001meeting of the putnam county school board for tuesday july 13th is now in session we'll have our pledge of allegiance led by ms jane crawford and our invocation led by mr bud mcginnis to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all your heads loving and gracious father you are the giver of all good gifts and we thank you today for your blessings for the successful outcomes of our school events and for all our staff members both the teaching and support members we ask that you bless them abundantly and we continue to seek your wisdom guidance and courage and strength be with us give us insight to lead with integrity that our decisions may reflect what is
002right and good keep us from short-sightedness and pettiness help us to make decisions that are for the good of all and guard us from blind self-interest dear lord please grant us the humility to always seek your will in all that we do and say all glory be to you loving god in your name amen amen what you need please thank you good afternoon and and thank you it's a pleasure to be here well it's good to have you well thank you mr buckles i have a couple observations after looking at today's agenda i'm glad i shortened up what i have to say and second it just occurred to me that i find myself in the unusual position of addressing an audience that knows more about the subject i intend to talk about than i do
003and that subject is of course education one thing that my tenure as the executive director of lift putnam has taught me is how complex the development and delivery of education programs and services truly is i have also learned that to be a successful teacher or administrator requires a level of commitment and dedication that only a special kind of person is capable if there are any teachers or administrators here with us in this room today or any of them watching on this video feed may i say thank you you are truly heroes in this community i hope to have more of a real presentation for you in the future but i'm here today to reaffirm that lift putnam desires to be a catalyst for change in our community by helping to support programs and services that
004might not otherwise be available to our students as you know lift putnam's primary mission is to provide a full day education experience to economically disadvantaged four-year-olds who would in most cases not be able to attend pre-k at all i must say that it is nice to be in a venue where i don't have to justify the need for pre-k every academic study has shown that pre-k education is beneficial and important to the long-term success of our children this honorable board is well aware of its benefits but let me mention just a few children who attend pre-k have better pass rates on the kindergarten preparedness test less truancy and delinquency and are less likely to drop out of school they are more likely to graduate and attend college and they obtain better jobs but of course
005better scores are not the only benefit of the pre-k learning experience i recently came across an article in the new york times extolling the virtues of pre-k but it wasn't about scores at all it was about socialization and the emotional growth that these young students develop in this writer's opinion better test scores were actually secondary to these other factors which help produce better students and therefore ultimately better people i'm often asked how do we how do we measure the success of our pre-k program well i suppose i could point out the large percentage of students who passed the kindergarten readiness test but i personally measure success a little differently i feel that any time we can help take a deserving but disadvantaged four-year-old who may be sitting in a house with nothing to do staring
006at a tv all day and place him or her in a structured learning environment a loving nurturing environment where that child will hopefully develop a love of learning then my friends we have been successful like everyone else covet 19 had an adverse effect on lift putnam but i'm proud to say that it did not stop us and our mission although individual and corporate donations were hard to come by we managed our funds in a way which allowed us to give as many pre-k scholarships in 2020 as we did in 2019 during the pandemic we also provided large quantities of ppe supplies to help keep our pre-k students safe we are currently vetting scholarships for the coming school year right now we probably have about 80 pushing 90 and actually expect more so what does the
007future hold for lift putnam well along with success i hope it holds change and expansion of our mission into many missions we actually have a broad mission statement which allows us to take on different projects should the opportunity arise we recently welcomed 10 new board members to our board of directors who are ready to help build our foundation i am confident that they have the enthusiasm the desire and the vision we will need as we go forward when i was hired i was told that it was to be a new beginning for our organization i now know that a new beginning sometimes means you have to start at the beginning before i conclude let me encourage anyone who does not have a support education tag to get one it was hard for me to give
008up my gator tag but i did everybody who supports education in putnam county can take pride in the fact that they are part of something bigger than themselves if our students are to reach their full potential it is up to all of us and lift putnam wants to be a part of the success our schools and our students are having now and will have in the future also our foundation needs sponsors if anyone is interested in learning more about what we do how we do it why we do it please let me know be happy to sit down and talk to you anytime anywhere i appreciate the support i've received from dr surrency and the school district as a whole while the putnam county schools what the putnam county schools overcame in 2020 and during
