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[Music] welcome to today's Schoolboard Workshop we are happy to have you join us and we are thankful for your time and your dedication to our district this Workshop of the school board of Broward County Florida is now called to order our
primary focus is to create a safe and productive environment for our for all participants please be reminded of the exit doors that are clearly marked for emergency exiting while in the boardroom refrain from obstructing the exit doors all attendees must occupy a seat with
the exception of media once the boardroom has reached its seating capacity attendees will be directed to a designated overflow area upon activation of the fire alarm system please exit from the room in an orderly fashion and continue to exit the building and remain
outside until the authority that has jurisdiction has deemed the building safe to return thank you for your cooperation board member alhad will now introduce her school to lead us in the pledge of allegiance to the flag Mrs alhad please rise and remain standing
for the pledge allegiance by Broadview Elementary we want to thank the school and their team at Broadview Elementary School we are stand [Music]
forance I alance 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 great job yes thank you board member Leonardi has requested a moment of silence for a staff member from seagull School Mrs Leonardi thank you Miss Carolyn span was a shining example of perseverance and dedication
as a teen parent attending Seagull Alternative High School she overcame various challenges and achieved remarkable success after graduating from from seagull she found her purpose in giving back to the very community that nurtured her by serving as a child care assistant at the school since
1996 this was not a job for her for three decades it was her life's Mission Carolyn's warmth compassion and tireless commitment to the students staff and families of seagull school left an indelible impact she touched the lives of countless young people offering care
guidance and inspiration please join me in a moment of silence honoring the life of Miss Carolyn ban thank you board member rert has requested a moment of silence for a staff member from the North Regional Office Mrs
Rupert is requesting a moment of silence for Mrs Tasha Wilson North Region administrative support who has recently passed away Tasha has served our district for many years most recently supporting the office of school performance and accountability in the North Region office despite her battle
with multiple health challenges Tasha continued to serve our families in schools valiantly her dedication and hard work have made a lasting impact on our community please keep Tasha's family in your thoughts and prayers please join me for a moment of
silence thank you I'd also like to request a moment of silence for alence Glasper a staff member from physical plant operations please join me in the moment of silence thank you also ask you to join
me in a moment of silence for Alexander sereni a staff also a staff member from the physical plant operation who recently passed away thank you on Friday Broward County Public Schools will commemorate seven years
since an active as salant at Marjorie stowman Douglas High School injured 17 members of the school community and killed 17 innocent students and staff members this morning this morning the school board of Brower County will pause
for a moment of reflection to recognize the loved ones who were tragically killed on February 14th of 2018 Dr holness Aaron feice [Music]
Elena [Music] Petty Alex [Music]
shakor Cara lochran Carmen [Music] shent Gina Manalo Helena ramsy Jamie Guttenberg and my daughter Alysa
[Music] aldea my husband Chris Hixon hen [Music] Oliver Luke [Music]
Hoyer Martin du angolano Meadow Pollock Nicholas doret Peter Wong Scot and Scott [Music] beagle these remarkable individuals will
never be forgotten thank you to the entire brow County Schools Community for to part participating in the day of love and service on Friday and for honoring these 17 beloved students and staff members
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thank you as we prepare to begin this Schoolboard Workshop we are reminded that our vision is 100% proficiency for all our students as an a-rated School District We Begin the vital task of sustaining this achievement we will
continue educating all students to reach their Highest Potential our theme this year is believe and power achieve one Broward today's Workshop will operate in accordance with Schoolboard policy 1020 and the board will review the items as
advertised and presented by the school by the superintendent our first item for discussion is Bond oversight committee report fiscal year 25 quarter 1 I now turn it over to staff for a brief presentation good morning um turn over
to Mr shim thank you good morning morning Madam chair board members and Mr superintendent uh my name is Omar shim I'm director of capital budget on December 19th uh we met with
the bond oversight committee um and we reviewed uh the bond oversight committee quarterly report uh for the for the first quarter which ended on September uh 2024 uh later on today you will hear uh
more update status of the program um but this uh is a opportunity I have a guest with us Mr William Tracy a member of the bond oversight committee to give a brief update of the meeting thank you good morning Madam chair uh members
of the board Mr superintendent and staff uh this uh uh quick update is from from the uh December 19th 2024 meeting of the bond oversight committee covering fiscal uh
fiscal year 25 quarter 1 uh key takeaways uh the quarter 1 report showed that over the summer of 2024 an average of 10 projects a month moved into uh substantial completion which you term
110b and Acom expected that pace to pick up and uh we remk marked that by the quarter 2 report the number of projects that are in substantial completion or completed will exceed the number of projects that are still
ongoing um we also uh want to thank the board for revision of policy 8000 which uh streamlined the change order process and has not only tightened up the process but has uh really U improved the
way that we can we can move Mo these projects forward um and we also want to thank the board for the reduced uh Quorum requirement we're still looking for a couple more members um it's but at least now one person can't show up we
can still have our meeting um then uh the cumulative change orders over the course of this Bond um has been kept very low Statewide Bond uh
projects uh Bond program change orders are running 7 to 9% this current bond is uh running at just under 1.7% which we think is is
excellent um and then uh the um um small business minority women uh business Enterprise um participation is running at 44.98 per currently which is almost statistically identical to our goal of
45% and Acom uh is confident that they will be able to reach that 45% before this Bond closes out and then uh an apparent key problem what of the reasons why many of these projects are being
delayed has to do with um final fire inspections for alarms and sprinklers apparently um in the review process projects are approved and then when it comes to the final inspection and the
walkth through the inspectors are finding instances where they need to say change a detector from a smoke to a heat or add an enunciator or a pull station and this when you're in a situation
where the project is at final inspections it really gums up the process because then it's got to go back into design got to go out to bid you have to fight over change orders and it ends up being an extensive
delay um one of the other board members is also a fire marshal and I'm a building official and our process is we have our plan examiners also go out and perform inspections it makes them better
plan examiners and also improves the entire process apparently um due to change uh change over and Staffing shortages many times and I've seen this happen in other situations where
the um plan examiners they just don't go out in the field anymore so they look at something and then three years later it's built and an inspector goes out and he sees things
that were either missed or perhaps scope of work changed and it didn't come into didn't become apparent that that also changed other things and it's what we we termed a Cascade effect um but and of
the projects that are that are fighting to reach substantial completion the the number one thing is um updating the fire alarm system fire sprinkler system and uh that's my
report go ahead I I also wanted to recognize uh that the chair uh stopped by for a little bit and and thank her for that thank you we'll we'll we'll take questions from the board okay um are there any public speakers on this item
no ma'am okay thank you board members Mrs ala question on page 19 in regards to the 25 projects that will not be completed by October 2025 and then specifically it speaks to
four projects for further discussion can you elaborate on that Dr heurn Mr sham Dr hurn if I may go ahead Miss Paul uh Mike uh McIntyre can you speak to that one of the projects of the four this is
dated information is no longer on the list so it's actually three projects so Mike McIntyre can you speak to that Beacon Mike please you know no hello this one should be yep check one to good morning Madam
chair board members superintendent Michael McIntyre aom program director uh when this report was issued it was on age data the four projects were those that had not been moved forward into design they were on hold for various
reasons um by the district um I believe it's now down to three projects that a determination has not been made on what will happen with those three projects um they have not been assigned project numbers yet so the scope is
unknown um the depth of the project is unknown so until the district releases them they're still on hold in what schools are those three projects at Miss heli we will um provide that information
in the next presentation on the smart update but the three schools are Bennett North Fork and brow Estates Brer States as part of the redefining um initiative uh but we will also brief again later on this afternoon on the smart
update okay and then can someone speak to in regards to the 2 projects not being completed by October of 2025 there are a number of projects um that will not be completed will not obtain substantial completion uh 110b by
October end of October um that number is constantly in flux it is it is fluid it's based on um issues that arise during a project such as you heard about fire alarms we have a number of projects that have been extended out because
additional fire alarm devices have been added that does require us to in essence go into design um argue with a contractor or an our engineer at the time for regarding a change order um once approved obtain the
equipment and install the equipment so we have a number of projects that are extended out due to firearm and we also have a number of projects I believe it's 26 now that are in I don't want to say they've stopped but they're in limbo due to legal issues um claims or litigation that have been
filed where work has slowed down um or Architects have stopped working uh because of litigation so that just drives the end date so they now slip past the October date okay and I don't know if this information that what I'm going to ask is already in this 719 page
document but what I would like to know is from the 25 projects what schools and what specifically is the issue of why that this won't be completed by October 2025 and then from your comments I feel like you are also maybe saying that from
the 304 projects that are going to be completed that you possibly think that there might be issues in some of those 304 projects and if so I would like to also know what school and what the issue is Dr
heurn staff we will provide a a followup of that but what I would ask is uh let us do the SMART update um and that will provide uh some additional detail okay thank you and
then in regards to this fire alarm issue I would like to understand that a little bit better peel back the layers on that is an issue from our fire chief from an outside fire chief why are we I
guess going down this path where you know we think we are doing it correctly and then there's this I gotta at the end from the fire chief so can we can you explain that Dr heper Dr heer
staff so there are multiple reasons um part of it is at the Inception of the project when the project starts that's when the architect makes the design am I correct me if I'm not if I'm not saying it exactly correctly but the architect
makes the design if they miss those fire alarms or those smoke detectors or whatever that is in the original design all the contractor knows is to build it to the design uh at the end of and there are various in inspections along the way
um at the end of the project if it's not Co compliant the Fire official cannot sign off on it uh we have to go back and put those detectors in there based on code so it really starts at the beginning of the project and many of
these projects as as you know uh uh went over spanned over years um and so that that's what I have seen uh in my time here is it our Fire official that is is making this
determination yes based on code okay so based on code because if we were to if the Fire official were to approve um the building and something happened later on the district would be
liable so the Fire official similar to the building official is required to uh approve based on the code at the time of design okay so I guess how do we prevent
further delays do we need to get our Fire official into the school sooner to try to figure out where these gaps of fire alarm systems are I mean we have to be more proactive
I feel like because we're now going Beyond October of 2025 and it just and not say that this is an excuse but I feel like we need to have a stronger plan of action to figure
out what how we can fix this so one of the things if I may uh and as you understand that this Bond program has been going on for 10 years um and we have had a change in a Fire official but one of the improvements we've made um uh
since my tenure is that the Fire official is at our uh weekly meeting and we talk through some of these things so the number of required has gone down but but still in all good conscious you know
we have to follow code um and we have to make sure that before um the Fire official approves the project that it's done by code to law uh for the safety of our kids so we are we have drilled down
quite a bit on the number of uh uh fire devices that are required um but the operative word is they are required and so if you if you missed a project at the beginning uh Miss alidev if you missed the design if you missed a project that
causes a lot of delays if the contractor installs them incorrectly puts a screw out of place or whatever that causes delays and often times what I've experienced in my seven months here is that when they do the various
walkthroughs and stuff that's when you identify it and I think it's been kind of uh in the past you get all these fire devices and requirements at the end of the project and so that's what we have put under a microscope and what we have
examined and you know some of it is due to contractor error some of it is due to design error so there are various various excuses but the reality is that some of these projects are four and five years old you know
and there's really you no excuse for this but what I wanted to say is basically each project is different some requires three devices which may not trigger a whole new design some require I've had some as much as 80 devices
which is concerning and so our objective is to get the projects closed out as quickly as possible but when you have a foure delay on a project and then say you know three years later I want to close out in October sometimes that's
not realistic just based on the various issues that have kind of plagued this program throughout yep no I I hear you and obviously yes we're absolutely going to be in compliance with the the Florida uh the fire code uh however I guess what
I'm trying to say is I would like to see a more aggressive approach to figure out how we can make this more efficient maybe it means we need to have a consultant of an additional fire uh Chief person to be able to analyze to go
into school to to analyze it because at the end of the day if we could put more manpower on the job we're going to save more time and money because remember the longer we keep extending this the longer the smart bom project just expands so I
would love Dr heon for you to come up with a more aggressive plan of action to figure out how this we can figure out the the fire alarms and and if it means coming back to the board and asking us for you know to implement something
additional with the fire chief or some type of consultant that's my ask thank you thank you Dr Zeman thanks chair I wonder to preface my comments that will be repeated over and over today could you look at the
resolution that we passed I think it's on page two or three of the original page three chair if you go down to the ninth whereas would you mind sharing that with the rest of the
board hold on a second sorry seem to not be on the right page here it is sorry the ninth whereas ninth whereas last one okay whereas all smart Bond projects will be completed and being utilized for the in intended
purpose as designed terrific and um I'd be curious if what we're seeing on slide 19 is consistent with the resolution of the Broward County School Board Dr heurn No this won't be this is not consistent with the expected close out
of all other projects I'm just going to follow on to miss alad kind of tone of comments um this board has been repeatedly not while we were on it but in the
past um formally investigated and come up wanting in our supervision of the construction project and we do things like past resolutions in 2023 that um suggest not suggest but say we want to get through financial
closeout not substantial completion not intended use not 110b uh but through and even with the lower standard we continue to say we're going to get fewer and fewer projects
done um Scott Travis's article in the Sun Sentinel was was castigating and kind of told the community that we promised a lot toward the end of the smart deadline October 31st 2025 but again we're over promising and
underd delivering on constru instruction in Brower County Schools uh this report uh has more news that's disappointing uh chair do you know how many fire inspections there are in the length of a general renovation
project Dr heurn staff I will refer to aom Mike McIntyre Michael McIntyre a come through the chair um typical project would have two reviews and then multiple what we would
call in progress inspections um and then the final inspection U the the the two drivers of issues as a project moves forward are the initial plan review which is which is an plan review is initial approval
process of the design uh the second review is what we call shop drawings where the on fire alarms particularly where the contractor has basically resubmitted the design concept but with much more detailed information as far as the the equipment to be
used that is reviewed and also approved and then during the project as work is ongoing there's what we call either rough-in inspections or in progress inspections and during those inspections it's eyes on on from the inspectors
meaning they're walking the building and they're looking at the work that fits into their scope and they're they're checking it for Code Compliance and doesn't meet the requirements of the design we may have multiples of those in
progress inspections then the final inspection is when the work is done and that's where approval is received we have to receive approval on all scopes of work before we can get a building permit which moves into a 110b and 110b
is a substantial completion beneficial use and then there are theoretically in this district there are two final completions there's a completion where the contractor gets paid out the contractor Financial close then the project close takes one year from the date of
substantial completion that's the warranty period so that's that's the process across all Scopes when it comes to inspections and permit reviews thank you very much and chair I think I heard our uh much appreciated member of the
bond oversight committee and thank you for taking your time to to come not only participate to come and and present this news today um suggest that in his career there was an opportunity for the people who did it at the beginning the planners to be informed by the inspections along
the way and I think we just heard aom mentioned eight or 10 different moments where there's a chance for a fire alarm inspection and yet if we stopped and asked the hard questions like how much more money did we have to spend how long were these buildings not uh ready to go through
financial close out which is what the standard set by the resolution is um I think that the public and this board uh would be you know frustrated outraged uh maybe you know that that another issue kind of comes up um and it's it's fire
alarms this time it's been roofs it's been air conditioners it's been change orders it's been time analyses uh in the light uh one of the big challenge chair that we have as a board is our ability to oversee a project when what we get is
a 709 page quarterly report I think if I were a member of a grand jury or any investigative group and I saw the the thick book come out and say oh here's all the data with no key performance indicators no red lights that say oh my God this project is late this Project's
over budget this may not be moving forward um it's not the kind of oversight document uh that would allow us to feel good about it 20 years ago I was responsible for a very large construction project and 20 years ago we
had indicators that went to our board uh in the Pentagon and said this is where we're behind on this entire 28 billion project and if we could do that 20 years ago with 8086 processors and our laptops that had like a crank on the side uh I
think in 2025 uh we need to do a much better job so that things like fire alarms become apparent early on and we fulfill all Our obligation as oversight on on this this budget um what I'm supremely concerned about at this point
is 2028 which has not been a subject of our board yet to this point chair but 2028 is the earliest that Broward County Schools can ask broward's County Commission to go out for another Bond and at last time we checked there's a between $4 and 8 billion of unmet
physical needs no matter how many schools remain open uh in the future and we're going to be highly dependent on the bonds passing the bond passing so that we can make progress on that I hope that over time we can keep this on the agenda I don't think we should have a
workshop where we don't talk about construction I hope we come up with a better way to oversee this I hope we shift our Focus from air conditioners and roofs and fire alarms to very large issues like our we going to be able to go back to the public and ask for more
of their money uh and I think right now uh I don't want this to be the first school bond to fail in in Broward County's history Broward County's had a long history of being very generous with their money uh for construction for teacher pay for mental health for Safety and Security but I'm really worried about
2028 um and and I would like us uh and Mr superintendent this is just a recommendation from me uh to come up with a different way to communicate to the board about the risks that are implicit in all of our projects rather
than a 790 page 719 page three- ring binder uh I can pour through that and I can read it and I can find individual projects uh but I can't tell whether the capital program which is what we're moving to is operating in a way that we're going to win the trust of the
voters uh when we're just a little bit down the road thank you chair thank you Mrs Leonard just real quick um since this is the the beginning of the workshop um I was wondering and because I've noticed that
this is um maybe more pertinent to the kinds of questions we ask when we're talking about the smart program um you know board members ask a lot of questions in the workshops and in our board meetings and we were told okay we we'll provide a followup I think um just
for like accountability sake it would be helpful if at the end of the the workshop or board meeting or the next day if the board is provided with a list in the tracking number of all of the follow-ups requested or um promised Dr
heer yes noted um we keep track on a one page or so we can we can send that out after the meeting thank you uh Mrs Fam thank you um I agree a lot with what Mr Zan said I just want to point out in
