001thank you family [Music] okay [Music] oh sorry [Music] good morning [Music] 30 together 30 seconds [Music] good morning ladies and gentlemen i would like to call the july 20th 2021 special school board meeting to order the first item today is to accept the agenda superintendent hyde are there any revisions to the agenda as printed no ma'am not at this time okay the chair will entertain a motion to accept the agenda for the july 20th 2021 with the um as printed no revisions do i have a motion and a second so okay we have a motion and a second is there any discussion seeing none i'd like to call for a vote all those in favor please signify by saying i i all those opposed like sign the motion carries unanimously now i would like to
002ask board member william allen to please give our invocation today i would ask you to please stand and remain standing for our pledge of allegiance dr alan all right let's pray father we are so thankful for a new day new beginnings and we know that your mercies are new we have new people in our seats this morning and new ideas and we are so excited about the work that's ahead in these next few minutes give us discernment as we make decisions that will impact every individual student in their seats around our county we're so thankful for life today amen amen thank you dr alan at this time i would like to ask board member lynn wilson to lead us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states thank
003you mr wilson and everyone please be seated at this time i would like to address any public comments on the agenda item for today um is there anyone in the audience who wishes to come forward to speak on any items that are on the agenda today namely the superintendent's tentative budget okay we have um two individuals that have signed up to speak so as i call your name if you would come forward we would appreciate that and you will have three minutes to address the board let me start with stephanie yoakam good morning good morning uh stephanie yoakam president of the polk education association uh 730 east davidson street um i'm going to keep it brief today you guys are going to be voting to advertise the tentative budget for the superintendent uh that he's
004proposing to you guys today uh and we had started bargaining yesterday for the 21 22 school year if you haven't had a chance to look at that it is on our youtube page um you know mr hyde was present and we had very productive uh conversation yesterday um and the district is proposing a wage increase for our support staff um but we need to do a little bit better um our surrounding private sector is taking they are taking our peer educators and our secretary clerical units they're taking our bus drivers they're taking our custodians because they can work at amazon for 20 plus dollars an hour now they can work at wendy's for 13. they can get in the state employee system and work for 13 an hour and we're proposing 11 with only a
0052 increase for our veteran para educators and secretary clerical staff and we have to do the better now if we're going to keep them and so we are going into a subcommittee today to talk about that and i'm very excited about that subcommittee and i hope that we can look at the money we have with the influx of cash coming in from the federal government that we know we can do reimbursements for for other things to free up general fund money we have to invest in our employees now or we're not going to have them and so i urge you to talk to your district team work with mr hyde and work with us so that we can keep our employees here for our kids thank you thank you miss yocum and next i have
006lisa burke if you'd like to come forward miss burke and once again you've got three minutes to address the board good morning my name is good morning i'm with ask me local 2227 i'm the president i live at lake wales 3100 fast drive train lake wales i'm going to talk to you about the budget today as we are going to set that and as we're still negotiating 19 and 20 there was talk at previous board member previous board meetings about the jonah funds starting to save some from rainy days our rainy days is here now and it's pouring we've lost drivers in area 6 yesterday due to another job paying 15.50 i've got some more that's planning on leaving we are losing employees left and right custodians bus drivers we need to make sure that
007we pay competitive wages with other counties but we should be the county that all those drivers want to go to we should be the ones that they say polk county is so much better let me go work there they treat their employees better sometimes that doesn't happen here and my other issue was on the policy we want to save public comments right um there was a comment about a reasonable opportunity whose meaning of reasonable is whose meaning of reasonable yours are mine one public comment should all be heard we should not limit you want to say if one group is here and i have 20 people that want to speak and you shouldn't limit just one person they should all be heard that's what public comments is for we're all public of employees the public
008is what put us here they should be able to be heard i understand if it's obscene they're out of control when they don't live here i can understand that but we still need to hear those public comments because they're the reason we're here they put us in these positions and we knew what it took for these positions and what was required so thank you thank you miss burke okay is there anyone else that would like to come forward to speak this morning okay seeing none we shall proceed next we come to our action agenda this morning and item one is permission to advertise the superintendents 2021 2022 tentative budget what i'd like to do is ask for a motion in a second after which we will discuss it so do i have a motion and
