School Board Workshop Afternoon: June 21, 2021

001good afternoon it is monday june 22nd and we are here for a school board workshop agenda 21st the 21st 2021 and we are here for school board workshop agenda and the agenda today is on the agenda we have capital strategies for 60 minutes we have the fy 2022 preliminary budget and then we have the meeting agenda for tuesday june 22nd so we will begin today and if our presenters will please introduce themselves and we will move forward thank you thank you for being here thank you we always look forward to being here hello everyone i'm carol green with capital strategies i'm ashley stasel with capital strategies and i know that we've had the opportunity to work with you all now for about three years i've enjoyed our relationship with each and every one of you

002and have an opportunity today to on a more formal basis go over some of the highlights of some of the issues that we were faced with this year obviously the biggest thing we were faced with was covet every every decision every policy every debate centered on covid and most of those debates and everything was actually done over the over the internet you know away we had most of the testimony that was handled with the legislature the doors were locked so you either had to get special permission and be required to be there to speak to be able to get into the door or you had to go to the tucker center a couple blocks away the senate took all of their testimony from the tucker center we were very blessed in the fact that we

003have a good delegation and good relationships with the folks so we were still able to have our opportunities to get with everyone that we needed to get with we did a lot of that prior to the i know miss jordan will remember that because i know she went to all those meetings with us to where we had opportunity to get with everyone so then it was just a matter of us following up and unfortunately again we've had great relationships there to be able to to get on the phone and get things happen that get things excuse me done that we needed to get done so with that i know that you all have received reports you receive a report every week that we are in tallahassee you've also received your final report as required by

004the contract because of the fact that ms stacill is the one who actually produces those reports she's going to go ahead and highlight some of the things there we're certainly here to answer questions concerns comments anything that you would like to have further dialogue on but because of the fact that the reports that you have received as you will note were very extensive i mean 38 pages of detailed information we'd had no intention of going through each and every one so if there's one that we don't go through that you have interest in that you need more data on we are more than glad to to get into as we say get into the weeds about those things but at the same time right now i think ashley will start out and start with some

005of the controversial bills and some of the really good bills too that we had well there were good bills now there were good bills in front of us so again if you have any questions please let us know thank you and as carol said i'm sure you all read the reports every week from front to back and i know they're exhilarating and i could talk policy all day but i know we only have a few minutes so i'm going to hit the highlights two bills that passed that are pretty similar were civic education curriculum bills and these bills basically revise the social studies credit requirement for high school graduation and it requires that the united states government course include a comparison discussion of political ideologies that conflict with principles of freedom and democracy essential to

006our nation's founding principles basically what this bill does is it brings in people that were from countries that had any sort of communism in there to allow them to these courses to talk about that actually the gentleman that sponsored the bill was from albania so he was very passionate that students needed to learn where people are coming from countries that may have communism or conflict and that wasn't being taught in high school classes so that is kind of the gist of that bill is bringing in more i guess of a well-rounded curriculum if you will into civics in high school and the second civics education bill deals with civic literacy and teaching children or students their obligation if you will on being a good voter what they need to do what their rights are for

007our country like the right to get together in protest voting things like that make it more robust is was the argument during the committee meetings on that legislation one of the more controversial bills that you i'm sure you've been hearing a lot about is the parental rights bill and that's been given to the governor and he has until the 26th to sign it and we have no indication that he will not sign the bill i'm fairly certain that he will sign that bill and what that bill does is it gives parents essentially an enumerated rights in statute and they have rights above and beyond what the school district any government or any institution has over their minor child including upbringing education oh i'm sorry i'm sorry could you just when you when you hit on

008those could you put whatever if it's a house bill or senate oh sure i'm sorry relate to that sure i'll go back to the civic spill house bill five representative zika did that bill and it was a house bill and then the other civic bill was senate bill 146 and that was senator brandis this bill the parental rates bill is house bill 241 and that's representative grohl and didn't rodriguez have that senator rodriguez had that bill in the senate i don't have the bill number but i mean i can get it to you but it's not the bill that passed so just go with 241. and these fundamental rights of a parent are to direct the upbringing education healthcare and mental health of a minor child and in no way are those in entities such

009as schools school boards local government state are they to infringe on those rights and that also includes any educational materials that are given to the child or taught to the child the parent has every right to see those materials things of that nature and i will say as a parent for this bill this one example that i have that would be covered in this bill is one of my kids got tested for gifted and i asked to see out of the 23 characteristics which characteristics he had qualified and what those characteristics were and i remember the guidance counselor saying to me i don't think i can give you those and i said i think you can i think you can so it's those kinds of things and i do understand that there are unintended consequences

010with this bill and we have been speaking to the attorney about those unattended consequences and i really do think that some of this language will go to the courts one of those being if you have a child that is close to their guidance counselor or a teacher or a principal or somebody on staff and they talk to that adult about sensitive information is that adult required to tell the parent that information and that is a huge unintended consequence of this bill and we just don't know the answer to that yet and it's very serious and i think it's going to be determined in the courts i agree yeah we had a we had a lengthy conversation with jackie on that last week on the 17th i don't remember what day that was but we had

011a long debate back and forth so we know that all of the attorneys across all the school districts are looking at that very seriously too about the ramifications they're in yeah there will be ramifications i'm sure another big bill was house bill 419 and that was the vpk bill and that was moving the governments and the accountability from the office of early learning into the department of education which is a really big deal i mean this bill has been around at least three years and there was a lot more in the bill but it got pared down at the end but i think moving the accountability over to the department of education is a big move and they're also repealed the screening and readiness methods that they use and the department of education are coming

012up with new methods new testing and i think it's they do this for kindergarten i know but they do some testing in the beginning of the year mid-year and at the end of the year and that looks like the model that they're going to take forward with vpk so there will be a lot more that we need to look at as they start developing these rules we need to be watching those to see what they come up with and what instruments they're using but that was the big gist of that bill was the accountability and then the measurements and then the governance of vpk changed oh this was a good bill house bill not bpk was too but this was a bill that really helped us was on house bill 519 the required health education

013instruction and this bill requires comprehensive health education curriculum for k through 12 public schools to include instruction on the prevention miss fisher's high-fiving on the prevention of child sexual abuse exploitation and human trafficking the bill clarifies that the comprehensive health curriculum must be age and developmentally appropriate and this is a this kind of went hand in hand with one of our high priorities was the comprehensive health that we've been working on for the last couple of years and this bill got nothing but praise i don't even think it had a no vote so i feel like this is a really good platform to move forward and build upon for next year is getting some of this curriculum in place for our k-12s and kind of building on that for next year which i think we

014should talk about and i would just i would just interject at that point too that as soon as we started reading that bill and we got so excited about it i know that i talked to miss fisher about that briefly too about the fact that come along we did get out to our delegation and made sure that especially representative roach to make sure that they knew this is really an important bill would you please sign on this bill or please do whatever you can to help lift this across the finish line so we were really happy to see this actually happen and it passed on the floor in the house and senate unanimously so and like i said i don't believe there was one negative vote even in committee so it had a lot of

015positive praise the next bill was house bill 529 and that was the moments of silence in public schools and what this bill does is it requires each teacher during the first period of the day to set aside one to two minutes for a moment of silence and a teacher may not suggest as to the nature of any reflection and a student may not interfere with another student's participation so that was a somewhat controversial bill and it did have some no votes on the house and senate floors but that was around last year so i'm not really surprised that it moved forward it had a republican and democrat sponsor last year and two republican sponsors this year so i'm really not surprised that bill passed the next bill is house bill 550 or 545 and its

016materials harmful to minors and what this bill does is it allows parents to see all of the reproductive health education curriculum that is given to students like for example i'm sure you all well aware of these things but my son is in sixth grade and he had some of his health reproduction education this past year and under this bill would be my right to look at all of that material and opt out if i did not want him to participate but the other thing in this bill that i thought was interesting is that it requires the district school boards to annually approve all the instructional materials used to teach reproductive health or any disease including hiv and aids in an open notice public meeting school districts are required to provide a process for the public

017review of and comment on the adoption of such instructional materials so making that a more public affair was i think the big change in this bill the next bill is what we'd like to call the choo choo train bill it was senate bill 1028 and it started off as a very innocent charter school bill basically giving a little bit more leeway to high-performing charter schools allowing them to submit two applications instead of one and it turned into a ginormous education train there were some good things in that bill for example allowing our advisory committees to meet virtually instead of just in person which is obviously something that we need with the covid times so we did work on getting that language in because that was in another bill and then it was taken out and

018then we got it put in somewhere else so that was a fun dance that we did with that also the student retention language is in that bill and it allows a parent or guardian to submit a written request that his or her k-5 public student could be retained for academic purposes during this past school year so if you if a parent thought that their third grader needed to be retained for another year due to this past year with kovid they had to do a written submission talk to the principal to allow that retention even if the school said that he was fine to be promoted the big controversial issue in this bill is the fairness and women's sports act this was the transgender sports bill language that got put on this bill and the bill

019specifies that athletic teams or sports designated for females women or girls may not open to students of the male sex a statement of the student's biological sex on the student's official birth certificate is considered to have the correctly stated students biological sex that bill started out that this language actually is house language the house version of this bill had always said gender specific on the birth certificate in the senate there was a little bit more progressive if you will it allowed students to have their hormones tested and it was this whole formula of what would be acceptable if you will from the science perspective of allowing this particular students to play female sports if they were male so as you can imagine that was very controversial bill and it has this bill was signed into

020law on june 1st so this is moving forward i'm sure we're going to see some court actions of this bill down the road but the charter school bill is where this language is and that bill had eventually and not eventually that bill had technically died until the last week yeah well several several of these initiatives had that went into 1028 were dead and then all of a sudden in the last 48 yeah it was the last 72 hours they did show up and materialize and then the next pretty big bill was the scholarship bill and in our state we have the five scholarships or voucher programs and it's the gardner scholarship mckay scholarship the family empowerment scholarship the hope scholarship and then the florida tax credit scholarship and basically what this bill does is it

021rolls the gardner and the mckay scholarships into family empowerment so it brings from five scholarships down to three so they didn't get rid of the gardner in mckay those requirements for those scholarships they just wrapped them all into the family empowerment scholarship the other thing that they did was they expanded the scholarship amount it used to be that students received 95 of the calculated amount and now they would receive the full amounts of that so which is kind of a big deal because it did affect our budget those were the main big bills that i had unless you have something no i would only add that we did have a great amount of interaction with bright futures this year i know you all know that i know you experienced it here locally they experienced it