the resolution item number um seven and8 state that um we are committed uh the board is going to require this program be completed by October 31st 2025 I remember when we discussed this we were very clear that if this wasn't a
reasonable date then we wanted to be made aware of that that this this was in stone this date was going to be um met and um with could rely on this with the community and making this public in add
in addition it says um that this includes the expectation of financial closeout and full expenditure of the General Obligations of the bond funds again we're failing on this we are not living up to our word and frankly I'm
tired of losing credibility and I know a lot of the people are too that sit on this board so I have several questions I have three I want to ask um number one I'm going to give you all three and you can answer them what should we as the board have done um or
what should the district and the board have done to avoid these delays number one how can number two how can we move these projects forward the 25 and then the other three so we can meet that October 25th our October 31st deadline
and lastly number three um are we identifying and red flagging the designers and the contractors that are causing these delays so we can move them out of the system because if we can't rely on them then they really don't bring a lot to the table we need to be
able to contract uh to um be able to trust these contractors that they're going to live up to their commitment because the community is depending on it so I'd like answers to those three questions Dr heurn um Miss fam if we can go one by
one I tried to write them down but let me if you ask the first and then I can have staff respond to the first and then so forth what should the district and the board have done to avoid these delays what could we have done to make certain that these delays didn't happen is there nothing we can do no it's a good it's an excellent
question um as far as how this program was initiated in the beginning and um I I guess that time was 2014 2013 2014 so um I'll let Miss Paul answer that based on her uh plethora of years of of of experience to talk about how uh a
program should be initiated to move forward to begin completion in four five years and not the 10 plus years we're dealing with do we have penalties in place when this happens when it's an Omission by a contractor when it's Omission by the developer so I'm G have her qu ask the first question then we
can go to the to the rest go ahead Miss Paul so part of the uh and I'm going just be uh extremely uh honest on this um part of it is I think the
district was caught flat-footed at the very beginning of the bond they weren't prepared for a bond a bond is more than just going out and engaging the community and getting that support that is extremely important
but you need to have a lot of preparation on the on the operational and Logistics side of the house right so once that vote is passed in November you have to already have a plan of execution
you need to have your Architects already before the board all of that preparation uh happens well before the voters even cast their vote and if it doesn't pass then you don't have to do anything but at least
you have your vendors and all of that stuff lined up um my experience did we do that my experience has been that it has you know you have to have your Architects ready um and based on the timeline that you
went out for the bond there's more than just row that's going out for bonds so you're you're you're competing for the same kind of resources the same contractors so the prep work is extremely extremely important
um post pass ing or getting the voters uh getting the voters um uh approval of the bond so I think that if it takes you three to four years to actually start or see
construction then you've already lost that battle you can't make up that time and in many of the projects that's what I saw where they didn't get start like um started uh in a very aggressive manner
uh you don't get aggressive at the end of a bra program you get you're very aggressive at the beginning uh you got to get you know we talk often times about speed to Market that's really what it's about uh because the longer you the longer you wait to get these projects on
the street the more money it cost you uh so you know just totally missed the boat missed the plane at the very beginning for 3 years Mrs Sam and what was the second question Mrs hold hold on one second how can we
move these projects sorry through the if you could we the oig is on a Time certain at 10 o'clock so I'm going to just ask a question can you read those questions and then when we come back to the smart bond which is the third item we'll start
with you and then Mrs rert she she disappeared um I'll ask her when she comes back so just if you'll read the questions so they'll be ready to answer it so we can move along how can we move those um 25 projects forward and the
other three that are also delayed what can we do to move them forward at a faster Pace number three is um are we identifying red flagging and really even holding designers and contractors accountable where we're implementing
penalties if they Overlook something and they're not moving promptly or they've diverted the project and they're working somewhere else whatever the reason for the delay is and causing these delays we need some accountability and we need something in place that says we're going
to do this we're going to get this done well that's my questions thank you U Mrs Rupert are your are your questions can we get through them in 10 minutes or can you hold them until we get to the smart Bond I'd be more than happy to hold them to okay so you'll go
right after Mrs family right cuz it's a little you know it's comingled a bit yes so right thank you okay yes sir thank you madam chair I I just for the record I know that it says here on
one of the whereas as was pointed out about financial closeout and full expenditure of the general obligation Bond and now although we won't fully financially close out some of these projects by the time uh in October 2026 I just wanted the board to know that we
have fully expended the bond funds um and let you know that that part of it's done thank you I was going to point that out and I'll end this so we can move on to the oig um so I have a question for Mr Tracy you you did mention that in
your job plan examiners um do inspections to improve the process so hearing what you heard from aeom do you feel like we're doing that what's the difference between because if we're have them involved in all these steps that
they mentioned it doesn't make sense to me how we're failing inspections at the end I would doubt that the plan examiners that reviewed um the fire systems actually went out in the field
normally that's a job for inspectors and a lot of times when people become a plan examiner they never go back out in the field um that's something that I've been trying to change in um in in our uh building officials Association here in
brow County um another disconnect is fire inspectors often do not talk with building inspectors fire inspectors enforce the Florida fire protection code we inspect we Pro we enforce the Florida
building code and there are some um mismatches where the fire code may may require one thing and the building code requires something else and our we've been working together we've been having Workshops the past couple of years every
quarter where the Fire Marshals and the building officials meet and we've and the standard is if you have two competing requirements the most restrictive is the one that applies so something may pass building inspection
but fire inspection does not and then another um another issue was with regard to the the bond um a lot of the uh projects were assessed based on the 2014 FCA the
fil the facilities condition assessment and it seems that some of those uh um assessments of facilities were done in a manner that um hidden problems did not come about so
that's one of the issues with the with the the the roof problems that ended up costing double or triple because you take the roof off you find well you know there's termites and we have to tent the building we have to replace the the roof trusses uh on a on a wood structure um
that the the the roof may seem fine if you do a core on the roof but if you were get underneath um you'd have to take down the hard ceiling that's inside to see that the condition of the underlying structure is is bad um there
are in the past 10 years there's been tremendous Improvement in uh detecting tools that can give a much more accurate assessment of condition of the existing facilities and then uh one last
thing uh a key Point uh um Mr McIntyre from aeom mentioned that there are in progress inspections rough inspections one key point is at what we call a framing walkth through before
they start covering up all the walls if if a building inspector and fire inspector walked through together and did an indepth assessment there there I think there would be a better
opportunity to catch issues like oh look at the look at the size of that header you're going to need a sprinkler on the other side of that or you're going to need a pull station here because of the use of this room and get those things
corrected before you start covering things up it's a lot cheaper to do things that way and plus you're also at typically the 60% point in a project so you have more time to make that up instead of coming
through at final walkth through usually the fire final inspection is when everything is done uh some Fire Marshals even want all the Furnishings in place to make sure that it doesn't impede exit pass in case of a fire emergency great
thank you so Dr heern considering the fire inspector and the building inspector work for us I think we can make it work out that they could do that together to all my colleagues points that have spoken it's seems like everyone's working in a silo and the
suggestion is that we should be working in tandem to make sure that we're getting these things done so I would like to suggest that we take the recommendation um and make sure that that's what's happening moving forward um and if I may if I may chair um to
that point Know M Miss Paul has made some um updates to how many of these things play out of course we can't change was happened in the past four or five years ago um but many of the things that um Mr Tracy is talking about have been implemented as we close out and get
Miss Paul to quickly speak about that because I know we on time on time certain so miss Hixon your description is exactly right uh that's what I found when I first got here uh part of the changes we've made is to uh have the
weekly meeting with both the Fire official as well as the building official who reports to me me uh at the meeting and we do iron out those uh situations where uh there is a question on the number of devices and that that U
sort of thing but uh this is where we find ourselves right now with many projects that are coming to the close and we sit and we work through what can we do uh by code to resolve these issues
one of the things that I want to say is that uh with uh Miss pearler and Nathan uh Miss pear is the uh building official and Nathan is the um Fire official they work very well uh Together part of the challenge too is is just the number of
uh of inspectors uh building code inspectors as well as uh fire officials uh as you'll see in the later presentation from the building department we Outsource about 75% of personnel and it's very difficult to
hire these people in house uh if I had to do it again I think I probably would have been a Fire official or a building official because they in high demand I've checked with my uh other um uh uh companions down south and at Palm Beach
and they struggle with the same thing we can't pay them to work within a district so we Outsource uh much of that work uh but in terms of what Miss Hixon alluded to in ter uh in in working together
we're doing in my opinion a a better job uh it's unfortunate that we could not do that at the beginning of the program obviously I wasn't here uh and the people that we have in positions weren't in a position to do this and so now we
are uh the objective right now uh to close out I'm very agressive about closing out these projects as uh aaom and my staff can attest to but again we're we're dealing with things U and sins of the past and so again I
think we all agree that the best thing we can do is close these projects out as soon as possible uh and prepare and build a a steady foundation for the future and that is the goal uh of my team uh and some of the decisions that
we're going to make going forward will be very difficult decisions but they need to be made as we prepare the district for the future thank you and I'll close with just one other thing um when we did the resolution I think staff
was very clear to us that it would be almost impossible to finish all of the projects that we had a date and we said whatever wasn't considered smart anymore would roll into our capital projects and
we asked for I personally asked I don't know how many times for a list so we could be clear with the public what would remain as consider a smart so we could go on that list and then what would roll into the um capital projects and that's been muddled and not really
obvious so I appreciate that moving forward we have some names on here and what like we said we wanted to under promise and overperform and I don't think that that's what we've been doing
and we're just continuing to follow behind and that wasn't the intent of what the resolution was it was to to be able to close the door on this and move forward and and have the trust of the public again but as a reminder we did spend all of the actual Bond money we're
now working within our own Capital funds to finish this so chair what is the relevance of that point I when we made the resolution in 2023 we knew we had already spent the smart Bond money and financially closed out that money the resolution said we wanted projects
financially closed out by October 31st of 2025 and my point was that's not what's in the report I hear you but this isn't but the question someone asked is about the money being all of the money would be U where did it go expectation
includes the financial close out and full expenditure of the obligation Bond and the point is just we did spend the the full expenditure of the actual Bond money that was my point thank you so much for your presentation and we're going to move on to the next item Madam
chair yes we need a reset for 10 minutes for a technical issue okay thank you you have to say it re sorry we recessed the meeting for 10 minutes [Music] [Music]
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[Music] can I thank you for did I already say the next item oh no okay the next item is the Broward office of Inspector General presentation I now turn it over to staff for a
presentation Miss Batista thank you uh Madam shair and um Dr hebburn um just want to be able to um introduce today the um uh Inspector General uh jod Bree and her general
counsel uh Kathy McIntyre and they're here to make a presentation to the board related to the relationship um that now has will be commencing uh with the interlocal agreement that uh we have entered into
I want to take a point of uh privilege to thank both uh Miss Brie and Miss McIntyre for their professionalism their cooperation throughout the eight months that it took to negotiate the Ila uh
with the with the county as well and uh just very glad that you guys are here thank you very much Miss Batista good morning chair and members of the school board I want to first thank you uh and express my appreciation for your
confidence in my agency's ability to take on the work that you have asked us to do it shows a lot of confidence in my colleagues at the agency and in the work that we've been able to do so far um I
also want to thank uh your staff uh particularly l m Batista as counsel um and other members of the school board staff who assisted us in our process of getting to know one another and what
each of us did and um in negotiating the terms of this interlocal agreement or Ila um which uh did take a while um but
was collegial informative and um uh it it did demonstrate a generosity of time on the part of Staff uh so with that I'm going to ask my colleague Kathy McIntyre our general counsel to uh present on the
Ila itself good morning yes good morning thank you again for having us um after the presentation we will go ahead and take any questions that you may have and we'll answer them to the best of our
ability um I've prepared a PowerPoint presentation and I'm going to start the PowerPoint presentation with a little brief overview of how what we did historically and then I will go ahead and transition to what we will be doing
with regard to the Ila and our new relationship with the school board so let's begin was with what does the oig do or what did we do before this Ila well overall the best way that I described it to anybody that asks is
that we act as a Watch Dog agency um an independent Watchdog Agency for the residents of Broward County uh we were created by Charter uh and we were created to basically investigate
report what we find and refer to any particular Authority that we must uh refer to with regard to our findings and we are specifically to look for misconduct and gross mismanagement and
I'll be going into those definitions um before the Ila and uh what our conduct will be what we will be looking forward forward to as far as conduct after the
Ila um and also the charter that we that we were created under our Broward County Charter gave us jurisdiction over County Municipal officials employees and providers you can find um our particular
section of the charter in section 10.01 uh that Charter provision was passed in November 2010 and like I said we were created to investigate misconduct and gross mismanagement so what was misconduct or what is misconduct to what is gross
mismanagement misconduct is any violation a federal state county or Municipal law or any kind of conduct involving fraud corruption or abuse um what is gross mismanagement now these
are definitions that you find in the charter so while misconduct can be used in the in the general sense of the word misconduct for purposes of our jurisdiction is specifically defined in the charter as is gross mismanagement gross mismanagement is a material waste
or significant mismanagement of public resources so those that's the type of conduct that we are are looking for again the jurisdiction was over County Municipal officials employees and
providers and the charter also established that we were to be headed by An Inspector General uh we were structured and organized in order to ensure that there would be absolutely no no external influence um or interference with our work and we are overseen by a
committee comprised of no one that is under the oig's authority that way the agency maintains its independence now again this is a brief overview there are definitely much more details in the charter and I welcome you
to look at the um at the actual Charter for any uh specific details for example the makeup of our selection oversight committee now because our agency fits the definition of the applicable agencies under section 112 through 188
we have certain obligations with regard to our information by law the oig cannot disclose the name of any um in uh any complainant or uh uh any individual uh
who in good faith uh discloses to us any kind of information that alleges that an employment that an employee or an agency um or independent contractor uh has violated or suspected a violating um any
particular laws or has committed um or has engaged in Gross mismanagement so again with regard to the name the identity of those individuals they are forever protected by us um unless uh there are certain
Provisions in which uh we must disclose a name or can disclose a name now likewise the statute also indicates that we have to keep confidential any information that we receive during our investigation while the investigation is active again these
obligations are statuto um are are statutory obligations for us the charter directs that we are to write reports under certain circumstances one
when we are concluding a gross mismanagement investigation and two when we are concluding a misconduct investigation if the report will be helpful in preventing similar misconduct in the future The Only Exception uh is if we
are working on a criminal investigation and the criminal Authority has asked us to um hold off on a report because it would be interfering with their pending investigation the way that it works is first we issue a preliminary report this
pre this preliminary report is issued for 30 days that 30 days is for the purpose of giving the opportunity to respond to any entity uh to The Entity involved as well as to any implicated
party all responses are considered for purposes of the final report and we go ahead and append the the responses to the final report so that the readers the the public can see all relevant information now our investigation
continues to be confidential until the report becomes final thus the preliminary report is also kept confidential the issuance of our final report is the signaling of the investigation
concluding and the charter also empowers the IG to go ahead and follow up on any recommendations that we may make during any report through any report with regard to Our obligation to refer and to uh uh and refer and in some cases
prosecute if there is probable cause um following uh an investigation um that there is certain conduct that is covered by another entity we must notify the appropriate agency charged with the enforcement for example if we see
criminal conduct we must refer to the state attorney's office um or the United States attorney's office if we see uh misconduct with regard to um any uh laws implicating the Florida Commission on
ethics uh we must uh refer it to them again with the Florida elections commission they get Florida um ethics violations and basically to any jurisdiction that may have um enforcement over the particular conduct
that we've observe then we have probable cause now if there's probable cause following an investigation um however there is no particular agency that has jurisdiction over enforcement of the probable cause that's when our uh duty
to prosecute kicks in in those instances we file a complaint with a hearing officer we prosecute the complaint and um our standards are set through the Florida rules of civil procedure and the for Rules of Evidence the charter also obligates us
to issue annual reports it requires us to publish the written report it um and that report details the activities of our office once the annual report is issued uh the selection oversight committee convenes
within 60 days they consider the annual report as well as consider the performance of the IG now I took some examples from um highlights from our 2023 2024 annual report uh just to give you a kind of
taste of the things that we've um handled and we've reported on uh the first one is what we what the report the report was called gross mismanagement within the city of North Lauderdale allowed Solid Waste vendor to overbill over $2.5
million in that case we determined that a former Finance Finance director at the city of North Lauderdale engaged in Gross mismanagement for failing to properly manage the financial aspect of a city uh contract for Waste
Services um the Ser because of that failure to properly managed the contract the Waste Pro Waste Pro who was the service provider was able to over build the city's residents through the city as um as well as commercial customers um
and they did not pay all their franchise fees in total what we found was between January 2012 through September 2021 uh the waste proos overb buildings amounted to approximately 20 2,600,000 a little under
that we found um other gross mismanagement as well in the city of Wilton Manners with regard to their parking Management Services conduct contract excuse me in that report uh after that investigation we found that
two former City Finance directors Eng engaged in grossness management in their handling of the parking Management Services in short nobody was overseeing um or vetting the invoices and because of that failure to
vet the invoices we were able to determine that they did not um in they did not engage in certain activities for example ensuring that the monies that the parking management services provider in
this case laner was collecting match the deposits that were going into the bank alog together for instance uh we saw deposits equaling I believe there was in there the deposits were totaling 3,
56,000 however they had reported collecting uh approximately 2, 9,000 900,000 and of course that begs a question where why why don't we have an act accurate reconciliation once we took a look at