009a second so second okay having a motion and a second i'd like to have some discussion um i think superintendent hyde i'd like to turn it over to you at this point i'm sorry madam chair i was i was distracted could you repeat that yeah i'm turning it over to you to have miss jenkins come forward if she'd like my apartment go through the uh go through the tentative budget with us this morning miss jenkins if you would please approach good morning thank you all for being here with us today good morning we're gonna take a little bit more time than we usually do due to the lateness of the information we received our final numbers from the department of education late friday evening so our team's been working to prepare this information for you
010what our advertisement is is it's the first piece as part of our truth in millage we call it trim so we're required to advertise our tentative budget two to five days before we have our tentative hearing so within the second calculation what we learned is that our millage had gone down .016 mils from what they had listed in the conference report it's still 2.76 percent above the rollback rate but it did go down a little bit the other information in the calculation i'm just giving you an overview now and then we'll go through the packet that i sent you um the other information that we received the fourth calculation was 1.3 million dollars higher than the total amount in the conference report that can be seen in the increase of required local effort our tax
011base in polk county and across the state has increased the revenue from that it's also 9.2 million dollars higher than what we received in the fourth calculation for 2021. the majority of those funds are listed in items that are categoricals which means there are specific ways in which you can spend those dollars important things to note about the second calculation the compression adjustment increased 740 thousand dollars which is a benefit to polk county that's something that we were adamant about maintaining the turnaround supplement to assist our turnaround schools has gone down 793 thousand that's an area that we supplement our budget last year we put an additional two million dollars in so we'll need to take an extra look at that make sure that we have our services covered the safe school allocation increased 31
012thousand dollars the mckay estimates statewide and for polk decreased decreased in general ours went down 346 000. the amount estimated for the family empowerment scholarship which we've discussed with the board has gone up 3.5 million and required local effort has gone up about 1.3 million so now i'd like to go through we'll go through the packet i sent you the first page is just our agenda for today on the second page you'll see our our initial blush at our budget the total budget comes to 2.2 million dollars the required local effort for this year is 3.581 last year it was 3.687 our total millage is 5 5.829 mills that includes required local effort discretionary and capital outlay last year it was 5.935 the reason that we're still receiving an increased amount of funding is because
013our tax base has increased and we had a discussion with the department of education and statewide they've lowered the millage for all the districts a tiny bit um you'll see our total for general fund is about a billion dollars special revenue is a lot higher this year it's showing 598 million that includes some s for funding we'll go over the description in a moment we've also listed debt services capital projects and internal service so if you'll turn to your next page it's a summary of our major components our general operating budget is one around a billion dollars it was close last year to the same amount appropriations include an estimated total in funding balance of 72 million dollars which is comprised of non-spendable fund balance for inventory and prepaids restricted assigned and unassigned so we've
014talked a little bit about this before our fund balance is broken into categories and the assigned and unassigned portions are the pieces that that make up the doe calculation where we have to meet three percent and the board's policy is five percent so the minimum assigned and unassigned fund balance in order to meet board policy is 42 million dollars our budgeted assigned an unassigned fund balance which includes our salary increases as proposed is 34.7 million that is below board policy yet above doe policy it would have us ending at about 4.06 percent special revenue is close to 600 million dollars and within that we've budgeted 410 million in cares or esser funding we still have not received guidance on sr2 or the arp funds the american recovery plan we do have our estimated allocations but
015we are not able to draw down or apply for those funds until we receive the the packet and information from doe however we do want you to know the estimated amounts that's why it's included our debt service budget is budgeted to be 66.5 million dollars our payments for debt service are around 37 million debt services used to pay long-term debt incurred by the district that includes our cops and our sales tax capital projects our capital project budget is estimated to be around 390 million dollars this amount represents 169 million in anticipated revenue and a beginning fund balance of 221 million that's allocated to various projects across the district as you all know we have the half cent sales tax which is dedicated to building we also have our impact fees we have our local capital
