to a new school

170board member the next one is policy 5121 on controlled open enrollment that is modified to match the new state statute regarding updating our controlled open enrollment availability every 12 weeks and doing it on a grade by grade um level the next item is 7520 which is naming of school facilities commemorations and memorials that I know superintendent Hyde has brought to you a couple times already what we've done here is taken his recommendations for you actually place them into the policy our current policy as a new and separate um section and the only thing that I think would be different than from what you have previously seen in your reviews of this policy are that we have updated the fee structure to include a couple of new items regarding um sections of a student seating sections

171at that on the table on page four out of five very last line item on that table has been updated with some figures and then under the um naming rights you had previously discussed um I believe Mr sharples had talked about whether we wanted to have sponsors that were involved with weapons and that type of a sponsor and so what I did was modify the language to just prohibit Firearms instead of all weapons in order to kind of accommodate some of our programs that might be involved archery and those types of things that might benefit from a sponsor but still be cognizant of that we are a school system and then the final um the final policy update is an update to our policy on homeless students and that is updated to include some language

172that has been required by the Department of Education so they have changed regulations and then also a couple of of just statute changes that were required to be in the policy so are there any questions Miss Wyatt thank you my only one would be and I know we had conversation about this last time with the Firearms but does it make sense to spell out what we would disallow or should that be based on board decision at the time I'm just thinking if we get into obviously we you know are not going to have Budweiser coming and sponsor a you know an alcohol organization or things like that is that something that we should spell out each one of those or that we should leave it open to I I think in addition to firearms and

173I'm trying to find the actual language and all the green stuff right now but we did and what we did was saying was I took the language that was already there and just took out the word weapons and changed it to firearms and so and and I believe it also um the language also states that it's anything that wouldn't fit in with the culture of the school district so um it would be up to the recommendation of the superintendent and that the board's will what kind of fits into our culture and what doesn't but we were trying not to Outlaw all weapons when we have archery programs and J rozy programs and stuff like that but still make sure that we were careful in how we did yeah Miss fields Miss Wendy can you tell

174us what section that is and what pages please yes if you give me just a second here so at the bottom of page three of five the second paragraph on the bottom is where it talks about the district recognizes That official names of facilities are vital to their Public Image and granting of naming rights must always be consistent with their vision mission and shared purpose and then on the following page at the very top of that page it says shall not be granted and I'm moving forward things right now by touching it says to not be commit granted to commercial entities Associated anyway with products or Services related to the sale of tobacco alcohol illegal drugs Firearms instead of weapons or any other products or services not appropriate for use by minors the use of

175vulgar plainly offensive obscene and and so that language was was in the previous um iterations of this policy that you've seen before and all we've done is changed the word weapons to firearms thank you Stice there's no further questions thank you and now the absolute most exciting part of your afternoon is the legislative update so as I have previously provided to the superintendent and the school board and our executive staff um copies of Bill summaries and a listing of all the bills that did pass during this legislative session a lot of them have already been um signed by the governor some of them have not including the budget which you know where we're hoping we'll be signed fairly quickly and so what because there were so many bills passed this year and there was a

176limited amount of time available at this work session I haven't haven't done a big thorough on every single bill that passed but I did but this update does have I think the things that you're going to be interested in and have questions about okay so as soon as I figure out how to advance this does anybody know how to do this oh there we go in intuition so the first I would like to go over the budget with you what you have on your screen is our our Polk County budget as of the current fiscal year as of the fourth calculation which came in out in about March okay so this is where we were with students you can see we've had a great amount of growth just since the beginning of the school year

177and we're expected to have an additional 5800 students next year that 5800 includes scholarship students so the next item is unweighted FTE and that would that's where you can see that big growth and then weighted FTE is even more that includes weights for ese and esol students and other programs like career that um bring in over 1.0 for a student and so that bumps us up to an additional 7 000 students the base student calculation is increased by 552 dollars just for Polk County um and then safe schools is increased by 1.5 million that's a great increase to make sure that we can pay for our Guardians and others who keep it at our schools safe and then you'll notice on the next line that there's this new item called educational enrichment allocation that is

178money that was formally budgeted through the state as our supplemental academic instruction they have modified that under the new budget that the legislature has proposed this year and it becomes educational enrichment they've kind of modified what can be paid for out of there but you can see it's almost a four million dollar increase just for Polk County um and that that number does not include money that will also come for our turnaround schools an additional 500 per student will be deposited into that account for our turnaround schools um and then you see the next item is they've taken the money that we used to get for turnaround schools as a separate item and they've rolled that into our base funding and the same thing with the reading allocation there are still requirements surrounding reading we

179have to provide a budget to the Department of Education every year and say this is what we think we're going to spend on reading this year but that money has been rolled into the base ese allocation has increased almost three million dollars and one of the things they did was remove what they call the group two cap so that we be sure we are now getting full funding for every student at level four and level five or any weighted student outside the ese guaranteed allocation to make sure that we're fully funded for those students no matter how many needs Services instructional materials allocation has been rolled into the base and so has the teacher supply allocation however that allocation still is outlined in the budget to say that we need to give teachers 300 each

180for classroom supplies each year um on the next page of the slide it's still the budget and the first thing I want to point out is that little box on the left hand side that refers to the DCd it is probably the biggest win that we have this year that the DCd has been essentially replace and eliminated with what they now call the comparable wage factor and no District receives under 1.0 historically we have you can see there last year we were at .9704 so even though the state always spent all this time and effort on providing a base a high base student allocation we never got the whole thing because our DCd immediately brought us down as to how much we were bringing in per student and now with the increased wage Factor we

181actually received the full base student nullification for every student that we have in the district so the class size reduction is on the first line up there and you can see that's the only allocation that is a decrease in the amount of money that we receive and that's a reflection of the fact that almost every school it's a reflection of the fact of the new school choice policies that the state has that we're going to be going over in a minute and the fact that almost every school has programs that allow us to measure class side at the school-wide average and not on a Class by class basis um unweighted FTE you see we're going to be receiving 80 over 8 400 which is an increase of four hundred dollars per student total local funds

182are almost an increase of 31 million dollars in state funds um is 65 million dollars um increase over what we received in the current year compression we're receiving almost 5 million additional dollars over the current year for for the millage compression um School recognition as you know depends on the number of schools that qualify the state has funded that at 200 million dollars this year and our so all of our schools that qualify to receive recognition money will be funded for that and they receive a per student allocation teacher salary allocation was rolled into the overall State base but there's language in there that says that um we have to spend a certain amount of that base student allocation on teacher salaries our numbers and that difference um uh our number is 40 almost 41

183million dollars and you'll see that's about 11 million dollars more than we are spending in the current year so that's new money that we will need to place on this uh teacher's salary schedule however um the language is very flexible they've taken out those um the the language that made us put it in certain places or at the beginning of the salary schedule and is now at the discretion of the district where to put that money on the seller is scheduled to make sure we're taking care of those compression issues for our teachers higher up on the salary schedule mental health allocation assistance has been increased by almost a million dollars compression and hold harmless was always a non-recurring pot of money that we received it was almost seven million dollars last year but that

184money was rolled into the base and so it's kind of nice that it becomes recurring money because it's rolled into the base total potential funds for Polk County are 96 million new dollars this year over the current year based on all the changes that were made and enrolling um some of these categoricals into the base and making us eligible for a full student-based allocation but there are these new um floor empowerment scholarships they're not new you can see this year as of March we were spending um 50 almost 58 million dollars on scholarships and the estimation for next year is that it we will spend about 70 million and so you have to take that money away from those new dollars that we're receiving to get our actual new allocation which is more which is