the numbers and we started investigating and conducting our interviews we were able to determine that there was simply no oversight of the contract um and because of that failure to oversee the contract Lanier was able uh there was questionable expenditures totaling over
a little over $100,000 uh laner had builds for a proximately $78,000 um and been reimbursed for that money for Personnel Services that that not have proper backup documentation um and they had uh been
reimbursed approximately $30,000 for expenses that were not even authorized by the contract during the investigation we were also able to determine that the contract had called for a retainer um and that retainer was supposed to be
returned to the the city however it never was we also determined that the uh lanyer was supposed to uh sign over a vehicle to the city and again that had not happened as well uh By the time our investigation was over we do credit the
city and laner because they did go ahead and resolve those issues uh By the time our investigation closed now before I go into the contract I also wanted to discuss that there are some times that we go ahead head and
investigate a matter and we uh do not report it there's a lot of behind the scenes work going on as well for instance in fiscal year 2024 um we closed an inquiry after vetting allegations about elected
Commissioners misuse and misappropriations of taxpayer funds for discretionary projects in conducting the inquiry in this case it was an inquiry we reviewed the agency budgets for three years the governing director in all the relevant documentation and we inspected
the expenditures from the commissioner's discretionary expense accounts and determined that there were 10 violations in fiscal year 2022 that were a little under $5,000 um and that was under a now repealed ordinance that they were able
to U make those expenditures because the ordinance was no longer in effect and because the of the Domin amount involved we found good cause for misconduct in the code violation but closed the matter without it an investigation in another matter we
closed another inquiry into an allegation that a manager had split purchases to avoid compet competitive bidding requirements and had manipulated bids to favor specific vendors we reviewed a multitude of Records um such as the procurement code the purchasing
card the purchasing um the procurement records Al together and the invoices 50 of which 50 invoices for the purchases that the manager had made from four vendors over 21 months which totaled approximately
$40,000 we also conducted interviews in that inquiry our analysis showed that the manager conducted seven solicitations but none of them revealed any manipulation of the vid threshold um we also analyzed the aggregate spending and we found that
those were in compliance as well uh we found no concerns when we reviewed uh the top 20 purchases so we looked at every angle to make sure that everything was on the up and up and we did see um that not only that it was um everything
appropriately um bid how or procured we noted that the manager had implemented improved expense tracking methods and attempted to establish Master agreements with the key vendors which to us indicated an attempt to enhance the unit's oversight and
compliance with the agency's purchasing standards so we determin the allegations to be unfounded now turning to the agreement which is what we're all here for effective January 2nd uh the oig the school board of Broward County and the
county executed an interlocal agreement whereby the oig is now to provide its services to the school board into the Ila's terms now what are the terms of the Ila now this is going to be a very broad
overview um again the Ila commands um let's talk about who is included we have included in the Ila all Schoolboard elected officials and appointed officials as well as Schoolboard employees we also have
included the um all entities and persons that provide goods and services to the school board under a contract for compensation however with regard to those vendors our jurisdiction um in is limited to the contract for compensation
so uh just because they are a vendor does not necessarily mean that we automatically have jurisdiction we have to be uh looking at conduct that is relevant to the particular contract we also o have included school
board or superintendent appointed members of groups that are delegated decision-making Authority or acting as an advisory member to one or more Schoolboard members or the superintendent and we have also included
all members of the competitive uh solicitation evaluation committees now who is not included we have specifically excluded members of groups that act to support um the
district school for example uh School Allied groups now that is unless the members of those groups are otherwise included for example they happen to be an employee they happen to be a vender
under a particular contract or they happen uh to be an official which we I don't know if there's any officials that are members of school advisory groups but uh unless they are specifically included um uh we have no jurisdiction
of those members um that uh belong to groups that are simply supporting a district school now what conduct is included we are through the terms of the Ila we have included alleged violations
of state and federal Constitution uh state and federal statutes or codes uh County Municipal codes and ordinances and we have also included applicable um Schoolboard rules and regulations which I see that you
guys have a lot of so we will be learning them uh and we are we have limited it as far as the particular subject we're um it we have jurisdiction over specific subjects such as um administrative
operations and procedures construction management equipment maintenance things of that sort and again you can find it in the Ila as far as the list we also have jurisdiction over conduct involving fraud corruption or abuse as well as any alleged material
waste or sign significant mismanagement of public resources now what are the financial obligations pursuant to the Ila again these are the highlights the school board is responsible for all the costs that the oig will be incurring um in the
provision of IT services to the school board uh the method of funding will be using the county through through the County's normal budgeting process the school board um the fee uh of 659 th000 is to be used for the cost
of oig services through the rest of fiscal year 2025 that was the initial fee and it's my understanding that it's already been paid um and it yes uh and it will cover us through fiscal year 2025 5 uh the IG will
provide its anticipated budget to school board to the school board in time for the school board's future fiscal years and will maintain specific documentation to back up these costs that we're asking for we have also included in the Ila a
termination process now any of the parties can terminate the agreement with 30 days notice of the effective date now once the oig receives or Pro or provides notice a wind down period is to begin by
which the oig may not undertake any um new Services unless based on existing information information that they receive before receiving the notice or providing the notice the period the windown period the actual period will last from the date
that the notice becomes effective through the end of the County fiscal year excuse me the date of the notice through the end of the County fiscal year following the fiscal year that the termination became effective that'll afford us a little bit of time to wrap
up in any investigations that we have pending if the school board's investigations are not concluded by the end of the windown period the school board will continue to fund the oig for those costs only for those costs necessary to bring that particular
investigation to conclusion as far as our other obligations as far as reporting and referrals those obligations remain the same on with the exception that the school board is now a recipient of the report um on those uh matters that
involve them as well as a recipient of the oig's annual report now this is the time for questions well I I I do have some comments I I would like to speak to can we turn micel I don't do this very often you can
tell um I would like to speak to um the my office and how we envision providing these services to you and a little bit about our experience so far um after which time we'd be happy obviously to answer any of your questions um we were
happy to agree to provide you with these services when we were approached um a couple of years ago uh but only on these two conditions there just two conditions they were of course adequate funding but
also um we had a condition that was um not negotiable which was ultimately that we remain independent and uh be able to function properly as An Inspector General Independence is the Hallmark of
An Inspector General or any oversight agency and without it or without the appearance of Independence uh we just we don't have the trust of the public to do the job that we're engaged to
do we don't expect our relationship with you to be any different than our relationship with the other entities that are under our Authority um or that appearance of independent may be affected we were pleased I was very
pleased that the Ila suitably addressed these two conditions now in terms of how we treat agencies within our Authority we have certain values and principles that all of us in the oig have agreed to uphold
and they include that we dedicate our limited resources primarily to cases that are opportunities to improve systems our teaching moments would have a deep or wide
impact and or are in the Public's interest we don't get involved uh where we would not add value we don't get involved uh as an appeal Avenue for example for decisions about matters that
we see are adequately addressed by the school board or by another agency as far as the treatment of subjects and of allegations and other implicated parties we recognize that our
reported findings can injure reputations so we always solicit and we listen very carefully to explanations to our preliminary negative things and then
we consider those explanations and we all also consider and mitigate unwarranted negative impacts to individuals and agencies for example in a published report we might omit the
name of an individual who was an integral part of the investigation in terms of being a primary witness but was not implicated and for that reason we might uh in indicate that individual by their role or by their initials to
because it's not necessary to accomplish what we're trying to accomplish through our services but at the end of the day without fear or favor we are going to report and Report uh we're going to report and refer for enforcement as
appropriate the misconduct and the gross mismanagement that we find I want to emphasize as M McIntyre has described to you that our Authority is very very
limited by following the charter and the Ila which we are bound to do our Authority is only over school board officials employees and providers period we are not uh we do not have
authority nor will we engage in investigations of any other individuals or entities if they happen to have uh engaged in some kind of misconduct whatever as a part of an existing
investigation uh that might be reported if it's pertinent and relevant to what we were investigating in the first place we're not going to be investigating uh anything outside of the school boards officials employees and
providers and then of course only that grp gross mismanagement or misconduct as defined by the charter and the Ila as explained by Miss McIntyre so I am going to go into a little bit about these subjects that the
Ila covers so we have um with with the county and the municipalities we can base our misconduct on their ordinances and so we saw um your school board policies rules and rules
as kind of you know the equivalent to those ordinances and so we expanded Beyond state law and federal law in finding misconduct based on violations of certain of your rules and
policies not all of them so um generally these are subjects enumerated they are enumerated in the if there's any question but they are for example regarding Administration accounting building and
construction codes of conduct other than those just for instructional Personnel Contracting and contract management facilities management and safety Finance financial management and Reporting funds
management cyber security and information technology procurement property control records management and of course the other enumerated policies so for example we won't be
investigating your legislative action what you decided we might investigate the implementation of that we might investigate violations of that but we're not here to second guess your
policy with a little P policy decisions we're not going to be investigating disciplinary issues and actions involving individual employees unless we find that there's an indication of a
pattern of some kind of systemwide or systemic problem and we're very good at tracking these individual tips and complaints over time to see if there does appear to be some kind of repeat
allegation uh which you know in an isolated case may not be something we would want to take on but if it involves systemic mismanagement or a fundamental problem we will uh we don't investigate
whistleblower claims per se you are the employer of the individuals who are designated to be whistleblowers but we are interested to know know when people are retaliated against or claim to be retaliated against because we believe
that that is additional evidence of um the underlying uh facts that these individuals are reporting we won't be investigating violations of your policies relative to academics instruction instructional
material curricula testing or extracurricular activities we won't be looking into bullying and other abusive personal Behavior or of course student conduct we will not be we will not be um
so that you have some understanding of how much work we take on and we produce um I thought I would go over some of the statistics that we we compiled for our latest annual report which came out um you know our fiscal
year ends on September 30th so through September 30th 2024 we reported in our annual report that we handled 377 tips 6.3 of those resulted in
investigative matters we handled an additional 40 complaints 7.5% of which resulted in investigative matters we identified $2.9 million in questionable
expenditures we closed nine inquiries and investigations that we reported to the public and we closed 16 others without reporting to the public now this was for the county and the 31 municipalities we've been operating
under the assumption that when the services for the school board are fully up and running running that the school board will account for approximately 25% of our work in the 2025 annual report to be released
around Thanksgiving we'll have a section on Schoolboard accomplishments and we'll be Distributing that annual report to each of you uh as board members individually and we'll notice the superintendent of schools and the school board chair um about when and where the
annual selection oversight committee meeting will be held um and that is of course where they review the annual report and my performance for the fiscal year um I want to turn to the Ila and our very brief history so far what we've
done so far under the Ila as you know P effective on January 2 the date that the county mayor signed the contract as the third of the three parties to the agreement um we are now seeking to fill
three positions dedicated to School Board cases and we have uh jobs uh job ads I should say running right now for a special agent and a special auditor and we intend to hire a investigations
manager either from among those applicants or inhouse um I thought you might be interested to hear that uh since our Inception in 2011
between then and la and uh 2024 uh through the end of 2024 the oig actually received quite a number of tips and complaints about the school board and uh by my count it was 38 in all those
years um and since the Ila since January 2 we've received five uh tips uh three of which were closed and two are pending followup and I wanted to uh very briefly go over with you those tips that we
closed or rather why we closed them so that you have your eyes open in terms of how we're going to be moving forward um in the first tip it was received on January 13th we closed it about a week
later um it alleged discrimination harassment denial of accommodations and false uh claims by your nursing department um that resulted in um harm to children
certain children and um the allegation was essentially that there was no implementation of a 504 I guess an ADA a 504 plan since 2023 we no action this matter because
there is a 504 plan it's just not one that the uh uh tipster was um felt was appropriate and thus uh and because the facts that were presented did not rise to the level
of illegal harassment or threats for example a threat to sue is not a an illegal threat it might not be you know very civil behavior um but um if warranted uh and or even if not warranted it's not a violation of Law
and so it's not misconduct um and so without misconduct uh we don't have the jurisdiction to proceed and we did not the second tip we received was on January
23rd um that allegation was that the Florida legislature the Florida state school board and the Florida Department of Education violated the first amendment when it passed a new curriculum that requires teachers to airm Bel beliefs they don't believe in
we know action this because the oig only has jurisdiction over Schoolboard officials employees and providers these allegations are really against State actors right the school board is following the curriculum and therefore
it's following the law it's quite the opposite of misconduct um as Schoolboard actors were not engaged or not engaged in Gross mismanagement management or misconduct we know actioned the tip and then in the
third tip which we received on February 7th the allegation was that there is a teacher who is out on sick leave due to a medical condition while being seen in public perfectly healthy now the tipster
believes that the teacher is burning through his or her sick leave prior to retirement and committing fraud against the taxpayer so this is an example of one of those minor singular events by a single
employee and not by management um as presented right uh there there may be a mismanagement of time and
employees uh but this tip does not present present that kind of bigger problem and we would have referred this tipster to your HR um for the for your HR department um or the appropriate
Department to uh proceed with disciplinary proceedings but uh the individual uh filed the the tip anonymously so we couldn't reach back for that so um that just gives you an idea of what we've done so far for you um um
before I close we did have a couple of questions for you um and they include one I think you can answer pretty quickly which is when do you need from us our request for next year's
budget um we're going to this uh the county uh with a budget request I think by the end of April um but your fiscal year is a little different than ours Dr Hepper I ask Miss Johnson a weigh in on that um
you're right we're fiscal years are different so I think we're going to need it fairly quickly but go ahead Miss Johnson we're curring building next year fiscal year now so if you could process as soon as possible to our office it'll be appreciated I'm glad I asked um and
who should we direct that information to it would be fine if you could direct it to me okay and you are I'm the CFO romaner Johnson thank you all right um and um Second and finally um we're we're going to need to
physically expand um and you have included in your initial fee approximately $115,000 I think um to um fund for us a modest buildout of our existing space so
we're in um Plantation we're at the corner of Broward Boulevard and University drive and we're in the I guess we're in the County government West building but we're in a separate Suite we're physically segregated from
the rest of the county staff we have our own entrance and this is um for a reason um to this is you know it's to to keep a physical and um uh psychological
separation between the county and the o I uh and to help people or encourage people that it's okay to come and you won't be seen right by County uh administrators or managers so um we're pretty tight as it is what
we're going to do what the plan is is to reduce the size of our individual cubicles stuff some additional cubicles in our file room remove all of our hard files out of our file room and and you that kind of thing um
and we are we're staffed for or we're budgeted for 20 we have 20 of our own staff now we're adding three um you know with the idea that we're going to dedicate three to the Schoolboard matters um and then I think we're going
to be expanding some more because of the displacement of work that we're able to provide the county and the municipalities by taking on this job so we would like to plan for accommodating approximately 30 staff and we have this
plan that was developed last year and we're ready to implement it um but I was wondering with your downsizing with your lowered enrollment
with your extra space around here and there whether um there might be some appropriately located space that um we could you know separate from
Schoolboard physic you know somehow separate from Schoolboard space and make accessible to the public that maybe we could rent from you of course at a discount given the services that we're providing you um so if if that's
something that is um feasible or desirable on your part um I know you can't work it out today but um if if somehow word could get back to me I
would not proceed on this other plan but I'm for now going to proceed on this other plan until I hear from you differently Dr heurn yes um and you said you're a pay for that space so yes uh we we my team and I will get back and follow up with you we we are reviewing
all available spaces and um see if we have have any spaces that are comparable to your needs so we can follow up with you okay super thank you appreciate that um so uh finally members of the public who may be watching we are standing by
if you believe uh that uh you've seen or know of misconduct or gross mismanagement by School Board official employee or provider please contact us at our website Broward
.org we have a report misconduct page on which you can find online forms very convenient um you can call us on our Anonymous hotline at 954 357 tips you
can email us at Inspector General broward.org you can drop by no appointment needed Tuesday through Thursday 8:30 to 4:30 at 1 North University Drive the South Suite or you
could make an appointment to come in at another time during the week at 954 357 7873 uh on behalf of all my colleagues at the office of the Inspector General we look forward to a long and
Cooperative relationship with the school board to helping you avoid and uncover mismanagement and misconduct and to improve improve your operation operations for years to come thank you thank you so much Miss ba M Batista yes
so I just wanted to add that there is also a link on the School Board website that goes directly to the inspector General's office for anyone who would like to make a tip or a
complaint thank you any public comment on this item okay thank you you Mrs Leonardi thank you and thank you so much for coming and doing the presentation um and thank you to my colleagues for accommodating my request
uh for us to go through this workshop together I thought it was very informative um I just had a few questions about the presentation um and the Ia um I know very early on you said that there were some circumstances in which the oig must or can disclose the name of
a complaint what would those situations be if the tipster complainant were to wave the confidentiality provision that could happen um if it was absolutely necessary in the course of the
investigation for example um if the tip had to do with the tipster himself or herself and there's only one person that could possibly relate to and we need to investigate the facts underlying facts um it could happen happened there we we
haven't had to trigger that exception um and then if a court were to order us to do what we would right um what about like if an elected official was the complainant would you have to dis because I know we're subject to a lot of like public records laws and things like that would you have is there a situation
in which you have to okay no absolutely not the law um in large part in large part protects the confidentiality of the source of the in the identity of the source of the
information um you know where we can uh we need the in the Informer to help us with the investigation we reach back we might even have that person be a witness in our case and they would be known as a witness in our case but they would not be known as the source of the