016outlay all of those things make up our capital our internal service fund budget is around 139 million that includes our health insurance and our workers compensation do you all have any questions about these pieces yes mister oh yes thank you so just i'm just curious why would we budget more in the debt service than we anticipate spending because we have something called a sinking fund one of our loans um has a payment at the end okay so we budget incrementally throughout the years for that all right thank you you're welcome and i have one other question as well um let me get my notes here so the milli dre went backwards for the rle that seems like a rollback yeah the state said they wouldn't be rolling it back do we have a sense of
017why that happened um with the conversation that i had with doe they indicated that statewide the property tax values were up it is still higher than the rollback rate they indicated that it was a formula that they used to calculate the funding based on the fefp we could our calculation um trim requirements require that you budget at 96 percent of your estimated receipts for taxes we could come in higher than that we typically come in at or above so this is our budgeted amount that's that being said they reduce the amount to show the actual percentage that they have to give us in state funding based on what they anticipate that we're going to receive and because our tax base is higher it works as an inverse as the tax base goes up as you've
018seen in the past the military typically goes down well that is exactly the problem i think yes sir and it doesn't the explanation they gave you is consistent with the rollback i mean correct it absolutely consistently roll back so we were told there would be no rollback yet we're seeing a rollback i understand it's not as much as in prior years but still um that's problematic that's you know there's a reason why property values are going up that's because people are moving here and we need more service we have more services or we need more services and so how do we pay for those if we if we aren't given the tools we need and the resources we need to cover them that's challenging i know this is not you don't have an answer to
019that those are really just comments so that is a little stunning to me being told that there would be no rollback and yet this is exactly what this is not as much but it's nevertheless a rollback it's about a five million dollar difference just to the general fund yeah okay thank you you're welcome if i may clarify as well um heather received this information friday evening at 6 00 p.m 8 30 8 30 p.m so we were very much on the impression that there would be no additional rollback and to find this out you know we had shared projected revenue prior previously in an email and then ms jenkins unfortunately had the unenviable responsibility of communicating with me at nine o'clock at night on a friday to say oops they are rolling it back but
020your point is well taken it's something we have to continue to advocate against and for because the benefit of that is is as we grow the detriment to our school districts as we grow while we have some capital funds to help us maintain and build new facilities operational costs will continue to grow we have to staff those schools we have to support those schools instructionally with their materials and so yes it's a point we have to continue to advocate at the state level i agree and i think the thing that's most difficult for me to understand is why would the state care if we're asking our local residents to help us out a little bit more i'm just not sure why that would be relevant to them um maybe at some point in time we
021could ask that question you don't have to ask it but i'll ask it i'd love to please do but if i get the chance i'll ask that as well just it just doesn't make sense it's just you know not logical thank you mr wilson would you like to continue with anyone else have any questions up to this point all right miss jenkins if you would continue yes ma'am the next port piece of your packet is our notice of tax for school capital outlay so for our local and cap local capital improvement funds our lci millage we're required to advertise anything that we intend on spending those funds for the one piece that we've added this year that's new from last year is new library books you're able to when you build a school you're able
022to outfit your library or also if you add a media center entire collections of books can be paid for from capital funding so that's to ensure that we're able to add additional resources if that decision is made so we do believe that we'll get based on our 1.5 millage rate 70 million dollars in local capital funds the next piece is the notice of proposed tax increase we're required to run this ad if our millage rate is higher than the official rollback rate so we have our initial proposed tax levy which is last year's amount of 265 million plus increases due to the value adjustment board when they go through and review of 618 000. our actual property tax levy for 2021 was 266 million and then this year's proposed levy is 283 million that's an
023increase of 202.76 percent it talks here about a portion of the tax levy required for us to receive 626 million dollars from the board of education we have to tax at the required local effort rate or we are ineligible to receive our funding from the department of education so that's why that piece is printed in the advertisement we'll discuss some of this again at our tentative budget hearing because there's required language for the board and the public to be made aware of information about millage levees this is something that mr pitts prepared many years ago which is very helpful so it explains to the board and the public what a mill is a mill is one tenth of one cent a one mil tax levy is a proposed tax of adult one dollar per thousand
