School Board Work Session | February 14, 2023

001good morning I will now call this Valentine's Day meeting for February 14th 2023 to order work session to order we'll start by reading our who are we statement we are the P 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 experience to ensure that our decisions are focused on providing a highquality education for all students the four most important things to our governance team are operating with Integrity respecting our students staff families and each other establishing a culture where our stakeholders feel valued supported and have opportunities for personal and professional growth and supporting an approach of continuous Improvement to ensure student outcomes collectively we need to work on behalf of the

002children we serve and find Avenues of agreement so that we can govern The District in an effective manner there is no acceptable alternative we will always collaborate in a respectful manner in order to enhance opportunities for each student and staff member we will not disparage others our students will Thrive because we will remain committed to supporting the whole child we hope to engage and Empower our students and stakeholders to create a community of lifelong Learners and with that I'll turn it over to superintendent Hyde good morning mad chair members of the board staff and community members thank you for being here this morning um I know many of you are grateful that this is only a workshop and we do not have to go into an actual school board meeting this evening so gentlemen you're

003still on the hook for Valentine's Day dinner and celebrations with your wives um I know I am so and I want to wish my wife a very Happy Valentine's Day our first uh two guests with us this morning has been consistent with our policy um we've been inviting our community- based Partners in to share and and basically um get a some free marketing um so that our community knows about the extensive number of Partnerships we have in our community we have and I think you've seen to date so many the variety I should say of opportunities and Partnerships that we have established is quite impressive um so no matter what interests our students have or their families have we have faith-based Partners we have Partners like you're going to hear today um who really go

004above and beyond to support our students we have tutoring have all kinds of intervention services YMCA Boys and Girls Club I mean it's quite extensive uh and so as you know we're capturing all of these and they'll be housed on a a section of our website as we reach out and fulfill our goals and objectives for our strategic plan uh for engaging our families and community members so that they know what all these opportunities are and as we get closer to the end of the school year hard to believe many of our families will be using this information to make important decisions about types of camps and programs for summer for their children to participate in so it's my pleasure this morning as a scout myself and I was not a Girl Scout I Was

005A Boy Scout it is my absolute pleasure um to introduce this morning we have Rebecca Brown Chief Operating Officer from the Girl Scouts of is it West Central Florida that's what I thought okay and then are you joined by Michelle Patton as well so I'm Michelle Rea unfortunately isn't feeling well so she wasn't able to make the drive over from Tampa but live here in Lakeland so I'm going to present on our behalf thank you for being here and the floor is yours board members will either ask question they'll save their questions for the end and I'll manage the speaker list so just look to me and then individual board members may have other praise or questions or comments for you okay thank you appreciate the opportunity thank you um and Happy Valentine's Day everyone

006I'm really happy to be here and be a part of your strategic plan um today we're going to talk about Girl Scouts and what we're doing to build girls of Courage confidence and character here in P County our agenda is just review our girl scout model and outcomes and talk about our presence here in P County and discuss some potential Partnerships and how we can increase P County families at our upcoming stem of palooza increase Girl Scout engagement at schools to promote improve student outcomes and increased family engagement and increase awareness to families in P County about this amazing program and we'll have some time at the end for wrap up in questions girl scouts mission as long strong and proud 110 years Girl Scouts build girls of conf Courage confidence character who make the

007world a better place and how do we do that our outcomes through our programs and initiatives through stem Outdoor Learning life skills and our entrepreneurship programs our girls learn a sense of self positive values challenge seeking building healthy relationships and Community problem solving so what is the Girl Scout leadership experience our evidence-based model describes what girls do in Girl Scouts who they do it with how they do it and how they benefit this is our model for the high the high value leadership experience that we want for all of our girls through a variety of activities with supportive relationships going through our girl Le Cooperative learning and Learn by doing processes we expect all girls to have the same outcomes coming out with a strong sense of self positive values again challenge seeking building healthy

008relationships and of course looking at our community problems to help solve those currently we have 1,376 Girl Scouts currently registered across P County a map of the schools that we have here in P County I'm sure you're familiar with we have a thousand of those girls are in volunteer Le troops and almost 400 in our community based troops we've got some pictures we wanted to point out we wanted to show to the board these are the girls that are doing things to give back to the community looking at problems in the community and what they can do to solve those problems and the positive impact that they can make anything from taking the cookie boxes from the thousand cases of cookies they picked up and sold through their entrepreneur program and turning it into scratching

009post for cats in um in um shelters and whatnot making survival bags for the homeless working in food kitchens but then again we also have our girls having those leadership experiences either through stem or the Flying high circus event where they're courageous and brave um having age appropriate activities for our middle and high school girls to visit Sun and Fun Sky laab all these wonderful Partnerships that we're lucky to have here in P County data shows that having Girl Scouts in schools boost family engagement in our students education it improves their academic outcomes it improves their attendance and it improves their social skills thus improving the overall climate in the schools we partner through um through a um Grant from United of Central Florida and through their dime system that you're familiar with that helps

010us tabulate and really put a number to our outcomes instead of it just it makes us feel good what what is it really doing and through those outcomes and using the dime system We Know That Girl Scouts in schools help our girls um they have better attendance higher FSA scores higher star reading and math and they also perform better on a daily basis with fewer referrals as well so we have the data that proves that these programs although they're not tutoring still have a positive academic impact on our girls so how can girls participate in Girl Scouts we have our community partner troops which are true meanss leing led by our staff members and partner volunteers they're often free to girls they can happen during the school day or at one of our after school

011programs like Pace Boys and Girls Club um the volunteer Le troops cuz volun make the world go around in Girl Scouts we have troop meetings led by parent and neighborhood volunteers they can occur on a school or in a community based site usually funded by the participants although we do have funding for those who need it currently the list you see is our school year troops in the um Recreation clubs Boys and Girls Clubs but also inside the schools we're really very happy to get our troops started back up at Crystal Lake and congratulations to to you all for that accreditation I know that's something that we can all be very proud of um but we also have some room to grow we lost some numbers during Co like a lot of other agencies and

012we really are putting the investment in to bring um bring those numbers back up and in pink are the schools that we're working to get into currently and these are funded by the Grant from United Way of Central Florida which is evidence-based Grant the Florida Department of Education and Girl Scouts of West Central Florida stemma paloa is coming up on April 15th it's tax day and we've got we're partnered with Florida Polytech to host again last year we had um300 attendees and really were trying to spark that love for stem and children early um early in their academic careers um it was hosted at Florida Polytech and include Hands-On activities a University tour and a women women in stem panel so how can we grow our Partnerships and Collective impa impact in our P County

013Schools some of the things I would like to bring to you all to consider As you move forward and also put out there for our parents using this as a reference we would really like the opportunity to give this to bring a 100 more kindergarten girls to stem of paloa planting the seeds of love for stem early giving them that tax hell opportunity and also looking at that beautiful campus and thinking of what they want to be create more school-based Girl Scout Community TR at three more elementary schools this year engaging at least 100 more girls in families and we really want to push forward the initiative to increase our older girl participation and get more Middle School girls involved in girl scouting troops thus supporting an improved School climate and student engagement we've got

014a long history and we're very proud of that with our Traditional Values we have Community Partners that we're very proud to work with here in P County of course you were considered one of our partners and we appreciate your continued support PACE Center for Girls The Early Learning Coalition United Way of Central Florida Florida Polytech the Boys and Girls Club city of pro FAL proof and the pulk Education Foundation one of the things that United Way of Central Florida which is based out of Tampa serving eight counties has done to really improve and put a focus on pole County and all the wonderful resources that we have here in the students the just the the opportunity for growth is adding more leadership based here in P County so you have myself I'm the regional vice

015presidents um I started with United Way in January after retiring from 20 years of service with public supermarkets I have two full-time Community managers who help support the service units and then joined with me today is Taylor Mills want to say hi Taylor started with us the end of last year she's a full-time program coordinator and her job is to deliver those programs inside the schools and then we also have two part-time program coordinators to deliver programs throughout po County questions and discussion how can how can we continue to be a part of your strategic plans and what can we do to build this relationship deliver programs in more of our schools and communicate the opportunities that girls have here in P County Board member sheras so first I want to say as an eagle

016scout myself I know the value that um scouting can bring to a community and to the participants so I want to thank you first for partnering with Poke County Public Schools and having some of your troops in our schools um spe specifically uh helping our our young females get into the stem and get excited about stem I think it's a huge uh huge uh Advantage That Girl Scouts brings to our school system um I'm also really happy to see that on that list of schools there's some quite a few schools from my district there so I'm very proud of that um and one final thing um I got to tell you this week I bought some Girl Scout cookies delicious so make sure you're all going out there and support these Girl Scouts I uh

017Rebecca was supposed to bring the cookies so of course I had to text her and I'm like you're going to send me into this schol boy meeting without any cookies having been with Publix for 20 years and bleeding green um a lot of my um a lot of my cohorts were really surprised that was that I was joining Girl Scouts and one of the things that I really like about Girl Scouts is that they're data driven we're we do things that feel good but we are making decision based on data so when you're talking about the schools and the schools that we're targeting in pink that's based on financial data personas what what kind of experience do those communities want because the one thing we know about P county is it's it's huge and it's

018diverse so you know this the girl cout TR Troup that wants to do a lot of stem and they want to do glamping might not be the same as the troops that I met last night um in the Northeast part of the region that want to do more they want to do more camping and they want to have like T camp like they want to have a contest to see who can pinch their tent the fast us you know so we have that large diversity and we've got the numbers to support creating troops that are girl Le so that was one of the things that really inspired me to make this change and to make a commitment to Girl Scout and you know building that presence back Miss Miller thank you I'm I'm glad to

019hear that we're looking at middle school I think that's important and we're um I learned that you don't have to start at the beginning and so middle schoolers can go into Girl Scouts without being a brownie or going through all the stages and I think that's going to be important to share that message that this is available to all students and you might find we have a lot of students who will be new to this and never had the experience of Girl Scout or even knew they could be so it's exciting to see us reach out to our middle schools thank you I appreciate that it's um it's something about Community it's the uniforms so in our community based troops they're allowed uniforms and those uniforms are provided for them often at no cost to

020them it's something about like my pen it makes me feel special that uniform makes it we know when I we made the decision to put uniforms in schools it brings everybody closer together and it takes those boundaries down and we really want to do that for our middle school girls as well because if you feel like you belong to something then you're going to have that community-minded spirit thank you there are no more questions thank you very much I appreciate your all time thank you next I'd like to bring up Miss Jennifer fasking and Chelsea gross who are here with us from State Farm Insurance good morning I Jennifer fasking and my partner in crime Chelsea G uh for over a hundred years State Farm has been in business and for just about that long