information in the first place official or not got it thank you um you in the presentation it identifies someone doing um submitting a complaint in good faith um can you give me an
example of of how you determine that if it's done in good faith so we have not had that situation before member Leonardi um but I can imagine that it would be a situation where someone is
absolutely um out to get someone else politically and ready to make statements that are not truthful they know they are not truthful Etc um in that case perhaps
that might be a situation where the confidentiality Provisions would not apply but we have not made that determination nor has it been raised to us got it thank you um so you mentioned um you know some
tips that that uh you've already gotten about the school district um I'm wondering and maybe you you answered this earlier but will there be um like a regular report of information like we got this many tips on about you guys is that in the annual report or okay yes
we'll break out those numbers for you how many tips came in how many complaints came in um if we issued any closing memoranda or final reports I doubt it I I I don't think we would have the time uh between now and the close of
the fiscal year to report on anything that we would be investigating relating to the school board but we would report the numbers for you for sure got it thank you um if someone calls in and files a complaint and it's not something
that uh the office chooses to investigate is that person communicated to at all yes so what one thing we did not uh reference is that we are accredited by the commission for Florida law enforcement accreditation this is a
a group that is set up by Florida statute that accredits law enforcement agencies and Inspector General Offices throughout the state and there are a number there's something like 49 um standards by which
we as an oig have to comply with in order to get and keep our accreditation which we received in 2014 and just uh got re accredited last year one of those standards is that we must communicate with the tipster complainant within 10
days of their having filed their information um assuming they are uh reachable and uh if there's not an exception to that requirement got it thank you um I had a a question just I I suppose generally about some of your findings
and um the city of Wilton Manor situation I thought was interesting um I believe I heard that from from you all that the the parking services vendor in the city came to an agreement that um
like the money was recouped and all of that is that a correct understanding of what happened in city of Wilton Manners as far far as the resolution that they were able to reach were the two resolutions that were indisputable in
the contract um one resolution was that uh there was a uh deposit that city of Wilton Manners um had paid laner and the agreement was that laner was going to be uh applying
it to the first um the first invoice in the contract here we are years later and that retainer was never returned so when we uh started looking through the records started seeing looking at the contract and saw that that retainer was
maintained by layer and brought it to their attention layer immediately issued the city of wton manners a credit um to their the invoice mind you years later but they uh credited their accounts uh the other resolution that they reached
was again it was IND undisputable um in the contract they were supposed to sign over a vehicle um a particular vehicle it was never done uh when we pointed it out they went ahead and and and got with the Department of Motor Vehicles and took care of that got it so I'm
wondering um is that generally the outcome that you see that the two parties um you know resolve what is UN indisputable um in the investigation um or do you see some like cities or the
county uh then using the report to pursue legal action against um you know a contractor or some some entity that they do business with to recoup funds it really depends we've seen a wide variety of responses to our reporting our
investigations so um as happened in in the Wilton Manners case uh very often as we're proceeding through the investigation the parties realize um oh uh we never did pay this they're right to ask us about it and they resolve
those matters so that we can report that they resolved the matters um at the conclusion of every report where appropriate we are also going to be issuing recommendations to the entities involved on how to improve their
processes and their internal controls um and to the extent that those processes change and those controls are implemented by the time we issue our final report the entities want to get that credit and we're happy to give it
to them um because after all it did result from our work um we do see sometime we have seen in one case I want it's the old case out of Weston where um a couple of
landscapers um had done some serious overbilling um of the city and the city was able to uh take that information file a lawsuit and did recover several hundred, from those
landscapers for um for that act for the that misconduct okay thank you for um Illuminating that I think that although this relationship um you know is going to to cost the school district money it seems like perhaps it could save us
money um down the line and and help uh create efficiencies so thank you for that um I just wanted wanted to to ask one more question um on the page where it says what are the terms of the Ila um
I just want I was curious um for who is included at the third bullet point um would that be so it says the school board or superintendent appointed members of groups that are delegated decision-making Authority or serve in an advisory role to to one or more School Board member or superintendent um so
would that be like our advisory committees the way that we determine jurisdiction is if they are charged with decision making so acting instead of the board member so if they are Bing that's one of the or or appointees um but that
particular Clause if they are charged with any kind of decision- making for example uh vetting through résumés and and discarding some resumés you're making decisions then we go ahead and have jurisdiction okay um I'm wondering
if our general C council could to speak to that so I guess would that be like um like the Committees is talk like looking at hiring and things like that I'm just I would like some more specifics Miss Batista so we don't really have any
committees that are look at hiring other than when we talk about the superintendent um so this would not apply to regular hiring processes within the district where you have an opposition that is being advertised and then there is a panel that interviews
and and vets you know like the HR um group uh vets the uh information um this would be more along the lines of what Miss McIntyre just alluded to which would be um committees where the board
appoints members and those committees are making decisions um that you know impact the district uh for example um anything with competitive solicitation uh evaluation
committees um all those members would be subject to the review of The Inspector General okay so not not like DAC or or like those kinds committees okay all right thank you thank you for clarifying that those are all my questions thank
you Miss Thompson I just had a question you gave you said you had some tips that came in that you said were unfounded but that would be within our jurisdiction do you send that information to us like the teacher who was nope no we don't send
that information out we um when we close our cases without published findings um the case is closed um we don't announce it we don't publish it we don't call anybody um and that's for a number of
reasons including we might we might reopen it and any confidentiality that might be lost in in the information that's re any confidentiality we had might be lost um
it's it's also um because there are all kinds of people with all kinds of motives who provide information to our agency and sometimes those motives aren't great um
and we understand that there are people who would file information that they knew to be sketchy um so that they can wave it around in the public
um uh against individuals who you know they they want to attack we are not in a position to make a decision as to whether someone is ill motivated or well motivated we're in a position to
determine whether the information is true or not and um when we close a matter we don't pass judgment on the source and we don't go out of our way to give that information to the source so
that the source can use it for whatever reason he or she might want to it's always available as a public record if someone were to want to follow up on the information that they have provided and they do um
they can get that information or anybody um a subject if you become if you become aware that you're a subject of an oig investigation that you to be believe to be closed you could make a public records request and we would provide all
of those records to you except for that which remains confidential which is the identity of the source of the information so I just want to clarify why I asked so you talked about a parent who was concerned about their 504 plan so do you tell the tipsters that like
actually that's not in our jurisdiction I would recommend you tell the school board so we can make sure that our students are receiving the services they need so we do um inform
individuals that we closed a matter we or we or we followed up with it when it comes to tips and complaints sometimes we're able we're in a position where we can provide the reason why um but I don't think that is
given as a matter of course but miss McIntyre is the one who receives all the calls and explains uh over the telephone uh the reason why something was no action if it was no action is that
something you could start doing if it's a matter of like student services just direct it back to the school board no that is not something that we would do for you or to for any of the other entities within our jurisdiction
okay okay Mrs Bowman morning good morning um I just wanted to follow Miss Leon already kind of covered some of the things that I wanted to ask about and but just in general and this has been very comprehensive so thank you I'm getting a
much better idea of what we're looking at here um in your experience dealing with other um agencies do you find that there's an abuse of this service so I you know
anybody can make a complaint um there's a good faith requirement that protects identif the identity of people that are making complaints but in general there's is there a good fi component to to making the complaints
not to disclosing identity but just to the complaints themselves C could I file infinite complaints without any real substance and you have
to investigate every single one of those that's an excellent question um because um we we do look at the motive of the
Informer the tipster or the complainant as part of assessing The credibility of the information but even a person with an ill motive could be providing and does provide good information which results
in an investigation and findings of misconduct or gross mismanagement as far as whether someone who repeatedly provides bad information um we look at every tip and
every complaint however if it's from the same individual and it turns to be 50 or 60 or 70 times or more and it does happen we have a number of of them um then we
take their information with a grain of salt um but we do look at every one of them we don't close anything automatically because of where it's coming from we look to see whether or not there still might be a basis for um
following up that's all thank you Dr Zan thanks so much um I find this uh absolutely critical for our relationship with our public uh earlier
this year we asked our demographers how many people were directly involved in providing education through our schools and it's 820,000 people in Broward County 41% of our population directly involved and our relationship with them is predicated on trust
accountability and moving forward with things like this uh it is nice to get this deck um chair I'd love to get these like a week in advance whenever we can it's very difficult to review such an important topic and like in an hour you
know come up with all the critical uh questions but I'm going to ask a handful um I'm going to list some people and I'd like just yes or no whether or not they're covered uh under the oig you ready well I'll do my best Dr Seaman
awesome members of the PTA or sack without uh them being otherwise within the definition of an official employer provider no volunteer advisers who don't have any uh policy obligations that would uh present
themselves as decision makers uh now you see you're starting to get into um School Board vernacular with which I'm not familiar yet um and I would say that whenever a new group or a new member of
a group it's questioned whether or not they're within our Authority as an appointed official we're going to run it through councel we're going to ask that lawyer or one of our lawyers to go through the IL and make a determination as to
whether or not they are or aren't within that definition I to totally appreciate it this is the kind of question I would have asked a week ago though if we had had this presentation I would have asked for an a list who's in who's out and kind of what the conditions are because
it's critical for us to know that um how about vendors that do before school or after school doc um M Batista so just wanted to point out that you all have a copy of the Ila and on page 14 of that
document there is a list of inclusions and exclusions and specifically the you know the um School Ally groups are excluded the PTSA the PTO the sa you know the school advisory Council all of
those are excluded thank you um today is an opportunity to communicate to the public that doesn't read our ilas and uh I want to make sure that the public understands who's in and who's out um are students of Brower County Schools subject to the oig
no are disputes with our collective bargaining agreement um uh subject to oig investigation no a vendor that offers before school and after school programs are they
subject to an oig investigation if they're paid for with Schoolboard money yes terrific uh we can talk more about it and bring the Ila back in uh later but these are the kinds of things that we're going to be asked a thousand times as Schoolboard members and as senior staff uh when people run into something
and they're like who do I bring this to and and uh we need to know it and to the some extent uh they need to know it as well uh Broward .org like a huge deal right we want people to understand to know how to report things that they've
seen I appreciate you uh sharing that today the cases that you presented today what were the consequences for the individuals involved besides just repayment of and and other kind of civil responsibilities let me step back and
explain um there there may be expect expectations of what it is an inspector General can do and inspector's General only ever have the authority to shine a light on a
situation and let the decision makers make their decisions we don't recommend discipline we recommend procedural changes we recommend internal controls but we don't recommend that somebody be
suspended or fired we don't have the authority to fire anyone we don't have the authority to fine anyone and we don't have the authority to uh do anything other than to refer
them for uh ref refer their cases to an enforcement Authority that does have the jurisdiction to do something about it in the cases presented today though there were no criminal criminal prosecution for the behaviors I understand Mr superintendent how are we going to
communicate the IG ins outs uh how to call and things like that to our 25380 employees Dr heurn we have a awesome communication and marketing team so I'll let Mr Sullivan um kind of chime in briefly um
but um listening to all the information um getting some clarity on next steps um from this presentation that definitely help us understand what we need to communicate to our public at Large we defin employees thank you we could definitely share out and come up with a plan um put on all our channels as Miss
Batista did indicate it's already on our homepage uh on Fast find so it's easier to find if anyone wants to file a complaint I appreciate that I thought Miss Thompson had a really interesting uh question which opened up an interesting opportunity on our website anyway which would be where it says
report to an IG you might click on that and it says if this is student services you know here's a number to call if upset about you know 504 compliance or you know whether or not your child has the appropriate resources to learn and things like that um to at least educate
people that go through our website uh because it would really be great to um minimize the uh the calls and inquiries requests that you get if in fact they're related to 504s and things like that so at least within our control um I'd ask you to consider uh doing whatever you
can in your deck uh I Madam IG you say that info is not released while the investigation is open I think what you said to miss lardy's question is that all of that information other than the complaintant complaint is subject to
public record request over time correct does that include people that participate in your inquiries and investigation and what they say yes sir are they aware of that when they do it I think people assume that the information they're giving is public information and will become public information
information terrific last point and I think it might be one that we need to take into consideration over time you've already gotten a number of complaints about the school board and we just got started that's right you've assumed uh three staff members and around 1.2
million per year is the approximate cost for this course I think as a board we need to be prepared for that cost to go up considerably uh this is a group uh that in some sectors can be kind of ious it's certainly something that people are very
passionate about I still continue to believe it's the body that has the greatest impact on the welfare of our community um and I'm not sure that three fdes is going to be sufficient to get these things done um are there methods uh by which you could come back and ask
for more staff and more money we plan to ask for more staff oh so the three the three um that we're hiring now are to get us through the end of the fiscal year so in our request uh our budget request we're going to be um asking for funding
for three additional uh to be hired sometime during the next fiscal year and what would that bring the cost to on an annual basis about $1.3 million I'm sorry so that's still the approximate number that we started with and that would be 6 FTE in that ballpark figure
that that's right plus a percentage of um those Personnel within our staff whose uh work um for the school board is you know intertwined with the rest of their work for example my work you know uh Miss
McIntyre's work um we're working on policies Etc that affect all the work that we do including the school boards and you'll be a portioned a part of our services as well terrific and U I want to caution the board about one thing we
love data and uh we love accountability and we love the IG and we're tickled that it that uh it passed and we have you uh on board the greatest impact of an IG will never be measured because it's people not doing the wrong thing
it's people who say let me double check and make sure not not that people always do wrong things with Mal intent sometimes they just do wrong things because that's you know they took over a job and someone always did it that way and they just keep doing it that way uh but to the extent that an IG has kind of
the greatest impact in my experience with Federal IGS is because they exist and people know how to report things and it's easy to report and you quickly kind of decide how far to go through inquiry and investigation and eventually public release of information about uh things
that are given to you we can never collect that data right you can never find out about the good behavior that went on because there was accountability in a system but this is fundamental to us building or rebuilding trust with our constituents and with our community I'm
so glad that you're here I'm so glad we got this done I didn't think we'd do it in two years when we did which is uh really break next speed and that's uh a credit to you and to uh our general counsel and team uh for putting it together so quickly but this is a big deal and I look forward to talking about
this uh more often I would also suggest chair that we not wait for the end of the year for reports if we can uh either modify our Ila or uh come up with a friendly Amendment uh where we can learn more about inquiries excuse me the um
tips that are provided to you on more often than an annual basis uh that would be useful at least for this uh School Board member so thank you for being here thanks for being here for us um and being such an integral part of our uh ability to do our job thank you Dr Zeman
um I just wanted to address something which I failed to do in answering Miss Thompson's question and that was that we do refer tipsters and complaintants to other agencies as appropriate and as observed on a timely basis meaning we
will refer individuals who have a concern which we think is better handled by another agency we will suggest to them that they contact that agency so that is something that we do do including Broward County School Board um if it includes a component of your
school board or of sure of of of an agency within you within your your human resources for for example right The General Counsel um who you know whoever would be responsible for handling
um that given situation and um I'm sorry because I think that that's the opposite of what was said earlier the the opposite earlier was if you had a tip it's not referred back to the school board is that we don't refer it back to the school board okay we suggest the tipster go back to I'm sorry right and I
think I think that's what Miss Thompson was inferring and maybe maybe uh maybe didn't come across you does that mean that you might need a menu of things and a menu of people that you could suggest to the tipster that they go to that would be very helpful and do you have that yet no okay maybe that's uh some
other action we could recommend chair you know that if you get a 504 you call Student Services if it's a facilities thing you might you know check in with the CFO uh if it has anything to do with mental health call Rebecca Thompson or home phone number is no that's not all right thank you thank you for clearing
that up um Mrs Fam thank you um and thank you for coming forward and being willing to work with the school district we do appreciate it and I know that um it's much needed I just have um a few Qui
questions one is um I know you talked about public record and keeping confidentiality um what about is a um complaint that's filed but withdrawn is that still saved and still come par uh public record
so there's really no way to withdraw a complaint once a complaint is filed it's filed a person could say I'm withdrawing the complaint or I don't want you to act on it we might act on it anyway just without the complainant you know but
there's no real way to withdraw a complaint okay thank you and um another quick question Union officials that are also considered employees they're on leave of absence um would they also be covered under um the oig so employees
and officials and providers by by the charter providers but when we look at the conduct of employees and officials from any entity we're looking to see whether they whether their alleged
misconduct or other Behavior was related to their work or whether it reflects on their FA winess to be an to be someone who um who should be carrying out public
business and be receiving public money for example if we were to have a City attorney get pulled over for a DUI maybe even involving an accident or an injury we under the a literal reading of
the charter we would have jurisdiction we would have the authority to investigate what happened investigate the DUI uh Etc but uh we take it um within the overall reading of the charter and the overall understanding of
what the public expects from us that that is not something that we will engage in so I would say that um in the absence of more information um you know what is the
nature of the the alleged misconduct by the union official would we investigate we might but it would have to have some Nexus to their official thank
you thank you Mrs rert and welcome thank you um we're happy that you came here to the best and I'm going to do a Shameless uh promo here you chose BCPS so we we appreciate that um my one question really is about