0092021 is truly remarkable lift putnam wants and intends to live up to the designation you have bestowed upon us as putnam county's education foundation robert f kennedy once said there are those who look at things as they are and ask why i dream of things that never were and ask why not it is gratifying to be with you administrators teachers and board members who every day are not afraid to dream or ask why not when determining the best possible ways to educate our children i thank you for your time today and god bless you morgan before you leave let me just tell you as someone who i work at all levels as many as these administrators have and elementary schools really get to your heart we've got kids that you know they're living in tents
010living in campers living in homeless you know as described by law and if they don't get on an equal footing and they don't get the assistance they need then they're never going to catch up now the superintendent and his instructional team have have made a national model for how to go in and improve the number of kids who are graduating from high school but it's really the the key is going to be starting early and the instructional team has a new goal to work on on several projects by by grade three which is just phenomenal and this what you're doing is incredibly important you you know our first grade second grade teacher they know who's not going to make it by by the end of first grade i mean and you've got to you've just
011got to to do better i mean and that's we're going to need you guys for yeah as the mission changes over time safety or security different things that the superintendent and his staff will need it's just thank you for what you do your your group and your board just you don't know how much it means to have somebody watching those that have nobody to watch out for well mr david i must tell you i first became interested in early education when i served as a uh as a guardian adult item volunteer i saw uh i saw children in this community that just had quite frankly no hope and then i got even more interested because i i was exposed to our pre-k program that we have at first baptist church and it was fascinating to
012me and when an opportunity arose where i could be involved with with lyft putnam i certainly jumped at that opportunity but we want to do more i think we need to do more um early education is the key i mean at first i was i was sitting here going i don't understand how four year olds it is absolutely it's critical it's probably the most critical time of education but i'm preaching to the choir but uh i certainly one question yes ma'am um you said you had gotten roughly 90 applications already that you're vetting yes how many scholarships are you able to give out ms gilliard i'm not sure how many we're going to give this year for a couple of reasons it's a little uncertain as soon as i find out i'll certainly let you
013know but i think we've actually had more this year than than we've had in any other year it all it depends on how many can we how many can we actually you know financially support because that's how we do it what we try and do is find the neediest when i say vetting is to try and find the neediest child and get them signed up get them in the program and uh so last year you had about how many scholarships actually last year ma'am we had 52. okay that's good and that was cody hey yes main sources of income well jane our main source of income should be our community and that's corporate individual donations right now we have we use our mortgage payment from the campbell building which ultimately makes its way back to
014the district and we also have several grants um excellent grants that we depend on and of course that's what i'm doing now is a lot of the administration administrative work but uh hopefully now that covets over we'll be able to make a push in the community and get more exposure to what we're doing and go from there what is the um cost of a scholarship for a student to attend full-time for the school year it costs 1500 for the year for a student to attend so if one if an individual wanted to write a check to cover the cost of a scholarship they can do that yes they can get out well our kiwanis club has done it before it's sponsored a child and things like that but uh yeah but that's what we're looking
015for is more community involvement and more early learning involvement and uh go from there we'll like to also look at things in votech and different things like that right that's where we are but uh always willing to listen to what our school board has to say and and uh ideas that you have keep dropping by and giving us i will sir i will thank you very much for having me i hope you all have a great meeting thank you thank you very much wow thank you mr perry um now do we have any public comments no okay well we'll move to we have no nothing in the public hearing section so we'll move to the consent agenda miss gilliard do you have anything you would like oh wait a minute pardon me sorry i don't
016have a public if you want to fill out a public comment card or just maybe your name and address and then you're still out there we can get you one yeah a lot of times she can talk and then she can pull it out afterwards yeah yeah that's right record of it mike can you let him know that they shouldn't come on up and speak and then she can fill a card fill a card out later thank you mike sing us a song while we wait yeah go ahead do what sing us or something while we wait there we go you could sing so loud everybody can hear you brandon did you get that she was gonna sing a song but she wanted to do a solo solo nobody could hear i'm scared aaron mace