18584 million dollars so I know there have been a lot of questions about hb1 the school choice um bill so let's just go over overarchingly what it does and then I'm happy to answer any questions that you have it does expand eligibility for scholarships to any student in the state who is eligible to enter public school they can go anywhere they want they can come to us and I think we have set up under superintendent hidea system where they want to but they can also choose to um homeschool if that meets their family's needs go to private school or do a person more personalized education where the parent directs the education similar to homeschool but they purchase services from either us or other vendors to complete their students education so the commissioner is going to

186develop an online portal that will be directed by the state that will allow parents to see what's available anywhere in Polk County and make their choices by seeing the performance and services available at each School through that portal in terms of students of with disabilities the fesua which is the unique ability scholarship is going to right now it can only increase by one percent of the total number of ese students in the State per year and that threshold has been raised to three percent and it will go up three percent every year and then for students who do not have an IEP there's been a little bit of a struggle for students who are homeschooled or never been in a public school setting to get an IEP and so um so the the law now

187authorizes us to use plans of care and other things that are provided by licensed professionals to develop those Matrix of services for students instead of actually having to have them in a traditional Public School setting private schools have to inform a parent that their student is not entitled to special education services under Ida and discuss with the parent before they enroll any academic programs policies and policies and specialized services so there needs to be a discussion if a parent is choosing a private school for a student so that the parent understands what they're getting before they make the decision to actually enroll the student there are also a lot of changes in HP one that impact the district directly we can enroll students and William Polk County have been doing this with homeschool students for

188a long time we have always allowed them to take three courses through us but now it's a Statewide policy that a student can enroll part-time and then the district can get funded part-time for any student that would like to join us for part of the day it explains the time frame for student transfer records from three days to five days this has been a real struggle for schools to comply with such a short timeline and so it gives them a couple extra days to get a student records to a new school um students no longer have to take one online course to qualify for graduation and then there's a big deregulation push in this build so over the summer the Department of Education is going to be taking a look at the Education Code and

189making recommendations for when and where they can eliminate some of the laws and regulations that are holding us back from wonderful things that we can do for students and they're going to the legislature is going to address them next year we expect to fully be part of that conversation to make sure that there are plenty of opportunities for us to take things off of schools and teachers wherever possible to make sure that students have everything they need and we make everything as easy as possible for our schools so as part of that did they did remove some requirements that every student has to be on a school bus to get transportation and they have authorized the district to use other vehicles for transporting students but we do have to notify parents and this in the

190department of education is directed to help us with some pooling bids and get the types of vehicles that would allow us to do some to do some Transportation more flexibly um teacher certification changes are included in this bill including the waiver of mastering knowledge if it if a teacher has been rated effective or highly effective for the last three years that requirement um goes away there's also some other flexibility in there on this slide I'm trying not to the most important of which is that it extends the non the temporary education certificate for everybody an automatic two years and that was effective upon becoming law which was last month so anyone who is at the end of their three years on their temporary cert automatically got an extra two years to get through those requirements

191there are some funding changes in this bill and they're also funding changes in another bill that's coming up so this isn't all of it but it allows salaries and benefits for people whose job duties support activities funded by the 1.5 millage to be paid for with those funds unfinished construction projects that were started before July of next year are exempt from the total cost for student station requirements and the does has to report all students who are receiving scholarships and funded in the fefp to school districts so that we know what to expect in terms of our funding and then the sfos who are handling the school choice program are not allowed to onboard or onboard students after February one that would be expected to be paid for and again that's so that there's not

192a constant hit on School District budgets so that's just the end of hb1 before I move on are there any questions or I know that it was a really big Bill and I didn't go over everything in it but I did want to make sure that we hit on a lot of different areas so I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone has about school choice Mr sharpless Dodge hi this isn't I've got a few different things but this isn't necessarily just on hb1 first just want to say thank you I want you to know your work uh does not go unrecognized and uh you know when I went to Tallahassee this time and the compliments I got around the state about how the hard work that you put in for our district so I

193want you to know publicly I'm sorry no ugly crying till the end okay well sorry I'm making you cry I just want to say thank you publicly thank you um I think the biggest win so far that you've talked about is 84 million dollar increase in funding um you know I mentioned before the DCd I wasn't a big fan of that I felt like it was uh not beneficial for Polk County and the fact that it's being exchanged with that comparable wage I think it's a huge win for us absolutely um also I I thank you for highlighting the uh on hb1 there's a lot of negative press around HP one but I want to highlight some of the good stuff that came from it and that increasing that temp cert from three years to

194five years is going to be critical for some of our teachers and so um there were some good things that are coming out of Tallahassee there's a lot of good things coming out of Tallahassee so thank you for your hard work you're very welcome it was my pleasure thank you um I tell you great all the time so I don't need to add to Mr sharpless I do have two questions um one based on using the plan of care to create a matrix is our district our District staff gonna for people who don't understand that the IEP services that come in is assigned a number at the end of that number is a mate you get a total Matrix score the amount of funding you'll get through the scholarship is based on your Matrix so

195if you have the minimal amount it would be around the seven thousand dollar mark But if you have a child with more significant needs you could get up to twenty one thousand dollars for homeschool private school through the voucher my question is we've always used IEPs as this and the state has always the process was it went to the state the state verified the student was not enrolled in our school system and then you could ask for a matrix review but it had to be done at the Skype level if we're now using plans of care for people who've never been in school who who will create that Matrix score the district or the state I'm not sure who will create the score okay what the language does is allow right now um the way

196IEPs are done is it's based on basically viewing what a student is capable of on all those metrics within each of the matrices yeah it's super complicated but a lot of it is based on being able to see what a student is capable of and whether or not well if you're a homeschool student you know you're not necessarily able to sit in a classroom for a couple of weeks for that to happen for that review to happen and so it was a struggle for some students to and some parents to um to get a matrix review even done if they if they had never been in that kind of a setting so what this does is allow if a physician has viewed or some other license occupational therapist or somebody who has viewed a student

197they can participate in that process or or give written plans and say this is what I've seen that this student can do and and cannot do so you know where to place them on the Matrix and then it will it is my understanding it will still have to be reviewed by the department okay by the I mean we do we do all IEPs because you saw the language said right we can take that information to help in our process for doing the IEP it all still has to be reviewed by ftoe but they're going to see this part the district saw and this part came in from plans from these licensed individuals I just want to make sure I give parents because I've had that call from home from parents who are yet very young

198and they're not in school and it was hard because we can barely keep up with our own schedule of every 60 days evaluating it was very hard to get a student who's never been in our district the proper documentation I just don't know if that's still going to be a problem because they're going to have to be reviewing other it's still we're still going to have to assign The Matrix score right I'm not sure that it will assist with the timeline okay but it'll certainly assist with getting people in IEP who maybe were struggling prior to this and my second question is commissioner Diaz had mentioned you know the whole part about that we could charge more we could almost like fee for services is that something that we're going to do as a district

199superintendo or is that a Statewide because we could be charging so many dollars for one class or one sport or one activity Hillsborough could be charging something different is there is there any structure to how we'll charge is it mandated by the state no there are there are no mandates or rules currently and I don't know if they'll Define any through rulemaking but at present there is nothing that would define what that would cost for a fee structure we will be bringing a fee structure before the board here in the next two months for students who take advantage of the voucher and want to basically pay fee for service so you're absolutely correct but for example a class would be 1 7 of the eight thousand four hundred dollars per pupil um because that's what