021State Farm the agents and Associates have been working to give back in our communities right now State Farm's Focus aligns with safety education and Community Development specifically today though we really want to talk about how the local Associates have been partnering with Pope County Public Schools before coid and um before we no longer had a building in the City of Winter Haven we created a group of people that were designed to lead where we live and when we have over 2,000 employees in the State of Florida vast majority kind of located in this Central Florida area we have a lot of people who like to give back to the community so our lead where you live group helps connect those opportunities with the people that are looking for them and as I mentioned we don't

022have a building anymore but we do have Associates who love to connect and contribute we've been able to leverage internal social media and emails and really just the ideas and creativity of our employees to help start some of these ideas but one of our favorites is partnering with the uh po County Public Schools but we do also partner with several other organizations um the mission um heartwalk kids pack Salvation Army and we work on different things so sometimes it is donating funds sometimes it's donating time other times it might be donating goods and services but by far our favorite and our Associates favorite is working with the schools specifically on beautification projects this came from a conversation with Steve Warner a few years back really looking at how can we leverage uh State Farm resources

023and the benefits that the organization provides Associates with our schools and to date we have been able to work on seven beautification projects with 528 hours of a of 132 employees time and give back grants of over $5,000 how does that work well State Farm provides every associate a community service and education support day which is otherwise known as paid time off to go do really good things in the community and also good neighbor grants so if an individual or a team of individuals um contributes 40 hours towards an organization they can apply for a $500 Grant so each of those seven opportunities and you can see the the list that we have worked on so far since 2020 took a lot of organization Steve connected with the schools um worked on what the beautification

024or the landscape plan would be looked at how can we find materials at a at a good cost uh connected with us we got the resources together and showed up and on any project we had between 10 and up to 30 people participating on beautifying and then after the fact we follow up with a grant request um either one or two depending on the size of the project or the the number of employees involved so $500 and in some cases $1,000 here's a couple of our pictures we're very proud uh you can see we show up in our in our red we show up happy to work happy to help and we get dirty um it is hot and it is um sometimes muddy work and I highly recommend that and I have to give

025a huge shout out to Steve because when we are completing these projects He is there elbow deep in the mud digging holes pitching Bulch and all of that good stuff so um really really appreciate uh his effort and his connection with us and I'll turn it over to Chelsea because we have some other fun stuff we do so first of all just thank you um before I get started on my part just thank you for having us today um talking about what our employees do in the community is such a joy for Jennifer and I we get to do it um often and so thank you for having us um we're just here representing the very many State Farm employees that exist um certainly we could not do it without them um and your partnership

026and so not only the beautification projects and the things that Jennifer's already talked about but we really have done back to school drives and so when you think about when we went to coid we were doing a lot of like in-person activities trying to keep our employees engaged and our employees have this really strong drive to give back and so the back to school drives um are such an easy way to virtually support so we do have a huge part of our population is here in in P County um really mostly Winter Haven and Lakeland area but this gives the entire State an opportunity to give back and we're able to do this through Amazon wish list we've really streamlined the process the easier it is the more likely people are to give we know

027that um and so we've been able to donate over 530 items and over $500 to supply students um and teachers with P County um additionally specifically schools um this uh Johns ively Elementary we did 190 schools Supply kits and 120 backpacks um Westwood Middle this was really exciting because we got to provide khakis which you know Jake and his khakis so we got to um donate a 100 Pair of khaki pants for their clothes closet that was really exciting and then W to Elementary 120 backpacks and so here are some some photos and you can see Steve's peeking out there he's a he's an honorary State Farmer at this point I think um and so um you know khakis and the the kids and that's who we do it for I mean we love to

028give it fills our hearts but we also know um that we're extremely blessed to be able to do this for the school um before I end I also want to just tell you um our corporate office supports um locally as well through um we've we've donated over $25,000 to the Winter Haven chamber to support Scholarships in the community for our students um additionally even though we have closed our physical presence we're hiring here so State firm has chosen Florida as a great place to grow and so we have added over a thousand employees in the State of Florida over the last year um I actually recently changed jobs and at the time there was nobody in in my department other than me and now I have over a thousand employees that work um in my

029department in Florida that we have hired and so just thank you for making this a great place to live a great place to work and a great place to partner thank you very much board members I'm looking at the speakers list I don't see any speakers or oh miss Miller Don't Forget Me superintendent so I just want to say as um someone who's raised on State Farm both of my parents over 40 years retired from that regional office my sister's an agent my other sister is working from home now with State Farm I was the community involvement has been forever I remember going to events like this as the shirts change with the different logos um and that bear I think is the same costume so they might want to check into that because I

030remember him from the 80s but um I I'm glad you mention the scholarships because that's something I think that people don't realize that the scholarships that were available through State Farm not just for the employees children but to the community um my question is now that there's not a building with the people in it is it do you find um reaching out to the ones who are working from home there's more interest or is that a challenge to get more people interested in in the different projects that you do because I would think it's a challenge that people aren under the same roof but I'm learning that the new way of operating is remotely oh um I'll I'll take that one I think it really is individual so I know for working from home for

031some people is like the greatest joy that's ever happened um for me personally I miss interaction like I miss people and so volunteering in the community is such an amazing way for us to be able to get together for those who are really like we you spend more time with your co-workers than you sometimes do with your family and especially when we were in the office so for those who miss that interaction I think we've really been talking about this as we recruit people is it can be work from home but you still have a family you still have a community you still have the support system and so I think it's a good balance for us to be able to support those who want that personal interaction while also those who would prefer to

032not see their co-workers day but I love your um take on that I think that's important so you're not isolated you're still that's how you're involving community and each week on Wednesdays we have an internal it's called our Yammer site it's like a social media site for State Farm and we have one that's unique to the State of Florida and we call it we care Wednesday and so we will advertise the things that we are doing in the community we'll advertise the opportunities that are available and give people sign opportunities to sign up and and or donate and so they know it's coming on Wednesday and we get a lot of positive feedback on that too well thanks for being our good neighbors Cher Wyatt I just wanted to say thank you obviously we get

033to see you a lot in the Winter Haven area um but we always appreciate all that you do and those State Farm scholarships will be opening up for Winter Haven students this month so have a look keep your eye out for those but thank you guys for all that you do thank you thank you very much ladies great job thanks Madam chair next up is going to be an internal audit presentation conducted by Carol Matthews senior director of internal audit services and also for the board members and and and for chair um at approximately 10:17 we will pause for a moment of silence in honor of Marjorie stowman Douglas and the victims of that tragic event um that is a Statewide activity that's taking place today flags are at half mass as ordered by the

034governor late last evening um and so I just wanted to make sure I apprised you of that so if I have to interrupt Miss Matthews or anyone else during the presentation just be aware that I'm not being rude I'm just being respectful so thank you very much and you are not Miss Matthews I'm not but I'm going to introduce myself my name is Jennifer CHR son I'm a partner with car Rigs and Ingram and um we audit the internal funds and so I work with Carol but I'm going to come up here and present our audit for this past year and um is my PowerPoint do I need it there we go and what what I'm going to do is give a brief overview of the financial statements and so again this audit that we

035conducted was for the internal funds and so the internal funds are the money that students raise within the schools so it would be for your field trips for your fundraisers for your prom tickets and so it there's no money from the state of Florida this is all money raised by the students and spent on the students then I'm going to go a little bit into our audit process and some of the recommendations that we have for the schools and then some of the recommendations that we had districtwide looking at the financial statements this year you could see we had assets of about 11.7 million and um liability is$ 145,000 and that's normal for the liabilities to be a small number because at June 30th the schools are out there's not quite as much activity going

036on in internal funds so usually all the bills are paid by the time uh June 30 rolls around our additions this year was 10.7 almost 10.8 million and the money going back out or the deductions was 9.7 and if you compare that to 2021 you can see the numbers increase significantly and that's purely due to coid if we go back to 2020 we would see that um the revenue was about 11 million and then if you go back to the year before it was about 13 million so we did have quite a decrease during coid because a lot of those activities I mentioned before the field trips the fundraisers they either um came to a halt or they uh decrease significantly so now we're starting to see the amounts um come back up and we're

037seeing the activity get a little back to uh those pre-co times the other thing I wanted to point out is with internal funds um a little different than um if a company a for-profit company or even your personal finances when it comes to internal funds we want to raise that money and we want to spend it in the same year so when you look at the additions and the deductions you want them those numbers to be approximately the same thing and so um during coid and before you could see the money being spent when we came out of coid I've noticed this with all my school districts they're they're going back to raising the money a little slower on spending it and I think that's just being cautious because of um coming back out of

038that time where they weren't able to raise a lot of money so um so nothing alarming here but um as we go on we'll expect to kind of monitor that and make sure that the schools are spending the money that they raise because those students that raised it it should be spent on those same students our report was unmodified which means we had a clean audit opinion and um as far as audit adjustments the only adjustments that we had related to um accounts receivable adjusting the accounts receivable and also the allowance for doubtful accounts and um the adjustment for the allowance for doubtful accounts is likely going to be something we do every year only because um The District's um policy is a little different than than when our when we come in and do

039the audit we're pro we're looking at any accounts that are over a year old and these are amounts that are owed to the um to the Career Centers for tuition and anything over a year old we're asking the district to um to look at that and allow it um in because it the chances of it being collected after a year you know probably is is pretty low and so um and so we record that allowance based on management um estimate during the audit but for purposes of internal purposes for the district they need to keep those receivables on the books and they keep them on for a couple years and then they have to present them to the board before they can actually write them off and so it's just kind of a difference in

040timing as far as our footnotes no um real high-risk footnotes or anything significant I wanted to point out the Investments um we didn't have any type of concentration so anytime we have more than 5% of our investments in one type of investment we would disclose that but we didn't have any of that this year everything was pretty Diversified uh there are a couple things that I'm required um by my Professional Standards to communicate to those charged with governance which would be the the school school board and that would be things like if we had any disagreements with management which we did not have any that would be disagreements on accounting principles how to apply them when to apply them um any difficulties encountered in the audit and we did not have any of those and

041if we were aware of um any consultations that the district had with other accountants on accounting issues and we're not aware of any of those occurring we're also required to communicate if we were to come across any fraud or illegal acts during the audit that were m iial to the financial statements and we did not come across any of those types of um matters and um and I always like to kind of stop at this part and um mention this this audit is a is definitely a collaborative collaborative effort um there are many different people involved the finance and accounting department um with Heather and Luke and their team they pull lots and lots and lots of invoices for us lots of information when we come out here we also um work with internal audit

042Carol and her team team to um kind of identify where those risk areas are to make sure that we're um performing adequate tests on them and then we also work with the schools we we have to contact the schools at the beginning of the audit they send us some information and then after the audit we actually have an exit conference with each principal and financial secretary to go over our preliminary findings so that they can then we can have a discussion and see if there's anything additional that they want to send us to maybe clear some of those findings before we get to our final report so I always like to say thank you it it all works sometimes at the beginning I think how are we going to do this with you know 50