017is gonna sing i know she knows she knows very well brandon do you need a tablet hi hi if you'll just state your name and your address certainly uh my name is janelle kilgore i am locally from here in putnam county in interlochen florida and please excuse my flip-flops and shorts i was running errands and didn't make it home in time to change so walk into the microphone young lady pull it to you yes sir thank you um i really i don't have any comments i just have a question this is my first meeting so forgive me if you've held a meeting before and this has been answered on friday the cdc released recommendations for school openings and recommended that masks be worn for children who are not vaccinated and that children that are not
018vaccinated remain three feet apart from other children just further guidelines i'm curious as to the school board stance on mass mandates for this year i'll ask mr bowen can you address that and i know you've had conversations with our epidemiologists uh so at this time we haven't pushed out anything official yet but if school were to open tomorrow our stance would be that mask would be optional as a matter of fact we did push out something starting at the beginning of summer where they were optional we haven't pushed out any reopening guidelines for the upcoming school year but we've had the conversations and as things currently stand again if we were to open up school tomorrow mask would be optional we'll still do the deep cleaning we will contact tracing will still be in place
019and currently if a student has been vaccinated and they're asymptomatic then they wouldn't be excluded but essentially all of these safety measures remain in place that were there at the end of the school year with the exception of the mask and the the distance it did change from six feet to three feet well right now the recommendation is actually three feet not six not six feet and we try and accommodate that the best we can i feel very comfortable with that recommendation others may not but i do and thomas that could possibly hopefully it won't but possibly change as this uh of course increasing the delta variant yes ma'am and i heard mr perry say during his uh very good presentation by the way um covet is over it's it's not over to your point
020young lady and the uh delta variant is spreading like wildfire right and and we have a very low vaccination rate here in putnam county so you know if i could use this as a public service announcement it would be go get vaccinated and and have your students vaccinated so um they won't have to uh be excluded from school with uh because of contact tracing which happened very often last year as we all thank you thank you thank you so the vaccination won't be a requirement for enrollment and i'm sorry your name was thomas and your last name i'm sorry bowling like the game all right i'm terrible at it ll not w okay okay bowling um and then my second question with the governor taking a position on um against rather critical race theory being
021taught several student or teachers unions i'm seeing have like taken a vow that they will continue to teach material that comes from that kind of doctrine regardless of state laws are there like safeguards in place to ensure curriculum is being taught according to proper guidelines and are is there a system in place consequences for anybody who chooses to go against that being that the governor is stood against and we've actually uh responded to this in the newspaper but very good if you'd like to give specifics on that miss france is our yeah you want his question right yeah i kind of answered him critical race theory is not a part of our florida standards therefore it is actually not taught in schools there is a lot of push nationally about it being out there but
022it is actually not a part of our curriculum and it's not in our social studies curriculum it's not in any of our textbooks okay so there won't be anything i was just kind of no we actually as a mom we just had a social studies adoption three years ago and it is not in that adoption series at all and nor is it our ela adoption that we just adopted this year as a mom there are a lot of moms that are very much against this and there are some moms for it it really even we had we had some complaints about book assignments over the summer and principals have have continually over the years traded out different books because parents were concerned that the books were maybe putting ideas or indoctrinating kids so it's not
023a it's not an uncommon thing you could have a teacher that feels very passionately about something that may through innuendo uh you know let their views be known to kids but that doesn't mean it's being taught you know most of our most of our kids are smart enough to know that you don't believe everything you read and you don't hear or here okay i was just curious making sure it wasn't like um you know passionate things or topics that might come up through historical or classic literature i think is necessary in part of learning but uh teaching people to hate america or anything like that well even if we wanted to the state standard wouldn't allow us to do that no very good okay education coming out over the next two years i began teaching