200it costs us basically and that's how we calculate our FTE and staff our schools and so Athletics there will be a base fee for all of those there'll also be a fee for any other ancillary Services speech otpt that we would basically Provide support for that and then again we would obviously offset that cost by any reimbursements that we're eligible to receive so that fee structure will be designed but at present no the state has not indicated or put any limitations or restrictions on what the fee structure may look like there's no guidance provided at this time and the website that you mentioned I think will be very useful for parents I can go on and see what's available in Polk County will it include what's available in the district schools are just the private

201schools the indication from the Department is that it will but it's it's like in the RFP process okay so so we're not more information to come thank you yeah I would I would say that that more information to come Ms Fields I call Miss Wendy Miss Tallahassee um you're doing an amazing job for us and for our students and staff and thank you for that I want to especially thank you for listening to the cries of the teachers that were struggling with being certified and being able to now especially when they're highly effective they can put that to bed I had one of the teachers who called me and was crying she was so excited she's highly effective yet she couldn't pass the general knowledge whatever the reasons may be so thank you for being

202that voice that we really needed at that time um I do have a question about the vouchers okay I wanted to know what is the accountability piece if there is one for the parents who choose to homeschool their students and I also wanted to know if we have any idea and this might be a superintendent hide question how many students might uh migrate from the school district to something different private schools or home schools and it might be too soon to know that and if it is superintendent heart do we have an idea as to when we would really know how that's going to impact our student enrollment so there's two questions if she can answer the first one and you can do the second one please so as far as the accountability is concerned

203there's language in there about students still provide their portfolios for homeschool students and for the personal education students they're still nationally normed assessments that they have to take and provide as part of their portfolio and then that that data is still provided to a State University who analyzes it on a Statewide basis and says these are you know what the trends are in terms of Education in terms of that we do have numbers that were in the runs that are our finance folks have but the number that I gave you in the budget was based on that 12 that 69.8 million dollars overall that's based on the number of K to pre-k to third graders they think in Polk County there there are different allocations for the for the scholarships for each grade level and

204so those are based on the estimates that they've that they have for Polk County that just Polk County and that's how it ends up being an additional 12 million there's also language in all of these bills that says that um that that we keep doing the counts like we've been doing you know how there's an October count and there's a February count and after every count there's going to be a recalculation so that we know how many scholarship students actually did come in how many are actually our student and so we can keep adjusting our figures based on those recalculations throughout the year so if I could clarify one part to what Mr Dodge just shared though um and I'll actually I'll come back to that but to your question Miss fields and the board

205had asked this question previously how many the vouchers will have a double impact on us number one students who are currently already participating in private schools can now secure a voucher so there's that number the number we are tracking more specifically are the available number of seats still available within the current infrastructure here in Bull County that's less than four thousand so we anticipate that even if we grew by five to seven thousand students the maximum we would see leave Polk County based off again the availability of current seats is four thousand um I don't anticipate seeing that number but going back to the accountability to Ms Dodge's point there are requirements on behalf of families who decide to homeschool their students there is no accountability I want to be very clear if the student

206doesn't grow that year it doesn't make grade level expectations the parent isn't penalized in any way so as a school district we are developing policies and expectations and a contract that we will issue to families that basically will put some accountability in place that over a specified period of time we expect the student to demonstrate an acceptable amount of growth as we would with anyone else because without that you will have people it's a very small percentage who will take advantage of the voucher and nothing will happen for that child for one two or possibly up to three years and then what will happen is they'll come back to the public school system and then we will get graded and evaluated based off their poor graduation rate poor performance and those types of things so

207there's there's accountability as far as procedurally what families need to do but there is no real accountability like to put it like that's placed like on our doorstep as far as performance indicators so it's a mixed message we send there but I'll continue to track because that 4 000 number is inflated it's an estimate because private schools are not required to report to the Department of Education their number of available seats they don't have a fish requirement basically that we can track and monitor as effectively so we've been working by basically calling each school and asking what's your enrollment what's your moment cap and for those who've been willing to share we've been trying to calculate that number but we'll have a very good idea at the start of the school year as to how

208many students to miss Dodge's Point have applied for that voucher and have successfully taken it and we'll have to differentiate between those that were already in the system outside of the public school system and those are taking advantage of it as a new process does that make sense it makes sense and I didn't think there was accountability piece but I wanted to make sure that that I wasn't uh uh knowledgeable so thank you for that and thank you Miss Wendy sure and if I could just add I would like to as we look forward to our index legislative platform I think kind of that accountability piece um is something that we should consider for for the upcoming legislative session and also the piece about what happens when a student who has been outside her system

209is very behind comes into our system and and we can you know we're we're going to do they're all our kids if they're in Polk County right so we're going to do everything we can for that student but what we don't want is for the schools to be negatively impacted for something that is outside of their control so we think there needs to be some common sense factors that are put into the system to make sure that we have an appropriate amount of time to catch up a student who might not have been receiving the same um quality that they're that they're going to receive when they come back to Polk County Schools Dr Allen yeah and just following up on that I mean we already faced that now if a student comes to us

210from a different District or Maneuvers from a different school I mean there's there's still those variables that are in place coming into our district from another state as well so yeah definitely I agree from an accountability standpoint um I want to go back to the contract that Services conversation um because I think the flip on that I would love to know superintendent how many part-time students we currently serve within the district because within that bill right it is if a student decides not because not all homeschoolers or you know they're not they're not going to choose to take the voucher and there's a lot to that conversation but like how many are we currently serving because if we're serving a part-time student they choose not to take the voucher we now can claim a full

211time equivalent right is what the bill reads I'm not sure what you mean if they're only part-time well yeah so it's when we have a part-time student we actually get to claim that based on the language in hb1 we get to claim that student as a full-time equivalent he's referencing home school students who are currently not accepting a voucher and if they come back and choose to take one or two classes on a campus we basically continue to collect the FTE for that student in its entirety so there is no FTE and in its entirety so what it is is when we when we claim a student they were in Mrs so and so class here and Mr so-and-so class here and it's actually a portion of an FTE so so we collect FTE but

212not not a full 1.0 FTE and and as I mentioned we in Polk County have always been serving homeschool students up to three courses um per semester I believe is the is the is what we've been doing so we've been we've been claiming that FDA along all along if a student want had certain courses they wanted to take from us yeah it seemed like the language said that we were getting additional um dollars for that part-time student um I'll share the language with you there are some tutoring and other opportunities outside of the school day that the bill um allows us to do and so if a student wanted to take three courses from us and homeschool in the afternoon and then purchase some tutoring services from us there are there are lots of ways

213for us to earn additional funding for a student good I think it's the FTE portion that I'm getting maybe unnecessarily hung up on and that question was brought up at the fsba in the session where um the state representative tuck who sponsored the bill was present and in regards to the portal will the district you know school districts have an opportunity to be present on that portal as well and that was answered in a in an affirmative because I think there's an opportunity I to me the opportunity is we've got some great programs that I think there's an appetite for within our area and you know thinking about yes the contracted Services as well but I think the part-time option so I don't know how many students we currently serve part-time but I think there's