022in tallahassee it was it was probably one of the biggest the transgender bill was debated the parental rights was debated but bright futures really probably got the most air time in in the fact and of course because of the fact that people were so vocal about that students were so vocal about that families were so vocal about that it didn't it didn't move it was moving but then it was a they were able to get it stopped so i don't expect that means it's gone away forever i really honestly believe that there's going to be more debate about that as we go forward so obviously the transgender got debate for lots of lots of reasons and the parental rights got debate mostly because of the lgbtq community that came forward there was a lot of

023testimony on those bills so there was a lot more going on than it than it would have appeared but we did have the opportunity as i said earlier to speak with ms dupay bruno at length to go over all these bills and i think that we came down to four or five of them that really have a lot of meaningful we had a lot of meaningful dialogue not that we settled everything because the most of those things are going to be settled in court but still at the same time we had a lot of bills this year i think we went over 32 bills with her last week and of those 32 bills 50 of them have already been signed so they are there there's really nothing on that list that we feel is not

024going to be signed nothing's been vetoed nothing's been vetoed yet we don't expect that there's going to be a lot of vetoes happening with any of the bills that we have in regards to education we really believe that they're all going to be signed as we go forward with that being said you know as always we stand ready to have have any questions that you might have any concerns comments etc we'll we'll try and answer those okay miss kittens hello hi there you guys in a while how did we fare with our list i mean do you do a comparison of that because there's some things that have been on there for a little while and we keep putting them on and i don't know if they've gotten any traction i think that the things

025that we really the things that you say we they've been on there for a little while they're on there because every year we get another another reach towards something you know accountability you know obviously there's good reason to have accountability on there every time you know and every year that's going to have a little different face if you will we were really happy to see about the health education bill because that's one that we have had on our list for a long time i know since ashley and i have been representing the board in the last three years we have really put a lot of pressure on trying to get that to happen so we were thrilled to see that someone did that as a standalone bill this year especially when there was in the

026beginning before we knew what the federal money was going to be we kept hearing about the doom and gloom of money because of covid right so from that perspective looking at an appropriation i'm actually glad that we got what we got because it allows us to keep that ask for next year and not have to use that ask for this year like we got what we wanted and we didn't have to ask for in funding if you will it just got done so that was a good thing and for me right the other thing that we would point to is we talked about early childhood the vpk that was huge and i can explain to you why it was so huge because it started out so different in the senate and house which is what

027has killed it every year every year every year that they debate this issue they've had the same senator senator gail harrell and representative aaron grall have had that bill and it's gotten blown up and i can tell you where that comes from actually i mean obviously a lot of people don't like change but at the same time where that was really coming from as private providers were really having a lot of heartburn over this they really felt that this that these changes were going to put them out of business so unfortunately what happened is senator gail harrell every time would take them out of the mix and of course you can't do that you know and so finally representative grall was able to get her bill passed which it was the far far superior bill

028and so consequently again another another big win not just for lee county but for our state and for our kids you know what what a great thing i know i've heard others talk including at the department of education talk often about if we don't get them started out right right then you know we're already behind so i think that's really an important piece too we also had quite a great deal of action on cte you know everybody's talking about career technical education we had a lot of bills that actually reflect that if you look back through some of the workforce development bills etc that aren't maybe especially directed at school boards so much they but they are directed at workforce and they are directed at those those groups too at least one was senate bill

029366 it was the apprenticeship pre-apprenticeship training training and so that put in some educational requirements for some of the businesses that have apprenticeship in there and how to get more credits for kids that are in apprenticeship program through their education so there was movement with that as well and there was a great deal of talk at this at this particular session about cyber security and the cyber security threats because we do have some in fact our own legislator jill lombardo representative jill lombardo from cape coral that's his career and he's obviously very knowledgeable about that and it's so good to have somebody who is because it's certainly a technology that many of us are not that familiar with so when you start looking down the list miss kittens i think that we're telling you yes

030those things have been on there repeatedly but at the same time ashley just found another thing she wants to bring teacher sorry the teacher's certificates certifications i'm sorry and retention there was a movement on that too house bill 1195. that allows for applicants for certification to satisfy their mastery of general knowledge requirement through their receipt of their master degree or higher from an institution as identified by a quality program so it gave gives them more time to get to learn get that mastery done and so that was another bill that passed that kind of addressed the certification issue we have and that was the one that i was getting at because i mean i've gotten numerous calls just recently of teachers that missed by one or two points over and over and over again and

031they've done spending you know an exorbitant amount of money just trying to pass one section of a test sure and these are people that are highly effective and have been for three four five years and you know they just keep trying so that to me especially in light of our teacher shortage which i don't see getting much better that we need to look at how can we retain the teachers that want to be there the last lady that called me she says you know i quit i just i give up i tried you know 12 15 times and i can't get it by one or two points and that it changes every time so you know she has driven to tallahassee to look at it and they give her some of the information but she

032doesn't know you know what to do so we i'm glad to hear that and i hope we keep pushing for that for that ability to give them one or two points based on their pedagogy i agree thank you miss kittens i have miss patricka and then miss morgan please i just want to say thank you because i believe the number one item on our list was the accountability piece and i know that came out of the doe and not the legislature but i also know that you had an impact on that and the other was the virtual meetings of our committee our committees i know you guys worked really really hard on that and you were able to make it happen even though it didn't happen in the way i would consider to be in

033a traditional bill where it would be appropriate you got it done i don't care but that's that's the way those all happen though yeah we'll take it and then i have some comments for the board and i'm not sure what your involvement would be in this we have early session this year correct we're going to bring that up in a few minutes but please go ahead yeah we were going to talk about that too but yes okay so i'd like to really prioritize the adoption of our legislative platform immediately so that we can start to work with our legislator it's already on there so you're already going to talk to us about that we are yeah absolutely but really just overall i want you to hear from me that i appreciate the work that you

034put in i know it was hard and as part of our future working together calls to action i got a lot of those from fsba this year which is great for issues that impact us statewide but if there are any issues that come up that would have a negative impact on us locally or a positive impact and you need us to be reaching out to say hey please vote for this or he please vote against that would be helpful for me as we make our way through session those are my comments for now thank you thank you thank you miss morgan so i'm going to just push right on through because i think we do need to be talking about what we're doing going forward and we don't have a lot of time and so

035i want to bring up two things that are budget related and we will be discussing the budget next this afternoon the first is the innovation school we have it on our budget at 78 million which is what our footprint costs our model cost the la the innovation school is as proposed in partnership with fgcu comes in at 90. i'm wondering what your opinion is about our putting on our agenda a request for 12 million dollars to span the difference this would be an initiative that fgcu and the school district would have to pursue together but again i think because we were partners we might have a little bit more leverage than if we were trying to do this on our own but but i'd like to you know just sort of get a sense of

036what you think is possible one of the things that has really worked well for us i believe is because we're local and because we've been you know been here ashley's been here forever i've been here for 35 years we've had an opportunity to have a really close relationship with fgcu and with their lobbying team that they have there you know we've known each other a very very long time so the workability of that together as a tandem or as a team with each other is very doable i think that in looking at what our proposal would be what we would really need to do is come up with a proposal that then make sure that we're mirror mirroring what they're doing too so we're not going in different directions so to speak i will tell

037you that as long as they are agreeable to something like that i think that having the muscle behind us and behind them makes it very doable thank you the second question i have is also budget related with respect to the eastleigh tech college we have it in our budget is 90 million and i think that we need to think differently about how we're going to pay for this school i don't think 90 million should come out of our budget i think what comes out of our budget is the footprint is the property and the walls i'm trying to think of the framework whatever and then there are two other investments one is the corporate investment in the in the individual bays or schools within that technical college and then the third would be an investment

038by the state and so i know we can't pull this together for the current session other than to introduce the idea of partnering with the state business public private with the state and looking more towards 22 23 24 25 bringing it up a couple of times so they develop us a sense of where we're going i think the question then would be how how do we start what is it that the legislature would be looking for from us how what so in conversation this year draft form next year an absolute ass the following year i can just i'm just not asking you to respond to this now but as we move forward some pragmatic suggestions about how we should be partnering with the community what it is they're looking to see as we go forward

039with this and i would tell you that that makes perfect sense to me to do that but i but what we really need to be able to do in doing an educational piece if you will to the legislatures which is what you're talking about which is very important i mean laying the groundwork the more times they hear this the more excited they can get about it is really down to how do we sell that as being something really important you the easley tech is so exciting because this is what we're going to be able to do with this and this is why you should get behind you mr mrs legislators should get behind this so that we can really you know make this all happen so the more information we can get in that regard

040the better off it is for us we need a champion we always need a champion with something like that and obviously my initial reaction would be you know we need to make sure that the representative roach is right there with us for those are my comments thank you i want to go to miss i'll come back to you miss games i want to get the people who haven't spoke yet miss vaughn yes hi hello i'm going to ask you for a little bit different kind of a pulse of what you felt when you talked to our local delegations and how they're really feeling about public education let me add a comment to that as a career educator who goes back to 1969-70 school year every single year especially since i've been here in florida i

041see more and more of an attack on public education i see and this really hurts my heart to hear the comments and i think some of these things are reflected in the legends the legislation that came out of this session really an overall lack of trust and respect for our professionals especially our classroom teachers there seems to be a concerted effort to undermine to expand because i think one of the bills you were talking about the scholarship didn't it also expand the eligibility making it more middle class not just because 100 000 yeah threshold yeah yeah because originally that was supposed to be like more geared to low income and so things like that and comments from the community and comments and editorials that i have been reading in new york times and other outstanding

042newspapers they get so there's such a disrespect for teachers that it's even gotten at the extreme people demanding cameras in classrooms to monitor teachers and make sure they're not teaching something a parent wouldn't approve of and saying that children and parents don't really have a right to demand privacy in our public schools because the public schools are paid for by taxpayers so if you could share some of the responses that you got with your interactions and obviously you were very successful with the health education albeit there's the huge other opt out and yeah it's fine but don't teach this don't it's just very disturbing the lack of respect for professional educators what are you seeing what trends and especially trends among our local delegation well our local let me let me first start out by