024americanism versus communism i wouldn't doubt if that comes back into effect at some point so patriotism and yeah very good thank you great concern thank you yes thank you questions thank you thank you very much um nothing else okay so now we move to our consent agenda before we start that um and the annual equity update has been pulled from the agenda is that f ah number four under g g four g four it was g4 it it was removed from our current agenda when this was printed so but it just so you know the annual equity update has been pulled okay okay um and so now ms gilliard is there any item you'd like to pull no ma'am i am good i'm just gonna comment on something during during the report that i saw
025in there that's great it's under mr bolin's topic about dental the dental program that's uh going to be i guess implemented next school year i thought that was awesome i just i printed it out yes yes so i'm good ma'am okay thank you you're welcome mr buckles no ma'am i had a good meeting with the superintendent mr bowling prior to the meeting and i feel very comfortable i do i do just pray we have a smooth opening of school with kids that are driving i worry about that so we we're on the way thank you mr buckles mr mcinnis i have nothing to pull miss crawford i just have one quick question um on the early release times i don't know because i was on the calendar committee i don't remember that we the days
026that we set aside for early release is it are they on the calendar oh so we're not talking about going back to home every wednesday yes no i have nothing to pull okay and i have um mr bowling do we have from the silotron oh yeah yeah okay so i guess do you want to pull that one so we can hear the i'll pull it i if you know i didn't pull it but i'll i should because well i think we flatter yeah i spilled it wrong you want to make a motion david i make a motion that we pull it i made a motion that we accept consent agenda minus the report on on on facilitron and uh james seconded it okay we have a motion by mr david buckles that we accept the
027consent to giant agenda minus g4 g4 and um the second is my miss jane crawford all those in favor say hi all those opposed motion carries 5-0 all right and if if you notice the screen over well it's in front of me but it's to the board's right uh the audience is left that spiffy little looking gentleman is called trent allen he works with facilitron which is the contract and there he is live and in person there's there's a face to go with trent you mind giving the board a brief overview of exactly what uh your platform can do and well essentially what it is and what we'll use it for sure sure thank you and i'm sorry that i can't be there in person i'm down here in hollywood florida at a facilities uh
028conference um with the other a lot of other school districts um around the state so i appreciate you all having me i hope you can hear me well and see me of course i can't see you but i'll just imagine that y'all are all smiling as i as i talk one of the one of the good things about covet i suppose is we all learned how to use video conferencing so that's one good thing we have going for us so quickly um i won't take up much time facilitron we met um mr bulling in san antonio at a conference and we introduced our platform to him what we do we are an event scheduling platform that manages facility use and community requests to use school facilities so on the internal side for schools that means
029it's a place where the schools can book their own facilities for after school events basketball practice anything um even things that aren't rented to the public conference rooms the ability for the district then to see and and and and depending on an approval our hierarchy approve of uh facility use across the district and from the community perspective we create a a rental site where the community can come and uh request facilities if you want to rent a gym or you want to rent a classroom you can come to uh the website and search for that and then we can they can see availability based on what's not already booked on the internal side and they can make a request through the system that then mr bolling has a a and his team has a administrative
030plat portal part of the platform where they see all the requests but they can also see all the internal use as well the goal here well many goals but one of them of course is to create a way for the community to come and request facilities with you know with ease and you know open to everyone and anyone who wants to log on and and make a request internally uh it gives mr bolling the ability to understand what all is going on at the at the district all across the district at any time why are the lights on at 10 o'clock on at this gym um he can look online and his on his phone even and and see what is scheduled there but it also gives him utilization data we can end up giving
031him a data we work with him to give him data on how many hours each building is being used how many hours the fields are being used and so forth so on the rental side a lot of data is it will exist as well that helps the school district ensure that they are are treating all the groups equally depending on what rate category the groups falls into non-profit for-profit all of that stuff is something that we very easily can can configure into the system so that when people make requests mr boeing will have uh information on who's using it how much they're paying you know whether their insurance is meets the district requirements all of that stuff is how uh things that we handle uh on the facilitron end so um i hope i gave