024dollars of property adjustment so things that are important to our residents there is a homestead exemption of the normal exemption is 25 000 so if for example if you have a home that's worth seventy five thousand dollars and you apply for the homestead exemption that reduces your taxable value down to fifty thousand dollars and that would be the portion that you were taxed on so based on this year's military if you have a home worth fifty thousand dollars your tax would be two hundred ninety one dollars and forty five cents we go into explaining what the difference in the millages are our required local effort which is the amount we have to tax in order to receive our funding from the department of education our discretionary millage which is the .75 mills that can be
025used for discretionary operating and then the 1.5 mills for capital outlay it's important to note that the capital outlay millage has decreased over the years it used to be a lot higher and they took the portion of that outlay millage and diverted it into the discretionary operating millage so right now we're capped at 1.5 the next section shows you what our total millage is for this year the required local effort is 3.581 mils discretionary operating of 0.748 leaving your total operating at 4.435 that will yield us about 11 million dollars our total capital outlay is 1.5 well 11 million dollars over last year my apologies um it's 190 million dollars and then our capital alley millage will yield about 5.6 million more than we had in the prior year this tax levy is about 11
026cents less than the amount we received per thousand dollars for the prior year the next piece is just a letter that we have to send to the newspaper in order to run our advertisements followed by the ad requirements there are very specific guidelines we have to follow when we print our ad in the newspaper and then the last two pieces are the resolutions that you'll see at the tentative budget hearing so that you have a first look at them the first lists the millage and the rates that it will generate at 96 percent which we've gone over and then the second resolution shows you that our total budget is about 2.2 billion dollars this year so with your permission we will run an advertisement in the ledger and then we will run that this this
027coming saturday and then next tuesday we will come back to the board for our tentative budget hearing and then followed by that september 7th we'll be back for our final budget hearing thank you miss jenkins so board members we have a motion and a second uh to advertise the superintendent's 2021-2022 tentative budget are there any comments miss fortney thank you chair cunningham i just want to clarify for public uh knowledge on your budget summary the uh pupil transportation services could you give us some figures on what we get versus what we spend yes ma'am that's one bear with me one moment please so our transportation allocation this year is 24.7 million dollars and we budget a significant amount over that at 41.2 million we've had increased transportation costs as well because of the way that
028our district is laid out to ensure that we can pick up our students increase routes various other things we're also going to see an increase in repair parts this year which factor into that a lot of equipment and items we're either unable to receive or some have seen as high of a markup as 50 percent in our research we've also been made aware that diesel fuel and gas costs are anticipated to increase and we're also opening up several new schools so that we will create more bus routes and we do we have three new schools best purchases i would imagine this is your best guess estimate as to how much we're going to lose basically yes ma'am we worked with the transportation department um to try and forecast the cost increases next point and maybe
029you can explain since i've not been able to ask you this um i've asked for a few years now our steps and years experience people um i i can remember a time when that was an automatic budget item can you explain try to to me why we don't do that anymore and why we can't it has not been done for the past few years or several years due to budgetary constraints we we are looking into our budget we are looking for more effective ways mr hyde has come in and has many good ideas about pulling everything apart and being able to review that so that we can identify the best way to use our dollars it all comes down to funding we we do want to increase our salaries we want to take care of
030our employees and we are looking for a way to do it i understand that but it's hard to talk to employees knowing that some of them fall in the same system that used to do this and now we don't and i just need help explaining that because you just said we're going to need more buses etc we uh we're going to need drivers for those buses attendance exci you know it's all inter-related and valuing our employees and then this might be a mr pitts question but uh and you might have already answered it and i turned 60 recently and i'm having issues remembering stuff so um don't ask me why i don't know i'm gonna start taking that prevagen but uh what is our total frs contribution 10 no the dollar amount dollar amount i