043different sites but it it works and um and that's because of everybody doing their part as far as the school testing we do um testing we do perform testing at 100% of um schools and any departments that have activity in their internal funds some departments do have internal funds so if there's activity we're testing them that year so um we perform compliance test on a lot of different areas you can see them on the slide and so this compliance testing is um looking at rules that they have the State of Florida the the State of Florida Department of Education has a red book they have a chapter on internal funds with rules um Schoolboard rules and internal fund um the internal fund manual that P County schools has and so we go through and we

044perform a lot of different testing um we pick a sample at each school and so because we're picking a sample we can't look at everything if we come across any um sample where there was a rule that wasn't followed so an example would be if a deposits made into the bank timely um and if it's not made in into the bank timely then that school gets a finding so for every item we see and if they had two deposits that weren't made timely they then that gets they get two findings and I just like to explain that so that when we go over the numbers you'll understand um how that works with the findings so here we have a chart that shows the average findings per schooler department and we had 146 schools and departments

045this year that had activity in the internal funds and you can see the line's pretty steady year toe it did dip down in 2021 I've seen that at every District I go to um and that's because of the activity decreasing because of coid so we didn't have um the fundraisers as much as we did preo and so of course some of those rules the forms you have to fill out the reports that have to be reviewed and signed that that all decreased also because the activity wasn't there in 2022 it went up to about 088 findings per school um or department and so that did increase and it increased a little higher than what it was at preco um and some of that's due to we may have one or two schools where they just

046had a higher number of findings um we have you know if we have one where there's a new employee that comes in and maybe didn't um didn't know one of the rules and so every sample we looked at maybe they they didn't pass that one rule that kind of skewed the numbers this year um I expect that to go back down where it's going to be closer to that 08 um next year here we just have a breakdown of the number of findings that each school had and so if you look we had just short of about 90% of our schools had two or less findings and so that's great that's consistent with um prior years and what I mentioned before if you go down you'll see five or more findings we had four schools

047and again that's consistent because you're going to have those schools especially we had um after covid we may have schools where a financial secretary is taking a leave of absence or maybe out and although there's um procedures for someone to take over those those um roles when somebody's out it's still um you know there there could be some things that maybe um don't always happen as timely when the financial secretary is not there so it's those special cases but every year when you have 150 you know you're going to have have a couple where there's something like that where they're going to have some extra findings here are some of the more common findings that we had and um and this is just for um for for your review and this is something that Carol

048Matthews tracks on her own and um and goes through them and these are the areas that we like to um talk about and make sure that the financial secretaries and the principls and the schools are being educated on some of these rules to make sure because um there is going to be high turnover at schools and in that Financial secretary role um again I I see that at every school district I work with and so um it's that training that we want to make sure we stay on top of and train you know the new people when those positions turn over this is I know a small graph but it's just something for yes clarification go if you go back one slide please um so when you look at this number unlike the slide you

049did um Number Eight Is there a way for me to get a c copy of this so when you say 21 deposit slips were not dated I'd like to know how many of those events were related to a particular school so much to like as you pointed out previously five of those could be related to one school yes and so that's where we need to focus our effort on training and support so is there a way for me to get that data after I can give you that data and I can tell you that that is the that is the situation um for that one in particular and um I think that's important for the community the board to hear as well is that 21 schools did not have individual instances of deposits this could

050be two schools it could be one school it could be it could be 21 but thank you for clarifying and that's yep that's exactly why I wanted to explain ahead um the sampling process and how every time we come across an exception it it's going to be on this number so you're correct it's not 21 schools um it's it's just a small handful and I'll I'll forward that information to the board thank you so here is just more of a visual um for you to look at and there you know different findings that we had and it shows how many um times it occurred um this year the the gold or yellow bar compared to the light blue and the dark blue which would be the two previous years and that's more just for you

051to be able to see if there's any kind of Trends and um for some there there are going to be Trends and for some it's not it's going to be um luck of the draw of what we sampled um when we go through we have all transactions for the year and we have um a a software that just randomly selects um samples for us to look at so sometimes it it could be luck of the draw um or you know or there could be something more like we mentioned the deposit slip's not dated and that is something that that we did uh look into and talk to the district about now um these are the districtwide recommendations that we had and so to um one that we did have that was a significant deficiency so

052just to kind of explain the three levels of internal control matters that we have the top level would be material weakness and that's where there um could be a a material misstatement in the financial statements and it not be detected because of a lack of controls we didn't have any of those for pul County Schools the next level down would be a significant deficiency and what that is is um there could be a misstatement in the financial statements because of a lack of controls but it's not going to be material it's something that's going to be small but we feel like this is important enough to bring to the attention of the district and that's where this finding Falls in and then the bottom one is going to be just recommendations more and and we'll

053get into those in a second so the one significant deficiency we had is that um this is with the technical colleges with the receivables we had um in 2021 when we came out to do the audit we had um six out of the 11 invoices that we pulled were um should have been voided they were students that registered for a class but ended up never attending and so they should have been voided but they weren't voided so they were showing as being outstanding so last year we had a finding for that and then this year um the six that had not been voided last year I went ahead and looked at those again this year because I wanted to see if they had been voided and three of them had and three of them had

054still um remained on the list of amounts that were owed to the district and so um because it it was something that I was following up on last year I needed to go ahead and and include that as a significant deficiency so um so I just want to whenever we do have a comment like this we do ask management to give a response and I felt like it was important enough um because there were a couple different factors to to put it in here so that you can read through the district's response and um and part of it is really there was some some key turnover of of Staff where um where one there was some miscommunication one thought that the other had voided the receipt and and then the invoice and then the other

055thought that that they had avoided it and so um so I think some miscommunication also just some other things going on in the in the technical school colleges that year um but they have started having monthly inperson meetings to train everyone to make sure because that was one key last year we talked about is it was if a student registers um and then they don't attend class how how is that being communicated to the accounting department at the um Technical College Coles and so that's something they're working on is making sure there's training so that they are communicating among departments so that they know if there's students that don't attend class if they drop out before school starts then they know to remove or avoid those those invoices also um something that they're doing is

056Contracting with a new collections agent um that's for collecting the the invoices that that our valid invoices they're going to be um working on that so that they can make sure they can collect um more timely and have a higher collection percentage the other as I mentioned we had recommendations Improvement points we call them and so these aren't internal control deficiencies they're just things we came across that we thought you know hey this is something that you might want to consider and so um the first one is the internal funds policy manual we had um talked about this last year and um unfortunately the the plan was to update the manual during this past school year but um again with some changes in uh management and some turnover in certain roles that wasn't accomplished but

057talking to them that is definitely something that they have on the agenda for this year this school year they're going to go through and update the manual and that's just um to make sure that it um adheres with some of the new rules that have passed and you know if the manual is you know quite a few number of years old we want to make sure that with the change in how procedures are being done with things maybe being more electric electronic than they were we want to make sure the manual is also updated so that when we do have these new Financial secretaries um they're going to get training but then um once they're on on the job doing the doing the work they can go back and refer to a manual if they

058have questions and then the um the other recommendation we had was to complete an IT risk assessment on a regular basis this was something that was done in the past when coid happened um they weren't able to um to do the it risk assessment um just due to there were certain things that have to be done on site where servers are and and they weren't able to do that during coid they weren't able to get access to those locations but now that um that all of that is open again we recommend that they go back to looking at it um before it was done every three years we just recommend that it's done periodically so if they can go back to that policy that'd be great and that's something that um the IT department had

059stated that in the 23 24 school year they are going to be um going through an IT risk assessment again I just wanted to mention no material weaknesses were noted so no no uh weaknesses in internal control where they could result in a um material misstatement to the financial statements any questions comments Miss Miller thank you I appreciate that you mentioned training of the financial secretaries I think we talked about that last time you were here and how important that was um and this might be a staff question or a superintendent question that's ongoing I didn't even ask it I know um because even as staff changes there has to be procedures in place to prevent these things do you have um I know can you believe he does that um the samplings that you

060show the repeat finding superintendent what are what is the training or plan I don't know if this comes from your Finance Department to to address some of those you know multi-year repeat findings what are we doing to address those uh so specifically Miss Jenkins has been meeting her and her team have been meeting with all of the financial staff from the school at the school level to address these deficiencies and to make sure that they're fully trained on the proper protocol and procedures as was noted there are very few findings out of 151 traditional public schools to have so few findings is I'm I'm not concerned I'm concerned that we make sure that we identify the individuals who who are having those those or making those mistakes so that we can adequately support them and

061train them to prevent them in the future but again there were no material findings so I think by and large the system works uh Miss Jenkins did as based off last year's findings ramp up trainings this year I will have a follow-up conversation um with Mr Cochran to find out exactly what's going on I while I respect YY I understand some of the challenges at those sites I do not understand how they a simple handful of students could not have been rectified in a timely manner over the last 18 months since the last finding um additionally I mean the other finding that was significant um was the the internal manual so as far from our P perspective part of our issue is a lot of the information resides on the Hub the problem is it

062is not there we lack a cohesiveness on the Hub if you go there some content is is actually captured under departments other content is captured under specific topics or documents and so we are going through the process now I see my staff in the back nodding their heads we're going through the process now of pulling all that information into one consistent location that's searchable so that everyone will have access to that so there will be an internal manual for for individuals moving forward I think that's great progress the only thing I did um the fact that you had that was a sampling and you went back and looked at the three you found three that had not changed at that technical school when you find that do you do additional sampling we we did we

063did last year because that was when we initially um when we initially came up with a couple of them then we did extend the sample and um and so the numbers I showed were for the um were for the original sample um I did not this year I had to pick new invoices to look at and I didn't have any um of those where we had issues with them with any of the new maybe that's where they're making the progress thank you yes Dr alen yeah great thanks for the presentation and your findings going back to your average findings per School in Department I did see we had an uptick in internal accounts um I think my question or inquiry here is do you fact in how how many more transactions there would be within

064a particular account um and and I think the the rationale on that question is the increase in our student population which would then I would assume at that point increase the amount of transactions per account so then does the sample ratio does it increase with the increase of transactions that's a good question um our sample sizes are all based on the type of school elementary middle you know Middle High high and so um but that is something that I will at a minimum put a note in um where we I can maybe display a different graph next year that takes some of the takes the population into um into consideration because um I think that's a good point that um to be able to show with show the school board that we could have an