032a good overview but i'm happy to answer any questions about that can you talk about cost real quick yep uh it costs for using the platform or costs for what we pay you essentially well so what we do is you don't pay us anything directly so what we do is we charge service fees very much like ticketmaster or airbnb so if someone rents something and there's a dollar amount to it there's a service fee that's either passed on to the renter or absorbed by the district and that covers all the costs of everything we do including we come out and take photos of your facilities that are available for rent to the public so we showcase so to speak the district's facilities make it very easy for the community to come in and look at
033you know what what what they're renting when it's available how much it costs what it can be used for what are extra fees custodial utility fees extra covered fees all of that can be programmed into the system it's all completely controlled by the district still in the sense that everything is approved so anything can be changed the dates can be changed you know the pricing can be changed by mr bowling or you know whoever is part of the hierarchy approval hierarchy so it's just a ten percent uh service fee that we charge very good and uh just a few brief comments from me and then i'll open it up for questions um i intend to for there to be a building level approval level person um so a principal or or someone at that level
034would make the initial approval decision and then it would go to the district for a final decision and that would probably be me or someone on the maintenance side we'll also have energy management reviewing that daily if not several times a day just so they can make sure that if the air conditioning needs to be on or whatever the case may be they can take care of those needs as well also with the with the district i mean with the uh the additional properties coming online like down in crescent city uh we've gotten several calls about using the gymnasium or on the cafeteria after hours and it's just various groups coming forward we like to we like the idea of having this platform in place so that we can be equitable and we can get
035people can put in those requests and there's an actual platform and we aren't just making it up as we go along so and that's that's pretty much what's happening out there right now so hopefully this uh process will streamline that and make things a lot easier for the public to actually access our facilities but at the same time make sure that they do have the required insurance and we've done everything we need to on our end how soon do you expect this to go into effect mark the question was how soon can we uh bring this online i'm sorry trent yep uh we can do it very quickly um um we can certainly have it done in a month uh if you're if you're approving it today another couple of things i want to mention
036is one of the things that we also provide as a part of our service is support um including support to the to the community members when they have questions they don't understand how to upload the insurance or how to meet their insurance requirements that kind of thing um we we do the support on that so email phone call live even live chat through our website that's something that we provide another thing i wanted to mention is we are working with nine or ten districts in in florida the closest are your neighbors in lake county and in seminole county but we also do orange county hillsborough county osceola county manatee sarasota lee and polk counties off the top of my head so we're we're partnered and have a lot of experience with how those districts uh
037run and the challenges that they face and those are part part of the things that we do as well is is share that those best practices share um in in the case of a new district sometimes they're they don't have every process in place uh you know moving to the digital system and so we help um guide mr bowling and his team through that as well thomas i'm i'm still in favor of the superintendent having the that our chief executive officer having the authority to over to to waive a fee or a process if if he so felt we have that flexibility all right as long as that's in place i just want to make sure that you don't give that right up that's the first question i ask all right jane you have a
038question um i think the first one may have been answered the district or you or your team will set the fee for each facility the cost of rental yes but we will work very closely with the schools and with uh trent and and i'd i'd really like some information on kind of what the going rate is what do people typically charge since they have a lot of uh experience in in you know pushing out fees uh so you know a lot of a lot of our the front loading this is is us learning what we actually should be charging you know for re-passing and uh oftentimes we in some locations people are charged in other locations they aren't uh i mean just quite frankly what's what's currently going on so and my second question also
039deals with money will they pay on the website for the facility or will they have to go to the school and pay or how does that work no facilitron does all the invoicing and payment collection and refunds um so that takes that burden off of the schools as well and there's also i mean you know we're we're in hurricane land down here of course and so you know there's many other services and times that that really is helpful when a hurricane comes through suddenly everything gets canceled that's a thing that our support team takes on and and we refund the money and then we also try to help the community members reschedule instead of the the school district normally doesn't have time to deal with that they just cancel it and that the community member