043saying the trends because we read national trends too you know we look at all of the national trends when it comes to all of the groups that actually the legislators attend these meetings the alec meetings and ncsl meetings and i when i was a legislator i attended those meetings i know what those meetings are about most generally those meetings will be where you'll get a lot of draft legislation handed out to legislators and the draft legislation then either either they get all excited about it or they don't and a lot of that you will find is very conservative a lot some of it may be even more more more red meat than even you're talking about because i hear you i understand as a former legislator a legislator as a former educator that has to

044get you right to the heart of something that you feel so passionately about and that i understand i can tell you when i see legislators acting bad it gets to my heart too because that isn't what anybody really wants of that unfortunately what we find is that with the leadership that we have here in our state and have had in the last few years that we do find that the leaning is in that direction i do not believe i honestly do not believe that they really are meaning to be mean to teachers because most of them whenever you whenever you address them directly and talk about it that a lot of them will come right out and say well i didn't mean the teachers i meant the leadership or the school board or the on

045and on and on i don't i didn't mean that the people who are in the classroom with my kids i meant other people that are making these decisions so that's what we hear our delegation here in lee county and we and we trip over into collier county some too with the people that we interact with and even up to charlotte a little bit we find that this year we had we had some newbies if you will we had some newly elected legislators and miss jordan i know went to every meeting with us and we had an opportunity we felt to start making friends i will tell you that we had good interaction with them i don't believe that there and she can tell you more than i can even with that because she did most

046of the presenting when we were there we felt that we had an opportunity with with with adam botana with representative rotana with representative pierce pierce sorry jenna i just messed your name up because it's really malika now okay so and they both were really open in fact it was interesting because they both asked for additional information which we immediately sent to them specific to health education specific to the things that we were really looking at those types of things that we went in detail i did follow-up emails with each of them about the things that we talked about because they seemed interested enough that they were going to really look at it now that's those two locally i will tell you that mr g lombardo has young children he's very interested obviously in education because

047he has young children he is a very conservative man and so he has some very strong opinions about that but at the same time we did have an opportunity to start sharing and start making making inroads with him if you will to understand us a little bit better understand what we're faced with a little bit better understand how many children that we actually are impacting families that we're impacting so i think all that was really good we did have senator pasado who has been a friend of ours for a very very long time very big supporter of health education very big supporter of mental health she too is moving into a leadership role if everything goes according to plan she will be the president of the senate in another year so we feel that we

048have a good friend in her is she always going to side with us probably not if you look at her voting record her voting record is probably going to reflect that she supported all of these measures i didn't see her standing up not supporting them she didn't she didn't have any reason to not now i can tell you also that senator rodriguez who we have known for many years i've certainly known him for many years he has strong opinions likewise in regards and most of those are very conservative opinions he actually sponsored a couple of the bills that we have here and spoke very eloquently about why he did that he has a child that has been in our school system a special needs child who's been in our school system and so because of

049that we have a few extra hurdles to jump with with that fortunately for us his team that he has is the team that senator ben aquisto had so we have very strong relationship and very strong ties there too so consequently even though our relationship is somewhat strained there for many many reasons from a long time ago which have absolutely nothing to do with anything we have done more most of you have done either so from from a long history so we've had a lot of making up to do and we've worked towards that means being able to do that with him hopefully making some positive insight that kind of gives you i think i don't think i missed anybody on that mr roach perfect example too he's he's the first guy actually that we talked

050to who said health education there's no way anybody can be against this and so he was very supportive and in fact this year whenever i called him said guess what we found the bill here it is it's you know representative yarbrough's bill please get with him and he was very receptive to doing i mean he called me on a saturday afternoon you know and returned my call and you know so i think that because of all those things but in general miss von i will tell you that i hear you i see what's going on nationwide too we don't lose sight of what's happening in our state but we certainly don't lose sight of what's happening at alec in nsa in csl and some of the legislation draft legislation you're putting out the bills that

051did not pass this year that we see come back every year to and back to miss kittens you know every year a lot of these bills will be repeats retreads of bills so consequently those are things we have to still stay on top i'm not sure i got to exactly what you wanted but that was my rundown on what i think you were asking yeah and i really appreciate that at least we got the health education albeit we have the yeah we'll teach health except not a really important part for our teens and moving forward everything on of course everything on budget and some of the other things are reflective of how the lawmakers feel about public education but i think that needs to be we're i don't think we're doing a good job as

052public educators at selling ourselves and showing ourselves as institutions that take everyone we don't you know no matter what you're handicapped no matter what your any any any of those things we take everyone and i really think that needs to be a priority for all of us here on on the board and from my opinion for you guys as well to really sell the unique job we do as public educators and have always done even when we have to jump through hoops and over some of these hurdles that have really hurt us with the four especially with the for-profit charters some of which go in and out of business like that i'm not talking about ones like some of the city the municipal ones the for-profits so appreciate what you do thank you but i

053just hope that moving forward as all of us as professional educators by virtue of being here on the board that we do a much better job of selling the unique things that we do as public educators and our teachers for now a lot of disrespect from community members so that's that's off my soapbox no i know and i know that i we've known each other long enough for me to understand where you're coming from i believe on on that regard i would tell you that i think that we all owe it to this institution to lee county to our families to be able to bring those things we all owe it to those kids to bring those things forward you know the respect for teachers i couldn't agree with you more about that i feel

054it in my heart and soul you know i come from a my father-in-law was a superintendent of schools my mother-in-law was a teacher ashley's mother's a teacher my in-laws were both teachers my kids are in public school you're speaking to people here who have nothing i went to school in lee county i graduated from cape coral high school nothing but respect for them and would be hard-pressed to have anybody try and debate that with either one of us and i'm sure with any of you i would also say that this has been a year that like no other like no other and that we have so much to be proud of with what happened this year and we just have been so much worse we talk about that all the time how the pivot the

055you know the pivot that happened here the fact that you know all of those things it's a great story that and it's not a story it's factual it's you know it's not fiction that we have to share about that's what your teachers did because you know as much as the decisions could be made with leadership or here your teachers were the people there and so i think that those are things that we continue to share as we you know set meetings and we go and talk to folks and you know people really want to hear about that we recently i was at a another meeting happened to be dr atkins speaking at that meeting and he's been speaking at some meetings prior to his retirement and and the stories that he's been able to share

056to some of our community leaders i believe have been very impactful because people didn't understand or realize unless they're like ashley would have for children school you know i had the chief of staff for the commissioner of education his chief of staff alex kelly is a very good friend of mine and we've had conversations about what is going on in the classroom because he knows my four kids are in elementary and middle school so at least he's hearing that part of it and now he's in the governor's office as his one of his chiefs of staff but you know they do want to know what's happening like you said i mean they want to know especially someone that's not in the classroom or doesn't have children what is happening especially during covid what is going

057on with the teaching are your kids learning are they retaining how are they doing mentally because that wasn't that's another big deal is the mental health aspect of our children and what they went through this past year whether they were at home or in the classroom with masks on and not interacting with their friends and not eating with their friends and things of that nature so i mean i know i've been asked from a personal level from people that work on these issues in tallahassee well and i think you're right because we have to be the ones who are telling that story right and carrying that narrative miss fisher i thank you that you had of course yes so for the past several years it's been a pleasure to work with you and watch you

058advocate and be available to us and as an advocate for comprehensive health education and mental health once you guys came on the scene you took the ball and ran with it and we have incrementally made steps forward and this is all to the benefit of our kids it's necessary our numbers are still not great when it comes to sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancies etc but we have made progress and rome wasn't built in a day so i really have to thank you so much on a personal note for your continued hard work on that and reporting to us all of what happened and especially this year for you to accomplish what you have and to keep our local delegation on board with some of those issues that were important to us i thank you

059again absolutely thank you were the driving force miss fisher i have to tell you i've known you for a long time too i know i know you and you were really pushing hard for that but it was the right thing to do and now i believe that we have this first step we have an opportunity to grow it people realize it wasn't it wasn't the bad thing to do no and and i thank my colleagues for their continued support too thank you that's been invaluable thank you this is jay vanelly yes your comments questions thank you i know legislators i've spoken to them and basically i think what tallahassee is really wanting they're just wanting us the accountability piece of it that's it's and they're not out for just teach you know against teachers or

060because i think we've got a governor that thought about teachers who just didn't think about all staff and i think that's what we're doing wrong it's not advocating for all and i think that's really important that you know we have to do a better job in advocating for you know all all employees that run a school district you know and because i mean the classroom's really really where the important stuff is done but you know it all trickles down right you know really so you've got to have the bus driver to get them there that's right and so i think that's for for when i step back and look at everything that's what i think we're not doing is you know doing the accountability piece and making sure that we're transparent about it and so

061people know what we're doing in doing our best that we can do with what we have instead of complaining about it just keep working you know and so i think that's really important one of my questions i had is i heard so much about the bright futures and i'm i'm really worried that it's coming back but when i spoke to legislators about it their their thought was we need to re we need to look at this and chan it needs to change but you know the changes that we're making were terrible and i don't think they really were thinking everything through so i'm expecting it to come back i guess i'm just hoping that we advocate accordingly so that we so that the parents are happy and the students are happy and where it's a

062positive you know positive advocating for it you know i appreciate that i senator baxley and i have known each other very long time he and i served together actually in the legislature so i've known him for many many years and i ha i have to tell you i think that knowing him and knowing his personality i know that we'll be back okay i there there's no guessing there i don't need a crystal ball to tell me that i know it will be back i'm hoping that when it comes back he's put more thought into it and i know that he was beaten up pretty badly he was bruised and battered and bloody nosed through all of that and because of that i think it's made everybody a little hesitant to jump in with both feet

063and what you say i believe is probably very true and that is that any program that's been in place for as long as bright futures has been in place there's been a lot of changes that have happened and yes we probably do need to look at it seriously but looking at it seriously in my opinion is not having someone just throw out draft language and let it go and unfortunately i think that's what happened and i think that he was shocked at how much pushback i think he knew there was going to be pushback i think he was shocked at how much pushback there was and how it got really personal which is unfortunate i don't think anybody here wants anything to get that personal when it comes to our public servants we should be

064able to debate policy without it being that personal and it got very personal towards him so that was unfortunate to see that happen but will it be back yes but hopefully with more thought and it wasn't picked up in the house it only passed there was nothing there was no language in the house and that bill only passed the senate it was 22 to 18. and there were republicans that voted against that bill so i think carol hit the nail on the head i really think they threw out draft language and not wisely we're not expecting the backlash that they have but any time you give a family with a child that's going to college a certain amount of money and then try to pull that back it's scary and it's very unfair because they've