how long um is there a set deadline if a if someone is to report mismanagement Malin etc etc do they have an x amount of time period or is there no a cuto off point no there's there's no C off um we
we will accept we will accept old information but um with the understanding that number one you might have a statute of limitations problem if if we're looking at misconduct um number two information that is old is often stale and um you
know as time goes on like anyone who who pursues investigations civil or criminally evidence is lost Witnesses memories fade um there are additional problems with old information so of
course we want information that's fresh um but we don't we don't have any kind of edict or rule that says that once information is x amount old it's not it's not considered we don't do that okay um and what what if it was an
employee that was um worked for us but now hasn't worked for us for 7 10 20 years um would that information still be looked at because I you know that yes so um for former employees and officials and
providers um we're so we're going to be concerned about whether or not the conduct involved their work as a official employer
provider that's number one so that's the legal but then the the discretionary part the part where you know I get to decide whether or not it's something that we want to spend our resources on that is something that um you know we would be looking at for example if it
was a very very old case you know it need to be something extremely egregious for us to want to go back and and take a look at again we want to spend our limited resources our limited personnel and and the money that we have to
investigate we want to spend it on those cases that provide um an opportunity for a wide impact or Deep Impact and if a very very old case um we I I don't think we would
look at it and um I think even um even a case against a former employee unless it was super egregious and pretty recent I don't think we would take it on got it okay thank you that was all the questions I had thank you to my colleagues who who asked other questions
thank you Dr holess thank you madam chair thank you Miss Bree for coming and Miss McIntyre I appreciate it so uh I also uh thank you for clarifying the concern that board member Thompson had regarding um if
there's a tip that is not within the scope of your responsibility you do not necessarily directly uh contact the school board but you encourage the tipster to do so so the question that I have is if the tipster doesn't follow up
for whatever reason with the school board in our case um what is the how do we well let me phrase another way can we get access to the information through um records
request you could yes but the case would have to be over and then we would have had to have well I I suppose you're interested in tips just the information itself I mean correct you could periodically request a um a report of
the report but you could periodically request the records involved understand so the reason I'm bringing this up because of the mere fact that you don't necessarily directly inform us of any tip that you receive but I think it would be within the district's interest
to know what those tips are and if the tipster does not inform us um then as a board and I guess uh through the superintendent or actually maybe Miss Batista uh can respond to this can the board periodically
uh do a records request from the oig on any uh uninvestigated issues that relates to the school board so at least we can have that information to determine if it's relevant for us and our departments to look into it Miss
Batista thank you madam shair so the answer is yes we we can um if that's the will of the board if the board would like me to proceed in that manner I can periodically L make requests from the ig's office as to um close files that
they can share with us okay so I'd like to see if the board would give consensus on Miss Batista periodically and whatever periodically means I don't know if that's quarterly or by annually I may be heard on this issue I'm sorry may I
be heard on this issue chair um let Miss Batista and then yes so a couple of things so one is um of course we would have to allow enough time for the ig's office to complete the investigation because those items would not be available until the their um uh files
are closed that's number one and number two rarely do we see um someone that goes to the ig's office as their first um path to a remedy so normally by the time that they are file something with
the IG is because they have come to the school board they have gone to their school they have gone to all kinds of different places they're unhappy with how things are proceeding and then they go to the IG that's um I don't know if that's normally what you see as well um
it definitely is what we see okay so I guess my other question that something we can do did you want to yes I I did um I before you make this decision I would
caution you to to appreciate that this could have a chilling effect on people coming to the IG in the first place to provide their tips and complaints if you would like for the IG
to be fully functioning you wouldn't want to to to make um it known that you were watching what information is coming in to the
inspector General's office while we are not going to be disclosing the identity of the sources of this information very often maybe more often than
not you or someone else within the school board is going to be able to identify individual is by the circumstances that they're presenting by the nature of the information Etc um
it's it's certainly a public record it's certainly available to you um but I would caution you to consider the fact that it might be chilling to someone who is who
is you know uh in good faith seeking to um remedy a situation that they see within the school board okay and I respect Dr heern wanted to chime in no problem yeah so I I wanted to chime in because I'm in this instance I do agree
with the oig um where we don't want to um dissuade anybody from U providing information to the oig that would be pertinent for something that we need to address that's like some drastic issues that we need to update revise or or make sure they're addressed many all the
cases she referenc earlier that were submitted we are familiar with um as Miss Batista said that usually uh the they're sending us information to the oig as a last just resort to to get a different decision for the the the regular nuances that we deal with 504 es
student discipline things like that um but I would caution the board um as the public is listening not to say we're going to pull public records from the oig because it's the larger issues that we don't want to dissuade people from
submitting that may have be of concern that we really need to dive in and and correct that course of action um moving forward um so I know it's a delicate balance Dr holness of of wanting to get that information but many of the information many of the cases that she
just referenced earlier all we are all familiar with those cases because they're emailing the school board too they're They're copying the superintendent in some cases they're also copying the governor the ig's office and everybody but many of those cases we are familiar
with so I it's a delicate balance but I would not want to create an environment where for some of the larger issues that we need to know about and have this um independent arm to help us investigate and figure out what's going on so we can um address them accordingly I don't want
to dissuade people from from doing that um and we have the same issue as staff where we're trying to uh figure out a mechanism to get Anonymous information so we can address our needs and concern terms better because we are a people business and some people um aren't being
ethical and doing what's right for kids or for other adults and we're trying to figure out a better way of getting Anonymous information because folks feel like you know there may be some ret retaliation or or um concerns like that if they step forward and provide their name so we're in the same type of um
issue ourselves so I would caution the board on that also understand and Madam chair I'll just finish up so I appreciate that feedback Miss Bri I think it's well received um didn't see it from that angle until you mentioned it so um you know I will not be seeking
a consensus on that um but I appreciate the fact that um that as a board or individual board members at any time there may be concern about any particular tipster um then you can do a records request but I don't think that's based
on what you said um it's not something that would be advised collectively as a board for us to engage in on a frequent basis and I I believe your um advice is credible um and well received so thank you madam chair I'm good thank you I
have two quick questions um and one is similar to Mrs Leonard's question on what are the terms of the Ila and who is included so on that third bullet it says school board or superintendent appointed members of groups that are delegated decision-making Authority which is what
you said but it also says or serve in an advisory role to one or more school board members and so we have school board appointed committees there's 13 of them are so so do would would they fall
under this because they are they serve in an advisory role in that they have advisory committee meetings and they bring us recommendations for us to look at in terms of changing policy so I read this as they would be included in who
was included but that's not really what you said when when we asked the question so I just want to be really clear cuz I'm pretty sure the reason it was put in there is because the expectation was they were included but it's sounding to me like you're saying they're
not um excuse me so I just want to make sure that I understand your question um you are asking whether we all are we all understand about the
decision- making Authority yes now if a school board member or a superintendent the superintendent or School Board member appoints somebody not appoints but designat someone as their advisor on a particular committee I would have to
have more information with regard to which committee um if there's 13 that are appointed and that's something that we not struggled with that we went ahead and we knew that we had to have more information for because we're not
familiar with what each duty is for example in a municipality they have a whole um plethora of boards as well some boards have within its duties to go ahead and make decisions some don't so it's going to be dependent on What that
particular person's role is are they acting in the stead of uh the board member or the superintendent or is everybody purely advising and we wouldn't know unless we know the person and The Advisory Board I got you because
what I'm tripping up on there is that decision making 100% we understand but it says or serve in an advisory role so the fact that you've distinguished or we have distinguished two different things
an advisory role is to give us recommendations which our Schoolboard advisory committees do for example the audit committee right they they don't have decision making Authority but they do give recommendations to the school
board about different audits or whatever that we follow through on same thing with the ESC advisory like we have some they're not decision makers but they do provide recommendations that we act on so the fact that it says decision-
making or advisory I this is a little unclear so I understand you're going to look through it maybe you could give us a followup maybe I can help the languages in the Ila I think it is clear it's either a a decision-making body or
serving an advisory capacity if appointed by the school board or a school board member or the superintendent so they are included they are incl because maybe everyone else just wasn't really qu clear on the question because I think we were all asking that and the answer seemed to be
no they weren't included but they are included so I just want to be clear the the ones where we appoint school board or superintendent appoints someone specifically to a committee they would be underneath the oig you could
investigate them ifre and of course before we make any decisions we will look through we'll look through the allegation the person's role and the actual we want to make sure that we have jurisdiction before we move forward perfect I appreciate that it's just kind
of muddled so um my last question is on the termination process says any of the parties can terminate the agreement and I just wonder since we had to get um a vote by the the people the residents of brard County do they also if there's a
termination process does it have to go through a vote again or that's completely up to the school board and the oig's office it's going to be up to the parties okay I just and I leave Miss Batista oh and the count so the charter amendment that the voters approved essentially says uh that a voluntary
entity who so if you are a constitutional officer of the county or are the school board you can um you can voluntarily enter into an interlocal agreement with the county and the Inspector General and if that doesn't
exist then there is no okay so the voters just said we could come into the agreement if we wanted to they're not saying we had to that's right thank you so much we appreciate your time and um and explaining all of this it is an important thing and we're very glad to
have you so welcome aboard thank you very much for having us we appreciate it and we appreciate your very thoughtful questions thank you and have a great day thank you than okay the next item up is the smart program update and I will now
turn it over to staff for a presentation Madam chair why they're setting up I just want to be clear is a member of the DAC subject to oig I would imagine yes because their school board appointed based on the conversation we
just had we appoint someone to the DAC chair you recess for two minutes we are going to recess the meeting for a few minutes to set up for the next presentation e e
e e e e e e e thank you um as we mentioned the next item is the smart program update I now turn it over to staff for a
presentation good morning turn it over to miss Paul and her team thank you good morning morning uh again um Wanda Paul chief operations and Facilities officer uh to the board uh Miss Hixon and superintendent hipper I have with me uh
Miss Sonia kohy who is our uh task assigned executive director of uh of uh construction and so she will assist me uh in this presentation I I thank you for the uh opportunity to bring this information
forward also uh as part of compiling this pre uh presentation we have aom and Atkins realis uh who can help answer any specific questions but uh let's get to it the goal of today's presentation is
to provide the board an update on the current status uh and forecasts of capital Improvement projects both smart and dfp projects uh you can see uh the table of contents won't U go through that it's
structured pretty much like the previous uh presentations smart by the Numbers $1.6 billion $65 billion has been invested across all aspects of the smart program including safety music art Athletics
renovation and Technology as you can see the status of the renovations go forward sorry sorry we having trouble with the clicker here let's see can we go back please the
clicker is having trouble here Denise the clickers okay let's see okay so as you can see smart by the numbers 1.65 billion has been invested across all aspects of the
program uh including safety music art Athletics Renovations that are still in progress and Technology can you check this thank you just next slide next slide please as you can see uh the focus of
today's uh presentation is the r in smart which it stands for renovations uh as of December the 31 1st 2024 the smart program has 153 schools in active construction a total of 68 media centers
have been completed to date the six projects in the design phase are Plantation Middle School which addresses uh Ada restrooms Atlantic West Atlantic West uh which addresses uh restrooms
also Lauder Hill 6 through 12 STEM Magnet uh again Ada restrooms Lauder Hill 612 another project which deals with HVAC and North Lauderdale Elementary
which also deals with Ada uh restrooms you can see the slides here commemorating some of the completion of the smart programs uh the school choice enhancement program is complete in addition 230 schools
received an additional $100,000 in $100,000 in funding uh as part of the school choice enhancement upgrades next slide please as you can see this is uh a depiction of the smart update the
current budget of 1.55 billion this slide provides a summary of 334 smart programs or smart projects as you can see Dr Zan we did address address the scale thank you for your
input on that uh of the approximately 110 million un encombrant funds 40 million is pending Construction contract Awards and 70 million is in contingency inside the project budgets to date we've
spent 82% of the current budget the next slide represents uh the summary again of as of December 31st 2024 for capital projects that are not part of the uh smart program some of
these projects are managed by the pmore and some are managed by The District staff the breakdown of the spin uh as you can see um it shows how the smart program dollars have been spent so far for the 331 smart projects and the
percentages that each category represents the program management figure includes uh the program managers cost program controls building department Consultants uh since the Inception of the program design represents Architects
engineers and any other Consultants like geotechnical testing construction includes the primary contractor as well as other hard costs like Furniture it purchases or purchase orders the economic impact of our uh
certified emerging small veteran minority women business enterprises you can see the number there um it's reflective of 5466 million in spend and committed funds that has been awarded to 79
District certified small businesses in the Tri County Market this represents 4.71% of the total program spend and commitment in addition uh you can see the prime and emerging uh uh payments
that we've made 100 or 1.3 billion represents the actual spend of the smart program today as reported in b2g now uh 447 million represents the total amount spent with the certified fir firms as
reported in b2g now as of December 2024 that represents 43.390296 [Music] just to remind you is the self-reporting system for monitoring data it was implemented while the smart program was
already underway and may be missing some historical completed POS for example the previous pmo R which is herey the data is inclusive of all activities in the smart program uh program management design and
construction so you can see uh the status of the renovations these projects uh a lot of uh discussion has been on three projects originally it was four we were able to move one off the list but these projects are Bennett
North Fork and Broward Estates and you can see in Bennett we have a remaining budget of 860k uh North Fork is 1.5 million and Broward is 5.9 million I think this was
brought up at the previous discussion the reality is that these dollars that are set aside for these three projects are not enough uh this this these projects have been I think on the list since the Inception of the program and it's not enough to take care
of their needs uh two projects in process is in the process of hiring an architect which is H for Char Drew which deals with HVAC and Broad View which is ada8 restrooms six projects are in design for Ada restroom car outs uh two
HVAC car outs and I can provide additional detail on these projects um the 4 ada8 restroom car outs for are for Plantation Middle Atlantic West Elementary North Lauderdale Elementary and Lauder Hill 6 through 12 the two
HVAC car outs Atlantic West and Lauder Hills 6 through 12 one project is in the process of and a contractor uh Margate Middle School uh the which deals with smart program Renovations over 20 million the school board awarded the general contracting
contract at the January 2025 uh regular with school board meeting so when you talk about a date of October to 20 uh October 2025 is ending the program as you can see these projects are are still uh in development
and that's part of the challenge um that we've had throughout this whole project I think uh Miss fam asked a question um and it deals with the Cadence of the program so how the projects were organized uh and that has been a
challenge along with some of the other challenges of fire devices and other things so when we look at the complexity of what we're dealing with now there is no simple answer to
um finishing the project by October October 2025 uh so I want to give you kind of a status of the renovations and the dfp projects uh these numbers are a snapshot snapshot
of currently active capital capital projects that are not part of the smart program so another added complexity is that you have the smart program and then you have dfp projects intertwin uh that the pmore um also manage so it's not
just a a a sanitized version of them dealing just with smart programs or the smart project uh while they are not included in the board resolution um as far as the completion of the smart
program by October the 31st uh we wanted to give you uh the cap kind of a picture of some of the capital projects as we uh move towards having management of only the capital projects
so here's uh the big three update uh we have uh Northeast High School uh you attended many of you attended the ribbon cutting of the new building in January uh the next one is blanch eely
uh the primary scope of blanch e is complete but we still have the renovations of the Bus Loop uh as well as some other uh items that we are working towards uh completing and then the new thing is uh or new old
thing is Stranahan um cafeteria the kids are in a cafeteria uh they're enjoying it it's a beautiful uh building and let's be clear it took way too long to get there but we're there uh and so we'll have a ribb ribbon cutting
I think it's uh this week and so um I hope you able to attend uh that uh beautiful building major Pro uh projects uh we wanted to share two of the major projects that we have uh in motion uh Parkway Middle
School we have uh we're in negotiation with the design firm um or and that began the first week of February is going to the board in March where is Dr holness okay there you are um the solicitation to hire a construction
manager at risk uh will be issued shortly so we're moving that project forward Rickards Middle School uh we've completed um the interior of many of the buildings is still an active uh project uh for
roofing the gymnasium continues with duck work installation and I give y'all very detailed reports probably um too detailed one of the challenges uh that I'm going to try to address with each board member to give you what you need so that you can speak to your community
in terms of uh where the progress is on your on your in your particular uh areas so we are working on that uh we're also working to identify um with the school
administration uh time frames to host Community meetings to also keep the community in step with what's happening in the buildings we we do brief principles and give them updates but I think we need to move um also towards
Community updates as a part of the regular plan uh winner construction uh highlights you can see that uh one of the things that we have to take uh into account is to take those opportunities when kids are not in the building to do
as much work as uh Pro possible uh we have 153 schools in active construction uh that receive uh critical upgrades that were completed uh by the start of January the 6 so we worked uh
really heavily with uh aom and our contractors to make sure that happened uh we are still working to receive uh certificates of occupancy uh they were finished on
schedule for the during the winter break so that was a A plus we are also focusing on critical electrical and HVAC related improvements um restrooms and Renovations as well as window
replacements overall this highlights the the management of construction and taking advantage of those critical times as I said before when kids are not in the building that's when we really need to do uh the line share of the work during the school
year and then we have have a video that we want to show you which is a highlight of some of the winter construction uh that took place so if you could click that [Music]
the next slide uh speaks to change or uh change orders and um it demonstrates the five change order categories and how much we've spent over time over the life of the program uh tax savings uh is what