040has to just begin the process kind of from square one to make a new request so we we help facilitate all of that and it's part of what we do one last comment about waiving the fees i think we need to be very very careful about that because it's going to get out if we waive it for one and not for another like one church gets it for free and then somebody else doesn't i think that needs to be a very judicious i agree and that's that's that has a lot to do with why we're going with this platform um yes ma'am now i will say i will make a comment though there are some things that are currently in place and in common practice uh for example um our arts at at gemini pignato
041theater you know those type things that have been happening forever and ever and ever right right so so there are some things that are understood that we would build in and and um and continue on as we always have still don't want to paint yourself in a corner you want the latitude for the superintendent to be able to to have discretion that's the place david that is in place i mean if we do it for great grandma's 80th birthday and then we decide the other grandma's 25th birthday is it james 80th i'm getting there i'm getting just for clarification did you say that every rental request would have to have board approval no no just um it would be at the building level and initially someone at the district will also approve it but that's
042those are things that we can we control internally for example if we wanted to just give all of our principals complete access on approving everything because i'm actually adding something to my plate or someone else's by saying that i'm taking a look as well and i'd like to do that at the beginning just to make sure that things are being done equitably but at some point i may have to let it go and just let principals make their own decisions at their own schools help out a secretary or at a school who has to keep a chris planner with dates that the facilities are being used that they that would be one less thing they'd have to worry about but i don't have a problem long as we have discretion to waive a fee if
043we feel so the need the superintendent does we've made that pretty clear i know i was trying to expedite the thing else thank you thank you mr um allen thank you very much you're welcome you're welcome thank you all for having me you bet thank you mr bolling um does anyone have a motion i make a motion we approve the g4 cilatron g5 oh unless they moved it let's see it's now four g4 facilitating facilitron incorporated agreement i got mine i'll second it okay we have a motion by mr david buckles to accept item g4 facilitron and the second by mrs jane crawford all those in favor say i i all those opposed motion carries five zero okay we have no no emergency items we have no unfinished business under new business we have several
044um policies do we want to do them individually or can we do them all in one motion at least item number one could we do them these are to advertise okay so we can do them as one notion this is just madam chairman i make a motion that we advertise uh item one consensus to advertise amendment to policies number two four three one number five three five eight number five four one 0.01 number five five one two number five six one zero number five six one one number six one zero seven number six two three three number seven four four zero point zero one and number eight six six zero under new business second okay we have a motion to ex to advertise the amendments to the policies that were read by mr david buckles
045and we have a second by miss sandy gilliard all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion carries five zero item two do i have a motion i'll make a motion for consensus to advertise new policy 2431.05 second i have a motion by ms jane crawford and a second by mr bud mcginnis to accept item two consensus to advertise the new policy all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed motion carries five zero now we move to the reports by our board members our board attorney and our superintendent um ms crawford are you ready um the first thing i would like to say is i want to make sure susan knows that i'm not going to be here for the next board meeting i'll be in rochester but i would like
046to zoom in say that one again for the budget no i'll be at the budget hearing the next yes yes the next board meeting and the only other thing i have to say is i think it's critical for us to be vigilant about our kova procedures um do everything we can in our power under the situation that we're in now because i'm pretty frightened by the variants that are going around and it seems like it's getting worse in florida by the day and so we we need to continue to be vigilant thank you miss crawford um miss gilliard no i was just i mentioned it earlier about the dental program that's proposed for the coming year i think that is excellent yes i don't know the person responsible for getting it for working with the
047health department but you get you get two thumbs up i mean when our children come to school and need dental help and can't get it parents can't afford it and they're sitting there with the tooth they can bless their heart uh it is no fun and so i when i read that it just and you know it it's heartbreaking because every year we had students at black high school that had dental problems and you know on several occasions guidance counselors had to take them to the dentist and pay for it because we couldn't find any way else to help them and the parents couldn't afford it couldn't afford it so this is just this is great this is great and the prevention man i'm down thank you miss gilliard mr buckles well aaron mace you