065increase in findings but we could also have an increase in population which is likely going to be ancre increase in the number of transactions at that school um definitely I can that thank you there are no further questions from the board I have one follow-up question I'm looking to the back to Miss Jenkins if she could make her way up front I want to make sure she has an opportunity to address this one of the areas you pointed out um and I'll look specifically at slide number three was the the volume or the amount of money that's brought in versus the amount of money that's spent there there appears to be well over a million dollars that's left over in this year's account versus a much smaller um 100 thou roughly $440,000 that was left

066over in last year's account Mr Jenkins Heather when when schools have that that that much money left over in their inter internal account do we require them to identify where those funds are stated to be spent yes sir when when the funds are collected they have a specific purpose for which they're to be spent and some what we've run across um over over the last couple years is when field trips were scheduled and they were prohibited or prevented because of coid then those dollars remain those dollars can't typically be used for other students to take a field trip so we have a a process to go through and review how the dollars were intended to be or issue refunds yes sir okay thank you that clarifies it can they I'm sorry Heather if I can

067just one more clarification if if I paid for a field trip and I can no and I can't take it can can I apply that elsewhere can I apply it to a yearbook fee can I apply it to graduation can I apply it to prom it could we would have to um reobtain permission so if if the school had a fund and and they wanted to use it for yearbooks they would contact those individuals that had originally given the funds and restate that it was to be redirected to a yearbook and I'll I'll ask our presenter does that create additional findings as a result or is that going to make your life difficult if we were to do that no no it would if anything it' probably make the school's life a little more difficult

068to having to gather all that information it it maybe it would be easier to do the refund and then have them repay but um but no as long as um we understand that these things happen and as long as they have the documentation to show that they got approval to to use that money elsewhere from the person who originally gave them the money then then that's fine yeah I I'm accustomed to schools having a cap on their internal counts as to what they can roll and carry forward without an explanation each from year to year um there are times where two seniors two senior classes for example may be sharing the cost of a senior project or donation to a school I've seen that where we've had to make exceptions so I'll have further discussion

069with Miss Jenkins and the team to kind of make sure I'm understanding what's where that million dollars is going and who's holding it and what the intentions are behind it so thank you I see no further questions or comments from the board thank you very much good job Madam chair and members of the board um this next item uh was going to be pulled and it in in its official discussion it has been pulled because we're waiting on finan we're waiting on the final Financial um documents to go along with this but I wanted to go ahead and get this item before the school board because as you know growth continues to be a significant concern that we uh continue to look for creative and Innovative strategies to address hannes City and ridge um as

070you know we we actually capped enrollment at hannes City this year um shifted several hundred students over to Ridge Community High School um but we've seen commensurate growth on both campuses in order to address that in the absence of a new campus which as you know we'll be coming back to you in in very short time um this is the what I'll just refer to it as the Southeast High School um rather than get anyone concerned about where that School located may end up the board had committed to putting that item out to bid just to give you a brief update on as to the high school project that is out with the Architects the final programs were identified I think I shared this with you before um the architect needed to know that they

071need to know what the what the uh Fine Art spaces would look like or the requirements were they need to know what the athletic requirements were so we've provided all of that and so they're working on the package that we can then subsequently put out for RFP um and so there will be a bidding process for individuals to come back and say we can build that school at these dollar amounts at this dollar amount subsequent to that we know that we continue to see growth I mean Dr Allen and I were having a conversation and I know just yesterday he looked at our our third calculation and it seemingly we've grown another thousand kids since the start of the school year we're now close to 117,000 students attending schools in P County so that shows

072that growth is a reality for us and we need to address some issues um to make sure especially in those communities where we're seeing rapid growth and this really goes to Miss Lori Cunningham's Community as well but so at hanne City the recommendation that I'm going to bring back to you is that we lease the concreta bles um similar to what we have at chain of Lake similar to what we have at Citrus Ridge um these are zero kind of I don't want to say zero lot line but there's zero space between the Portables they're they're built adjacent to each other um we'll be looking to add approximately anywhere from 30 to 48 total Portables there'll be two additional restroom Portables two portables will be set aside one for Administration one for guidance and social

073workers so essentially you'll have almost a small campus into into and of itself students will have access to normal lab facilities so the science classroom for example science instruction may still happen in the portable um but labs and activities that require a traditional science space would then happen in a classroom environment um and so this would be a short-term 2-year solution for that Community um and then we would remove these Portables from that location and then resoning with the new high school would help alleviate some of the growth and congestion that we have in those communities subsequent to that or in tandem to that there will be a high a softball field recommendation that will also come before you so to date we've had so many Portables on their campus that hanne City's campus previously

074that the girls softball campus or softb field has actually been covered by Portables as a means to provide them equity and support we bust them to a local facility where they can play instead of doing that we're looking at the the property that we own immediately adjacent to the high school football field the reason and as for construction that project will be about a million million 1.6 million total 1.5 million and the reason we've selected that location to move the softball field is there's already a field house or let me rephrase that a concession stand and built-in restrooms there adjacent to that facility so it would provide us with ready access to those things we would not have to extend and build or or construct new facilities for those for that Stadium um so those

075are the two items that will come before you I just wanted to make sure that I explained them because they were on the agenda and then we had we had the intention to remove them was going hand we were just talking about adding the Portables to hanne city and I'll subsequently follow up with you if need be um but we were waiting on final cost and pricing as I shared um the setbacks have already been identified by our Engineers but as you know it's it's a thorough proc process that we follow but these would be leased just for the 2-year period of time in which we needed them um there would be um poured concrete or asphalt out in that area for students so we don't have to worry about mud and things like that

076and inclement weather and then some of those will have covered walkways and passages as well so plenty of space plenty of opportunity um this would as a result if the board approves this and we're able to increase their enrollment to and I'm hopeful that the board will approve the project um for the next two years then what we would do is begin communicating that to families um so that they know that they can reenroll at hanne city if they so choose but this would also impact their overall Staffing and I know Dr Allen Miss Cunningham and several of you I've talked to about Staffing recently um so this would be a consideration where under their normal enrollment they may they may and you're going to see some of this in a few minutes they may

077be subject to losing a Dean or losing assistant principal in this case we would not we would refrain we would keep that administrator there the guidance counselor there to support these students for the duration of their time on that campus until again rezoning in the new high school were to open and Avail itself to these students so just wanted to provide that I see Dr Allen or is that left over Miss Cunningham yes sir thank you um just to add to the discussion on the Han City High School softball field fields that is something um that the community has asked for for even prior to your coming on board um at least three years that I know of that we've had discussions um because they're currently playing at one of the fields I don't know

078what you've covered I apologize for being late it's been quite the morning um and so they've been practicing at uh the point sien Recreation Complex and the community would really appreciate obviously having that back on campus cuz currently that site is used for the Portables as you probably know so um so I'm in great support that we would try to get them back on their campus um to be able to have the kids practice right on their own field on their on their own school property so I appreciate whatever we can do to move that forward I'll look forward to seeing now do you are you going to be bringing forth plans or something yes ma'am you'll see that at the next Workshop staff had asked for some additional time sure okay um because they

079were getting some different numbers and they want to make sure that what they bring is the most accurate possible final number um worst case scenario right is is what you always want to see and then you want to see cost savings as a result so that will come before the board at the next meeting at the next one okay sir thank you very much seeing no further questions at this time I'll bring forward Miss Pasco who's here to discuss with you Google Drive transition to or migration to Office 365 thank you superintendent Pasco be aware I apologize I just want to make sure I preface this if we get to 10:17 I will pause you yes sir good morning Madam chair School Board superintendent Hyde and community members as Mr Hyde said I'm Anne Pasco

080and I serve as the assistant superintendent of Information Systems and Technology for p County so I'm here today to talk a little bit about how we are moving forward with our onet toone initiative and supporting students and staff with integrating digital technology into the classroom and our business P county is continuing to streamline the technology footprint of the district and schools to ensure appropriate alignment of learning and operational platforms for implementation support and cyber security requirements this process is generally described in the IT world as it governance as we continue to ensure that students are College and Career ready an increasing emphasis is placed on data and digital access in the classroom simultaneously we have an increased need for cyber security protections and risk management in the digital environment as they've increased globally you heard

081our auditor mentioned the it risk assessment this is the type of thing I'm referring to too many options create confusion for users they create inconsistency in our business and our classroom processes and they don't allow us to concentrate support efforts in a way that can ensure that digital learning is not interrupted we we also want to make sure at the same time however that we provide tools that allow for differentiated learning in the classroom for all students to be able to learn to the best of their ability so this it governance idea allows us to align our IST decisions with our learning Decisions by four important bullets we ensure that appropriate benefits are realized from the utilization of IST resources so fiscally appropriate decisions human resource appropriate decisions all of that we want to align

082we also want to minimize our risk just like we talked about with cyber security we want to optimize all of our resources to ensure we have Equitable access across the district while remaining fiscally responsible and of course we want to align our resources to the Strategic plan goals so we want to all be in one happy family all aligned moving forward together how do we do that so we have first chosen to support our users and our services within our framework to provide optim optimal digital learning environments in the classroom our first area of streamlining these resources will be to support only Microsoft productivity tools districtwide and sunset Google Drive productivity tools so what does that actually mean and why would we pick Microsoft currently we do have a Microsoft implementation and Licensing contract that

083was executed in 2019 so we've had Microsoft for many years you can see the descriptions here it is a robust environment that incorporates our email services including encryption it creates our user accounts and makes sure everything is Flowing appropriately we have Defender which is security Al of all across all of our platforms it ensures we have built-in intelligence if somebody makes an accidental click on something then we have software that's watching that and making sure we're protecting our end users we respond to threats anything that comes in as we detect that we might have it's typically called a Dos a threat anything that's attacking our Network um a young lady just called the other day to interview me for a classroom project and she said how do you keep us safe and I asked her

084if she understood castles and Moes and that's kind of what we're talking about we create a moat around our whole network so that we can protect ourselves then we have Office 365 so those are our productivity tools Microsoft uh Microsoft Word Excel PowerPoint I'm sure you're very familiar since you're looking at that right now on the slide how those things work one drive is individual cloud storage so for instance I created this in one drive and I shared it out with individuals who could give me feedback before we presented today SharePoint is collaborative cloud storage so that's where just like we talked about different manuals we might keep those internally in one spot and then put them out there on our hub replacement for people to find in a searchable area and student and staff

085accessibility tools so this is key one of the things that has happened with our onetoone imp implementation is we have been able to take accessibility tools that were no longer viable to all students and put them in the hands of students and Microsoft is very good at that they provide learning opportunities in the classroom where students can have closed caption they can have things for hearing impaired you wouldn't know but I'm deaf in my left ear so things like that that will help us be able to access our learning just like everyone else and that's a key component of the Microsoft platform another key component that we receive with Microsoft is significant support we have on demand and as needed support hours we have an online support portal problem resolution hours on-site visits and professional