214an opportunity if we can see it differently in some way I can ask Miss Everett to run those numbers how many individual students take one two or three classes with us great thank you Miss Miller just have two things one I'll speak to the accountability of homeschooler because I have one um I fill out a paper once a year and I tell them what grade my son is in his portfolio is reviewed by a certified teacher she marks that she reviewed it that's it and then he met expectations that I had said for him because it's about the parent choice which the issue we'll have with that is there's no parameters to what's reviewed or there's no parameters of any of and I'm talking to my son obviously is cognitively disabled but even if typical

215students I asked what grade should I put down he's in you know we're moving up what grade great do you have you discovered that he's at yet and that's very difficult um and and that's been a long conversation of it's a balance of how much do you put on as accountability fact as an accountability factor to people who are choosing their own curriculum and choose so it is a gray area and it'll be interesting to see what the data shows us but there isn't really much in as far as far as accountability we have most of our private schools have a lot except for the very large I would say the large private schools but most of the small private schools in Polk County are funded a lot by the vouchers already so I don't

216see that they're going to pull I will tell you that the larger private schools are already marketing the voucher to the students that are there and have been there since Pre-K that we don't have numbers on but I don't think it's going to be a huge impact because like we've seen um some of the other private schools are so heavily funded already the by the vouchers that they're already accounted for my question is in hb1 there was um there was an accountability factor in if schools take so much money in vouchers can you talk about that piece I think it was 250 000 if they were accepting that you know which some of them will be automatically but what will that change for private schools in recording pieces so I think that the rule I

217think that the statute used to say you didn't really have any accountability until at least 50 percent and I think they've lowered that to a lower threshold so that there's more involvement in what's going on in those schools as they bring in more and more students on scholarships I think that's a good that's a good piece only because that was our fear that schools were 80 voucher 100 voucher and there was Zero accountability for that so I'm hoping that helps the districts and the students that will return back to us thank you sure no further questions Miss Dodge okay so now I'm going to move on to HB 5101 which is where all the funding fund fun funding changes that so this is where they renamed the DCd to the CWF and say you can

218be above one but you can't be below another great thing that happened was the they put language in there and they actually did this in another bill that says that the the career cost Factor has to be greater than basic funding for our students in 9 to 12 who are taking career courses so that's we have so many career courses in Polk County that's going to benefit us also and then it repeals that group to enrollment cap and it also makes some changes to ese so that you can't have any less funding for your ESC guaranteed allocation than you have in your current year so either you either get more funding based on a growth in the next year in ese students or you're capped at your current your funding so that you can't lose

219money in that program that this is also where they put the language that says that the education the new educational enrichment allocation is a baseline you can't ever get anything less than you have right now they must add workload to it every year and that's where that language about getting 500 per student for your turnaround schools will be added to that allocation in addition to what you saw on the budget table and that's for anyone in turn around in District managed turnaround or within two years of exiting turnaround to support those programs the TSA tsia becomes the classroom teacher and other instructional Personnel salary increase allocation which I don't know good luck getting an acronym for that but that's this is the language where they provide us with flexibilities to make sure that anyone who's

220instructional Personnel can benefit from those new funds and that it's not just going to the bottom of the salary schedule so let's make sure I didn't go too far I didn't okay so um there's language in there that allows you to transfer from you the board to transfer from any categorical program to an appropriate account if it's necessary and the department approves it so if you're if you're doing some sort of instructional materials adoption or some things because they've rolled so many things into the base it allows you to transfer money around um if if it's needed on a specific item um the teacher this is where they establish the teacher classroom Supply will be specified in the in the budget every year and this year it's three hundred dollars there's also some this is

221where they put the language about the comprehensive reading plan the plan has to be approved by the board and we have to submit the budget for the individual components to doe and there are timelines established um um there's also um language in there about our mental health plans what needs to be included in those and how the funding will be divided up between providers and what we provide at the district level this bill also has um language about library media centers to make sure that our classroom libraries are included in that and that the board is approving our staff development plan that supports our instructional materials program and that a budget for that is submitted to the department that's by July 1 the budget hasn't even signed so that that's something that would start in

222the following year the instructional materials allocation is eliminated language about if any of our reading materials that are identified by the just read Florida office that we use don't have to go through that public review and comment process that's required in statute it creates the heroes in the classroom bonus program and so that's four thousand dollars this year is what the bonus is and that will be in the budget every year how much it is for retired First Responders and Veterans who want to become teachers and then if they teach in a critical shortage area there's an additional bonus and then School boards can adopt salary incentive or other strategies to confident compensate teachers at our dnf our turnaround schools and it removes the requirement to do mous and um and move people and to

223have to collectively bargain those movements to support our turnaround schools and then this is the language that allows us to assess B fees for summer school and they have to be based on the student's ability to pay and outline in policy let's see there are going to be bonuses for incentives to get people into the Early Learning career pathway who are already in an early learning setting and then among other things this bill establishes the Florida school for competitive academics which is a new school that they funded in the budget that will be located in Alachua County and it can begin admitting students in two years so those are all that that's the actual bill that has all those funding changes that I talked about in the budget um SB 7024 is the retirement bill

224this is very exciting for many of many of us who are worried about Recruitment and Retention of employees and especially teachers it allows for entry into drop at any time instead of that one year window after you're eligible for retirement it extends drop for everybody from five years to eight years but classroom teachers already have eight years so it extends it for them from eight years to ten years and it um that portion for the teachers will be repealed in 2029 so get all the teachers you can before 2029 and then um there's if you're an elected class who already was in drop you can't have that same extension I don't think anybody hears and drop but you know just in case they've changed some interest rates and they've also increased the health insurance subsidy

225for our rare entire East so that goes from five dollars to 750 per month it's capped at 225 a month instead of 150 a month which is what our retirees have been receiving and the minimum that a retiree would receive is raised to forty five dollars and we will be paying two percent of every employee's gross compensation to cover that increase and then also allocations to the investment plan accounts are going to be two percent for each membership class so those are I think the drop um the drop portions of this bill which was signed on June 5th were were effective upon becoming law so anyone who was worried about having to leave the district on June 30th because their drop was up has that opportunity for those additional three years and for the teachers

226an additional two years after eight um SB 256 is employee organizations were about representing public employees I put this on here because it's been quite a discussion um there are three areas of the bill some are effective July 1 some October and some immediately the July 1 is the part that prohibits dues from being deducted um to pay for union dues from a from someone's salary and I think that pea has done a really good job about already piloting other ways to get to collect union dues from for their members there are membership authorization forms that are going to be prescribed by perk and it has to have very specific information included on that form members can revoke their membership at any time and if we if a union requires a form it can't ask

227for a reason why they're revoking their membership and then um they have to keep all those forms so that they can be inspected by perk effective October 1 is when the language hits about having to have 60 percent of your eligible members as members or if you don't you have a certain timeline to recertify the recertification process has not changed so while you have to have 60 percent of your members to um to automatically recertify you only have to have 50 percent of those voting to get recertified so it's a it's a it's an additional administrative hump that they will have to go through if they don't meet those thresholds but that doesn't mean they won't they don't just disappear and so um there's also some Provisions about when somebody can challenge an application and

228then there's going to be the public employee unions have to provide audited financials to their members and a little bit more fiscal information to them SB 240 is the Career and Technical education Bill I've already gone over some of the things like the funding portions that are in that bill this bill concentrates a lot on what you'll see is wbl on the screen which is work based learning it it provides more work-based learning opportunities for students the you see the first bill if or the first bullet if a student's in a CTE course or an or certification course and they want to keep going on in that program we have to afford them that opportunity if it's available somewhere in the district um parental notification to parents at the beginning of the year is expanded