048called me saying you were coming to the meeting are you going to make a presentation are you just observing are you like mentoring oh okay well it's good to see you i was extremely pleased to hear from mike perry there's nothing more important than getting our children started on the correct footing because it is not fair it you've got parents that have time and have options to take care of their children and expose them to educational things and and then you have some who are living in in just deplorable circumstances who don't have any help and spurring off of that my question would go to tonya do we still have payroll deduction for uh can we still do payroll deduction to go to lyft putnam yep he's still doing it thank you i didn't know
049if it was if i'm still doing that when you have this kind of money you don't even notice i just said he didn't even notice it i could go stand by sandy's jaguar get pictures taken with it anymore oh anyway that's i you know it's i'm just i'm really proud i watch what's going on i'm going to summer ball games and stuff watching the kids play it's pretty neat we still got a lot of stuff going on and they're playing baseball they're not wearing masks they're practicing volleyball they're not wearing masks but they will we will be vigilant when school starts and i know the superintendent and staff will stay on top of any any problems that we encounter so actually kenneth sent a text message while jane was talking and said we're on top
050of it awesome good deal thank you and that concludes me holly thank you mr buckles mr mcinnis okay yeah echo what mr buckle said about the uh liv putnam it's been a vision for me personally uh just seeing what uh the the pre-k units can do in a community it just ties it all together and gives the kids that extra start and i um i've attended surf camp my granddaughter was in last week that was wonderful being at the beach and i want to give a shout out to um this individual melrose they've got a back to school drive and the theme is put your money where your mouth is please support our students with back to school supplies we want to focus on hygiene and school supplies we want our students to look and
051feel good you can donate tooth brushes toothpaste any hygiene items and school supplies contact marilyn baker thank you marilyn baker and the giveaway will be july 24th between 11 and 1 at williamson's vacant lot and i just applaud this lady for doing that thank you have one last thing and i want to challenge my fellow board members i think we should each donate to one scholarship for lift putnam it would be two hundred and fifty dollars each for a fabulous coffee one yeah just okay oh we go together yeah oh thank you i was about to say heck i'm taking care nieces and nephews as it is but okay i'll go with you yeah okay we could do it in our name we could each donate 250 all right it's gonna be that'll be i
052twelve her how much it would be do the math i don't do math okay 300. and then and then we can do the storm you don't do the math yeah i don't do the math i thought i asked what are y'all how much it would be you did you asked me so you don't do the math either okay nobody help you okay i should have asked him they didn't ask us it is really embarrassing well okay i think that's a great it's a great idea and i'll accept that challenge um okay so i am i've visited crescent city high school and um middleton bernie and the revitalizations that are combining the schools is um been a huge undertaking at least at crescent city high school and those custodial staff the football team came in maintenance
053it's a huge undertaking it's one thing for us to to pass that but then to see it actually taking effect is pretty pretty awesome i mean all the administrators were in the front office around a little table and there were boxes and desks and everything everywhere and mr adams took me through the halls and they were stacked with desks but um the football team got a lot of furniture moved and that was that was great by mr delaney to organize that for the football kids to have um ownership and yeah absolutely and um and i know that it's been a big a pressure point with the district too and i think everyone at the district um while i was at middleton bernie they today they were in a training um dr shelby with his administrative
054staff so i happened to see the two food service workers out there meeting um cars and giving them food and so i thought i have to talk one of the girls so i was talking to them and they are feeding about five or six hundred people and as i was there they they get a hot meal and then they get a bag with juices and you know i'm sure there's some snacks and stuff in there and um while i was there car drove up and it was a lady and her son or grandson and she said you just don't know the difference this makes and we really appreciate it so hats off to all the custodial workers i've seen bus driver names miss whitehurst is moving people everywhere and i just think that's neat everybody's
055chipping in and um and we're meeting a need in our community and with a smile on our face and they haven't slowed down at all so anyway kudos to everyone that has something to do with our summer food program and with that um mr taylor well um we continue to work with the school board we've been performing regular office hours for over a year probably two years now with somebody coming in every tuesday and being available working with staff so we're very happy to let you know that the staff is still very very busy um they've got a lot of projects and they're working hard we're proud of all the work we get to do with them the support role that we get to play um and so we look forward to that continuing and