we get back from the general contractors du uh through the direct owner purchase program we don't have to pay taxes on the materials uh when we contract with the supplier directly for purchases over 20,000 so every time we have an
opportunity to do that we will uh it saves US money owner requests are currently a net credit because they have been a uh quite a few cases of work being removed from the project because it is no longer
required uh a lot of the efficiency um for the program is working hand inand with our po Department um to actually try to speed up some of the projects some of the minor projects if
possible and uh that has helped quite a bit in the seven months that I've been here seven or eight months uh consultant error and consultant Omission or or mistakes that the um architect and engineer made on the plans which is is
common that happens uh it's impossible to have a perfect set of plans uh as much as you work towards that and the added cost is the premium for these change change orders because
the the the plans were not in the original bid to the GC so a lot of this is and this is kind of how you know the the complexities of the program and kind of how the sausage is made uh has
created uh some delays in the program but again you know this is where we are right now this is where we find ourselves right now and then we have this thing called unforeseen conditions and I want to talk a little bit about
that it it's it's like you you have a project and the project is to paint the wall and when you look at the wall you see growth or something on the wall you
have to see what that growth is you take the wall out and then you find out that there's a leak behind the wall that to the naked eye you don't see so that's something that was not caught very difficult to catch in many
cases that's an unforeseen condition you can't just paint the wall you have to fix the problem the root cause of the problem it could be a pipe burst behind the wall or or whatever the scenario is that is considered an unforeseen condition that wasn't the contract that
the contractor signed so we have to go through the process and make sure we update the design and that we pay the contractor appropriately to repair it not only to repair it but to paint it so often times when you see on the time
impact analysis sheets it's not just about the whole period of time that the project took part of that is a percentage o of what the unforeseen condition is and so um we've had some of
that uh and because this is such a long program the total amount of change AR orders may be uh a large number but it represents and I think Omar are showed it in a bond oversight um um 709 page uh
book that is under 2% and so that is the industry standard as we've said I think at least two other times that I brief you is between 8 and 14% so we're well below that
but that is not that does not mean that we lose focus on the fact that it exist and so um we will continue to to monitor that uh let's look to uh the projected
um look ahead for October uh 20 or October 31st 2025 and Dr Zan uh my birthday is October the 30th so I mean you know you could have done that you know we could
have had a celebration October the 30th but anyway let me move on uh the program forecast okay so as you can see you've seen this slide before uh we have 35 projects active 296 substantially
completed and three schools that I mentioned before that will be rolled into the long-term plan the long-term plan uh is the capital plan is the dfp so I want to to make that
connection um the three projects being discussed uh Bennett North Fork and Broward um when not when you look at complete that means that uh the school or that the students are already in the
space uh so uh we're still working towards Final close out and any warranty activities that may be included projects uh pending further discussion many of you uh the board members have asked about these three projects um we
removed Glades Middle School Because as I said previously our po Department was able to take care of those minor uh uh activities there so we removed that from the list and that project is being closed
out Bennett North Fork and BR States um these buildings require a lot more they're older buildings they require a lot more that was scoped out and so the FCA uh will help us understand those three schools better um and in terms of
what their needs are the next slide represents projects that we project to be rolled into the dfp currently the list contains 35 projects but again this is a moving
Target because our intent is to close out as many as possible and to be aggressive in those Closeouts um and so this number the expectation I have is that this number will go down um and I explained to you
previously some of the complexities uh that we are dealing uh at the end of these projects part of that uh that was uh talked about was uh the need for additional fire
devices um some of that deals with um not meeting the specifications that are required uh for us to close out the projects uh which deals with the building uh Code Department we'll do a uh presentation of the building code
Department about some of their work a little bit later um into today but my expect is that these that number will continue to go down um of the 35 projects but this is where we are right
now at this moment in time and the second page kind of gives those projects too um and I will do an additional uh you know I will continue to talk to the board at board workshops and provide information to you on a
regular basis so um to tell you kind of where we are in the smart program and definitely as we move towards the uh Capital program uh to Contin continue to have that conversation with you as well as with the
community this uh the next slide uh shows uh the capital projects dfp projects we are projecting to have 10 active projects by October the 31st
um that these projects were managed by aom and then on the next page you can see those 10 projects of note uh building one at uh James Rickards Middle School and coral Glades High School auditorium and the
new addition at Parkway Middle School so these are cap projects that were paid by Capital dollar um that will still be ongoing next Slide the path forward so one of the things that I wanted to um speak to you about were
opportun opportunities and how we move forward from this program and so there are three or two things here enhance the relationship uh with the business community and uh proactive and thorough
planning one of the things I mentioned um in the previous presentation on of regarding the bond oversight was planning you know you you have to do very thorough planning um at the start of the program is very it's very
difficult to do it on a tail end because you know you've already lost that time uh but I wanted to highlight the business excellent uh Excellence program uh we had throughing the course of the program uh we had 40 guest panelists 800
attendees and 258 graduates so this initiative uh was to increase engagement with the community and it also um creates a a a atmosphere of collaboration with our local business
Community December the 5th we graduated 258 small business businesses and aspiring business owners this was the first year of the program uh and the goal of the six part training series was to elevate and Empower and connect small
businesses on the journey and growth and impact so this goes back to what I said before about building a firm foundation we need to build that foundation with our small businesses as part of um how we move
forward next slide strengthening business Partnerships um local is imperative that we continue to Foster that relationship uh having a targeted Outreach and engagement uh
Communications uh program will help us as part of their normal business EDC hosts a monthly brunch and learn series for small businesses and training and access to resources uh we host uh quarterly
industry specific Matchmaker events to broadcast specific specific procurement opportunities um and then we have currently we have events scheduled in April uh 2025 so we will continue that program
coaching and development um helps us build capacity uh to do the work in a district it provides uh we also provide certification assistance and again the coaching workshops very in in a large organization it's very hard to break the
code uh to do business and this is how we want to do it uh moving forward next slide I'm going to turn it over to uh Miss Coley that is leading the uh facility condition assessment uh
and give her an opportunity to to speak to the board so uh good afternoon good morning Sonia Coley um so through proactive planning we're uh the facility condition assessment uh which is currently
underway uh is going to assess the state of the schools and identified areas needing repair and upgrades through or replacement with that uh the long range planning and steering committee uh we will have more business-minded experts
that will provide guidance and and Direction which is very essential to the development of a comprehensive plan that will address the school's future needs um proactive and thorough planning uh supported by the long range steering committee is again crucial for the uh
schools projects and working together we can ensure that the educational facilities meets the needs of our community um as stated when uh again as of January 30th uh 2025 uh our vendor Bure Vera toas has
completed uh more than uh site visits on more than 88 five schools um we are actively coordinating with key departments po uh our uh uh fire department building department in a
collaborative effort to ensure that we seek input from everyone School administrators we've sent out questionnaires post and pre- Survey questionnaires for them to uh answer so we can capture all that data within the facility condition assessment in
addition to meeting with our external uh Consultants our Roofing assessment consultant our structural consultant to ensure that we have a comprehensive report okay I'll I'll talk about uh vendor evaluations uh they're ongoing and Serv serves as a way to assess how
Architects and contractors are performing the work so this is the accountability piece um that um I feel has been lacking in the program um
um you can see the numbers in terms of the average score um the scores are shared uh with the quality selection evaluation committee to provide Insight on the fir firm's quality and capacity to take on new
projects so the next slide isal with the management of remaining projects so many of you asked me um how do we move forward
um once our program management um Team leaves so I've showed this slide before so uh we have three approaches internal hybrid external um you can see the strengths
and weaknesses of each one one of the things that is acutely aware to me um um from Reading Grand jewelry reports and other documents uh during the time I've been
here is I think the district gave up too much control of the program um at the end of the day the district is responsible for the
success of the program and when I read certain documents and I see where Pro where projects have just sat for years as I said before there there's really no way to recover that
time um so that'll be a lesson learned and I'll dive into that with with the board members uh in future meetings so we are in a in a in a in a situation right now whereby we have to transition
away from the pmore um and I'll come back to you with recommendations next month the contract with our pmore with aom ends uh July uh of this year and
so I'll come back to you next month with recommendations in terms of our next step uh as I said previously the approach that I um would like to recommend to the board as and of course to the superintendent is the hybrid approach I
think that a as a district we should not um give up that kind of control one of the weaknesses that we have internally is just uh staff over the years the construction department has been um
reduced and I think that in order to uh effectively manage a substantial uh Capital program that we need to look at adding additionals additional positions um so again you know my recommendation
is the hybrid approach uh I will come back to you next month uh at a workshop and tell you kind of what that looks like uh I want to make sure that as we go forward uh and move away from the
smart program and move into the capital program that we are not caught flat-footed again you know the FCA is a great tool but it's about the execution of what you see in the uh FCA
and how you manage the program and so in in my experience it is unprecedented to move from one pmore to another pmore within a bond program so as we learn and I'll bring Lessons
Learned back to you and I'm sure sure many of you have experiences uh uh uh that you've seen from your perspective with this Bond program uh I'll bring back Lessons Learned and how we can get better uh I assure you we will get
better we will improve uh but this program just from its onset is comp has been complicated throughout uh and so one of the things that I want to do uh moving forward with
my team is simplify it uh to make it understandable to our community um there were like countless missed opportunities here uh from the very beginning I want to make sure that we don't make those same mistakes going forward so uh that's pretty much the
presentation um and definitely open for questions and input uh as we go forward thank you thank you so much any public speakers on the item okay thank you before we go to board member questions I just want to
remind everybody I know this is a very hot topic but we by policy and an agreement by the board are limited to 10 minutes for board asking questions does not include staff answering so Mr Hill's going to make sure he stops the clock
but we do have a Time certain at 4:00 today so we want to make sure we're cognizant of the time that we're spending um and don't get upset when it beeps because we've agreed to the 10 minutes so um with that we'll start with
Mrs ruper thank you and I will have it done in 10 minutes um Miss Paul correctly voiced Common Sense statement about the bond program needing a heavy lift in the beginning absolutely um unfortunately the
information that would have been helpful for us was not available and my one question in the very beginning when conversations began was the number one question is how are we going to implement this and what I was told don't
worry about that we need to we need to push back and make sure that it gets passed first I said well we're going to take eight months doing that and it it will get passed and then what then what happened uh and thank God for the barred
voters but when staff was asked by me what is that information plan they just they just kept saying over and over add to that the ever revolving door of chiefs especially facility Chiefs and putting the roof projects during Hurricane Season that would not have
happened with myth Paul I appreciate the intent to have our students and staff not being affected by the very loud and messy projects but I also wanted to highlight page 22 and 23 in the PowerPoint for item
three and when you add up those items I want you to look not with the eyes of somebody uh who is rose-colored glasses but the eyes of somebody staff
community members children sitting in buildings dripping moldy those are things that happened and there were many points along the way that it could have stopped but it was not and from my perspective and I was
here I was there I I felt and this page will show that time after time it is very striking to see that the 35 projects rolled into the
defp district one had three of 35 District Two Zero District three five of 35 district four five of 35 District five eight of
35 district 6 one of 35 and who was the most vocal person at the time who has a lot of the Eastern communities district 7 13 out of 35 so if I did my math right it's about
37% that's what happens when you speak up that was before that is not now I have full confidence in the superintendent and my colleagues and our new staff to be able to write this ship what I
believe the failing program was for was to silence people and employees and honestly it was very chilling and it did happen what I can say is it was not and makes my hand shake even talking
about this it was not pleasant to go through because we were letting our kids down we were letting our employees down we were letting our community down again and there's no way that these projects don't get don't get done on these new dates um and I'm sure that Miss Paul is
going to be able to grab the reins and be able to do things right because I'm impressed with so far of what she's been doing with her staff and Dr heurn kudos to you upfront accountable transparent and
honest I'll end with that thank you I told you thank you uh Dr holes thank you madam chair um and Miss Paul uh thank you for that wonderful comment on Parkway Middle
I'm looking forward to March 11th uh to be able to happily vote Yes uh and moving forward with it so um some of my my concerns here has to do overall with obviously the unfinished work now and
after contract ends the accuracy of the information and um any transition plan that's in place and what that looks like um I did Express concerns through a board member request as well regarding
scope of work the status of the work and targeted completion I believe that's forthcoming I haven't received that as yet but um I'm sure that that will be coming shortly so I have a few questions um data on project status says
as of December 31st and today is February 11th um has the projection changes uh regarding how many projects will remain on finish Dr
heer Miss Paul through the chair um so I get a list of projects at the beginning of the month middle of the month well actually every meeting every week and I track with my team where those projects are and if they will be at substantial
completion on the last day of the month and if they fall out um I work with aom to tell me why they fell out and a lot of the reasons uh that I see
are projects at the end uh we have as was stated uh previously uh additional fire devices um if it's one or two or three or four that's not a big deal but when we start dealing with 20 um and 30
and 40 uh we have to go back to design and that causes additional time um that's one ex example another example uh could be that the contractor put in the wrong type door even though the plans and that
these are real examples even though the plan calls for a certain door they order the wrong door and so that adds time and so we have these little uh one-offs that occur uh in our projects another
challenge has been some of our subcontractors that are not doing what they say they're are supposed to do we went through when I first got here we had challenges with uh uh pay and paying contractors on time and so we've we've
improved on that but we do have some things that are in litigation I meet with uh Mr Cooney every week he's part of our meetings every week to talk about um uh litigation and those things that
uh we are calling for the bond or the security on some of these contractors because they're not doing uh what they said they were going to do um and what they are contractually obligated to do and that is a a change that has not been
exercised in this program over the 10 years uh we bring them to the table we tell them we're serious about this and in many cases the contractors go back to work work
um uh and and do the work um in some cases it is going to be a legal issue um so we we work through these things uh these challenges every single week um
and we look for the best path forward to complete the project so that's again things that happen behind the scenes that are not uh in uh in the public view but you know
this is as I said before um our intent is to be very aggressive in closing out these projects and reducing the number that will carry over into the capital plan so that's our um um focus at this
point okay Miss Paul I appreciate that response and um how do you normally receive um project updates and do you believe the project data is accurate in your professional judgment and have you
or your team independently verified these projections so I doubt everything quite honestly um I we work with aom I think um my staff has a better perspective
because obviously some of them have been here a lot longer uh in the district um the aom that we have today is not the aom that we had previously so I work with Mike McIntyre to
uh you know I feel like it's like forensic uh um study if you watch CSI sometimes because you know just trying to get to the root cause of why the project isn't moving forward uh we do that every week
um so in terms of trying to give you a percentage of what I think is accurate I think the majority of uh the information is accurate but we have those moments where um questions lead to why did this
why did this and then you know I go into the forensic um mentality uh and Sonia in many cases goes out on site her team goes on out on site if if there's a disagreement between us and aom uh uh
the team shows up at the building uh example Stranahan cafeteria uh to make sure that we don't accept something as a district that is below standard okay so would you say then that often times your team independently
verify uh the projections if if we have questions about something and and the team uh typically looks at this during close out so the team consists of uh Nathan sday who's behind me uh the fire
codic uh official pea um who I think is here uh somewhere uh not yet but she'll be here in a minute uh uh building code they go out so one one of the things I think that has changed with this is that we are a lot more aggressive in questioning things um and making sure
that the district that uh the community get it's what we paid for uh the delay in Stranahan cafeteria was because we would not this lady right here as well as myself would not accept that cafeteria floor the way it was and
sometimes you have to draw that Line in the Sand and put the stick in the mud and said we're not doing this and so we've had some cases where that just didn't happen uh we work with Tom Cooney we work with Mike McIntyre and his staff to make sure that we're all on the same
uh sheet of music we're going in the same direction ction it doesn't do us well for us to say one thing as district and for our pmore to say one thing and for our inspectors to say another thing so I have a weekly meeting that includes literally everybody that can influence a
project okay so miss Paul can you um expound on what the role of Atkins is in in this whole process in terms of budget and scheduling I think well so Atkins does not control the master schedule
when I bring their contract back uh in March uh or April but I think it's March I want them to control the master schedule uh part of my concern with this program is I don't do squishy and Squishy sometimes are the dates that
keep changing and so that's why I want to put that in the control of Atkins Atkins in my opinion since I've been here and then based on my uh uh staff has has done an outstanding job on the financial side of the house I want them
to control the master schedule okay so what is their current role in the whole process uh they do the financials and Ashley if you want to speak to that you may not to put you on the spot but Ashley Carpenter with Atkins RIS um
the role as I see it that um my company is performing here for the district and the way that we serve the program is in um the cost and program control so as Miss Paul said related to budgeting forecasting and risk assessment related
to the financials of the program overall and as well as the capital program um and then also in terms of administering the program management software so e-builder it's Chang names it's now Trimble Unity construct but e
Builder is um the software by which all of the work flows for the program so really helping the program to move forward by streamlining and um automating a lot of the various processes so most everything in
Construction and design and um now goes through these different workflows which have helped to really I think um increase the volume of things that can happen in a month right so when everything is happening electronically and and it's very e nothing's in paper
anymore it's much easier for everybody to just process more items so that's also helped um and then I have estimator cost estimators as well so not just budgeting and forecasting for the program but estimating projects when they're in design doing change order
reviews that are over $25,000 um trying to think what else the team does but um yeah it's mostly in those in those three areas okay I appreciate that and um Miss Paul
um for uh you mentioned that Atkins doesn't have access to the master schedule and um based on your response that um you feel that this would be um relevant to their um responsibilities in the future is that what you mentioned