086learning credits in fact as the IST Department although I'm here representing the department the entire Department's been involved in this the networking the digital learning our business and instructional technology operations and help desk we've all been going through with Microsoft looking at governance policies cre creating these documents and we've been doing that with their support now for Google Drive that was implemented prior to the availability of some of these Microsoft online tools so there was a reason at that time to have both and we utilized the free Google for Education Suite initially we utilized it for student email online productivity tools and cloud storage and internal collaborative sites all of these are available with Microsoft we do not have any dedicated Google supp support so we have decided to standardize on the Microsoft platform and

087how will we do that and how will we support students and staff because that's the most important thing you can have a great plan but if you're not supporting students and staff that's going to be a problem so the way we're going to do that is currently we're discussing this with you we have talked with principles to make sure they are aware as well and tomorrow I will personally will be providing emails out to all staff in the district to let them know the plan so that they will get that and be able to review it we'll explain explain the rationale as well as assist in how to find their Google drive documents that they've created over the past 3 years during February we essentially will do um Discovery openhouse sessions that we will be

088emailing out tomorrow where we will ask users if they have any concerns to come talk to us let us know what those are so we can make sure we have a personalized plan to ensure that everything is supported I've already had a few principes reach out and we will pre providing onetoone caseby casee support for that during March we will provide virtu ual face tof face and self-paced tutorials so we want to make sure staff have all types of options to be able to receive that support on how to utilize the Microsoft tools note that for many uh staff this is not new they have had this before but we want to make sure anyone who was more comfortable in Google now has every opportunity to be comfortable in Microsoft during out April and May

089we'll continue to provide that and then in may we actually will move the documents over for the staff so they won't lose anything we will move it over we're working with a company that we will have a process for that both their shared tools and their personal tools and with that what questions might you have for me Dr Al hi I'm good how are you great uh I think we've got 10 minutes left so might be able to get a question or two in here um besides Google Drive you know obviously there's a suite of tools do you see us moving to eliminate more of those um as far as within the Google Suite of applications in a sense I guess and then other ones like for example now we'll have teams I don't know

090if you're going to you know simulate that out uh so then at that point do we like pull back on Zoom as an option I'll give I'll give you the full picture so yes we will be sunsetting all of the Google um tools that we have typically Google sites was the only one you used and we'll be migrating that to SharePoint sites and we're working with staff to do that we did a full dive and most of the Google uh tools were not being utilized to their extent many people had moved over to Microsoft teams is part of Microsoft so that will be continuing we did pull back this year with student access and teams as we move to schooly one of the key pieces with governance and it is to make sure that you

091have many tools that fit together we call that interoperability and so we needed to pull back for schooly and now we're working with Microsoft to reined teams for next year to cre create robust offerings so yes we will be continuing to maximize everything that Microsoft has in fact I sat on a call last week have a meeting with Mr MCN next week about some of the new learning tools they're bringing about as well mhm and I would assume like uh yeah our LMS integrates very well but do you see any other barriers with other software applications that we are currently utilizing that that do not integrate well with our uh Microsoft move no by standardizing on one platform for Microsoft we're able to have the conversations we need to leverage those Partnerships and and tell

092different companies this is what we need to do what's best for our students so we do a lot of work in the back end um for instance that's why we're going to have teams because we asked them to integrate it into schoy so they're going to do that so students can do both so that's part of streamlining the support for the IT department so we have time to work with those vendors to make sure they're providing what we need for our students does that kind of get to the question you're asking about so teams currently is not um they don't have an API meaning our school G LMS does not have a current API with teams they're going to have to develop that yeah well they're already in progress yeah yes so and transparently with

093our size we have a lot of students so it's nice that we have that partnership with Microsoft because a lot of times they'll bring it to us ask us for feedback what do you think and we can be on the ground let talking with them about what we need for our students and our staff because our staff use these tools and as well as business I think that's another thing for us to talk about we just talked about business processes and really needing that transpar information so we've actually in the ID Department split and we have business Technology support and instructional Technology support to make sure we're doing the same tools for everyone and making sure we're meeting all of those needs right you're welcome thank you my question was similar but I had already

094pressed the button before he finished asking um so I've heard a lot of um complaints from Community Partners about the use of teams because they're not able to get on the calls as easily they're not able to share um how are we managing that because we do have a lot of committees that you know we we do a really good job I think trying to involve our community members so I want to make sure that that doesn't get lost in the transition yep so uh last year the decision was made to Sunset Zoom prior to me starting with P County so I can't really advise why that decision was made we have had some challenges with teams I actually have a meeting today at noon about that very topic and our goal is to have

095that accomplish this week one challenge we have had this year is there are so many tools that when we're making decisions we can't make the right decision because we don't know what tools we maybe out there for what purpose so that's this year of trying to build that so that we can ensure the decisions we're making do not cause negative impact for situations like that but that one should be resolved this week thank you I appreciate that you already knew about it yes ma'am thanks sh so every time I sit down at the dinner table I'm with teachers okay my whole family's teachers yes sir and so um one of my just concerns is and I know they're going to be asking me questions about this um how difficult is this transition going to be

096for our staff what I know you talked about you know providing off office hours and that kind of stuff is there going to be any additional requirements for our staff teachers or anything to understand this new technology I mean I'm I'm just curious to know what the transition is actually going to look like so they'll have many tools available to them if they can come to the online support hours in February and that will be widely disseminated we have one per day for the entire rest of the month in February up until spring break and then they'll have support they can do a self-pace tutorial they can meet with us oneon-one they can come to a face to face meeting so there will be a myriad of opportunities as far as how difficult it can

097be that's the piece with technology that can be a challenge because we're all individual I will be transparent I did not set up this technology today so Mr Spruce met me at 8:30 to make sure I knew how to use my technology to be here so there's always a nervousness anytime you change technology and you're using it to ensure that you provide learning and teachers get nervous with that and we understand that so that's why we're providing this entire semester to do that those Google Drives won't go away until the end of May when they leave to make sure that they have the full semester to prepare to then start in next year what I will tell you is if you're at the dinner table and they're nervous please tell them we don't judge they

098can come every day for support if they want we're not going to limit how much support that they need to do that yeah M Pasco uh please again historically we had office before we had Google correct yes sir dist we did so the vast majority of the tools that are being utilized are already well understood this is the conceptually this is not something completely new and different this is just a transition between two programs and platforms because one provides us a much more robust support mechanism and growth opportunity for our district there are some utilities that are new in Microsoft Office Suite um but if you think about it from that perspective Office 360 has been free for educators for probably the last 20 years and by and large was the platform of choice for

099many school districts for a long time I'm not sure when we made the choice to go to Google um but that's become a problem is every one of us is still operating on Microsoft Office Office Outlook as you are and then but yet we still have Google utilities and so it becomes a conflict for us going back and forth so I I I don't necessarily see this it's going to have a huge impact on our staff but I think that the plan that Miss Pasco and her team have put together that over the next few months and over the next year will be more than adequate to support the staff's transition because the biggest issue that you're going to deal with quite honestly is not adapting to a new platform or new utility the biggest

100issue is making sure they secure whatever content they had previously developed and transition that over that's the part that takes the most amount of time um having gone through this before um actually I was in a district that went the reverse Direction um but they were we were willing to pay for some Google support and utilities which and so that at that point it made sense for the school district to do it so and can I ask one more thing and I think I I want to make sure I heard this correctly so whenever you're actually Contracting with a company to bring those documents from their Google Suite into this new Microsoft yes sir okay so nothing should be lost that is what I'm trying to say nothing will be lost okay no I I

101I'd be happy to say should I'm not going to guarantee because again why don't we have certain handbooks that are readily available on our websites because documents exist all over the place in the hub and have to be unified so um I I I will not be the one that sits here and says 100% accuracy will or all documents will be transferred I I can't say that with all sincerity so thank you you're welcome at this time thank you Miss Pasco oh Dr Allen was next but Dr Allen prior to you doing that it's now 1017 so what I'd like to ask is for everybody in the room to please uh join us in a moment of silence um today is the anniversary date of Marjorie stowman Douglas and the tragic events that took place

102there the governor asked for all schools to place uh flags at half mask and to participate in a moment of silence if appropriate our middle schools and high schools will be doing that elementary schools will not um simply because we didn't have enough time to communicate that to parents so we are sending a message home for families this evening about why we had a pause today um and encouraging them to have discussions with their children at home tonight so please join me for a moment of silence if you would thank you Dr Allen I think I'll just hold my thought and and question and just address it to you uh via email thank you okay all right thank you thank you at this time I'd like to bring up miss m McKenzie and Stacy Davis

103M McKenzie is a senior director for K12 literacy and Stacy Davis is a senior coordinator for library media services I'm sure they'll do a better job of explaining even further but if the board will recall one of the requirements that we initiated as a school district was we ceased the ongoing procurement of Library materials meaning um our schools were accustomed to ordering books throughout the year we have no long we no longer allow that we have asked every school to submit all of their procurement requests within a specified window of time each year so elementary schools have a window middle schools have a window high schools have a window the reasoning behind that is to allow this team and several others who operate in the background the opportunity to review all of those materials prior

104to them being submitted to the board for recommendation for procurement the same rules apply as we I shared with you before nothing um that is not currently in our media centers um or would be deemed appropriate nothing that conflicts stat are included nothing that's in state that would be in conflict with State Statute um are on these lists but again what you have is a comprehensive list of all School requests for procurements if the board were to approve all these then the community has 30 days in which to file an appeal um remember the board's approval of a purchase list is not does not mean that we are purchasing the books tomorrow it simply means we are we are setting the stage for that procurement we wait the 30 days if there are no appeals

105at that time then those procurements will take place even subsequent to that if there's a book at a later date that someone finds objectionable then they have a right under statute and then with board policy and our school code to object to a book and have it reviewed further if need be so I'm just providing you a brief summary before I turned it over to these two amazing ladies who have done an incredible job um and really are the real reason why we got invited to Tallahassee to share our policies and procedures um about our book and and how we've managed this process throughout because really they're they're the workhorses behind the scenes that make the magic happen so thank you ladies for being here today and I'll turn it over to you thank you

106superintendent hi ladies and gentlemen of the board um I apologize for the large number of orders that you have in front of you um but again as the superintendent already mentioned these are all the orders that will be all the library and classroom book orders for this school year typically we would have different ordering Seasons um but the orders before you come from uh library media material funding that's State funding Esser funding so that's our Federal grant funding which we are fortunate to have this year so next year we will have spent that money next year we will not have those included Title One monies and any other local school funds used to purchase library or classroom materials we held off doing any ordering this year as other districts did um did as well while