065earned that scholarship and that family budgets by that scholarship so i don't know why that all wasn't thought through i don't understand the thought process of that but if it comes back and i think that it will it just it'll look differently i hope that it is well thought out but that is one of the issues that we need to constantly hammer our local delegation about over the summer and into the fall when we start going back is that bright futures cannot end up where it was at in the senate and senator pasado knows that and she's the rules chair right well and i mean parents for four years students high school you know career they've planned accordingly yeah strategically picked classes and did colleges expensive to get to you know for their next step

066for their child's next step so i mean it was a big deal so you had parents that were outraged oh yeah understandably so but i can tell you knowing knowing senator baxley who has like nine children i mean this is a man who has a bunch of kids but senator baxley is known for trying to create what he calls dialogue i call controversy he calls dialogue and some of that i think but it really it he got yeah he got yeah he got slapped around so i would recommend that maybe this could be on our agenda and this is something to talk about but you know and what your thought your expertise would be would you all recommend recommend it being on our and it could be on fsbas i don't know absolutely but 100

067we both believe that it should be one of our bullet points great thank you thank you so we're coming up to the hour and so i'm going to have that fast kittens i know it was a quick hour wasn't it so we have miss kittens and then ms patricka for the last questions please okay a couple of three quick things one on the house bill 545 you mentioned about the board would be reviewing reviewing materials on health instruction and all that and i would like to say that perhaps we put it on our agenda to look at what does that look like because if we have to do that what kind of a rubric or template do we have are they providing what are we looking for yeah that type of thing so i don't

068know if they have that specifically if we could get that information or you could share we talked to your attorney about that last week too okay not about a rubric but about that particular piece of legislation right and just something i mean if we're if it's something we're supposed to be doing we need to know what we're looking for on the innovation school that ms morgan mentioned i believe that dr savage had mentioned previously about a plan to to help that partnership along and maybe he will want to mention that later on and then you mentioned the you know visits with our chair and i'm wondering could miss jordan give us an update on you know those visits and what types of things yes and that was in the very beginning of the session and

069i did come back so anytime i've ever gone out i've always come back and i've shared that information right and that was me that was our we did like a drive-by if you will maybe not the drive-by is not the correct word yep we did it because they all gave us quite a bit of time actually especially you know when you go to tallahassee it's a drive-by right when we got to their offices we actually got to you know drink our soda yeah correct we did yeah we were given candy or whatever we wanted but we were so anytime that i had gone to any others i had come back and i had shared and i know that representative botana he also was going to go to do a walkthrough because he does not have

070children he has dogs he has no children and so i know he went to bonita and miss morgan was over there he had asked miss reach out to ms morgan and asked miss morgan to to take him for the tour she could not do she was at a meeting that day and miss stillwell met him and took him on the tour of the school and i think he actually know someone at the school was one of his friends as as well but he said anybody he's well he welcomes anybody to come and visit him he's not in his office he's at the boat at his boat dealership you can go there anytime stop by see him he'll be more than happy to speak to anybody all of them you know said their doors are open

071for anybody who wants to stop by and speak to them and i frequently do talk to most of them you know because when i see him or if i'm thinking of something i pick up the phone i call him so we all have that duty as carol had spoke about before it's all of us we all need to you know be working this together did you have another question ms kittens no i'm fine thank you okay thank you and then mr patricka you would be the so i thought bright futures was something they dealt with in off election years so i'm surprised to hear that you anticipate it coming up again this year he is turned out yeah okay okay so it doesn't that will that will change things because he is termed out okay

072that's that was my answer thank you again so then carol or is there something else that we i know i know you're on the clock i got it very quickly just so everyone understands committee week starts september 20th september 20th we're so we're looking we're i ha i haven't really looked but i think we're out 90 days out somewhere yeah somewhere close to 89 you know days out the delegation meeting was just announced the delegation meeting is going to be august 18th at its lo at the venue where we always are at there at i started to say edison community college at fsw thank you and the deadline for put getting on the agenda is august 6th that being said it would be really helpful to have be really helpful to have a platform at

073least drafted at least moving in that general direction to have a platform as far as some of those things so we need to really start thinking about that like yesterday as far as you know anything that we need to put on the platform and who and who would like to go and present and all of those types of things which we don't need to know right this minute but by five o'clock on august 6th we have to know i mean i will i will certainly make sure that our delegation chair representative roach knows of our interest make sure that they know that they save a spot for us etc but paperwork wise all of those types of things even if it's draft they need by august 6th ms patrick can i suggest that we reach

074consensus to meet as soon as humanly possible regarding legislative platform i know we have the month of july mostly off but if it means meeting in july either on this issue we could perhaps prioritize this issue and push something off in something else off into july that's less time sensitive i'd like to reach consensus on that if we may well i think this is something we definitely have to do so we're going to find room for it somewhere and do we have a consensus in finding room for this agenda miss morgan yes it's fine yes all right i need to know the schedule i will be away for part of that so yes if we can work it around their schedules beautiful thank you ms patricka yes please mr cause i've also taken vacation time

075you already took a vacation no just kidding i'll you know of course the willow board thank you miss fisher yes okay yes so we will definitely work on this and get that information to you and with that is there anything else and i just want to say seriously thank you so much stacy you always always send this information out the updates are fabulous because i can take those updates with the fsba updates and look at them you know put them all together and it's just so appreciative and i know it's so much work and i so appreciate you both of you thank you we appreciate you yes if i may i just hate to interrupt i just looking at our head in our agenda we have our board agenda item review the questions that we

076received were actually specifically related to this item so while that is certainly staff have the ability to answer and do their best to answer to this item we have the benefit of having these folks here today if if you would find it permissible to for me to let those questions be known so that if they would want to add any value beyond what staff could do then that would give you some found time later in the agenda i know you're trying to keep us on schedule but it's just those questions just happen to pertain to capital strategies and that item if you would find it permissible okay if we have questions then we could miss miss vaughn yeah i had one of the questions and it's been answered through the presentation and something that i

077think lauren center miss stilwell sent us earlier so my questions are have been answered thank you i think missed you and ellie head well thank you so much we really appreciate you somebody else okay sorry and actually mine was just regarding i believe this is an annual contract this is really for the superintendent and i couldn't recall if we had went out for initially if this was an rf rfp when we did this three years ago or and that's that's really my concern and i just because i just want to make sure that we had opportunity for all absolutely and we have the ability to have staff answer that later if you like those are that part of the question is certainly a staff piece but dr desmore's is available now if you'd like to

078have that answer while our capital strategies folks are here it doesn't matter me whatever chair it's your discretion i would prefer that we do that afterwards okay if that's okay and mr bruno thank you madam chair i want to thank capital strategies for all of their assistance when we you know move forward with the advisory committee and everything else as we've analyzed these bills i really have enjoyed working with them based on the bills that we have there is going to be some policy that will be coming forward to the board try to work on those as quickly as possible ms kittens i think you had a question on house bill 545 is that the one you were asking about so that's going to have us revise board policy 2.18 to include certain language with

079regards to the public access and the board approving those instructional materials and there's i would say about four to five either new policies or revisions to policies that you'll be seeing in addition i've had an opportunity to speak to them about giving me a summary from 2018 and 2019 and i'm in the process of reviewing that to make sure that we are up to date at least from 2018 2019 i feel comfortable with 2020 and we will definitely be up to date for 2021 so that is one of the projects that i have is to make sure that we're completely caught up with our policies now that i have this great cheat sheet that they provided so i really appreciate that and that's that's what i'm going to share thank you thank you so much

080appreciate it have a great day guys thank you okay so then next will be dr desimora and miss kelly lecher hey good afternoon good afternoon dr savage members of the board good to be here this afternoon to talk with you all things budget so this should be the most exciting part of the day we have lots of information to go over related to preliminary budget and also capital i know that we only have 40 minutes for the day so in case we don't finish our discussion because there is really a lot of material to go through then we also have some time reserved in tomorrow's briefing to continue the discussion as well so it's as far as we get so that being said i'll turn it over to mrs lecher who will share some information

081information related to the preliminary budget good afternoon so some of this stuff we've already discussed i just wanted to kind of go over it again so that everybody was aware of what's in the budget of course as you know the bsa has gone up 53 dollars and 42 cents from the fy21 we're now at 4 hundred and seventy two dollars and ninety one cents our one unweighted fte we've discussed has gone up two thousand six hundred and thirty two and remember that's a number that we're not sure we're going to hit but deal we felt comfortable that we would so we're hoping that we do and we're i'm holding back some fte just in case we have to give any money back so we don't have to go back out to the classroom the teacher

082salary increase they have it again the 47.5 they gave us an additional allocation i'm not sure how we're supposed to be handling that at this time so we're waiting for some direction from the department of education i did contact them and they said they were probably going to be expecting a plan again next year which makes me think that we're going to have to do something before we get the allocation so we're just waiting to hear from doe on that one we do expect some growth in our family empowerment scholarships we saw a large growth in the current year and with all of the changes that they're making next year we are expecting it to be an impact on the budget i'm not going to go into the details because i think ashley and carol

083covered that very well there we have an increase in the contribution for our health insurance of 744 dollars per employee we went from 7 360 and 80 cents to eight thousand one hundred and four dollars and eighty cents and that's about a seven million dollar increase to the budget there's going to be an increase in the retirement rate it's going from ten percent to ten point eight two percent i was expecting before around 11 so 10.82 was a nice surprise to me and that's about 5.3 million dollars based on current employees so for the general fund our estimate for the general fund is 664 748 that's a 19 million dollar increase over the current year that includes the growth in the fte that doe was expecting us to have and retirement and health insurance increases

084are in that number the fund balance right now we're expecting to go up about 17 million dollars we do believe that number is artificially high for this year as you know we had been bringing that down trying to get that number down some but with all of the vacancies that occurred this year during covet we had unfilled positions and things that were going on and not being able to get subs in the classroom left some money out there we are working on a plan to be able to bring that fund balance down but not with reoccurring expenses that we're going to have to carry on with so we're going to look into some different options that we will be bringing back to you the focus this year of course is the classroom we are focusing