yes but also I think uh I don't want to mislead the board uh we work in concert with Atkins with aom you know we we all work together uh but one of the things that I think uh going forward that would improve the program is to put the master schedule
under Atkinson okay and I have some more questions what is the total cost for the 35 projects that are projected to remain active and this is past October
of 2025 correct uh yes let's see you have that number Ashley the 35 projects I think it's on the slide though
yes give us just a moment sorry a lot of slides okay so on slide 24 um the project budgets is the First Column with the cost so those 35 projects add up to a pro total project
budget of 255 million but that's why we added the second column just to kind of say it's most of that money well about 80% of that money will be spent we're projecting that about 80% of that money will already be spent so there would be a remaining balance to spend in those
projects of about 58 million that's just based on a formula so that it's not super scientific but just to give you an idea aide that you know a lot of those projects particularly where you see projects with a projected completion of December 2025 okay so we're looking at a project that's almost done right so most
of the money will already be spent okay all right thank you very much I have uh some additional questions Miss Paul um I know that aom's contract will be expiring in July and I know that there were conversation regarding a extension
to October so um will aom be proposing an extension to October are we to expect that forthcoming or where are we as a board so we do not we're not taking off guard that there's no extension being proposed and then we end up with having
to figure it out going forward so what I'll uh bring to you is three options one is to do it external one is to do it internal and one is to do it um a hybrid approach um the external would be to do
a RFP for um another P more um internal would be to staff up and if I were to try to staff up internally to that amount then I would have to more than likely extend
a com's contract by at least three months but no more than six months to do that um and again the I think I mentioned staff augmentation Which is my preference which is the hybrid approach
where I would piggyback off of um an existing contract in a school district um Duval um they have an exist existing contract uh I would picky back off of them for three months uh and then do the
RFP uh for either staff for staff augmentation and for another pmore so I want to be able to give you uh uh different op options so that you don't feel like you're um boxed in a corner on
it um but again my recommendation is to do a hybrid approach where we staff up as we need uh those particular skill sets and if we're not using those skill sets then we don't pay for them unknown participant is now
joining okay so so one of one of the things when when you look at um project management um you look at the Staffing part of it
and at certain times you need more than others and what I've looked at throughout this contract is where I've not seen that that uh movement where you know
it's been kind of a flat number throughout um and I take pause with that and so I want to be able to control the number of people that we have uh on the project as opposed to
being fully staffed uh when there are less things in in in the in the um queue for work so we need that flexibility is what I'm saying
okay so miss Paul um you mentioned those three options and my impression was those three options would be upon um Acom leaving correct yes and well yes right and my impression on that was that uh should
aom request or an extension to October as we had originally talked about then the three options that you uh are proposing and and being in favor of the hybrid option that would come uh subsequent to Acom leaving whether it's
July or October so my question is um regarding does aom intend to provide a proposal for extension to October are there not and um and if so if they've made a decision um I think it would be
important for the board to know um in time uh uh because um July is around the corner um so I I guess my real question first of all and I appreciate information you shared but are they intending on having a proposal and if
they're not then that's when your suggestion of the three options and choosing the hybrid would come into effect so we don't know if that's July or October so I think that they are interested uh in an extension uh based on um uh a meeting um and let me tell
you what the process is and I I'm sorry I haven't done that yet but we have started transition meetings um with aom and so basically detailing um the process of aom
transitioning out right okay so that has already started I think we're into the third meeting on that part of that transition out if they were to transition out is whether they would whether there would be an extension for three months or an extension for six
months right that's part of of of that plan I think it's important that we look at uh doing an RFP that addresses whether we have staff augmentation or or and another another
parar uh the the piggybacking off of uh the dev Duval contract would allow us a transition time too so we can use that contract to continue the work one of the the the issues that I'm concerned about
is the SU is the the the best time to do a lot of the work so I don't want us to jeopardize this summer and so that is why uh we started the talks already and the conversations and the meetings uh
for transition okay and I and I appreciate that but as a board member one of my major concern and I appreciate the conversation taking place we're in February um at some point I believe we would need definitive information
that Acom is going to extend or not extend um and well that is really up to us as as a board or you as a board uh in terms of if you would be receptive to
aom extending and I need to bring that to you so you can have that conversation okay so I know we had the conversation Miss Paul before um I remember um don't remember how long ago but we know the contract expires in July we had a
conversation I believe Dr Zan had mentioned by October 2025 we talk about it as a board and so I think um the expectation would be there would be some proposal for extension that would be forthcoming by Acom and if not then we need to have a
plan of action in place that would take us to our October completion deadline and I'm a bit confused because I am not it seems very gray where we are at this time because we don't know if aom is going to present a proposal for
extension and if they're not I am not sure I'm clear of a transition plan and if they are I think we still need a transition plan Beyond October so we're I feel like we're in sort of a gray area that I'm not comfortable with because we
have the deadline of their contract the expiration of their contract coming up in July so um when can we receive a definitive answer as to whether or not um there will be a proposal coming forth
from Acom uh for an extension uh because this board has already had the discussion that we would like to um have an October um completion timeline and I know you mentioned 35 projects
might be beyond that it could be less as you mentioned um so we had the discussion as a board and now my concern is is aom coming forth with a proposal and if they intend to uh when
can that be worked out so we can have it um I believe we have Mike McIntyre here so if you can address that Mike Madam chair board members superintendent Mike McIntyre aeom we are in discussions with our partners um presently on what
the options and opportunities are um as soon as the partners in a eom make a determination we will let the board know um hopefully we'll be finalizing something in the next couple weeks uh but we do have ongoing
discussions okay so um I am hoping that that information will come forth soon because we're we're looking at a July contract expiration and and I think as a board it's responsible on us to really have a plan
of action in place should there not be a proposal for extension and and should there be then that would be great then we have more time to determine a plan of action Beyond October but we don't have a lot of time if Acom should decide not
to present a proposal for extension and so I am hoping Mr McIntyre that that information will be forthcoming very soon um because I think it would enable the board to move forward in a responsible way understood as I said we
are working through it uh aom and its Partners it will be a group decision um on on what we believe is in the best interest of everybody um hopefully within the next couple weeks we will have a proposal put forward
okay thank you very much and my last concern and I still have 2 minutes board member Hixon I have 10 minutes correct okay thank you so much so um with the concerns that I have um I think it's important for our superintendent to um
have a uh transition plan uh to include aom's involvement in the transition whether that's July or October and so I would like to direct the superintendent to present a transition plan um in a
hopefully sooner than later to include aom's involvement in the transition uh moving forward Dr heer so I just want to um for clarification Miss Paul I know you're bringing an item in next month correct and this is going to speak to the
transition to give the board options about to come to consensus about specific next steps so um that could include aom or a piggyback pmore um so I would um suggest that we wait till the next Workshop that we have planned for
to go over all that information about how we transition and what's the best option to move forward okay and Dr heurn based on your best judgment do you think at that time we will have um information pertaining to aom's intention Beyond
July we are hopeful um right Mike yes yes so we we'll communicate with Mr McIntyre all right thank you that's all my questions thank you thank you next is Mrs ala thank
you all right where do I begin so I guess I'll begin um from the beginning um 2014 this is when the smart Bond started it was supposed to be $8
million has we are aware there was poor planning lack of a proper needs assessment all right now fast forward 11 years later we're at 12.9 billion is that
correct I'm sorry for the smart Bond 1.6 billion 1.6 billion need my glasses I would have appreciated 12.9 billion but all right and and we have an amazing
superintendent with amazing staff getting us moving in the right direction so I think it's a great idea to come up with a transition plan um you know we paying a Comm millions of dollars
throughout these many years and um you know I'm sure in the next couple weeks before we Workshop they can come to you Dr heurn with a plan but then ultimately you're going to make the best decision to propose to us the school board what
that what that plan looks like you know the other thing is on page 29 the path forward you know I thought this was a crucial piece you know as we know our enrollment projections are decreasing and we are trying to redefine
Brower County Public Schools you know I I know we are trying to live up to the promise of 2014 um but I I do believe that this Board needs to figure out in an aggressive
manner when we were supposed to be closing Five schools or more and now that um got morphed into something different we we need to so so for example so this says on
page 29 the comprehensive identification of facilities needs the facilities condition assessment um so that assessment is supposed to be our Guiding
Light in the sense of how we as a board figure out what is the best way to redefine Broward County Public Schools and and I think it's very difficult like I don't want to see us putting millions of dollars in a school
where we're going to decide to hypothetically lease that space or we're going to close that school and demolish that school again and I know it's very difficult but it's and these are difficult decisions
that the board has to make we have to be aggressive in our in our plan of action I know there's a phase phase two probably phase three of redefining Broward County Public Schools um and I just again don't want to
make another bad decision and and with and I don't want to waste millions of dollars of taxpayers money so I guess what I'm saying Dr heurn is that I would like to
see uh something to come to this board in the March meeting as far as what that transition plan looks like because to Dr Hol Miss's Point July will be here before before you know and we know when these things get legal gets wrapped up
for months and months and months going back and forth with lawyers and um you know and there's there's the Lee right but ultimately July's going to be here and and and we um need to have a plan plan of action
and if we don't again we're going to waste millions and millions of dollars and who's ultimately going to be affected is our our students and our schools so I think the board really needs to vote on something in March in the March
meeting and and then but also again I think this needs to be like a very comprehensive approach with our redefining plan and this cannot be silos meaning like we cannot just be trying to fix 2014 decisions here in
2025 when so much has changed and you know I'm optimistic with superintendent heern leading this District in a positive way and doing the right thing for barer County Public
Schools thank you Dr heer um thank you um chair so great feedback great comments um um M ala you're you're um in the right vein of the thinking that we have the FCA completion of that comes at
a opportune Time For Us in June July when we'll share with the board um which will be in the initial phases of uh of redefining phase two that'll help us assist with some with some decision- making that we'll have to make around our schools and and where do we go from
there and the March meeting is about providing as much comprehensive information to the board so we can make the best decision possible before vote on how we move forward if it's uh hybrid if it's uh not a hybrid solution more to come okay thank you and
just just to clarifying if the board can weigh in on my comment I would like to see something in the March meeting for the board to vote on Dr heurn was that what vote on specifically on the different no I was
just wondering I want to clarify on the vote you were already bringing to us so so so if I may the intent is to to have a workshop and then a board meeting to vote will both of those happen in March that
is the intent yes ma'am Mrs aladu does that satisfy yep as long as we execute something in agenda item in a school board meeting in March okay thank you uh Dr Zan I'm sorry did you want consensus on that or we're done no it sounds like
they're already bringing it oh well I just couldn't wait to say I agreed with you madam uh former chair um but I want to come back to your your comment um that you made because it it kind of gets back to I think is a is a like a massive
issue that we as a board need to think about can anybody on this board provide me any evidence right now that we do a better job in construction and facility management that we did in 2014 no evidence evidence that we have
it's critical that we know that it's critical we're able to talk to people about that what we get in presentations is incredibly useful it's far better organized than than we've seen in a long time but I keep asking about this critical board presentation that we get
that gives us the evidence and the facts that we can go back to our community and our constituents and our County Commissioners who have to approve a bond eventually and and everyone else we want to talk to and say look we're getting better here's the Project's getting done I mean going to a ribbon company we always have gone to ribbon cuting
whether a project takes three years or six years there's a ribbon cutting eventually but the issue is on critical construction metrics can we get a board format that comes back to us that says there's the evidence now I can talk to my neighbor I can talk to the mayor I
can talk to people on the County Commission and leaders in our community and say give us some time but we've already turned the tide and we're getting better that's what I'm looking for we had it 20 years ago when I ran a construction project um I know we can do it um it's just something that I think
we need those facts uh as school board members so that we can fulfill our obligations wanted to thank Dr holes uh for asking for the data that you asked for I'm going to ask an extension of that question though how many active projects will there be between July 1st
and the end of the smart project on uh October 30th maybe or 31st of 2025 Dr heurn Mr Paul so what we have now is 35 uh um
that's the number as we stand right now um so I really am thinking somewhere you know maybe 10 less at most and I want to be CLE this is not smart projects I
meant projects oh dfp and smart how many and this is the reason is we're talking about organizations and transitioning and peores and all that how many active projects will we have between July 1st and the end of October 2025 Dr heer
uh I don't have a number because we're going to have a lot because we have po that are doing uh projects we have the 10 that are in the dfp plus we have the predicted anywhere from 25 to 35 so uh
we're we're going to have um a quite a I mean a large number of projects that will be ongoing throughout the dfp terrific on slide 13 speaking of dfp and capital projects how many of these
projects are under pmore management I believe the number was 10 uh that came over from the dfp and to help my colleagues think a little bit about uh pmore how are these projects assigned to the pmore so my understanding is that is the
the um enormity of the project that is too much for our po to handle so the large dollar uh projects that could be more efficiently handled under pmore so pmore in essence if I could characterize your answer gets the bigger projects and the more complicated projects yes uh
that go go beyond uh Parkway and Rickards two middle schools we care about a lot who's responsible for managing those those are under the pmore thank you um and just to clarify what I think you said Miss Paul you think that even
though there's 25 on the list that will extend beyond the smart deadline you think that some of those might come back in before the deadline and that number go down so it's 35 projects that as we stand today that are on the list uh of those
35 uh some have moved in and out so it's a constant flow based on what's required based on inspections based on um uh just the complexity of the project so it's 35
now um I in concert with aom and my staff think it'll be uh a few less but it won't be zero terrific and just so that my colleagues know this as well what percentage of the overall uh P more
contract is uh awarded to AECOM for their services I'm g go to Ashley give us a moment sure yeah sure Mike McIntyre with the eom through through the chair uh our the aeom
contract we are one of five and our contract value last year was 20% our contract if we would have another year it would be 25% and the rest is split between our partners so um in the in the end we are in the
middle of of those that collect fee on our contract terrific but that other 75% or 80% minority owned women owned local firms like so correct I just when we say aeom to Mr Dr hess's Point uh they are
20% or so or 25% of the overall contract they're 75 or to 80% uh that are that are other firms um I want to take a break too though and compliment Dr heurn Miss Paul uh there's one small thing that you did that is monstrously
important to this board which is you have made it very clear that you need experienced Construction and building experts to be involved in our long-term planning expert uh plan thank you for that it's a SE change in Brower County to make that decision and
I look forward to see uh who will participate on that uh on that effort uh going forward um chair I I really uh don't know how to make sure that this gets done so I'm going to ask whether or not you have
consensus or you would like to gain consensus on this dashboard for the school board so that we can talk to people and say we've already turned the tide we're going to keep turning the tide and that we keep that going roughly on a quarterly basis from now until we go ask for the next Bond until we get
the next Bond until we have not just confidence because I have great confidence in our leaders but now I need evidence and I need the facts to carry forward and make sure that I'm persuasive can we get a consensus or do you think you have on a quarterly Schoolboard dashboard that we can have
the facts and figures to move forward Dr heer yes absolutely we actually utilize the dashport right now um in our um rers of 101s we can bring what we have and um get some feedback to make it public facing so it's easily understood yeah
terrific I appreciate that on the organizational issues I think there are more than just the pmore and I don't want to get totally distracted on that that's a good one to Mrs alad's point I think there's two decisions one one what is the future construction and and and renovation management system look like
and the second is when do we transition to it like Dr holess I'm very nervous about anything between octo now and October 30ish 1st 30th I don't care Miss Paul you can have it your way October 30th we have to change the resolution now though on her 29th birthday we're
going to have this done um I'm nervous about changing because of domain knowledge I'm also scared to death because there are not enough construction managers in the United States right now right now uh uh chair may I ask what
percentage of the aeom pmore team is staffed today how many if you have x positions what percentage of those are filled Dr heurn Miss Paul I'll refer to Mr McIntyre Michael McIntyre aom through
the chair right now we are down 14 uh and we have two more expected departures in the next couple weeks um we are at that moment in a program where people are looking at their personal lives and their
profession and if the future is unsure here if they're good at what they do they have five job opers right now so that's that's the world we're living in is and and we're talking about companies that are big players in this
market um that they are struggling to keep staff because of programs winding down thank you and and to me that's why Miss alad's point about March is so important just by saying we might not have aeom four more people resigned today eight more people resigned today
they they got tons of job offers Atkins has 20 job offers for every person on their team their team is incredibly talented moreover they have domain knowledge about Broward County Public School construction and renovation and we have to be careful about when that transition is so two decisions one is
what does the landing look like and two when can we feel like excuse me the risk profile is uh is appropriate uh to make those decisions I also think that there's a big issue with our own government Staffing I've been asking for
a year to figure out why we don't have enough people inside Brower County Public Schools to do planning to do construction management to do project management to do scheduling do risk we just don't have enough and I know that we there eventually will be a plan but I knew a year ago we didn't have
enough people if you just looked at the size of our capital budget our government staff is dramatically too small and we've split responsibilities between a chief facilities officer and a chief operating officer I'm still scared to death about that our biggest issues are around operations a piece of which
is facilities uh but most large urban districts have two people in those roles um and I'm anxious to see what the or uh chart uh changes will look like uh this summer uh thank you for the dash board I cannot wait to have that like in
Schoolboard vernacular so that in just plain English we can talk to people at Publix talk to people at kanana club and things like that and show them that we've already turned the tide and if they trust us with more of their money we'll continue to deliver uh uh big things why is that important to me
because Charter Schools can't do that they get a piece of what we do but we go to the public and say we need this done and they write our coiles but we really need that long-term facilities we are billions of dollars um in the deficit in terms of delivering
facilities uh that our kids deserve thank you chair thank you so much um next is Mrs McCarthy Bowman thank you chair thank you for the presentation and um I'm not going to keep you very long because I think my fellow board members have hit on a lot
of the points that I wanted to make um so I'll just say again just to kind of uh in support of what Dr holess maduff and Dr Zan have said I think that with the timing and just knowing how the Time