107we waited for the state to release the Mand mandatory training which was in January 1 when that was released um so no new library books have been purchased this school year which means means that we also have students who are anxiously awaiting for the next book in a series or the latest book about their favorite team to be released um just uh I want you to understand also that we have trained certified staff um which we do have a portion of those who hold master's degrees in library information studies who created the orders following the process which I like to take just a minute to explain to you so 100% of our certified media Specialists attended the state mandated training that was released on January 1 we held this in our district on January 11th

108and they have completed the required um follow-up paperwork that the superintendent will have to um certify at a later date they attended previous trainings on collection analysis collection development action plans and creating orders using professional peerreview sources and utilizing our district rating system for purchases by September 1st each certified media specialist created a collection development action plan that included a collection analysis School demographics identified weeding or discontinuance candidates based on age and circulation and recommendations for areas of collection growth I might add that this is an annual task that all of our schools complete as required by Statute they work to create orders rep orders representative of each school's unique population teacher student request and support for academic standards all of the titles were selected using our district rating system for elementary middle and high

109with exceptions made for best titles because those have already been approved by the state they also um used professional periodical review sources such as circus book list School library journal and Publishers Weekly crowdsource reviews such as common sense Amazon Goodreads are not considered professional periodical review sources so our certified staff go to the professional periodical review sources first um after the imedia specialist spent I might add hours and hours of evening and weekend time working on these orders all of these orders were reviewed by their school stakeholder committee as required by Statute you might know that better as our school media committee so when we have book challenges or book reviews that's that same committee that serves in that capacity um so the stakeholder committee is made up of teachers parents community members administrators and

110students at the middle school and high school levels as required by Statute principles also reviewed all these purchases and signed off on the order verification form we do have 30 schools that are staff with media pair professionals or non-certified staff so for those schools the library media Services team created The Collection development action plan and we shared that back with the media staff member and the principal um so they would know what were the needs of their collection what do they need to focus on for weeding books that were outdated the orders were created Again by our library media Specialist Team at the district level taking into consideration the wish list that each school had the opportunity to submit and the collection analysis needs the orders were then sent back to the school for the

111same process of the stakeholder committee to review those and for the principal to sign off on um I would like to thank the media Specialists and Media Care Professionals across our district for their diligence and dedication um putting students first and ensuring that these orders represent their diverse student populations and the needs of our schools question I just want to say thank you for presenting today and and making that available information available to the public um and I appreciate the work you've done to make him look good in Tallahassee um that always helps I'm I'm interested in the media committees so all of our schools have media committees for um reviewing new orders and any concerns that a parent may have in that school yes that's correct and those are in place by August and

112that's not something new that's something the district has had for a number of years thank you there are no further questions or comments thank you ladies this time we have the instructional calendar for students teachers and Par Educators Mr Warren board members as he makes his way up because this will be a short very short presentation if you recall the board approved the tentative calendars for the next two school years um we will be bringing you an additional calendar in the near future the only things that were not completed on this calendar was the first week of school for teachers basically outlining what their week would look like upon that first week that's a non-student attendance week it typically is a combination of both personal plan or independent planning time for them to structure their

113classrooms and do some lesson planning as well as professional development and or School culture climate conversations with the overarching faculty Andor by Department so um there was a lot of conversation about how to best structure that time in collaboration with paa and our school-based administrators and so we were bringing that back to you all calendars were published this weekend um in a draft form it' be finalized after today there's no vote required the board has already approved and authorized these calendars we simply wanted to make sure that we had a conversation with you and with our community so that they knew what we were what these teachers would be doing for the first week Upon returning to school so Mr Warren Cor segue from there uh we were in discussions as recently as yesterday relative

114to the memorandum of understanding that we need in place for the six days that's been discussed with you regarding I called in the six days return to school calendar and one of the benefits I believe that occurred through the calendar process this year was kind of embedding a discussion of how return to work would look in repetitive years um and it was a good um collaborative discussion relative to the half days of PD and um teacher work days that occurred uh furthermore yesterday at the table uh with the Union um we provided opportunity for schools to have a sight B site based latitude um whether they provide that PD in the morning or the afternoon uh to assist with those schools uh in their needs individually uh because we also were collaborating with our district

115folks for how to provide that PD across a district platform as well so um theou is in place the calendars are on the website and should you have any questions we're here to assist uh we had community members uh represented uh folks from poke State College we had uh your individual Representatives uh some of you board members um had folks uh uh joining us as well as yourselves personally so we appreciate that feedback we met uh twice I would say both times we had I would say at least 35 folks in attendance and uh it was a great collaboration any questions M Cunningham uh thank you just wanted to commend the calendar review committee I mean they're just a great bunch of folks and I know I've had a young lady on there for Holy

116Cow close to 18 years um and she cons continues to serve our community well miss June Olman um in addition to that I'm I'm noticing um is it true that are we as we go forward both in August of 23 and August of 24 there are those six days that's corre okay and I it makes more sense obviously on the in August of 24 cuz students start on a Monday but we talked about that last time I actually asked you know having them come on a Friday but you had indicated it was a transportation thing so with us starting on a Monday is Rob going to be upset with us so is it the second year that it fell on the Monday so Mr Davis wanted this year this year to problem solve but he

117he's insistent um that he would like that extra day right right um that's fine he did not win out in the second calendar committee did not okay okay all right just trying to make sure it is it will continue being the six days and are you looking forward to this continuing after that that was that was the mindset I believe of the committee moving forward is that this seemed to be a a return to work schedule that seemed to make sense it met the needs of both parties and uh we look forward to presenting that for the 20526 I believe calendar we're now two years out we have 23 24 and 2425 that that are in the bank because taking it to six days we were able to pull a full release professional development day

118out of September and reassigned it I believe it was September yes we reassigned it to the start of the school year so there's less disruptions once the school year begins and I think you mentioned that the LA at the last meeting we have a more consistent calendar moving forward okay well that's great okay sir thank you very much and thank you to all the folks that serve so diligently um on that committee year after year we really appreciate your time and talent so thank you and to staff Mr Niti yes uh thank you for all your hard work but as I go around and talk to my different teacher friends and everything I just keep hearing the same thing why do we go back on Friday I think I'm a little bit better educated now

119in it but uh I do hear that's the biggest thing I hear from my the teachers custodians lunch everybody I said please when you get on the board get them to open up on a Monday so anyway thank you again for all your hard work though sir thank you that's it Mr Warren thank you very much at this time Madam chair we've been going for about an hour and a half I believe it's time for a restroom break if we could if we could take a 10-minute short recess um it is 10:31 we will come back we'll do more than a 10-minute recess we'll come back at 10:45 thank you I'll get you so we're still building in the hash Community right we haven't decided good morning good morning again and we are officially back

120and I'll hand it back over to superintendent Hy madam chair members of the board members of community and staff thank you again uh for allowing us that short break uh at this time I'd like to bring up um pardon me I had to wrong highlighted um Candy I have Miss Candy Amato senior director from our office of charter schools here to discuss preliminarily some conversation about language for literacy Academy and their renewal all yours Miss is the Sixth and final Charter renewal for this school year so we have language and literacy Academy of Learning up for their very first contract renewal um this statute this slide is very familiar it was the same slide that I provided during the December work session it talks about what we can do and how we can do for

121Renewal and the requirements associated with the with the renewal process and I added this piece for cause for non-renewal or termination of Charter um it is referenced as when we do not if a non-renewal is recommended or suggested these are the terms that have to be met in order to recommend that this is the review process the charter review team looks for the following things is the academic proog is the program successful is it a viable organization and is the School faithful to the term of its Charter and when the review team is doing the process those are the three main focuses that we we look into when we're reviewing the documentation provided by the school sorry I am freezing so so um we have here language and literacy Academy for learning the background of

122the school is they opened in 2018 they are an ESC Center School located in Winter Haven The District staff the charter review team conducted a site visit back in October and the school is requesting a 15-year contract to begin J July 1st and run through June 30th of 2038 so this is a breakdown of the student performance now please know because this is their first five-year renewable they are limited in the data that they have available language and literacy receives a school Improvement rating because they are an ESC Center School so as you can see their very first year they received a grade or School Improvement rating they were listed as un satisfactory obviously 1920 there was no grades issued 2021 they opted for no grade again and the 2122 school year they did increase

123to maintaining this is their current demographics they are approved to serve students and they do serve students from p prek through 12 so this is how the charter review team voted and I did provide you with the breakdown of the tally of the votes because as you can see the charter review team was kind of all over the map with some concerns and it is truly reflected in in their vote so these are some of the findings and I don't want to read all of them to you um word for word but some of them are extremely important and very valuable to the conversation so um some great things that we did see as they do provide the Serv services and accommodations are provided directly into the classroom and they provide transportation which is huge

124for the population of students that they serve they provide transportation from Lakeland to BTO Winter Haven Han City Davenport Arendale Lake Wales um if you know where they're located they are caddy corner from Dennison middle school so they kind of are in the heart of Winter Haven so just knowing that they're reaching all of those other outskirt populations is speaks volumes to the services that they do they that they do provide to their students um the physical and culture environment of the school was friendly safe and it was inviting they do submit their monthly financials and their audits as outlined in their current contract and they were extremely excited um that they were renovated the auditorium they updated the front office they installed a beautiful Ada playground equipment I and they've added three modular classrooms

125so they can accommodate the additional students that they serve some other concerns areas of concerns of findings that we did find um during the 2122 school year there were some test um security concerns to the point where the assessment accountability and evaluation Department did require the school create a thorough assessment plan to ensure that security breaches would not occur again in the future uh just please note that the person who was handling testing at the time is no longer with the school and we have not had those concerns since then um they do only have at the time at the visit they only had one ESC facilitator um the charter review team felt for a school that serves 290 ESC students one ESC facilitator was not significant to provide adequate support so it was a

126recommendation to add a second um ESC uh facilitator when I reviewed language and literacy January um board minutes it did appear that they have added a second Lea which is huge that's very important it was also recommended that their student to teacher ratio should be lower it is an ESC Center school so we felt that um based on having a lower significant population in the classroom um would be the students would have better service in regards to the best standards this one was a huge um concern is although it is an ESC Center School they do have students taking regular Algebra 1 1 a one 1B or Algebra 1 in general and during the walkthrough in October it appeared that this students were only on chapter one based on our learning Maps the students should

127have been on chapter three uh there were three students who although are parentally placed there their only service of need is speech so the question to the review team was is that the best placement for the students we're going to circle back to this top one in regards to a high need for a certified school counselor that has since been rectified but there are additional conversations that need to be added at the time at the visit though there was not a certified counselor um which is a concern in regards to providing accuracy for schedule they do serve high school students so making sure they're satisfying those graduation requirements the master schedule has significant layering of courses and grade levels it is the charter review team's recommendation to eliminate the stacking of different content areas courses