031can't recall at this moment in time jason do you remember mr pitts if you have it's going to be almost so 11 percent oh my god all right thanks so much thank you you're welcome thank you miss fortney um miss miller i've asked for this in the past but i'm asking again um as far as transportation budget we've made some decisions about programming uh specifically last year where we're going to introduce programs between an elementary middle and high school that are significantly miles apart we also have to fund choice to our magnets with transportation i would like to see a breakdown of transportation costs that's my first question because we're looking at the overview of it but there's some specific things that we do as a county that when you talk at the state level
032other districts do not fund so i would like to see i would like to see those numbers please and my other question is at the beginning you talked about a reduction in mckay and a significant increase in empowerment is that because the mckay is no longer it was folded into the empowerment so you're we've gone down 300 and something thousand in mckay and up significantly because all of this all ships are now enrolled i mean rolled into one yes ma'am that's correct excuse me it's my understanding a portion of mckay um i believe you've talked about it before is when they make a within the district i believe the remaining funding is for that estimate and as you've stated they've all been rolled into one so that is just does estimate of what those costs
033will be but we work with our student information system department and our other in our ese departments to estimate what those amounts will be we do review it periodically so that we ensure we have enough budgeted and quarterly we will bring any changes as we receive our new calculations there are five per year we receive four in the final one in october but as we see what our revenues and expenditures are we will bring that back to the board and update you and as part of that transportation breakdown i would like to see what we pay to be involved to help students mckay within the district and or there are some of the empowerment scholarships that we provide within the district um such as the hope what what that cost and transportation thank you yes
034ma'am we'll put that together for you thank you thank you miss miller miss fields okay uh first of all thank you for the presentation this morning the in-depth presentation i think what concerns me is that we didn't get anything in writing to my knowledge saying that you guys were having to delay attaching this document to the agenda i noticed it yesterday when i was reviewing it for today um i think out of courtesy especially this is one of our major uh roles as a board member is to approve budget it would have been nice for you all to at least say that there's a delay and and this is what we're doing and we'll have it to you there's no way i'm going to be looking at a document at 10 30 last night i'm
035just not going to do that so i have not even had time to really review it my question is when are we going to have in-depth discussion as it relates to this budget how everything was compiled if we have specific questions like ms miller was asking a few minutes ago when are we going to have an opportunity and it might be a mr hyde question when we're going to have an opportunity to really discuss this budget before we vote to approve it so the board has an active ongoing ability to engage with me and my office to submit any questions so that we can bring those forward not only provide a written response to individual board members and then to the collective group in my prior practice anytime i receive a question from a board
036member not only would i we provide a response to that board member but i also respond to the collective board so that they get that additional background but i think what we would do is anticipate additional dialogue prior to any budgetary approval and if we have to extend or provide another meeting such as this so that we can provide a high level of transparency and address all those questions because your point is very well taken this should have been attached in a more timely manner and i will address that and ensure that we have that done in the future but any questions that you have please submit those and we will continue to engage and provide that level of clarification and transparency that we need to so just follow those questions through me please feel
037free to copy miss jenkins and mr pitts but we will get you a timely response within 24 48 hours and then again i would like to bring those questions back publicly at an upcoming meeting so that our community knows the depth in which our board members are asking these types of questions for clarification so that they don't feel that we're rushing a budget through to approval and that brings up another point um so we have i had had discussion with with a few board members um about an efficiency audit and that's not something something we necessarily need to contract it is something that we can engage in but it is not something the districts should do alone it is something that the district should engage various community stakeholder groups in they have a sincere and
038legitimate interest in helping us and quite honestly i think we need to embrace and celebrate those areas where we do well financially where investments are well placed and well funded but we also have to acknowledge those areas of deficiency and we do have costs as ms jenkins shared when we we use the phrase take things apart um i i know that may be alarming to some people but um and you and i have had a separate conversation about opportunities so we have persistent vacancies uh our architect is a great example and we ultimately when that individual retires we may have to go out to contracted service but there are other savings at the district level where we have multiple positions that have remained open it may be an opportunity for us to consolidate those positions