085again on our english learners we're focusing on the low-performing students and we're trying to recapture learning loss during that covet time frame the budget is constantly changing right now number none of the numbers are set in stone so when i come back to the tentative budget with you all in july is probably going to look very different than it does right now our debt is estimated anywhere between 86 to 102 million and later on we'll talk some more in the when we get to the capital piece about why that number in debt is so different depending on the options that you choose and the way we choose to handle our debt it could be anywhere but from 86 to about 102 million we'll be discussing that later on so our capital is currently estimated about

086950 to 430 million it includes an estimated 181.9 in cops the capital millage is at about 148 million that number is adjusted up with the property appraisers updated estimate just so you know that our sales tax we're estimating this year to be about 87.2 million and impact fees at about 17.3 million that where current collection rate is at 52 and a half percent and that as you remember we had the impact fees the county commission approved a two and a half percent increase as the years go every year that we move forward and again more detail and capital will be coming forward after this so our food service we're looking at about 63.2 million dollars that is a decrease of about 9.2 million over the current year there was a lot of feeding going on

087through the summer for and through the school year for our food service we fed every student even if they were home you know the home connector however they were being instructed they were being fed but our focus continues to be on making sure that all of our students have nutritious meals and the cep will continue for all schools into next year our internal service fund is estimated at about 155.5 million that's a 10 million dollar increase of course we have the health insurance contribution increase of about 7 million and the fund balance we have estimated currently to go up a little bit and we'll continue to watch that and that will change as final numbers come in our tax roll is currently at 96.5 billion the conference reporters or first calculation came out about 100.8

088billion and the new the property appraisers preliminary report that we just received takes that up to about 103 billion dollars that is a 6.68 increase over the current year which is a nice set of money as you know the required local effort even though that's going up we'll see probably no additional money from the required local effort piece because as the tax piece goes up the state peace goes down where we will see our increase is our discretionary millage we're expecting about 73 million more in our discretionary or about 73 million from discretionary and in the capital that was 148 million so in the discretionary that would be about 1.6 million more than what's in the budget right now and in capital that's three million dollars more and we'll find that out when the second

089calculation comes out in july there's no questions on the that part of the budget i'll move into a quick summary of esser miss fond yeah i did have a question you showed that this year our focus is on resources to the classroom and the three areas ell low performing students and recaptured learning losses all focus on low achieving students i've asked about this before and i'm going to ask again why are we not providing specifics to our gifted students and our students that are enrolled in advanced classes and i want to add to that we have as a district now we have expanded i know i think all the high schools or some of the high schools have now for english three or four depending on the school english three or four honors put in

090an ace cambridge ace class i think our middle school eighth graders are expanding so we have and i have my own opinion on ace versus 18 versus but that's for another time we have expanded so many of these programs for our higher achieving students including ap we're pulling in some of our native spanish speakers to take the ap world language spanish exam now all of those generate i know they generate some money to the teachers but they also generate money to the schools and i was asked this question actually about a year ago from a former colleague of mine at estero high school who has been teaching cambridge classes for years and she says said betsy where does this money go we haven't seen it so my question is we are generating more money correct

091by expanding these opportunities and i'll be honest picking courses where we can get kids to pass and it's and that money does where is that money going and do we have a line item in our budget and how much is it because yes we absolutely need to bring everybody up but it's not fair to our high achieving students that they're not getting so the payback you are correct we do generate additional dollars for that and the teachers receive bonuses based on the students that pass so we do give that money back to the schools it's a what we do is it the fte that they generate the bonus amounts are reduced from that the tests the cost of the tests are reduced from that and then the remainder of the funding goes back to the

092school right to use in those programs now how the principals choose to use that money is at the discretion of the principal so the money is allocated back into the schools and i can provide you a spreadsheet of every program and how much money is given back to the schools and how much it's earned so the money does go back to the schools and then they allocate the dollars okay and i've actually heard that now that you said that in in the past but would that spreadsheet also include how the schools used it and let me ask you this if it was generated by our high achieving students passing these very difficult exams when we give the money back to the school why do we just say oh you can use it however is there

093not maybe this is also a question for dr savage is there not a stipulation that because the money came out of these advanced programs they need to go back and enhance the advanced programs yes there is there are those there are there are those stipulations that the money is to be used in the programs the money is put in projects that they do see it separately so they can account for it and use it for those programs the way that they need to be done so we do it is supposed to be used back into the programs that earn the dollars we follow up on that or do we just trust and i'm not trying to diss any of the principles but do we follow up and if we don't shame on us and also

094shame on us if we don't say this was earned in these advanced programs we need to reinvest because we need to invest in all of our students and not give the short end of the stick to those who are working so hard yes so i can tell you that if we are questioned on the usage of the dollars we explain to them how they can be used but we do make an assumption that the principals are using the money appropriately and in the classrooms the way they should they do buy additional staff with some of them to help with the programs as well so i you know we do have an accounting of that you know where the dollars are and how they're being spent but we don't review it we do i'm going to

095add one more thing on on the dollars and then i'm going to ask dr savage to weigh in i talked with dr spyro about this at least a year probably more more than a year ago when i was on the liaison to curriculum and he and i actually i talked mostly and he said there's not enough money for that the priority went to the lower and he said there's not enough money on to train and i think that's gotten better to train all of our because we cannot have teachers at any grade level teaching these higher level classes without proper training i mean it's just it's unfair to the kids it's very unfair to the teachers so i'm going to ask dr savage to weigh in please on money that's generated and where it should

096be in the budget because i feel like it should be channeled back into the advanced programs and gifted program well i would just comment that i would love to have the opportunity to provide some detailed information about a school by school breakdown showing what funds have been received and how that's been expended as lecture kind of volunteered to share that piece and also to give an ample opportunity for academic services to provide some bulleted talking points around that particular area it's been an area of considerable focus and so i'd hate to just speculate on beyond the work that they've already been doing to that effect just probably from my own perspective this is an area of considerable attention for for me it's a family pride a lot of my family members are have taught some

097of those advanced courses i think as an opportunity in our district we always really try to prioritize lifting up every member of our community i think it's just also very essential that we take for students who are already coming to school and are far ahead that we continue to allow them to achieve the highest possible scores on the most rigorous tests available i think it's a shared perspective of a lot of our school leaders and so i just would love a chance to kind of highlight some of those successes as well as any opportunities we have to enhance that work so with with just knowing we have a lot more to cover as well would that be amenable for for you yeah yeah and what i'd like to ask for is if you would share

098with me and the board how much we are generating through those tests and am i correct in saying that we're generating a lot more money as we've added the more tests so the first couple of years that you add like in the ace program there's you won't see much of the additional funding so we put out a lot of money up front for the test and the things to go on and the schools do it isn't until a student takes the test and passed it is the money generated so like say they started these programs this year this year all of the money was up front cost to the district and then next year the my the students will take the test about this time frame and hopefully next year we'll see some benefit from

099the additional tests that were taken yeah i would like to see that and i would like to see if available reports from the schools on exactly how they utilized that money and because i would like to see as we look at new budgets in addition to focusing on the ones that you did focus on those that are our very best best and brightest in terms of academics so thank you and thank you and i just wanted to make a point that the point the bullet points that you saw in the previous slide were in no way supposed to be an inclusive list right so when we listed some of the you know academic priorities it certainly wasn't meant to be an exhaustive list of what is in the budget it's just an idea of some

100of the top top things that came out based on the data and i'm sure that as we move along during this summer and the school year our friends and academic services will be sharing a lot of information that dr savage just talked about but i just wanted to make sure to point out that was not supposed to be the end-all be-all list of what academic priorities were in the budget yeah and i do realize that but let's be honest when something appears in print in black and white in the budget it gives it gives me more confidence that it's being dealt with so thank you i appreciate it right okay and if we could just going forward if we can be really considerate about trying to keep everything to maybe a five minute for each

101comment so that way we can move on and have everybody speak because the time and i know mr trica it's super quick the 2632 that's new students we expect next year of that number how did the state consider red shirt kindergartners and are we considering that number it's it's my understanding that a lot of parents chose to keep their littles home rather than send them to school during covid so what are we anticipating for redshirt kindergartners that can be in a board update please and thank you okay is there anyone else has comments regarding this particular segment okay it's kelly okay thank you thank you so the next thing i want to talk about is esser we have a lot going on in esser right now and a lot of unanswered questions i'll do my

102best to tell you as much as we know right now so what this the first thing here is displaying is an esser timeline this is when the funds we believe will be available through and the reason i say the word believe is because we have been caught on some of these cares act dollars even though the state has said they would be available for a certain amount of time they'll come back and take the money before we've had an opportunity to complete the spending before our charter schools have had an opportunity to complete their spending or even just we've spent it in trying to get the reimbursement has not occurred so with that in mind we are trying our best to you know utilize the dollars we're trying to make sure that while we utilize

103them we don't leave ourselves high and dry later because i believe that it will take us a couple of years to regain that learning loss that students have so we want to make sure that we keep the time you know the coverage of those the higher things that we're offering students for as often as we can the first the the top one is the esser three dollars that we're expecting to get the total is about 128 billion and that's statewide i believe i'm looking at this here we do believe we'll have those dollars through fiscal year 24 completely and then be able to do our final spend out in fiscal year 25. the s or two dollars we believe we will have through the end of 23 with a little bit of overlap into 24

104and our current s or one dollars we should have through the end of next year as well so we're hoping to can have programs that will continue on to help support the students throughout the programs just a kind of a recap on where we are with our current cares act which is the corona coronavirus aid relief and economic security act that was awarded to us we had 22.8 million it was awarded and it should go through september of 22. that is the one if you all recall the they have been doi has constantly been looking for the spin down of this even though it was for two years and we had put in the budget for two years to continue services to schools because we have been told they won't give us s or two

105dollars until we spend out sr1 which we're still trying to get clarification if that is true or not what we've done is we have put some additional items we've done amendments into sr1 and then move those items for the continuation into the other esser grants to try and make sure that we can utilize the dollars and still receive the new dollars in its pla and it's when we expect to get them as well we use this we'll go just a couple of initiatives that we had in place here was our expanded learning opportunities so we had our summer programming that we did we had after school tutoring we did an additional 30 minutes in some of our high schools for connect with lee and back on track and did some additional with some you know