229to include all of our CTE Pathways work work based learning opportunities and specifically contact information for a school guidance counselor who can help a family decide what's the best pathway for their student it adds CTE in the high school diploma requirements right now there's that item about you have to have Fine Arts um debate in speech or practical arts and they add CTE courses to the courses that can can be used to satisfy that requirement and they change the Merit diploma designation to the industry scholar designation our Career Centers are now authorized to offer associates in science and Associates in applied science degrees there's going to be an approval process for the State Board of Education but that's a pretty big change and an opportunity there's going to be an additional weight for students who

230that the district would receive for getting these students through dual enrollment career courses and then they change the qualifications for being a career education teacher so that you only have to have three years of experience occupational experience instead of six so that will help us get some more instructors into some of these programs and the same with the week we can now as a district issue that adjunct teaching certificate to anyone who has industry certification in a specific subject area so that will also help us there's also a hundred million dollars in funding in this bill to allow us to start programs in Career Education so I think that's pretty exciting and I know that we have lots of things that have been hanging out there that we've been wanting to do but but there

231hasn't necessarily been funding available so hopefully this is something we can utilize so HB 1259 is the charter Capital outlay bill that's also received a lot of tension this year the charter schools now under this bill are are eligible to receive not only the state capital outlay which is about 230 million dollars per year that they receive on a per student basis but also a portion of our 1.5 Mills it's a um graduated implementation schedule so next year they would receive 20 percent and then in 2728 they would be eligible for 100 of their per student allocation and the bill outlines how that's calculated it's calculated based on the coffee of the entire district and then a per student allocation for the entire district is calculated and we give the charter schools based on the

232number of students that they have they have to attest in writing that they're if they go away as a charter school that all of the um everything they purchase with these funds would revert back to the public and they're not eligible if a member of their governing board or their family has an interest in the lease a lot of charter schools lease their properties they don't own them and so that's just an accountability provision that they put in there HB 1069 is um regarding instructional materials which like other things gets addressed every year lately and also pronouns so the instructional material requirements says that Doe is going to prove all instructional materials used to retreat used to teach Health now it defines sex for the purposes of the Education Code and then it exhibits it

233takes that prohibition from last year's parental rights Bill and extends it through eighth grade in terms of teaching sexual orientation or gender identity the pronouns portion of this bill basically states that no one we can't require an employee anyone Contracting with our schools or student to offer pronouns use pronouns in any way people can still offer whatever they like we just can't require them to be used as the school district and then we cannot you know there's language in there about we can't have any penalties for not for someone who doesn't want to use somebody's pronouns that they have offered did I and then the instructional materials portion the elementary schools right now have to put all the books in their Library Online for parents to review and they've added classroom libraries to that requirement

234so that those books will appear online also there if an objection to a book in a library or classroom library is based on it being pornographic or harmful to minors it has to be removed within five days and it can't and it can't be available to anyone at the school until the review process has been the objection has been addressed and the review process has been completed if it's determined by the board to be objectional then it has to be discontinued at all schools the doe is going to develop a forum right now we use our own form and so they're going to have a Statewide form and then principals are going to have to communicate all these processes to parents and these committees are going to have to be open basically using the sunshine

235statutes as they're reviewing these books and they have to have parents and the public and it has to be appearance of students who will have access to the materials that are on these committees hb7039 is student outcomes also I don't know what happened there it's the same slide so we're going to skip over that because somehow my student out but this the student outcomes uh Bill even though I don't have the right bullets on here the student outcomes bill is all about adding dyscalcula to some of the requirements for students to receive extra Services right now if they have dyslexia or if they is just um what'd she say okay well if they have if they display anything that makes it somebody think that they might have these learning disabilities then there are extra supports

236that have to be put in place and they have to be put in place early even as early as Pre-K and um and the and the materials it talks about the materials that have to be provided and and basically just the additional both the reading supports and math supports as well so sorry that's that's um slide didn't come up I don't know what happened it's like my secretary is awful and I know because I'm her so education these are just a couple of Education bills that I wanted to just go over real briefly because people have asked about them technology in public schools we have to limit access to only age-appropriate subject matters and materials we have to be very specific about protecting the Safety and Security of students and their personal information we cannot

237let them X use our wireless our at any of our schools to access social media platforms unless it's expressly directed by the teacher and Tick Tock or anything that Tick Tock becomes is completely banned students adults can't be happening on a school campus so teachers can now designate areas for wireless devices during instructional time if they would like to do that and just say everyone take your cell phone put it here and I'll let you know when it's time to get it out and then students in grades 6 to 12 I have to have instruction on social emotional and physical effects of social media and the code of conduct has to have all that language in it middle and high school start times does not apply until July 1 26 27 so we have three

238years to get this together at that time middle schools wouldn't be able to begin before eight and high schools before 8 30. we have to have input from stakeholders in the community to discuss the impacts and we also have to talk to our community about the impacts of steep sleep deprivation on students and then we have to discuss with our community strategies for implementing the later start times and there's five million dollars in funding provided in the budget to kind of plan for this over the next three years um HB 1121 is the Florida retirement system basically this allows anyone that one year time frame after you've retired right now you're prohibited from volunteering and a retired teacher couldn't come back and read in their classroom and this bill takes care of that so it

239defines what volunteerism is and once you've retired from the system anybody it doesn't just impact teachers if you retire from a legislative office you can go back and read in a classroom any ones who are retiree of FRS can now come back and volunteer during that one first year after retirement prohibited apps on government devices the DMS Department of Management Services has to create a list and then we as a public education institution have to block access to any of these apps that they say are on this list we have to restrict it and we have to have a way to wipe it from many devices that we as a district provider own um taxation is a really long bill but as you can see it's a really short slide all there are going to

240be two back to school holidays this year one is July 24th through August 6th which is right before school starts and the other one is January 1 to January 14th which is basically the beginning of second semester so two opportunities for families to get a tax break on items that their students use for school it defines what's in it and then that puts a permanent sales tax exemption on um baby and toddler products and oral hygiene products K-12 teachers is all about it creates a teacher's Bill of Rights allows teachers to direct what's going on gives them it takes all of the statutes regarding teachers rights over their classroom and puts it in one area of the statute the commissioner is directed to try to get as rid of as many state or District rules

241or laws that um are too much for teachers and bring those to the legislature next year and then they're specifically language about when a teacher sends a student to the principal's office for Behavioral reasons um first the principal has to decide if it's a violation of the code of conduct if it's not nothing can happen if it is and the principle doesn't use the whatever recommendation the teacher sent the child with in terms of discipline they have to put something in writing to tell the teacher why either they did more or they did less and then it creates a dual enrollment scholarship program and a teacher Apprentice program for as more teacher recruitment opportunities with that the state will fund to try to get teachers into the profession so I'm over by seven minutes but

242oh sorry I apologize Mr sharpless um I just wanted to go back to HB 5101 and I just wanted to take a second it's not a question it's just a comment I just wanted to thank representative Josie Tomko for I mean part of our poke delegation is what really was the uh you know the driving force behind this so I wanted to publicly thank her and all the rest of our delegation for helping us get that extra funding I think it's important yeoman's job Miss Miller you just go back real quick for the public and talk about we hear a lot about the teachers union but we don't really hear a lot about ask me who are our painters our electricians our food service workers our bus drivers who who do not have the same