056we keep telling you that we're moving into our new building um and it got delayed a little bit but it's supposed to happen in two weeks wow okay that's exciting yeah so we are exciting and that will put us right across the street thank you mr taylor and one other thing thank you for our new logo name tags yeah i hope i can get up with this thank you very much um i tell all our staff to get real busy on tuesdays because i think alex is coming over just in case he says something at board meeting i want to know they work hard all the time they really do so um just a few things i did want to share that uh progress is continuing on moving and i don't want to say everything's
057perfect until the teachers show up and they find out if their stuff is there so but i i know that yeah we do want to we're withholding judgment but i know they're working hard on getting everything moved uh we met with our principals yesterday and they actually uh you know a couple weeks ago we did our administrative staff had a retreat where we um worked on putting together actionable items for our strategic plan and we spent all day at nefekt and you know really put some pen to paper and really talked a lot about what can we do this year to implement our strategic plan where our principals met in here yesterday and did the exact same exercise so we're going to be bringing all that information together and and uh talk to miss sarah
058jean here she's going to be working on that immediately on making sure that some of those concerns or some of those items are communicated to the right staff and making sure that's put in place and then our leadership team will follow up to make sure that um everything is going smoothly as far as implementing these actionable items for this year i did talk to mr henke he said he will be coming back probably in the fall and updating the board on just how the strategic plan is going in his first year so we'll bring you up to date on that um just let you know we do have a lot of kids that are busy this summer i understand we have a had a stem camp at uh celo and i understand we had 178
059students involved in that very very popular i understand we have a camp jump start going on for k-6 and these this is uh through a partnership between the the school district and the housing authority i know uh justin campbell's been heading that up and also i just want to point out i want to thank the arc who recently put on a camp uh sensitivity camp and actually my granddaughter was involved in that and i can't be more proud of how they're reaching out to our yeah for our students i really need that extra touch so yeah thanks to the arc for doing that and finally i want to read something that um i saw in the newspaper since our last board meeting and this was actually in a editorial i believe is in a saturday
060newspaper but mr leonard who's uh the newspaper is always very kind to us and really supportive of us but i want to point out something that a quote from mr ben bates who's also our real estate broker that we are working with but he said that um you know based on his many years experience he said more people are discovering putnam adding that many buyers talking about the housing market many buyers are coming from outside the county he points to the improvements made in the putnam county school district's graduation rate as a key factor and bates said the average sales price of a home a year ago was roughly 138 000 now it's almost 170 000. so it's good to be to me that's a compliment for our entire school district and all the hard
061work that all of our teachers and our administrators and the students are doing and um you know it really is an economic driver and we mr boeing and i met with a couple of our local business people in the community real estate people and business people before this meeting today and they confirmed that they said we're on the cusp of a major explosion in the housing market right here in putnam county and you know because of a number of things that are taking place number of projects that are happening and so i think again we are part of that we're not outside of that we are a part of that and part of our community and what we're trying to do is provide our students the opportunity when they graduate to be a part of
062that economic boom so congratulations to y'all and i think this is something we can all be proud of so i believe that's all i have well i just have to one thing i want to say to you you know another thing when you mentioned to us that you were going to take your leadership team on a retreat i never thought a retreat would be me back but y'all know you have miss arnold back here on highway one no she knows what i mean i was thinking more like marco island or you know somewhere like that to have a reach where did you get that i'm not i'm not dissing y'all but really i do not think he thinks a definition of retreat is get people away from their offices okay okay i don't remember that
063in fact it's a good economical place for a retreat thank you next year we'll take them to that place you're talking about it and we'll send y'all to be here and they'll come to us to yeah but we got a lot of work done because nobody could leave to go to their office and we fed them there right susan nobody could go out by the pool yeah brought food back to him so we made him stay there you guys are to be commended i i just i know we're proud of all of them in the system they're doing so good yeah who knows everybody especially this year coming up our principals when we met with them yesterday and we have one or two of them in here but uh i think they were very upbeat
064are you stressed out no i mean well i'm sure they're stressed all the time but very optimistic jt she tells me what to do as well so i don't listen neither to you okay thank you dr cernsey does anyone have anything else to come before this board no we're adjourned you