039elevate the existing positions to a higher pay grade because they're already doing two jobs and so there's an ongoing conversation here that we have to have and to miss miller's point when we talk about efficiencies we have chosen to provide transportation for a variety of different programs so which we should break that out and provide you the cost analysis so we know the impact that that decision is having on our economics it doesn't mean it will be offset by our philosophy if our intent was to make sure that we can provide students choice regardless of their zip code and give them gainful access and opportunity in our magnet academy and other programs then that's a commitment we make but we do so with our eyes open knowing these are the costs that come are associated
040with that level of support and service for our community so to your questions submit any questions that you have ms fields but yes if the board feels there has not been enough time for us to discuss this at length we will make we will provide additional opportunities prior to any approval i will not rush the budget forward thank you yes ma'am thank you miss fields ms reynolds thank you my question was very much in line with miss fields because this isn't the first year that we've gotten the budget late we typically i think the earliest we've ever gotten it is maybe 10 p.m the friday night before at least in my time on the board just because we typically get the numbers very late from the state i know with vam scores this year we
041were finally successful in getting a hard deadline they have to give it to us by because our meeting today is required to be today correct or is because we couldn't do it in actuality this meeting is not required by statute it's a meeting that has always been done by polk you're required to have your tentative hearing and then you're required to have your final um in my if i may in my prior district we did not hold this meeting but one thing we did do is we provided the board with the tentative budget at the budget hearing which is permission to begin spending your funding the board compiled any questions as mr hyde has stated and sent those back to us and then in august we had a workshop where we discussed your questions and
042and ensured that you understood the budget that way you were prepared to vote on the final in september okay so because today's meeting is just to advertise essentially what we got permission i think if we could more clearly articulate that in our messaging too just because people see they're having a budget meeting i got several calls the past couple days of oh you're meeting on the budget tuesday yeah i haven't we haven't gotten it from the state what it can be yet so if we can just advertise that so that people understand what we're up against time-wise too that would be helpful absolutely thank you miss reynolds anyone else seeing no further discussion i'd like to call for the vote all those in favor of advertising the superintendent's 2021-2022 tentative budget please signify by saying
043aye all those opposed nay the motion carries unanimously thank you board members and the next item this morning is our superintendent's report mr high do you have an update for us today there is no superintendent there is no superintendence report for today however the next work session and board meeting will be held on july 27 2021 the work session will begin at 12 30 p.m and the board meeting will begin at 5 pm they will be held at the jim miles professional development center located at 5204 u.s highway 98 south in lakeland thank you madam thank you sir uh next we have our attorneys report mr bridges do we have a report today madam chair no attorneys report but the the superintendent has indicated to me that he wishes to hold a an executive session
044at the close of today's work session for purposes of discussing collective bargaining issues which is specifically allowed by florida statute 447. wonderful and where will that be held mr bridges i think we'll hold it across the hall just for everyone's convenience that is a meeting that is that is it is confidential and exempt it is not noticed uh it is there are no minutes there is no agenda okay thank you mr bridges i appreciate that the next item on our agenda is our auditor's report however there is no uh auditor's report today from miss matthews next we have our board member reports and i'll start with mr allen uh very minimal comments today i just wanted to say we're happy to have superintendent hyde on board this is our first official meeting with him at
045the helm as i make way around district one and my constituency um it's clear that he's been active so already so thank you for what you're doing uh keep that up and um i think in moving forward just as an update i've had a couple individuals reach out to me as well um wanting to know about uh stipend and bonus payout i would love to have a report next time um that we meet just uh to say okay we've we've paid out you know this much of all the bonuses all the stipends from last year and i know that was addressed in email in regards to the concerns with the state and their initiated bonus so i think that would be great just from a public standpoint just to bring that awareness of how we