243participation level and they're organized Union group this will all apply to them as well is what I understand that's correct it will apply to them but so will the recertification process so if they're not at 60 percent or you know right now the law is 50 percent if if they're not at 60 percent then they would have a time frame where they could go back they would vote people who are interested in participating and ask me would vote and as long as 50 of those people want to keep asks me as they're not 50 of everybody who can be part of ask me but 50 of the people who decide to go on and vote as to whether askme should represent them or not as long as that as 50 of them vote for ask

244me then they are retained as their representative thank you chair Wyatt thank you Miss Dodge see now we're at the end and you can make her cry if you want to um but I just want to say thank you for all that you do in Tallahassee I'm a little sad that this is our last meeting with you officially on our our team um but I know you're not changing your phone number and are still gonna gonna hang out with us um but just for I mean it was a heavy education year I think to say the least um and you really tackled a lot of our our priorities in that I also want to give a shout out real quick to Senator Burton who I know if you were at the Winter Haven chamber wrap

245up she was very passionate still about how difficult it was to get the Florida retirement system Bill through and she really stuck her her neck out quite a bit on that one um and went to bat for us so a huge shout out to her um but really for all that you've done over the past 20 plus years and and with the district we're appreciative of you I'm glad that you're still going to show us around Tallahassee next year um but we appreciate all that you've done thank you I've loved doing it and I'm glad I still get to do it so there are no further questions or comments Miss Dodge so can I just add a comment here absolutely first of all this very last slide is every other bill that I didn't get

246a chance to go over so I hope that you'll take a look at those things and if you have any questions please feel free to reach out me out to me and then I just wanted to say it's been an absolute pleasure to work for all of you so thank you very much thank you Miss Dodge well the half the room is depressed good luck Mr Warren Mr Warren has several items Mr Pitts unfortunately is under the weather and not able to join us today but Mr Warren is here so Mr Warren I'll turn it over the very first item is the para parent involvement job description thank you uh yes I want to quickly go through some of the changes that come under the budget and Staffing section specifically the first item is a

247change that you'll see a financial impact sheet there with no cost incurred with this piece this is a position uh job description where we have changed the job description title so it will now be a para educator parent family and parent family engagement position you can see through the strikethrough changes that the position is going to now exist to perform responsible work in assisting parent family engagement kind of changing making sure that it's functioning specifically in that part the essential functions of the job are reflective of that it outlines who the position is going to assess what functions specific at the school site the position will engage in I also think it's noteworthy in the non-essential functions of the job that it's very specific that the position is not for clerical use or for translating

248so they're trying to really focus on the parent engagement function of this position they do have a preferential experience component of a title one and so with that being said it's a no cost impact it's a revision to a job description for para educator family engagement just one or correct me if I'm wrong but I believe peas already reviewed this that is correct any concerns there there were now and I reached out to her a day before yesterday and got an email correspondence that she was good to go thank you sir Mr sharpless um I just uh this is a isn't a question about this specific one but just a question I have in general when we get these different changes can we please I have two things I would like to see how are

249we benchmarking this or comparing this with other school districts and salaries and and positions and then also how do these positions align with our strategic plan so if I could get that information just again is it for this specific one but just in future when we get uh you know changes I would I would appreciate it okay no further questions Mr Warren thank you we will now uh proceed to the second item which is a staffing update for Fine Arts and again if you open your attachments that you have there on your screens you'll find that in the financial impact of this position you we are unfunding a trst district coach Fine Arts positive I just want to make sure the board members understand all the attachments are there for some reason we're having an

250issue with board docs it's operating intermittently so please understand that's not an issue that the attachments were not there and you would have seen that anyways during your initial reviews but unfortunately there is an issue with board docs at this time if with that being said if it's in order I can go ahead and read some more of the details if you're not able to see them in front of you to jog your memories we're unfunding a trst district coach Fine Arts which was a teacher position the the cost of that position would have been 47.5 which would have been the the teacher's salary we're looking to fund the senior coordinator music which would be 61 245 it's a difference of cost incurred of Thirteen Thousand Seven forty five that's the difference between the teacher

251and the senior coordinator um you you would be able to see how the senior coordinator position fits within the fine arts department and then there is a job description that outlines its function it is a senior coordinator of music and the various responsibilities that it specifically has um this I did want to I think it's important to also add I did follow up with Miss Cummings today relative to wanted to know more details relative to the unfunding of the trst this is a position that's being vacated so there is no one in this position um effective Thursday actually they're retiring so one I apologize let me move to my paper copy of the agenda I board members I'll ask for a show of hands if you have questions about that last item that he just

252reviewed seeing none Mr Warren you may move forward yes the next item leading along would be the Staffing updates for professional development and in that particular item if you had your attachments you could see it would follow much like the item we just discussed we're looking to unfund a lead Mentor which is a teacher position at a cost of 47.5 it is a vacant position at this time no one is in or occupying the position I followed up with Miss Rouse they'd been waiting to bring this forward as they're wanting to fund the senior coordinator position at a cost of 61 245 it's the same difference as previously stated of Thirteen Thousand Seven forty five this is a position that would serve specifically working with coaching and mentoring new teachers and providing services in the

253professional development department under the direction of Jennifer Ross senior director any questions from board members on that position seeing none the next item would be the organizational reassignment of ESC facilitator and with this particular item you'll notice that we are looking to follow up on what was previously presented at the March workshop and board and work session as we are looking to change the reporting structure and the title for the position of Lea facilitator to ese facilitator the reporting change that is being proposed would be organizational in the fact that the the positions would change from reporting directly having their work directed by a building principle to having their work directed by central office it allows the opportunity to deploy resources based on student need and changes of student population and the job description has

254no substantive changes relative to the function but we do have the title change from Lea to ese facilitator any questions from members of the board fields let me meet you I apologize spinning yes ma'am so all of us board docs is down unfortunately and so um I'm trying to remember from my memory but the job description change for the ESC facilitator was there a change where they now are required to do eligibility uh the custom job purpose here it says the facilitator provides site-based support in all areas of ESC Ed it utilizes program knowledge of leadership skills to work collaborative with school region and District staff to provide support for curriculum instruction Behavior compliance and programmatic decisions the facilitator will assist the site-based administrative team Ese and General Ed teachers School staff parents and students

255to ensure the provision of a free of faith and to improve the outcomes of students with disabilities they schedule and conduct change of placements for students with disabilities and IEP meetings they provide support to students with disabilities they assist with organization and management of services to provide to the students and they demonstrate knowledge of practices of instructional behavioral strategies there's several others that are that I could continue on but does that answer your question because I did see the component that they do assist with IEPs they provide support with disabilities upon they provide support to students with disabilities based upon site needs sites support schedules will vary depending upon needs of students as documented by the IEP they schedule and conduct changes of placement for students with disabilities as well so they would be actively

256engaged in that process okay because it's my understanding that that's a little bit of heartburn for some of the ESC facilitators and this is to superintendent High not not to you thank you that the eligibility piece is a new piece for many of them if they're going to do that I mean that's my question and if they are going to be required to do the eligibility piece are they going to get training my understanding is that it's six weeks about six weeks of training and what kind of support will they get if they're going to be given the duties I don't know if that's true or not but that's what what I have heard from different uh different people just castles if you'll please come forward um yes ma'am they will be provided trainings and