106a lot of tutoring with these dollars as well to try and do it we offered some safe reopening of our schools so we had the ppe that we had in place the one-to-one computers and things like that social emotional learning supports we contracted with mental health professionals and we had some small group services that were provided for students we added we had additional supports for our ell esc and the lowest 25 students in here we are looking at the sr2 cares sr2 portion that we're expecting to get about 84 million dollars through we again it was distributed to school districts based on their title one but it you do not have the rules of title one so you know we had that same allocation method from the first one we expect about 9.8 million of

107that to go to charter schools the proposed spending requirements that we have and again this is what we've been hearing we've not gotten any official notifications from the florida department of education on the requirements of this these dollars but about 3.3 or 4 percent for non-enrolled assistants 16.8 or 20 percent academic assistance and 4.2 million or 5 percent on technology assistance so we have been working with all of the divisions we have all been meeting once or twice a week trying to figure out the best way to help our students with the learning loss and to provide the needed resources in your attachments there was some initiatives i won't go over all of them but some of the initiatives that we had the group had come up with and discussed trying to do for students

108and for staff there are some things in there for staff as well sr3 we're looking at about 174 million it was again distributed on the same basis on title 1. this one requires that we have consultation with our stakeholders and we just and they stakeholders are you know staff teachers things like that so that is a part of sr3 that we'll we'll work with there is a 20 requirement for learning loss initiatives and we are going to continue the supports that we had with sr1 and sr2 initiatives with this as well again we're still waiting on more information to come forward on these any questions on this sir miss morgan and then miss kittens yeah so i'm looking at the sr2 and three initiatives under discussion and the additional personnel math and science coaches mental

109health professionals school counselors social workers additional esol resource teachers where are we going to get these people we can't even get them for our current staffing and and normally i would say i'm not for adding staff when you've got none non-recurring funding if you could even find these people and then find a way to absorb them back into the system once the funding goes away i just i'd like to understand a little bit more about that aspect of it the others make complete sense to me not these this doesn't make sense but i really want to understand from an operational administrative point of view how this how does you see this happening so though we have had those discussions because of the one of the hardest thing is pulling the teachers out of the classroom

110and so we've talked about getting some outside contracted services in some of these areas to help and so staff is looking into the opportunities that can give to us we are really looking at this and the most important thing is to have a teacher in the classroom so if if all else fails they go back to the classroom because that is the number one place for student for teachers but your point is taken i mean it is a significant challenge it you know it really is and so and we know that we have those same concerns that we may not be able to find all of the people that we need for the positions that we're you know that we're able to fund at this point but we're going to work in tandem with academic

111services and hr to do the best that we can to get as many as we can and i we agree with you from a financial standpoint that typically you have this one-time funding source that is going to be around for two years in some cases three based on that timeline and so typically it would not be ideal to try to invest in people or recurring sources but as you can see by the numbers i mean 174 million dollars 86 million dollars there is no way in such a people-intensive business as ours with the parameters that they are putting around in terms of how you have to focus it we wouldn't be successful in spending this money if we did not invest in people even for the short period of time that we can do so

112that's that's why you see some of what you see on that list so essentially you're looking at contracts because contracts roll off so that for your some of your professional staff you're really talking about contracted employee contracted specialists as opposed to direct hires in some cases yes but not in all cases in some cases it would be direct hires that then when we did that we would make sure that they knew that this is based on the grant that we have and that grant has this time period right but then we also know that based on our numbers each year in terms of numbers of people that retire that leave that will have the opportunity within those three years to retain some of those people in the positions that come open thank you miss kittens

113okay non-recurring funding makes me very ill makes my stomach hurt and my head hurt too because i look at a situation that suddenly they have given us this awesome amount of money to help especially to bridge the achievement gap and if it's only for three years it's like saying okay in three years we're going to catch all this up and we all know that's absolutely not going to happen so i guess two things one what is our plan b if we're looking at the achievement gap of students that has widened because of covid we get the money let's say it narrows somewhat and takes us back to where we were so do we have a plan b let's say and you know this lecture you mentioned at one point sometimes they just they give it

114then they take it away so do we have a plan b for those students if we're still in the flux of trying to close that gap and then i have one more thing to say on it go ahead so we've had discussions about that as well and so while we're going through this process we're going to be looking at the data we're going to see what is working and what isn't working and if something is working really well then we're going to try and figure out what do we what can we give up to do what's working and so we're going to be looking at those as we're going through this and seeing what we need to shift to make it happen so that we're providing the best for our students okay and for my

115colleagues i would like to maybe put on our list for our legislative asks that if we do see the disaster funding is truly helping to close this gap you know is there anything that prohibits us from asking to have that funded and showing the data look we had this we were able to do this in this time period so why can't we ask for that to be funded for even an extended three years or something if it's closing the gap so i would like to have that on the agenda for a legislative piece the other thing and you mentioned charter schools as charter schools are opening an example is athenia what what is the data how many students did we lose and of what you know levels did we lose because that affects everything from

116finance to academics and all that as well so i really would like to see that data i we did have charter schools like athenian that grew during covet but we also had charter schools that lost so it's hard to track where they you know did they go from a traditional school setting or did they shift from another charter school did they come from outside we haven't looked at that data but we can look at that data and see you know what students they picked up during this time period i don't know we have not looked at that as we were moving well we should have it because for the charter schools don't they have to say from whence they came to go into that charter school if they're coming from yes we can get the

117data we do charter school yes that's that's the kind of thing that i and i've been asking for i really would like to see that because that does affect a lot of things okay we can we can pull it we just have not looked at that during this time frame okay so i would really like to get that at your earliest convenience if you could okay miss getting what exactly is it that or miss kelly do you understand what she's asking for so that way there's a clear i'm asking for the data of student enrollment for charter schools and you know leaving traditional going to charter and vice versa and those numbers basically so that would be student assignment that would well and i know that there is a report too that if it's a

118charter school that our grants department has to keep that information so they have to know that so they should have that as a part of their criteria for grants and for charters yes we can tell by the students enrollment code if they came from another traditional school or if they came if they come from traditional school another charter school from a private or from outside the county we can pull that you're talking about just the current year the fy21 current year yeah should be fine i know that a lot of students have moved to charter schools recently within the year and i just would like to see how's that affecting us okay thank you thank you thank you for clarification are there any other questions are we on this on this so we're going to

119finish right okay no no they're not okay so i do have a question for yes sir well not really answer part just a quick general question so i saw in the news where the city of cape coral is trying to take or wanting to take half cent half of you know some of our money for charter for their charter school you know half the half cent sales tax what impact would that have on us you may not have that information so but i'm and i'm not curious i don't really know the details of what they're really asking for but i know they're wanting to take some of the half sales tax and what impact would that be on the district and what impact would that i mean now does that open that up for other

120charter schools as well like what does that look like i know so mr bruno may want to speak to this as well because i know we had a conversation and she was looking into some things related to the law to my knowledge i don't i don't believe that we have the opportunity to pick and choose what charters we choose with we either what charters we share with rather you either share or you don't right so generally charters are 13 of our population so we would be looking at if we just did that by a population share then that would be 13 of that revenue that would be out to the different schools if we chose to share currently we don't have to if there's any new remember that statue went into play i think it

121was last year if i remember correctly so that any new referendum that goes forward there is a mandate to share with charters but our referendum went through before that so we don't have to do that and recall that we had that discussion when we talked about i'm actually going for the referendum and how we were going to do that and for various reasons chose at that particular point in time not to choose but just to respond to your question about what the impact is it would be if you were just looking at a population about 13 percent of the revenue thank you and mr puy bruno i don't know if you had anything you want to add to that i don't have anything to add to that at this time thank you miss morgan from

122a capital point of view there are differences in the charter schools the oasis charter has been built according to state standards so effectively any investment we make in that school with our capital dollars is a safe investment it's a different problem if we're giving capital dollars to regular charters because we don't have we don't own those schools we don't own that property that's a that's a lost cost if we ever got to the point where the cape was became really aggressive we talked at the board table gosh i raised it i'm going to say six years ago when this last came up that there's no reason we can't incorporate the cape inventory into our inventory and effectively renovate maintain whatever on the same basis we do our own building so rather than giving out on

123a per student or whatever basis because some of their buildings are a lot newer than ours we would effectively put them in the same building and and set up the schedule accordingly so i mean i think i think if if it becomes a serious issue then we do need to think about negotiating with just that charter and so that we don't end up letting them drive a requirement for all of our capital as you've seen you understand what i'm saying yeah that was my concern thank you yeah and then mr tricho you have i thought i remembered at that time when we were pursuing the half penny sales tax that we did a calculation that showed the disproportionate amount of pico dollars that the charter system had received and the sitting council at that time

124looked at those numbers and said you're right we don't have an argument for additional revenue here could be am i wrong is my memory serving me that's true in that we did have information related to pico dollars and how the charters had to received over that time period leading up to the referendum the bulk of the pico dollars and in fact all of the pico dollars for a couple years in there including this current year i don't remember the council looking at that information and saying okay we're going to back off i don't remember recall that piece but i do know that we one of the discussions and the points at which we determine not to share at that point was you know that was one of the talking points related to that okay thank

125you and do we have any other questions i know we're over a few minutes but i think you just have two more pages right i do yes for this part so what's we're still doing a lot of work so the numbers haven't settled we still have to settle on the details and initiatives with esser funds and that's you know we have our items in place but we still don't know again what the department of education is going to require of us so things could change based on that as well i do want to let you know that you probably will not see the s or two and s or three dollars in your the tentative budget when it moves forward because it is coming through the federal area which usually we don't put in the

126budget until the funds are awarded so i just want you to be aware that you will not see that in the tentative budget unless we're awarded those dollars prior to the time of the tenant to budget we still are working on the and determining the overall student growth in the impact which is the kindergartners as well miss patrick we are working to look at that we're still waiting for them to show up so then we're going to make the final decisions on the priorities with all funding sources we're going to look at compensation and finalize our fund balance numbers as well as our revenues and our expense estimates the timeline that we're looking at is july 19th is when the department of education will send us they are required to have the second calculation to

127us with the new millage rate set july 22nd you will receive all of the documents for the tentative budget and the advertisements that will be taking place on friday july 23rd we will be advertising which is required by trim so we'll be doing that on friday the 23rd and then on july 27th we will have our first tentative budget hearing on the fy 22 budget and then on september 8th we will have our final budget hearing on at that time i just wanted to point out that there was an additional document in your handout on the positions that are still being considered nothing has been finalized at this point those are just positions and adjustments and positions that we are considering we still have to meet and go through some final changes on those okay