128and stacking of grade levels meaning Elementary and secondary in the same class period so what I mean by that is so for example we have a a staff member here who during fifth period teaches two students access geometry three students grade four math two students grade five math four students mjus history three students MJ Civics two students MJ world history and one student algebra 1A and all of those are access courses that is all in one class period um and there that's just one example of what we discovered in their master schedule that was of a huge concern for the charter review team um another major concern is in a recent grad check they do have six graduate six seniors scheduled this year um as we started un uncovering their academic record we noticed um

129huge discrepancies in regards to the students eligibility to graduate we did call on a me a meeting the school responded quickly they did come within a 24-hour notice we did have an extensive 2hour plus meeting to work through all of these concerns and again I Circle back to having a certified guidance counselor on staff could have maybe helped preempt some of those concerns after the conclusion of that meeting the next day the principal did notify me they hired a guidance counselor so I think they understood the magnitude of that position um teacher certification is an ongoing concern at the school with not all certified in ese content area reading endorsement e and esol endorsement there's a low percentage of Highly qualified teachers that are fully certified according to FLD dooe requirements again based on their

130January board minutes 13 teachers on their staff are considered long-term subs and with that if you have 13 vacancies there are currently no employment opportunities posted on their website when you click on employment opportunities when you click on it it does take you to another link when you click on the link for employment it tells you that the link is no longer active in Jan or excuse me in October when we had our face-to-face site meeting the school had pled to purchase the current facility that they were in as of mid January with a a phone conversation with the CPA and the ex ex cutive director principal they notified us that they intended to no longer try to purchase the building at that time but they were going to extend the current lease they did

131provide a copy of the lease the lease does have an expiration date of October 31st of 2023 upon further research um based on Grace Lutheran's Church's website they have indicated that the church has since bought the building from the owner but language and literacy does have the option to stay through the the 23 24 school year I have no other updates in regards to their future plans Andor what that's going to look like for the students and the staff Financial concerns in April of 2020 that was right when the world shut down um P County public schools in partnership with the finance department did have to send a formal notification to language and literacy indicating that they had a negative fund balance to the tune of negative $95,000 500 and 55 um in May of

1322020 the school notified the district that this they had received their very first PPP loan therefore they were no longer in the negative so P County Public Schools took no further action as we aren't obligated to at that point um the school has an ending unassigned fund balance of 2.76% both of their PPP loans have been forgiven um language and literacy does receive supplemental revenue from Charter School capital without access to these funds it is the district's opinion that the school's expenditures well they the school's expenditures do exceed their current Revenue without access to those funds it is potential that their balance would continue to remain negative however um for the remainder of the 2223 school year P County Public Schools is scheduled to mail their January March April and May ffps payment directly to

133Charter School Capital if warranted so from our understanding the way it was explained um Charter School Capital sends those assignments ahead of time there therefore if language and literacy does need the extra Revenue they reach out directly to Charter School Capital they get the money and then it's in turn paid back as needed if language and literacy does not need to access any funds from Charter School Capital if we do CH by chance mail the FF payment directly to Charter School Capital Charter School Capital does turn around and and send it right back to language and literacy um language and literacy did provide notification based on from their CPA that they do plan to move away from relying on Charter School Capital however they're not looking to forecast that until the 24 25 school year

134their current monthly Revenue has decreased by approximately $75,000 based on their updated October 2022 FTE reporting if the expenditures remain consistent with prior month the fund balance will be negative uh language and literacy provided a 15-year Revenue projected budget as required because they asked for a 15-year contract which included Capital outlay Medicaid reimbursement and donations all of these items are subject to change and are not guaranteed revenue for example Medicaid reimbursement typically runs two quarters behind um and capital outlay funds are allocated to eligible charter schools by section 1013 establishes eligible criteria and allocations um procedures and distribution of capital outlay f funds to the charter schools and that's get ver that gets verified every year um and those are these are the actual Capital outlay requirements that's not something we typically discussed so I

135did want to make sure I provided what those requirements are for you so during their in their application this is for their 15E the length of their contract that they're requesting these would be the enrollment projections that they would like to add um to serving students of ESC on needs now my La my next slide is just to let you know is how the charter review team voted please no we had extensive conversation we had several meetings um Mr Bridges did provide legal counsel in regards to what does it mean to non-renew uh he did provide we did have extensive conversation on what it would look like if we offered them a one-ear uh there was extensive conversation on what is the minimum we are required to give them but at the end of the

136day seven voted to approve however there was a caveat that they wanted to ensure that there were some conditions and Provisions and a renewal process that would come through contract negotiations that was the only way the seven felt comfortable providing any type of a renewal um with the conditions being attached uh one member did vote to deny and then the seven that voted to approve with conditions were split between the two and the three years next steps will be um this will come back to you at the February 28th board meeting for the superintendent's recommendation and a vote and then if approved uh the general Council myself and the school would move into contract negotiations if you voted to non-renew General councel and myself would then be drafting a letter to meet statute language to

137notify the school of the of the board's vote to non-renew any questions all right thank you very much um couple of things uh first of all when you indicated the information regarding the curriculum and having all those different classes in one class um that needs to be very strictly monitored because I don't know what type of learning is happening in that environment being married to a teacher if he had to teach seven classes within one class that would be a wee bit um difficult to say the least um so I'm really uncomfortable with the curriculum piece that I've heard this morning and I'm going on record saying that because I think they need to do something about it secondly you indicated that there were 13 vacancies substitute teachers that's a vacancy to me but okay

138it's a substitute teacher but with no plans to fill that so couple questions number one is 13 teachers or substitute teachers out of how many total for the school so they have when I pull their master schedule they have 30 staff members but that includes all of their therapists because students when they have therapy ma' the students get scheduled into therapy so those the therapists do appear on the master schedule I would have to pull how many of instructional St that's what I'm asking but I'm going to assume that that substitute teaching that substitute teachers are more than half of the current academic staff that are teaching core academic classes I might be wrong but that would be a guess and that is yes if there's 30 if there's 30 people on their master schedule

139including therapists and 13 are considered long-term Subs right we we we have an issue there now I'm not not trying to say anything negative against a long-term sub we've all had them and some are really excellent because they've been in that job for a number of years so I'm not saying anything it's just it's a little bit alarming that there wouldn't at least be the opportunity to hire a permanent teacher um for those children and I I don't I don't know why but that's a question I would like you to ask what is their plans to move forward are they waiting for those long-term Subs to get their certificate I mean there's a myriad of questions okay um because those children deserve better um and um that completes my questions for this morning I'm just

140sad to hear about that and um I'm not very favorable personally at this point in time to renew a contract um based on what I'm hearing and of course the the charter Review Committee comments as well so I'll be sure to go through that when are we voting on this how it'll come back to the board February 28th for the board vote in two weeks okay thank you very much that Miss White thank you Mr Hyde and thank you miss m we um I Echo some of Miss Cunningham's concerns can you talk a little bit about the fund balance because I know if we as a school district are under a 3% fund balance we're sent into State takeover um or on that path at least so what statuto what are the requirements if their

141fund balance dips below 3% I'm going to refer to the finance expert Miss Jenkins who sat in on numerous meetings with us so she's very familiar next there are um recommendations for Charter Schools but they're not held to the same 3% compliance that we are however it is recommended that they maintain a 3% fund balance um looking forward um that recommendation is because some some charter schools are owned and operated by corporations whereas they have a multitude that they can fund does that answer your question yes yeah I think my biggest concern I mean aside the man seven or eight preps in one class period just sounds I I'm pretty sure I saw Stephanie's entire head rle in the back um that I I just can't even imagine teaching that many classes at once um

142but my biggest concern I think is the finances and that it's just not sustainable moving forward um especially if going if adding in the PPP with the Forgiveness only brought them up to not even 3% um and they're not showing a positive Revenue in the in the future a positive trend there um that I do have a lot of concerns but I look forward to seeing what my other board members have to have to say Mr Niti I concur what my colleague said U because I know it's difficult to teach one or two preps but they have more than one or two preps that would be unbelievable did I hear you say that there were six openings but they're not advertised seven or seven so they have 13 long-term Subs right and when I looked

143on their employment opportunities on their website there are those positions are not posted as if they are actively searching for a full-time teacher because I would think that if they're not posted on their website that they're really not very actively looking for people because there's so many teachers out there that I think would love to have that opportunity but I do appreciate your hard work and your colleagues hard work but that's little big question mark in my mind but thank you Dr Allen yeah definitely uh some good discussion here and appreciate the analysis and reflecting on that um the situation that you were observing in the classroom and then you note the low percentage of fully certified teachers um what was the credential uh in that particular situation I know we we addressed the layered

144um academic you know rigor in a sense I guess or um different class um grade levels you know what was what was the analysis of the certification level in in a sense so in regards to they the certification of the teachers that they currently have in that particular situation yeah where this I don't recall the teachers I I excluded names so I don't I'd have to go back and look on my original notes um in regards to the teacher that was not following the curriculum appap so to speak in chapter one chapter 3 is that what you're asking for specifically yeah I mean I think you know when you're saying there's a low percentage of fully certified teachers and then you unpacked that one situational analysis um I was curious if that particular instructor was

145actually even certified is what I was asking okay I would have to go back and check the teachers's U name because I didn't include that in my in my note or in my my write up um but I do know they do have five teachers currently on their staff that are listed temporary certificate out of field I see and then they have the 13 that are long-term Subs okay um and then you know you mentioned that they did turn around and quickly hire a guidance counselor uh did we get an update uh on the budget in in regards to that expenditure thereafter so the the the conversation where we met with the the school in regards to the graduates that just happened last week so no we have not received an updated budget from the

146CPA we did have multiple conversations when we were diving into their budget that they provided both their 15-year and their current current budget and we did have a phone conference with the CPA and did provide and he we did ask for additional information however even the additional information we asked for wasn't necessarily what we needed so it was very hard to dive in to determine that but we do not have a new expenditure with the new guidance counselor sure okay um maybe one more oh yeah I was thinking on the building situation right so um you're looking at you know in a sense a guaranteed oneyear extension on their lease but with new ownership so if we're looking at say a three or fouryear extension uh do is there any type of plan or anything

147like that if that was not available to them after this next year so the the we did find out after the the charter review team voted I did find out that the building had been purchased and language and literacy was only being being provided in another year so that was information that was not available during the charter review team uh vote and conversation that came in after the fact um we do have schools that relocate we had another situation with another CH school that did relocate in the middle of the summer so it does happen um but considering the population of students that they serve the ada8 compliance you know the beautiful playground that they just built um those are factors that would need to be concerned they wouldn't be necessarily be able to go