257the current Staffing the way that it is we have program Specialists who providing eligibility Staffing meetings and in order to make sure that we streamline the support that's going to be going to the schools we've requested back and we talked about it back in February I think you were out that day but we discussed having a different way of work so the current Staffing specialists the recommendation is for them to become program Specialists which will allow another layer right now we have senior managers that support 20-plus schools and in order to support schools more effectively we're asking for program Specialists to provide additional support we have three to four per region that would allow for each person to have seven schools in addition to the leader which is a senior manager so with that being

258said the person who's now the Lea who will become ESC facilitators will also be able to do the eligibility Staffing meetings and when when this was first presented we gave a we actually gave a draft job description and we had conversations about this early on but yes ma'am there will be a lot of trainings that's the reason for the changes to make sure that we can streamline a lot of the training to make sure we're consistent with the support we provide to schools and when will they start doing the eligibility piece well we have staff in place that can do eligibility meetings now um and so we're going to be providing the trainings we're in the process of developing the trainings at this time and so when they many of them many of our staff

259that are program Specialists will be returning on July 20th and then teachers will return after that and in the meantime we'll be developing trainings to make sure that they have the time to do that because if they're not in the schools they'll be at our district office and be able to have more time during that period before students come back Miss Williams if I could clarify I believe what Mrs Fields is requesting is or asking and I'll ask it a little bit more directly will they be asked to do something they're not fully trained and competent in doing before they're fully trained thank you thank you yes ma'am and I think that it needs to be repeated and repeated and repeated because I think that some of the facilitators are not understanding that to be

260the case yes ma'am and even to that extent there's always subsequent follow-up and check-ins and coaching and mentoring that will take place as well so miss castles will be more than happy to provide me with that comprehensive training plan and we'll bring that back before the board so it's noticed publicly as well appreciate that yes ma'am thank you you're welcome thank you Ms castles go ahead Mr Warren that that would conclude the ESC facilitator piece unless there were further questions okay I see no further questions so that concludes budget and Staffing we have one more which would be um the strikethrough of the ESC director of ese instruction and I could walk the group through that we are changing a position title from director of ese curriculum charter schools and private schools to director of

261ese instruction the substantive changes to the job purpose establishes who the position reports to and what services they'll be providing to the various departments or elements of the ese department and then it outlines with specificity functions of the job relating to um to the the change of the position to reflect the curricular component Mrs Fields superintendent hide is this the position with uh that we you and I discussed with Miss Bruno I believe it is yes ma'am okay this is the initial error um in the Staffing and so they brought it back to make sure that clarification was made okay thank you yes ma'am includes budget and Staffing no further questions sir thank you [Music] Madam chair members of the board the remaining items you have the donation report February 2023 financial analysis March 2023

262financial analysis and this Head Start Services report board members I will also provide you at least two of you have contacted me in regarding to the overall audit status of our overall audit we did receive an updated calendar the auditing service had had some turnover as well as our own internal staff and so they've revised and developed a much more aggressive timeline to ensure its completion for this school year and to ensure that we've addressed any remedied any issues going into the upcoming school year um so you'll receive that from me on in your Friday update Madam chair that concludes the workshop I would love to review the agenda however I cannot currently pull it up so before we review the agenda well hopefully this is still spinning one of the things that we do

263need to talk about before our board meeting tonight is fsba officers so typically all of our appointments come in December just after School Board elections happen those are for all of our committees and Liaisons except for fsba they rotate on a June to or a July to June schedule so we will be for July 1 need to approve our both someone for the board of directors and an alternate and then also for their advocacy committee part of the reason that they do it in the summer is so the advocacy committee can start meeting during the summer and not get a whole new committee on January 1st right before session starts um so we want to just want to make sure that we have our appointments to those and I believe currently it is Dr Allen

264on board of directors and and you're his alternate and then for advocacy I believe it is Miss Miller and am I the alternate on that one I think I'm the alternate on that one so if anyone is interested in serving on the board of directors or would like to nominate someone that's interested I would love to hear those I would like to nominate Justin sharpless if he's interested for board of directors but I am very interested okay but board chair just I want to make sure we're in work sessions so correct yes and if that is going to be added it is already on the agenda we just don't have who the names are so we typically have the conversation thank you just so we don't have to to go go down that rabbit Bullet

265at our meeting in the evening so if Justin sharpless is interested then we can certainly put that forward as the nomination this evening um is there anyone else that's interested is there anyone else that's interested who is not I mean I I think um as serving as alternate and then with Miss Fortney moving on moving into that role I've enjoyed serving in that capacity and would enjoy the opportunity to serve in a full term okay not only fair everything is not fair that Dr Williams would be given an opportunity to do a full term and Mr sharpness could continue to be the the the backup the alternate absolutely I'm okay with that back to me just nobody seemed to be responding is why I didn't think anybody anybody wanted to respond um all right so

266we we can put forward then Dr Allen and then Mr sharpless as the nominees for this evening and then advocacy is anyone interested in serving on advocacy what does that entail so they do um part of it is these legislative platform they changed it a couple years ago where not everyone serves on the state or federal legislative committee they kind of split it up so advocacy is really for schools in general um and then they have they'll ask you to serve on a subcommittee for either legislative federal or I believe there's one other at least protect me effect policy um so those are the three subcommittees that they kind of have broken it up so every district has a representative and then once you're on the committee they split it up for who's on which

267team I know I when I was it I was the led the State Legislative I don't know Lisa if you've been on no I haven't been on that long but I was I'm I know right now I'd love to find another board member who would be willing to serve for that full time and I could go as alternate my main personally my experiences in federal legislative advocacy um but I've just joined two other boards and so if there is someone who has heart for that I'd be um very much and willing for them to run that advocacy position typically they do an all-day advocacy meeting typically depending when session is typically either September or October and then they also until that they have Friday phone calls still Friday mornings they have zoom calls ask session

268committee weeks and session starts just with updates of where everything is and then that week in um the big one is the Tallahassee week and would most likely be end of January beginning of February this coming year first session okay but you could have an alternate so yes the burden's not solely on one individual correct would do it if I have an alternate if Miss Miller is going to be able to to go and do when I can't if you would like that would be fine okay if you don't want to do it I'll be more than happy to to help with that no I think that's good thank you everybody okay with that all right so we will update that motion as well for this evening to have Miss Fields be the designee for

269the advocacy committee and then Miss Miller to be the alternate chair can you just make sure that that that's um that they're notified because it took me forever really to get on that list so they need to be quick with their update yes we I know last year I sent it in like the morning after so I will follow up though to make sure that the list gets updated yes any other questions about fsba nominations all right I Believe Miss Winchester handed everyone a physical copy of the agenda because it appears we still cannot get online forget about discipline yes we'll we'll finish go through this quickly and then clear the room for discipline any questions on sections a through C none any questions on D through f ifty nine then we'll go down to

270consent agenda any questions on sections I through l yes which one miss Mr sharpless first in line of curse okay um I I4 not the road um the top I was wondering if there's a timeline because I know this is about the uh Winter Haven High School Dennison stadium and also Tenoroc High School turf fields if there was a timeline on when we're expected to um could be completing these that's all as I recall I shared that at the last meeting I apologize um that we would complete the stadium renovation first and then the tracks would be done in November the companies would come back and do both tracks the football stadium would not be completed in time for the opening of the season however Mr Talbot who oversees all of our Athletics would work

271directly with the school I believe they would anticipate one of their first games is already a own away game and then they would have to relocate a second game but that it should be completed in time for them to return after that and then my other questions on I-5 I was just wondering how do we attempt to collect the unpaid student accounts and is there a process in place to help us not get into this situation where we have these unpaid accounts going forward so you saw some of that take place earlier this evening or the earlier this afternoon we talked about modifying our payment process in the Dropout process we do we do refer these to collection agencies as well some of these are offset through additional dollars we received through the federal government