046have honored our teachers and staff across the board that's all i have thank you thank you dr alan next sarah fortney thank you chair cunningham um i have been out and about in my district as well uh i would like to encourage folks kingsford elementary is getting a new school willow oak and they are in dire need of some monetary donations as far as new uniforms those kids cannot transfer those shirts to the new school and so if you have it in your heart to try to donate and and help some of that community in mulberry that would be a blessing for them speaking of blessings our international baccalaureate diploma rate at bartow ib at ib at bartow high school was 91 percent pass rate that is an accomplishment that when i taught there i
047don't believe we ever exceeded that so uh and we had some instructors like mr ekman a band director he had a 100 pass rate of his kids uh one of our outstanding history teachers 93 percent pass rate so uh that's a lot of hard work by staff and students and i want to thank publicly the city commission abarto and and uh for doing a proclamation last night and all those teachers showed up uh you know even on their little summer break speaking of which if you drive by schools you'll see the staff still working there really hasn't stopped just because there's no kids every day there they are um speaking of that um i'm hoping to bring something to promote some equity here on our programs we have some programs around the district that are
048managed by assistant principals like cambridge sarah beth kathleen high school our central florida air academy and those folks are doing the work of the school leader and i'd like to entertain something along the lines of summerlin and harrison to talking about combining and promoting giving those folks some autonomy at their individual schools by rewarding those individuals i just wanted to kind of put that out there in the public i think it would be beneficial because as i've said before even principles don't grow on trees either especially good ones so and then last uh not last but uh two more things uh i i really hope uh to mr allen's uh point the stipends and the bonuses there's some confusion as to who gets what when how why how it was paid etc some clarification would
049be great on that and you know i'm always going to advocate to pay and show support and respect for all our employees and i just hope that we can come up with living wages for all of them and last but not least i believe on september 14th 5 30 to 7 30 mr hyde you'll be doing a question answer at bartow civic center uh is that in stone or in writing yet i wanted to invite folks september september 14th for district three yes ma'am community conversations pardon me yes at 5 p.m is it 5. maybe that's when i have something on my calendar for 5 p.m okay and then september 20th uh also kind of your area mr allen too but bartow kind of draws from there as well so that is correct just wanted
050to point that out and invite the public to come and meet and greet you yes ma'am that's it those will be advertised with more clarity mr garrity and others will assist these were tentatively placed because we wanted to regionalize opportunities and meet people in their communities so but yes these will be largely advertised no folks calendars fill up fast yes ma'am so i put it out there that's it thank you so much thank you thank you miss fortney miss reynolds thank you madam chair um just a very short report today the number of phone calls that i've gotten from people that usually call because something is wrong to tell me that they have just met with our new superintendent and how incredible he is have been overwhelming um and taken several hours out of the
051past couple weeks so thank you for whatever you are doing out in our communities and meeting with people because the community it's one thing for them to say oh yeah i had a great meeting but for them to feel the need to call and then talk for 20 minutes about all of the great things that you've said and indicated is very reassuring so thank you and continue to do what you're doing thank you thank you miss reynolds miss fields looking for it thank you miss fields mr wilson thank you madam chair i also would like to welcome superintendent hyde it's good to have you on board mrs yoko mentioned that the pea would be discussing budget matters and might have some ideas i think it's important that we hear from them so i look forward
052to that report whenever you whenever you do that um and i want to thank superintendent hyde for being part of the pa discussions i think that's going to be incredibly helpful that engagement is um i think will be very beneficial so thank you for that um there was some discussion about the efficiency audit and i know mr hyde and i have talked about that i had some questions about ms miller mentioned there were some things we do in the way of transportation other districts don't do but i the conversation back and forth with mr hyde i think you you're well aware of that and on top of that so thank you for that as well and lastly there was some comments about limiting public comments you're not sure where that comes from okay all right
053so that concludes my comments thank you thank you mr wilson miss miller thank you madam chair um i wanted to mention that i did get to visit a new boys and girls club here in bartow at gibbon street they had an open house they're looking to expand into the fort meade area and i think i had i did not realize of the facilities that we had that were sitting empty that could be used for community partnerships and i think that's probably across the district and i would like to see us look into more of those opportunities it really met the needs here in um bartow not we're not in bartow we're in south lakeland but in bartow as well as what could happen in fort meade so i know in my district i'm going to