128so given we're at the end of our time and we still have the capital portion of the budget to do that'll be our continuation for tomorrow to be all capital all the time tomorrow i just have one question that i'll ask miss kittens so these positions that you have open these are positions that have already been there we're not creating these positions there are different pages there the one page is new positions that are being requested for next year there is a page of reclassification so those are current positions that people are asking to have changed there are transfers of positions where they're transferring a position just from one area to another position another area and then there are recommended eliminated positions positions that due to either retirements or vacancies or some some reason they're

129looking at removing those positions from the budget okay so the new positions do they come before us to yes they will be part of the tentative budget you will receive that information with the tentative budget thank you miss kittens and just tagging along to that on the changing positions the ones that exist but are being changed do they not need to come back before us as well because is there a difference in cost as well some cases there are adjustments in cost sometimes i think i highlighted in i think it's pink the ones that are just a funding source change there might be a grant that is going away and so they're changing the funding to another area so it could be some of those but again at the tentative budget those items will be

130presented to you as well okay and one good thing and you can bring it tomorrow one of your items on the previous slide you talked about student growth and capacity and i don't know if that's a part of your presentation tomorrow but i would really like to see some data on on that with the growth capacity and you know in conjunction with fish reports and all that where are we on that i'm sorry in conjunction with what some updated information on our growth and capacity and how we're looking at it that to me is such a significant piece and cornerstone of what we do and i would like to you know at least see how do we get to those numbers of growth and capacity because that is what drives everything it depends on you

131know if you do the numbers one way or you do it another way and i'm not saying it's wrong i'm just saying i would really like to see how that is done i've asked for that but i haven't really received and understood that how that fits into our future planning and all as well i understand okay and miss were you finished miss kitten yes okay miss patrick so i'm looking at new positions paralegal for board attorney i would like to see the overall proposal for legal and how that fits into that before i would approve that i mean as as i understand it we've got significant holes in the legal department and i have no idea at this point how they're going to be plugged and so i i thought we were going to get

132presentation about that in may it's we're two weeks away from our staff attorney leaving and i don't really know what's going on so i would like another yet another priority prioritized subject to be what's happening with legal and how does that position fit in please and thank you are there any other miss morgan yes so i was going to say say the same thing first of all proposed positions haven't been approved so just because they're here doesn't mean they're going to be in the budget and then i would i was going to say the same thing that ms patrick has said i want to see our legal services profile all of the money that we've spent the last couple of years how it's been allocated how it's going to be allocated going forward before we

133entertain any new positions all right before we entertain any new positions thank you any other questions concerns comments just kittens are we going to put the that legal piece on our agenda to every workshop but soon because yeah i think we need to to look at that as well i agree with them we need to know sooner than later what is the plan and since we now have the new superintendent and that falls under his purview then i'm i don't know if you if you wanted to address that at all and say is that in the works or who want to address it to address that it's this is just completing the first week as of today i've had a chance to meet with most board members most of the senior staff as well as

134with the attorneys both our board attorney and our staff attorney so we're very well aware of the two of our attorneys who are leaving and it is certainly of one of our highest priorities to make sure that we are hearing all sides and kind of considering a lot of different variables looking what the current work is that's a hot top priority item for us right now as well anywhere else please thank you so much yes i really appreciate it okay all right thank you well you are done right that was it okay yeah yeah we'll we'll see you again tomorrow okay all right could we have a break a break yeah before we start i think we're done aren't we there are no other we have the agenda review which we don't have the two

135questions and we've already done it no there's still my one question hasn't been answered he wanted they wanted to wait but i think that's it so we have one question and then is that okay so do you need a break or shall we move forward ladies apologize please okay dr savage please yes before we get into questions i just want to also make sure that we know there have been two more items added for good cause i just kind of want to reiterate as a just a mention of why these are happening of course with the condensed summer and knowing that we have a very currently on the schedule there was not another meeting until late july there's a lot of press for some of these issues such as the capital strategies that you've already

136seen as well as the department of health original contract that's in there but just wanted to make sure that i let the board know some of the why on that particular piece the first is an approval of a contract between the state of florida department of health and the school board of lee county that item the reason why it's being added just from a time sensitivity standpoint is that this allows for six school nurses to start on july 1st and it's the last meeting prior to that date at least is currently scheduled i was submitted by the deadline but due to a procedural issue within the board doc system that's being fixed it did not move through our typical approval process but again we don't want to disrupt that critical employment and so that's that's

137one piece the other is just for the administrative recommendations just to ensure that their folks are because we are in such a compressed summer to ensure that either departments or just our district schools are not unduly interrupted and have to wait and have be down those staff members so that's another reason for those appointments some of those things such as surprises when a particular person retires suddenly that has a residual impact along those lines so those are things that we are moving on as briskly as possible but want to make sure that you all have that information as well i'm sorry the last one what the last one is part of a good cause what you just spoke a good cause of personnel recommendations so that's three good causes versus two yes so i have

138f1 h18 and then the others i don't have it listed but it's under it's under our human resources under our typical personnel area so it's administrative personnel that's also a good cause i'm understanding this shady post is it already posted or is that this is the one that posted here no yeah on my list here it's not showing up yet it's not here but that's why i specifically want to mention it now that if it is not present then it will be shortly should be in the system for you to be able to view shortly if not readily that's why i wanted to bring it to your attention that is a late edition today are there any comments about that one you've got some mia miss fisher yes thank you so then do you want

139to clarify like what those positions are since they're not listed now yes so there were there were some other additional movements that would typically be individually briefed to the superintendent those were not over the weekend i pulled those items so they would not be included in this particular item just the significance of like school level leadership and whatnot wanted to make sure those things were addressed the remainder of them are typically coordinated or below positions that typically do not receive the same level of individual briefing and so those are present we do have staff here to speak to any of those if there are any individual concerns or questions about any of the staff movements things such as appointments change of assignment and retirements and so forth is looking on board it's not it's still

140not yeah it's not showing up on board docs right now so they are in the process of approval we just want to notice the board accordingly to be on the lookout for those good cause items and just the nature of why they're coming in that way in that so i may fashion miss kittens go ahead please okay so does that include some of the ones that i'm trying to say this delicately that we've had a lot of discussion and input on that's that's part of the reason why the delay in the process is that over the weekend made the determination that those items should be removed from that item just to give our public more chance to react to those items as well as just to to make sure we have an opportunity internally to

141consider all options make the best decision we again a lot of what precipitates these movements is there isn't another meeting at least there wasn't until late july knowing that any potential like school leadership positions and things of that nature are so significant and you do not want in a short summer you want to give principals every opportunity to prepare to hire to work with their staff to get their master's schedule done things of that nature they're so significant that we're under a definite rush to get those decisions made but we'd really like to make sure that the decisions we put forward are the right decisions the best interests of all students in the community we really value the community and especially on the eve of the pandemic we just want to be as deliberate and

142thoughtful as possible in those decisions we do anticipate some recommendations coming in sooner we're trying to get another meeting scheduled as soon as possible to ensure that we can make those placements so that if we have other critical positions we need to fill we don't have to wait until late july to do so okay and i do have one further question on the principle on assignment position for judy johnson can we get any further information as to what that will be what her duties will be or do we know yet i do not have any of that information right now and attorney bruno can you that would be hr would it not believe that that individual's on administrative leave is that assignment okay all right well perhaps attorney bruno you can let us know individually

143if you have to because of the sensitivity of it at a later date what that is about okay and i had a question miss kittens you made a statement about a conversation that you've had an input that you've had on some of these changes when did that occur we all have there was there was no i have it that's why i'm kind of curious on where what you were referring to i've received quite a i saw quite a few emails about some of the potential changes and miss fisher weighed in on it so would you like oh you're speaking on what the public had sent emails inquiring about a certain individual but that was not a conversation that anyone had i didn't so i'm just saying what conversation was i received conversa i received calls

144about it and we all received emails about it they were directed to the whole board so i don't know why everyone else didn't see emails about that situation but okay miss morgan i think she's talking about two different things one is the situation with the school change that we all got emails about so we all got those emails but there's also all kinds of rumors about other changes and i have not had my initial meeting with the superintendent correct so i have no clue what people are talking about that's why i asked that question what was the conversation i'm i'm confused but anyway that's all right are there any other comments so as far as the questions for the board the one question that remains for the board of gender review i have that as

145well you yes is that visible to them okay so this is it madam chair may i proceed with these so this is for item f1 in under the consent the approval of the contract for professional services with capital strategies consulting the first question that was asked was from ms vaughn she said that they received an answer during the presentation the second question was from miss giovannelli the question specifically was this is an annual contract did this go out for an rfp initially should we at this time there should be opportunity for all i am concerned that we have not allowed for that so the person who's going to be speaking to that is dr desmore's dr desmore i didn't ask the question is it an annual contract i know it's an annual contract so but

146my question was initially which is like three or four years ago you know and because then this is just me thinking and that's why i just was curious i'm not trying to change anything at this time and but i think consciously we need to think about that as a board making sure that you know since it is annually do we make a contract longer where a renewal process you know how does that look and as a board how do we want to talk about that you know and i guess i just want to make sure that we i don't think this went out for bid is my question i don't if i remember the way this came about and so i just was trying to get a little more insight on it for the community

147thank you so yes we did do an itn which is invitation to negotiate in august of 2017. we had four respondents at that time and for various reasons each of the respondents were deemed not acceptable for the evaluation committee so at that point we saw independent negotiations and then negotiated a contract with capital strategies as is authorized to do so that's the history behind that and we can in the future move forward however the board would determine but that was the history behind how we came with capital strategies so it and it's not on a continuous contract but yet kinda is so i mean as a board do we want to have that conversation i mean my question is are you know are we getting the best bang for our buck you know what i

148mean and i just want to make sure because i mean there's other you know there's other lobbyists that are right there in tallahassee is it more beneficial to have our lobbyists here i mean there's just several questions because this board has changed y'all some of this board was not part of that process and so i'm just trying as we you know board changes a little bit we've not allowed everyone to have a seat at the table and talk about it and that's where really where i was with this oh thank you thank you for that i don't know if is there anyone else that would have this fish i do and i apologize that i didn't send these ahead of time especially was that part of did you have anything to add to miss gibinelli's