272and so it depends on the student and their specificity of their circumstances as to whether or not we can be reimbursed but for many of these it would it would it results in a collection agency report and then when we work with our credit agency I believe I don't see um staff in the room but I'd have to check with Ms Chen because I think it's about 30 percent that we forfeit to the collection agency for their due diligence 70 is better than zero I don't disagree yes sir yes ma'am that's all I have any other questions I threw sorry I through okay I believe I threw l are we going to have the uh board doc working for the board meeting superintendent hide or do we know that I don't know that they're on

273the phone with them right now I'm able to refresh every and it'll cycle up and then when I try to click on attachments I tend to get the error message so we're hopeful that we'll get them up and running by 5 PM I hope so too because there's a lot of important stuff on the agenda tonight questions on H through l any questions on in through p I only have one question on N yes for the whole thing of it um for one through six can we have comparisons to know how competitive these prices are for these different I mean for similar services I just uh well I'd like before the program so I just like to have some sort of comparison to know if this is this industry standard these prices are we compare

274we are we pricing out multiple things here I mean well they all provide similar overlap and services and part of that is because none of them can adequately staff one particular area by themselves that's why it's inclusive of it typically will include our RNs our you know our otrpt school psychologists not counselors but behavior therapy so we do price these out and negotiate these each year as to I mean I could see if we could do an analysis to see if we're paying um close to the industry standard as far as national average um I I could I could see if that's the case I I did the only reason I just when we pass these I want to know that we're doing things fiscally responsible oh no they're they're competitive and can I add

275that we can't we would hire these positions ourselves if we could right so we are we are only in the position of trying to find Services because we can't and we worked on that in Tallahassee for a while there's some limitations and OT has to have a doctorate degree we're not competitively able to hire and so that's made it difficult for us and having to pay contracts but yes I understand what you're saying so maybe we could look at similar size counties to see if they have similar expenses yeah and I think that's one of the things that actually came out if you recall in the efficiency audit when they talked about contracted services that we were doing a far better job than the other larger districts because we're not overextended the unfortunate reality here

276and actually this has become a topic of negotiation um is what we would like to do and we this is how we've approached it we've taken a we're taking a snapshot in the last five years and I'll use let me just identify one particular group speech therapists and we've looked at what have we contracted and paid for in those six years in the last five years for that position that's above and beyond what we would normally pay in our salary range and then the recommendation is going to that I will bring back before the board is that we actually create a new salary schedule this is we're already spending those dollars on contracted service reinvest those dollars into the overall salary schedule for that position and maybe that makes us more competitive for retention because

277the 30 percent that we pay to the contract companies does not go to the employees it goes to the contract company so we'd like to see if we can be more competitive but part of that is acknowledging we've already been paying this amount year after year after year maybe if we were enhanced we were able to enhance the salary schedule for that particular position we would get better applicants and be able to increase our retention I don't know that yet and I don't obviously want to propose a solution that we end up increasing salaries but then we're still Contracting for the same number of people so it's it's a fine line we're walking there but we are trying to be as fiscally responsible as we can be but to miss Miller's point these are mandated

278positions through IEPs 504s and things that we can't let go because otherwise we're on a hook during the summer for compensatory services and we would have to pay a local agency to backfill those for students as well so thank you yes sir question on K for the naming rights for um the frost proof and now I'm not yes for Frostproof K5 no it is not K5 it's not K5 action item ring it was I got action oh sorry it's an action board Doc is back up which is the next section all right oh thank goodness um so I'll ask where does anyone have any questions on action agenda section r it was back up those out it sure does yes I have a question on um R1 with the Frostproof Middle High School naming did

279we get clarification that there was a Sac Committee Member serving on that The Advisory board that because in our policy it requires that a Sac member is on that committee I would be surprised if Mr Windham brought something forward it did not but let me look and verify okay and if not I'll get verification between meetings okay thank you I just want to make sure that we're not doing anything outside of our policy any other questions on Section r will get our 9 and 10 updated as soon as we can get into board Docs okay and we can get Section r 9 and 10 updated now it would have been last month right right any questions on Section s superintendent hide you have a report I do Mr Murphy do you have a report this

280evening a very brief report okay do you have any just asking for a um your permission to advertise permission to advertise that was something that was supposed to have been advertised for today but it has to be done next month thank you and and we'll need a motion on that yes ma'am and then auditor Miss Matthews you have a report all right and then we will do board members reports and public comment any other questions on the agenda so that needs to come before us during work session Mr sharpless uh so the committee report well things were involved since I am fsba uh alternate on the board of director I just wanted to say that I serve as a moderator for the session where superintendent Hyde and Varsity Tutors did a presentation and hearing the

281testimonials videos about from our teachers about the impact Varsity Tutors made I just want to say board it was a wise investment our teachers really appreciated the Varsity Tutors program um and also there was a one thing that was mentioned uh in another session I was at is called a board Champion it's something that we may want to think about that's where board members um are assigned a Cabinet member to kind of start talking to and be and almost becomes the an expert in that area for when when boards having discussions so that way it's called a poor board champion and they do it they do it in one of the districts up in the Panhandle something we might want to start thinking about um you know where you know let's say you know your

282and transportation Guru now for the board you meet with maybe monthly with the transportation commit Cabinet member you know just a thought something to bring back from fsba that's all I have anyone else have any updates from committees you know we're running a little short on time because we need to do discipline too so if you want to save your reports for this evening I don't have a report but what did we ever find out about the master board training do you ever get an answer on that whether or not we had a credit we do not have a credit um go ahead Miss vegan I apologize it's okay I just okay thank you yeah I mean I'll give a couple of thoughts on the board of directors meeting there were definitely several informational items

283that were brought up there is a great resource pretty much every Friday they do a webinar with various topics there's an archive at vimeo.com forward slash fsba some of the topics like the future of Florida's accountability system with FL doe Chancellor Jacob Aliva fascia FAFSA data sharing agreements and then the state of student mental health so a lot of topics I think are quite valuable to us they did share also a court case that was brought forward just very recently so um one that you probably want to read was Penn versus Escambia County as it relates to the book challenge process so Penn basically filed a lawsuit against Escambia County would be worth a while to read that they also offered like several data points on superintendent searches around State it's it's crazy I mean

28461 out of 67 superintendents around the state have served less than three years and I do know that we we actually have the best superintendent in the whole state of Florida and Beyond so just a few thoughts there from the board of directors meeting thank you Mrs he's not going anywhere so that's that's also helpful um just a couple other quick notes before we dismissed for discipline superintendent Hyde and I have been working on looking to do our board retreat in January so we will be getting dates together to propose for that that's something that we can certainly look to bring Master board training at that time would likely make the most sense and again we'll we'll start sending out some dates here in the next couple weeks to make sure it's on everyone's calendar

285well in advance um the other thing is that I know it's hard to believe but it's almost time to do evaluations again um because July is coming quickly so I will send out that or have a vet send out that information um in the next couple weeks my goal is to have it opened July 1st and then if I could get it back from everyone by July 31st and that way we can use the month of August to go through and meet with each of our our staff members and present their evaluations to them I believe that is all I have no one has anything else we will adjourn this meeting and we need to clear the room as quickly as possible so that we can go into discipline