054start looking around at the buildings that we own and services that we provide and hopefully we can come with some more community partnerships i think that's very important especially for families working families for the after school programs i do want to thank mr hyde i've heard great things i've had more communication than i've probably ever needed and i think that's very important it's good for it's good for me and when i get questions from the community i have the information to provide i look forward to talking more about the budget like mr wilson said you know we've been saying efficiency audit because that's what we hear from the community so we need to be transparent in what we're doing um providing not only the budget and explanation but categorically things like transportation in other areas
055where maybe the community could have input or collaboration so i think it's important we're having those conversations and i look forward to them thank you thank you miss miller and i just have a few comments as well first of all i i do want to welcome you officially superintendent hyde we're so excited that you're on board i would have to echo the comments of my colleagues when i say the communication piece that you've been able to do with all of us has been incredible i too have received so many different comments phone calls texts for those that you have met with and have made the opportunity to meet with and have taken the time out of your schedule as i mean you've only been really in this position for 20 days and the impact that
056you have already made in polk county is definitely being felt across the districts from what i'm hearing and particularly in mine as well so i want to say thank you i think the communication piece is probably the most important thing as we were looking for new superintendent that that was at the forefront as we move forward and you've definitely in the short period of time delivered on that so thank you very much i also want to say that i've heard from staff and the impact that you've already made on our district staff in your ability to work with others your ability to discern what's going on your ability to understand the nuances because obviously you're coming not only you know from out of state but in a different position you've been able to do that
057from what i'm hearing from our staff excellently and you're willing to ask those tough questions you're willing to address them straight on and you're very fair and equitable as you do that so i just want to thank you from our staff perspective as well um we are also going to have the town hall meeting as it's now being called if you will that's being set up by kim long with polk vision from what i understand our town hall meeting for northeast polk county has been set for september the 21st from 5 to 7 p.m at lake eva banquet hall and i understand all of that has already um been done and if you'd like to as ms fortney said put it on your calendars we're very excited for the community to come out and meet
058our new superintendent if you haven't already i know that he's going to be actively touring our schools in august so for those that haven't met him you may at that point but if not join us northeast polk or anyone else who wants to come out on the 21st of september to do so and we also are very excited as we approach the beginning of school in my area we have two new schools opening up which is davenport high school and mr douje has been very very busy i know there's a upcoming meet and greet for the staff on the 26th so we're excited for families to come out and meet new teachers and coaches and all of that which will be wonderful and i just drove by the school this past weekend and wow what
059what a beautiful piece of architecture i mean i don't think it's like any other school that we've got in polk so kudos to miss usher and her team it's it's a beautiful school and i know as i look around and see the number of homes now that are going in around that high school i really don't know where we're going to put them all but here we go right we're just going to have to continue to deal with the growth in northeast polk and i know that we're searching for a middle school as we speak and and also a new high school in point siena and i i was going to ask i don't know if you have an update but we can save it for next week i'd like to know where we stand
060on purchasing that um that would be very helpful to get us moving because the growth continues to way exceed our expectations in the northeast side of the county and i guess that is the blessing we just have to have seats for students to sit in when they come to us so okay with that that concludes my report today yes what time is is the town hall meeting at lake eva it is five to seven on that evening yes sir on the 21st yes sir okay next we come to um agenda president excuse me reynolds mr reynolds had her hand oh i'm sorry i'm gonna say can you send out a list of all of them for every i know we were each told ours but yeah i was just speaking to miss winchester they were
061waiting to confirm all of the locations the venues but i believe they've done that within the last 24 hours so we'll work to get a communication out to all of you with a comprehensive list thank you as well as the community yes ma'am okay the next item on our agenda is public comments addressing items that are not on the agenda is there anyone in the audience who wishes to come forward who signed up to speak okay seeing none we shall proceed the next order of business board members is adjournment and the meeting of the polk county school board is now adjourned thank you [Music] you