149before you start on yours just that well maybe i would ask dr desmore then if that isn't that an annual renewal yes it is so it comes before us annually it's our budget now i mean it's today to tomorrow to vote on that's why i brought it up it's because it's when i made me think about it right yes okay thank you thank you okay miss fisher yes and i apologize for being late with this but age 14 is elk mountain school in idaho for a special needs student placement for 255 and 4 500 and i was just wondering you know how do we how do we review those types of placements and know their history record the length of time they've been in business etc there i think i have it on now good

150afternoon that is a school that we have been doing business with under clearview academy we actually do visit school sites when we have to employ a residential placement and we have done that in the past and we also are in communication very frequently with the school and their staff so we ensure that they meet all of the florida requirements for providing services to students with disabilities and is there specific data regarding that or any kind of reports from local agencies in idaho regarding their history of success with students that i would have to check into okay thank you and theresa can you please say who you are and what department you're from i'm sorry i'm theresa bowen the director of exceptional student education thank you that particular placement is there are very few that offer

151the services that are afforded to students so that is one of very few for that age bracket so then then we have this is a contract that was in existence before this year correct we've been contracting with clearview academy for several years that is through an individual education plan and we have there that is a new name of the program because of the age of the student but it is the same company okay thank you and then h17 collaboration with equal opportunity school i don't i don't know exactly presentation what what that is there's a presentation tomorrow i think tomorrow they're presenting something on that oh there is yes there's a formal presentation tomorrow where we're going to be to the meeting okay okay thank you and then my final one is the public hearings

152on charter schools i see that some of the renewals are 15 years 15 years is a long time and i was just wondering is there any kind of specific criteria and what are their success rates and history and the financial impact we don't have a miss kennedy here do we she is at fafsa but we can get that information for you and make sure you have that okay thank you thank you thank you miss javen now you know you had a question thank you miss kittens back to the h14 it made me think of a question is this for a particular student yes so are these services karine that's what i'm like how long do we continue doing this excuse me madam chair i just want to caution that the student does have ferpa privacy

153rights so in that discussion please keep that in the back of your mind thank you thank you so in general terms a placement like this is made by an individual education plan team and when that discussion is occurring and made it is determined that the school district does not have the services available in the district in order to provide a free and appropriate education to the child in circumstances such as this as i was talking to mrs fisher earlier there are some specific services that are very hard to find and that is why it is even outside of the state okay i was just trying to see the date of the services is this for one year this contract is for one year and we do meet on individual education programs at least one year

154so the decision is revisited at least once a year but can be revisited at any time during that year okay thank you is that true are you good i think so okay thank you so thanks kittens just a quick question when when we have a student and i can't remember what happened when i was teaching but we get a student and we don't have records or anything like that and we have to place them what what do we how do we do that if we don't have anything is there do they just place gen ed across the board for their schedule until we get it and what if we never do so are you speaking about a student with a disability if yes or even that or a regulation but especially a disability if we

155didn't get information from anywhere or they didn't come with you know all of their records how do we handle that so this happened pretty recently with the hurricanes when we were getting students that did not have any records and there were no schools that could provide records the state does give us some leeway in talking with the parent and finding out if they were in a specialized program and to create a plan for them to move forward generally we are requesting records and we don't have that problem in getting records and placing them appropriately based off of the records we receive so okay i just wondered my other question is academic but i'll wait till good of the order thank you for that question okay are there any other questions so you have one more

156question miss kittens because i know you know what's going on because of questions okay it's it's not necessarily based on this may i ask it now yep okay thanks jordan i read recently was sent an article and read an article about one of the districts i think it was hillsboro one that got their results back of the third grade fsa results are back and i understand that we received ours as a district last week sometime and i'm wondering about an update surprisingly some districts have found that there was not the tremendous slump that they thought there would be and i just thought that was very interesting and it kind of tweaked my interest to know how did we do and are those is that data out there for us to see or how how it

157you know where is it can we find out how we did and who was that dr spam dr spyro thank you yes we do have that data available we are actually in the midst of looking through all that through that particular piece but i'm happy to share with you our district average as well as each school as well so you can see that and that's just one data point certainly we're waiting on the rest of the results to come in as through the course of the summer but i'm happy to send that to the entire board and can we kind of have a thumbs up or sideways or down if we did really bad or worse or better or we did not we and i don't remember that exact number off the top of my

158head but we did not increase from last year and certainly we were not intending certainly doing not last year actually the year before i mean certainly we're not expecting to increase but i believe it was a five to a seven percent drop and i'd have to i don't want to quote me on that number no i'm not holding your feet call me accountable until i have that back in front of me but i will certainly send that to the board today so what was it as bad as we anticipated it's really a loaded question because our progress as you can see because our progress monitoring along the way really did not show as as big as a dip as other places have been saying they have been so we were not expecting a huge dip

159in this particular area and we were not disappointed anyway i'm sorry they're fine thank you thank you okay miss steven ellie well since miss fisher miss fisher brought up the age 17 which is the equal opportunity schools i know we this was pulled prior to and now it's coming back i was going to wait until tomorrow for the presentation but and i will still but i have a few questions that maybe the information tomorrow will it will have it but i would be curious like how many students are we going to be at these high schools how many schools students will be participating and then my other question is you know what are we doing in the lower levels versus you know i still my when i pulled this a month or so ago my

160questions i hope will be answered tomorrow regarding you know what are we doing in the lower levels compared to by high school we're missing it so i feel like this is you know kind of like not you know it's a little late too late you know to try to save students if that's what this is but i'll wait for tomorrow i just want to put those com you know those questions out there just as a quick comment to that one of the two prongs that they typically go is to increase the access but also increase the achievement you know we really want to try to broaden our reach so we're reaching more and more students in our in our district and that's really a lot of districts everywhere but then also to attain the highest

161possible standards i know that dr spiren's team have some great information ready to present tomorrow in that presentation is there anything that you want to add sir at this time or just as a preview remember equal opportunity schools is not a curriculum it's a service that's provided to help let's do exactly what dr savage is talking about really to identify opportunities for students and then we've talked before a little bit about what we've done in the middle school as well and so we'll make sure we include a piece of that in our presentation so you can see what we're doing at the other levels to make sure students are ready once we get to high school but it is certainly a process and thank you for those questions ahead of time we'll make sure they're

162addressed well and like so we have data that shows there's their successes in other schools who are using it and that kind of thing and what you know their data is and the outcome of it so i just like to see all that thank you thank you thank you and it looks like there's no other questions so we are moving to i know there's something going on in here shortly so we are at the good of the order does anyone have anything for the good of the order miss kathleen morgan i have nothing thank you miss spawn just nothing new except things that i guess i should mention about edac as a matter of fact at this point it act did decide last monday to have a june meeting which which we had and the

163focus was taking a look at different presentations and topics that had been presented to the committee and there was an activity where small groups put their input you know on the papers and then we came back as a as a large group and took a look at the various concerns that had arisen through the different presentations and concerns and recommendations so that will be the chair is with the help of board liaisons or i'm sorry the staff liaisons kind of tidying up the language on that so there will be some recommendations coming to the board from from edac our meeting i think i love the group it's a long meeting it was i think we were there for two two hours and we got a lot done beautiful thank you so much miss kittens i

164have a couple of things but i'll save them but one thing i do want to put out there food for thought for my colleagues is i work with staff to make sure that the web page on the superintendent church search church whoa superintendent search is updated and i feel where we need to put out there some timeline as to you know a little more information as to what we're doing and i know we had a meeting today but i'd like to get with you madam chair to make sure that i'm hearing what i'm hearing before we put it out there so if we can discuss that would be great and are there any other questions or comments about the web page oh i think you're doing a great job and thank you so much for

165taking that on appreciate that okay miss patricka so i've got two things and there are perhaps legal questions or questions for staff to do a little digging and get back to us with the permissibility of these two things as we discuss our legislative platform number one student involvement and advocacy suwannee county i'm sorry sawani school district last year had students do four or five different advocacy videos and they were phenomenal and they were very moving and i'd like the board to consider whether you have an appetite for creating a new award perhaps we could award the student legislative advocate of the year each year moving forward when i was a student things like awards and winning stuff really motivated me so perhaps that would be a way to get our students more engaged what is

166the legality of that and to what extent i don't want the answer now i want you thinking about it when we come up on the workshop and the second question is parents i know i've asked this question parents opting into a phone and or email system so that we could send out calls to action during legislative session that would have been wonderful this year with the whole oh best and brightest thing and if we could keep parents that engaged on items that are less interesting to them then we might see more success during legislative session those are my comments thank you alexa thank you miss giabinelli i have none thank you miss givenelli miss fisher and i haven't done this afternoon either thank you thank you and i have none and mr pre bruno i

167have none thank you thank you and superintendent well i just thank you madam chair if i just may have a minute just wanted to say you know it's it's a pleasure to be completing the first seven days of this remarkable assignment beginning kind of a week ago today actually this evening and i kind of predicted that i would make at least one mistake within the first week and i wanted to publicly apologize i think it's really important as a as a district but specifically me as as your interim superintendent that anytime a mistake is made there's an opportunity to own that mistake and to say you know when when we do those mistakes we have to make it and so we have to own it and so i just wanted to publicly apologize to you

168know our staff and our community and to you as a board at any time you're put in a difficult position on controversial items it really falls on my shoulders to to address that so i want to take full accountability for any of the emails and so forth that may have come in over this weekend about an item that i mishandled i just wanted to take full ownership of that and i just want to reiterate that our staff especially our leadership staff they absolutely put children at the forefront of every decision they make i can assure you children are at the forefront and so any decisions that are made or recommendations that are made that is what drives our staff and i can say that it's that's i've observed that my entire career but i really

169had the chance to observe it in action last week so just in spite of the fact that sometimes things do tend to if there's a mistake that's made that really is on my shoulders and mine alone so i just wanted to say that publicly and just apologize also to our community who were put through some some trying times which is the last thing anyone needs on the heels of a pandemic and closing down a great school year but just wanted to we take the good with the bad and it's a learning opportunity for me and just really appreciate that piece so with that said that is all i have well thank you so much and i will just say too i definitely appreciate all staff that's been here that work so hard for the district

170each and every one of them and we are here and we support you all just so that you know that and see no other business to come before this sport this meeting is adjourned and we will see you tomorrow thank you