148into just any location it would have to be something that could meet their needs so that is a question and a concern mhm yeah I was just wondering if there would be a a potential to to hear from the new owners if they would do a multi-year contract on the property rather than a year-to-year lease but I I can't speak for the church um but I do know at one time the church did occupy that building that they're in and it it did serve as their prek program so I'm not sure if the church is looking to head back in that same direction I hav as well this information did not become a available to us through the provider we became aware of the housing issue through second and third party so there is a

149lack of transparency here that we're also dealing with and and seeking to address so you know and to your point there are different certification requirements for elementary middle and high in the case of six classrooms being taught the my concern Rises not only and you can absolutely teach a three four class or four five class or a one two class that those combination classes happen all the time especially in in the world of special education what becomes alarming is when you start infusing middle school and other courses because the certifications do become far more explicit for those content areas and even on a temporary certificate I would find it hard to believe that they are well knowledged and well versed in that content area and are able to differentiate at a level commensurate with that

150type of strategy in the classroom I I it's not possible yeah and that was that really at the core of my question yeah Y and I think to miss Amato's point we just need to go back and determine how many of those positions are instructional positions I think we'll be surpris I don't think we'll be surprised finding a large number of them are they're also cheaper I mean when you're looking at long-term Subs you don't have to have some of the same commitments that you do with traditional long-term employees such as benefits um and so depending on the number of days they work you can actually exclude them from from actually um qualifying for benefits so but it's it's just a members game so I'm I'm concerned about the finances concerned about the instruction concerned

151about their Staffing um ultimately concerned about what their location would be and I think Miss Amato answered it the best she could even if the church were to tell us today the current owner were to tell us today that yes they don't see an issue in the next 2 three years that could change overnight if all of a sudden they choose to open up their own facility and do something different for students um and as you know as Florida looks to expand voucher opportunities that will become an interest of many of our parochial and private entities so it would not surprise me if they were to change their mind at a later date I'm not saying they would um but these are things that we have to take into consideration um and so I think

152Miss Amato and her team did really had did a fabulous job evaluating the application prior to making a recommendation or bringing recommendation to me Miss Miller thank you I have a few questions and um UNT I haven't been out to visit yet I have been invited and I plan to go um I have several questions okay um I figured you would only because this model there are there are other model schools similar to this ESC when you call it a center school I don't want our Center School staff to watch this people need to understand that our Center Schools only teach access so we don't have Florida standards classes in our Center Schools because of the type of um students we have the most significantly challenged students in Center Schools and I'm not sure if

153that's the makeup of this school to understand that but I but I'm I'm sure I'll plan to visit my question many of them um are on the finance end of it and so Charter School Capital when you say that that's not a parent Charter School company that is a funding source correct in the real estate world we call it hard money lending so these people aren't it's not money they're holding they're charging to hold that money is what I understand them to be yes they do pay interest on the money that high interest correct and so um I don't want with people with good intention trying to do good for students this is the finance end is what will end up closing a school so I have I have concerns about finances if we took

154let's say the long-term Subs are wor working but we need to find teachers for Best Practices if we put in teacher salaries into that budget what would ha how does that change the figures because then you're talking much more dollars exiting and it looks like we're struggling already I without looking at numbers I would have to probably agree with you Mrs Miller that if we replaced the long-term Subs with full-time certified teachers that would have a huge negative impact on the budget expenditures exceeding Revenue MH yes um when when is this coming to us do I have time for more questions at a later date so it does need to come to the board for a vote okay on February 28th due to statuto language um I want to make sure I provide you all

155with the correct information and have an opportunity to explain that if you all choose to non-renew we have to provide the school 90 days of notice prior to the end of the school year which will be March 1st you said what the there's some information that was found out outside of the Review Committee but you also said the votes to renew had a caveat of things can I can we have cop have we sent us copies of that I have not provided you the copies of that because it's not a com it's not a compiled list of all the Departments it is but we do have some from Finance we have some from ESC and we have some from certification I would like to see what your committee you know who said we're going to

156renew this but we'd like to see happen I would like to see that list thank you Mr sharpless I was wondering if uh Wes could uh speak to this I know during the presentation um it was mentioned that you had a conversation with the charter Review Committee um correct if I'm wrong I think I heard this uh what it means for our district if we don't renew we or versus a one year a two year or a three year um legally what what does that mean for us I was just wondering if you could recap briefly what you mentioned to the committee and especially in the financial world uh what we've discovered through the years with with regard to Charter Schools is that uh you politically they are uh they have received some favor um

157in in Tallahassee and nationally Through The Years uh but and and so you can you can go up if you if you wish to Nomine or terminate a charter school um that is a a tough road too except when the rationale for it is financial that is one area where the um the the State Board of Education and previously the cabinet have have listened carefully to what districts have said so so we know that that it is um it is it is difficult when you wish to to non-renew or or to terminate a charter school so we we went through that stuff pretty thoroughly and we will also go that through that pretty thoroughly when we make this presentation to the school board um and I'm glad you asked the question I wanted to point

158out that um you know Charter School capital is a lender they're a commercial lender and they they lend Charter Schools um we we're all watching right now as a society as as people find themselves in financial difficulty because they're living on credit credit card companies charge usurious interest rates and it's not a question of paying back principal it's question of whether you can pay the whether you can maintain the payment on the interest and I think that is a a a reality that uh that is that is present here and if if a school is relying on borrowed Capital to maintain a fund balance I have an idea that ultimately the accountants and the Auditors are going to pull the plug on that so if if in fact this this fund balance is is based

159on on revenues that are that are either borrowed or non-recurring those those things that we're going to have to pay attention to and and in time as things unfold that that may be uh it may be a problem for the school now that said I think the one important thing to consider is the statute does talk about long-term Charters and it tells you that in certain circumstances Charters are are entitled to or should be given long-term contracts 15 years um this school does not fit under that statute so this is one where we we have the option to look at Short shorter terms uh I will I will will tell you that if you if you try to renew a charter school for one year that that put you in the in the position of

160having to start looking at non-renewal immediately upon renewal it really does not give much time to uh to try to try to solve problems and improve so I think that's why the why the charter Review Committee has looked at at two and threeyear contracts there of whether the school would would agree to that I have no idea they've asked for 15year contract my impression was that I don't know that there was anybody on the charter school Review Committee who was interested in in investing in in that length of time based on the current difficulties um Candy do you know what the current enrollment of the school is they're studing at about 290 students 290 and if you if you look they've they've included um projected enrollments they based based their budget on projected enrollments of

161350 uh for the next three years and going up to to 500 over the next 15 um and and so that's that's a question as well and the budget that they provided did have the FS co-mingled rather than separated and we did ask the CPA to update update the budget so that the the funds were not co-mingled um just to have a better indication of the budget matches so there's there there there are a lot of issues here that have been scrutinized closely and and once again you there's it it is a high bar if you want to terminate or non renewal a charter school but this is one where there are enough questions enough enough uh red flags I guess if you will that have run up the flag pole that that suggest it's

162worth closely monitoring and and and and making hard decisions based on on facts and trying to get emotion out of the out of the conversation as much as possible but we yeah we'll we'll have a more in-depth presentation about about the the the factors that that that go into it and if you have uh several of the board members have been through uh non-renewals and terminations before and have uh seen the the gyration and the difficulties that are associated with that the costs um both in terms of money and in terms of political Capital so we'll have those conversations very carefully but if you if you wish to give me a call and and and go through in individual questions and and circumstances I'd certainly be open to that and I got one additional question

163for superintendent Hyde will this be brought back uh at the work session on the 28th or straight to the board meeting going to board meeting all right thank you okay my mic is on I believe thank you I just a couple questions um the I didn't Iz they were only at 290 right now do we expect that they'll have more than a 20% increase by next school year because it looks like they're projecting 350 for the 23 24 school year based on the fact that they do provide transportation I see that you know where they they're eliminating the transportation as a barrier for the population of students that they serve um I it is feasible to say they could potentially reach the 350 okay is that their current enrollment cap is 350 no their current

164enrollment cap is 290 okay so it would would come back to us again for an increased enrollment Gap no and if the contract if the application is approved and it goes through contract negotiations and they come back at 350 that would be their that would be their cap okay thank you um the other thing I just wanted to mention is that the I think it was Dr Allen that asked about the um organization that bought the building if they'd be interested in leasing back they came out with a pretty excited statement this week about being able to expand um their classrooms at their school to be able to have increased security making new office suite um they're already working on designs I believe of how they're going to be using that building as soon as

165they gain access back to it um so it it sounds at least from the murmurings in the area that that will be unlikely because they've got some big plans over there so that's all I had speak about the charter school Capital funding and and the question of whether they were relying on on borrowed money uh to reach their their in fund balance and to talk about the enrollment as well M Miller I have a question that the chair brought up with building so we've had another charter school with similar issues finding a building and in the end the students once it gets out that there's not a building in place or different than other we've had one charter school have a building fund raise capital and and had the plan to the public that they're

166going to go here they're going to build their building and they've done that um another Charter I've sat here and heard um their intent for a building it never happened and slowly kids started leaving that school until they were less than probably 15 even enrolled so what is what are the rules with Charter maintaining or securing the building within that contract period unfortunately there isn't a requirement they have to notify us 30 days prior to school starting where they're going to locate and provide us a copy of the new lease can you remind you don't have to name the school can you remind the school me what happened to that school that could not are they even are they even around anymore this yes that so the school that you're referencing did land a location

167they did have to delay their start of school they started after Labor Day um but they are fully functioning and okay good they have students but there's no what's that Stu what's their student their student calculation population is around 17 18 students students yes okay that's a concern for for building I can ask later thank you Mr M you're in the clear there are no further questions or comments at this time all right I'm running thank you very much for doing your D thank you board members um at this time we are running slightly ahead of schedule um I would still recommend that we go ahead and take our scheduled break uh we will have lunch from 12:00 to 1: and then we will go to close session if I recall correctly we'll return to

168open we will then immediately subsequent or subsequently go into close session for attorney client session and then we'll come back at approximately 1:30 to finalize the two last excuse me the three last uh topics before us today in today's Workshop so with that being stated we can conclude we can go to we can thank you hit the gab well welcome back to our Valentine's work session for February 14th 2023 and we will now recess this meeting to go into our attorney client privilege session and I believe Wes you have to give a little spel yes ma'am is that correct thank you madam chair we announced earlier uh at the last meeting that the the need for an attorney client session pursuing to Florida statute 28 6011 which says that the school board can meet privately

169with its councel to discuss matters that are currently in litigation for the purposes of settlement negotiation and litigation strategy there are two matters that I wish to bring to your attention I think that this should be fairly fairly quick um as we've as we've gone over before these meetings are closed to the public but we do have a court reporter we should be having a court reporter she's in the other room they're moving her okay then we need to I I'll wait to finish that till she gets here yeah we have to announce it okay do they have a hood yes they have a hood I've been hting it but I found it