Slips Away and March is not or February is not far from October or July that it's incumbent on us to in regaining the trust of the public to make sure that we have a very tight transition plan um you know we
weren't here when some of these mistakes were made but we're here now and it's our responsibility to make sure that we're doing it right moving forward um I agree with Miss ALU about making a comprehensive plan that has to take into
consideration redefining otherwise I think that we would be um negligent in our duties so that's extremely important um and I'm just wondering contractually with
aeom what the resp responsibility is moving forward we have like ideally we're going to have a seamless transition to our what we're going to do next if we're going to do a hybrid approach or whatever we decide next month but when we
transition what is the responsibility of aom to assist us with that is there um are we getting a bunch of boxes of files or for the next for the successor or is there a contractual obligation there to make sure that we are maintaining
functionality at all times so one of the things oh sorry sorry uh uh one of the things we're doing as I stated before we we're having a trans uh transition meetings uh with aom um Mike um and the
team um uh have been uh very uh forthcoming with that Mike uh attends a meeting with my staff mik key staff um Tom Cooney is also in the room uh and what he is U what we're doing is
compiling a list of everything that we need from them uh going forward uh if they choose not to present a proposal to extend um and that that has you know one of the
great things that we have is that we have uh e-builder which is the system we use that gives us a historical uh depiction of all of our projects and everything that's happened along the way so um uh that has helped a lot so we are
you know just um continuing to work with aom they are a partner uh to make sure that if they are not uh successful in in the extension that we have everything we need to uh protect the district uh and
to move the projects forward in addition uh it's very important that we um uh have this transition planned so that uh any kind of litigation or future litigation we're uh in a position to to
work with aom um uh through those issues so missone has been very instrumental uh in those meetings um and could you just give a I guess I don't know who I'm asking how this goes but um I I appreciate that
your recommendation for the hybrid um format for moving forward and when you're talking about uh person well to Dr Zeman's point do we have or how like what do you envision
in terms of having inhouse um knowledge and talent that we maintain here so that we have a certain level of capacity internally and then um jug suppose with the Personnel flexibility you're talking about like
how does that I I think we need both quite honestly um as uh Dr Zeman alluded to you know we don't have adequate construction staff you know but we have to make uh um informed and meaningful
decisions on who we add to the team um that's number one uh number two we have incredible Subs out there um that are responsible for the projects and I can't see uh moving forward without having them as part of our team and so the ones
that are the subs to aom it's my ex uh expectation that we will continue to keep them and and many of them have worked with the district for many many years so we do have that historical uh knowledge that uh will help uh quite
honestly part of my UH responsibilities as I see them based on uh uh speaking with Dr heern um uh before I even came here is building the bench we need to have um uh qualified individuals that
are waiting uh to move up within the district uh and uh that's part of the um uh succession planning that we need to have so uh there are a number of fronts that uh uh we need to improve on um but
we have many contractors that have worked here for many years that are very good and we need to keep them as part of our team that is the expectation um part of the um technicality of it and I wish I had time here to speak to it but you
know uh if aom chooses not to propose and to stay then we would ask aom to release the subs and either we as a district would would uh contract directly with them so uh that's another
option uh the piggyback on uh the dval contract will give us additional time too for the transition plan if uh aom chooses not to propose for three months or six months or whatever they choose to do um so I want to make sure that all of
our bases are covered and that we're not just doing in motion right now just that one thing uh and Sonia has been very instrumental in um uh working through that and and and uh helping us uh move
forward so when contractually when do we have to have a final decision from aom what's the timeline on that their contract ends in July so um they they you know they my expectation
is that they'll work up until July but the sooner the better uh I think as we uh spoke previously if they can get the proposal in within the next two weeks and that's something I can present to you at the March board we would definitely appreciate that thank you um
and then if they uh when you're talking about releasing the subs um if they decide not to go forward is uh are there also non-compete and any other kind of um issues that would be
where uh that would that goes with their contract that not be to work with for a period time is that a problem that we have to also address well I think that's something that we would work with Tom and aom on um the specifics of it thank
you thank you uh next is Miss Thompson I'll just keep it really brief because I know we're behind and I don't want to belabor the points we've already made um I really appreciate Miss Paul that you are kind of trying to write this ship um I know that there's been a lot of issues
with the smart Bond but if we let's learn from for the mistakes and let's move forward um two comments I want to have is I think it's really important to have a comprehensive options um I was not here on the board when they decided that maybe they would extend with aom
and I think it's really important that we have that opportunity as a board to reconsider all of our options whether we want to go any any sort of way um so whether they propose or not it's still on us to accept their proposal I just
want to make that very clear um and then along with when you bring it back in March if you could give a comparison to how the other larger districts are working their building department I think that would be really helpful to see like how Miami dat how they're
working with contractors if they have everything in house is that clear perfect and then I also just want to make a comment when we're as a board talking about redefining schools we don't have a facilities assessment yet and I don't want us to jump ahead on on
making decisions about redefining when we don't actually know the conditions of all of our buildings um and since that won't be in June just something to continue reminding yourself of in March and that's it thank you thank you Mrs
Leonardi thank you um I will not be quick I'm sorry um I have a lot of questions comments um to to something that Dr Hess was asking about earlier why uh wasn't the master schedule under
Atkins already miss Paul I do not know uh Mike can you address that Michael McIntyre a eom through the chair um the master schedule is held within the Ecom contract because that's how the scope was
written um in how a master schedule is developed is important um a master schedule's developed on on what projections were at the time and then it is
informed by actual live contractor schedules so an initial master schedule that's agreed to is is a theoretical projection of what should happen at the beginning of a program in and that
master schedule was just just happened to have been within the aom scope like Mrs Paul I and most of you I wasn't here then um so that's where the master schedule lives the basis of the master schedule
is just that projection how should it be if everything works properly what does the schedule look like for the program what does the schedule look like for individual projects then it's informed because then it becomes live right the master schedule
static it's chiseled in Granite it doesn't move the progress schedule which is the actual work that's that's free flowing that changes based on the Day a contract is issued if it's issued three months
later the master schedule is busted right so we all know the first three years was sort of wasted in the program because there was no infrastructure nothing got to the street so the program was was off fter was off
Tilt at the beginning and then the master schedule had it compress now where should it live it could live in a future pmo it could live in Atkins both would do the same thing would collect the data from from actual projects and it
would inform the master schedule it's really about building a master schedule that's honest that's true that's factual it's based on realworld projections of what should
happen if it's done properly so we're looking back now at water that's gone under the bridge and it's hit the ocean was it done properly probably not was it factual probably not
was it realistic definitely not so that should inform the board on on where it lives in the future if that helps thank you um so I know there was a recommendation earlier uh
that the master schedule live under Atkins so I'm wondering what does the board need to do to ensure that that happens we will bring a contract to the board or uh for approval uh for Atkins and it'll be in their uh contract to
renew when they're up for Renewal so uh we'll include that as part or they will include that as part of their um um responsibilities when can we expect that to happen to the next next board meeting
next week thank you um is aeom or is Atkins doing the tias on the projects in the program or is it a combination of both I think um Atkins
provides the financial piece to it but am I correct or Aon okay go ahead uh Mike Mike McIntyre through the chair the Tia reviews are just a Time analysis so there's no fact there's no financial side to it so AECOM does the the time
analysis um there's very specific information that that must be supplied by the contractor multiple schedule types and then then we need the narrative what happened what happened and what do the schedules tell us happened whether or not a contractor
gets additional time whether it's awarded to them or they're held liable for it thank you and can you remind me is that in the contract that aeon would be doing that we do the change order analysis and a Time analysis is considered part of a
change order got it thank you um I believe the the question was raised earlier um you know how confident are you in the validity of of the information that was presented to us um so I I won't ask that question again for
a response but I I think that is a a question for many of us um and and to that point I believe that we have now $270 million to spend by October um from August to now well from
August to December we spent $85 million which is about $4 million a month um so I'm just not sure how we are going to be able to spend that money by October are you confident that we are going to be able to no okay so then I guess I mean
because because we still have ongoing projects and we mentioned Parkway and some of the the bigger projects so no we're not going to expend um all of that by October but
keep in mind too that um in terms of the smart Bond money that's already expended so um no we're not going to expend all of that by October okay which brings me back to you know
the validity of the information in this presentation um on page 12 uh I asked for a followup um you know of the 169 projects in close out um how many of these were still in close out in August and the response was 14 7 of them were
in close out in August they are still in close out now um so 147 seven of them have not progressed Beyond closeout um which is oh there's sorry Ashley Carpenter um with
Atkins RIS I just wanted to clarify the 147 that showed in that construction close out box from the August presentation includes projects that are fully closed financially closed out nobody's looking at them anymore they're done done um and as does the 169 the
reason we continue to show them here is just because with the smart program we want to always make sure we're showing the full amount of the funding and the full amount of the scope and not just being like oh we don't talk about those 100 projects anymore because they're done um so that
169 102 of them um somewhere between 99 and 102 I don't I don't want to say the wrong number but are completely finished phase nine closed financially closed out um and then the rest are in those various phases so somewhere between they've
received a substantial completion and they're fully fully closed out got it thank you for clarifying that um when we're talking about projects are we talking about schools or individual buildings individual projects at
schools that is an excellent question and thank you for that um we're talking about individual projects so if it's a roofing project if it's a uh HVAC
project we're talking about individual projects one of the things that I I want to do in the future is I've always managed by school and so I want to be able to give you a holistic view by
school as a part as opposed to carving them up uh and getting you into the roof counting business kind of thing so uh we have uh several things that we're going to uh recommend going forward as a better way to communicate not only with
the board but with the community because it is very confusing a we can expect a Community member to understand what a roof car out is so we we're we're looking at that as a better way to communicate thank you I appreciate that
um on page 14 highlighting The Big Three I just want to point out that from a community stpoint from August to December says the same exact thing for Northeast High School and stranding High
School um that roof uh roof repairs and Fire Protection upgrades are in progress um demolition of old buildings as underway for Northeast um and it says the same thing as it did in August for strain ahan um so I just think it's important to point
that out um that that can be frustrating for some I think um and I understand you know we completed the The Strand ofan cafeteria but that's not the whole strand ofan project and so again you
know um it is in many cases very repetitive literally what I want to be able to bring to you is done done and done uh but we still have certain aspects of the
project like in blanchy the Bus Loop and so forth but I don't want to because these were uh major items as a part of the bond I just don't want to take them out you know some of it may be repetitive but I want to keep it in the Forefront to make sure that the big
three as I that she tried to explain The Big Three to me several times but uh that the big three stays in the Forefront uh uh but yes I understand we can take some of that verbage out and just give more of a a status of we are
95% complete and or something like that a better way to to to describe the project yeah I mean I I don't necessarily have an issue with like repeating that we are done with things like that is positive my I guess my frustration is around and I I think more of um like a
more abstract issue of these are like these are the big three it they are taking longer than they should and I know that that that is not your fault um but you know things have not seemingly progressed that much um from August to
now for some of these projects at those schools um and I I want to go to the straining hand cafeteria for a second um I'm reading the the superintendent's newss in Notes From The
7th um and it says the issue concerning the floor the floor slope and kitchen areas you've alluded to the the issue with the flooring in the cafeteria multiple times today um the the consultant has identified multiple areas in the kitchen where the
floor slope was not installed per code and I'm wondering like how does that that happen was the was that approved by anyone in our um building department or in our staff that slope or did did the consultant
just do it and then we realized after the fact that it was incorrect so um there's a story um strain ofan cafeteria is a prototype for Miami um I'm going let uh Miss Coy go go through the different Generations but the bottom
line was um the floor in a cafeteria was not acceptable um we would not approve it and so that's why they had to go back and replace it that added time the the um uh floor in the
kitchen uh was not functioning properly whereas um the equipment was tilting that wasn't acceptable they're going to replace that this summer so part of the tension we have
especially with um not only around the fire code but also around the building department is we're just not going to accept substandard work and so the building department the fire coat or the fire department or Fire official um there I
look at them as our front line of defense so that uh there is they have to question and they have to make sure that we follow code uh so with Stranahan cafeteria um I understand that it it's taking
longer than it should have but I look at these buildings that are uh constructed that we're going to live with them for 50 years and if the floor is popping up and it's wavy before they even turn it over then there's no way we can accept it so when we go with
prototypes um and again we have a couple examples Rickards is one too um that uh we need to be very clear in terms of um of doing that because you go to prototypes to save time but just in my short experience here uh it really
hasn't saved us time so that's my opinion but uh Sonia could speak to the specifics a little bit more detail like going down in Miami to look at the kitchen floor Sonia Coy uh so I'll just clarify the the kitchen floor is per
code it's a quality control quality assurance issue so um the kitchen is much smaller than our normal kitchens uh that we have in high schools well not much smaller but the footprint so uh and
the contractor being able to slope to the slope the floor they missed the mark so that is the issue it is code uh compant it's just a quality a quality issue and it's uh us our really our
requirements and our fun correct fun and functional so um uh Mary molder who is our um uh invaluable person over our food and Child Nutrition department even though it may uh look right in terms of
code if it's not functional then we're back in the same spot so that is why we have to uh uh replace the floor and I know that brings other questions but if the you know even though it may look correct on the plans
when you put the equipment in there and it's sloping and and tilting then that's not functional and it becomes a safety issue so uh we're making them go back and replace the floor okay and there are other spots not just there yeah I mean I I I I feel like
I'm hearing multiple different things about this so I want to I want to come back to the slope in the kitchen were the is it not per code was it installed not per code
it's installed per code it passed inspection it's a quality issue so the floor in some areas are just not sloped uh correctly um and it wasn't noticed until the furniture went in so once the they the contractor did go back and
correct some of the areas they repaired some of the areas however some of the areas still need to be repaired which are larger which they can't do until over the summer so again it is per code install per code but our specifications
call for something and the con the architect that not pick it up within our specs okay thank you for for helping me get to the bottom of that um on page 15 we're talking about records and the
you know the superintendent says sends out you I'm sure you all write um a portion of the news and notes every week about rickords um you know for months we were told that there was a delay about a year ago I was told that there was an
additional delay and that the contractor planned to recoup that the time that we've lost that is now changed and I'm wondering a like why has that changed and B when has the community been told
about this the school Community been told about this and if not when can they expect an update on this um I'm gonna bring Mike McIntyre up on rickords so he can explain that Michael McIntyre aom through the chair
um as many of you may know Rickards had a structural plaw um that was identified when there was a partial collapse of its sister School in Miami me um at that time we stopped the work uh we had a third party engineer do a
structural review structural review found false a redesign was required and we lost plus minus three months uh the contractor did attempt to adjust their workflow the phasing of the work with
the intent of picking up that three months um unfortunately the the change in workflow did not capture uh the time they had lost Unfortunately they in in many ways I call it they they work their way into a
dead end that they just not could could not capture the time the problem in the business it takes a week to lose a month it takes a month to gain a week back so they they could not get that three months back um they're still peac
mealing it to try to get some of it back but I'm not sure with my experience that we can find three months with much left for the work the the the window is just too short to gain that much time but they did make a valiant attempt it's
just they changed the workflow they just could not get there they the loss wasn't theirs the loss was the engineers and and they worked out of the box to try to recapture that time but it it could not be recaptured okay um I I appreciate
that explanation so to my other questions has this been communicated to the school community and if not when will that be happening so the reports that we put out have captured the accurate date as of today they the schedule is still
November um we've asked again for a update if that change we will notify the community so the the information that's being reported currently uh the November ba date is accurate it the other thing that I'm sorry so the other thing that I
believe I spoke to you about is the need to have a community meeting there and so we we do need to schedule that um uh we will send you that date uh once we finalize it but I think that's important as part of the um uh additional enhanced
Communications that we need to do on these projects the remaining projects thank you I appreciate that and I will just say and I I know that this does not take into account all of the complexity and Nuance that you all just described about rickords but you know I drive by
rickords almost every single day I don't live very far from the school it's the school that uh that I'm zoned for and I've seen apartment buildings go up be occupied in the time that that the roof collapsed and and I mean I think even
until last year um so as a community member and then as a school board member remember watching children go to school in on a portable campus while people are able to build apartment buildings and have people occupying them is
infuriating um and so I I understand that these problems come up but it is unacceptable for our students and our families and when we talk about redefining and and repurposing our schools and the concern around
enrollment I can tell you as someone who lives in that Community um it certainly doesn't help enrollment for that school even though they have an amazing principal amazing teachers um that have been there for decades um so I just I would be remiss if I didn't Express
extreme frustration over the situation at records um on page 18 of the presentation does this thing around the change or ERS does this include change
orders that are in dispute do we ever do we ever talk about change orders that are in dispute Ashley Carpenter through the chair um it's a good question we have not included any open change orders in
these reports and we typically don't um this is really just reflecting approved change orders but I did run the the reports this morning because I wanted to be able to answer this question if it came up um and obviously we need to do a better job of representing what's kind of in the pipeline um since the the
question you know has arisen um currently for construction all the change orders added up together that are in the pipeline are $7.6 million as is referenced somewhere in the presentation uh there's about $70
million in contingencies in the project budget now some projects have no budget left they've had a lot of change orders and we've used up all the budget so you'll see when we bring change orders to the board for approval we actually ask for the funding of that particular change order when we bring the board item because we've just run out of money
in the project lots of projects have you know plenty of money and contingencies still remaining for change orders because you know they've been budgeted from the beginning they're expected it's a normal part of construction um we also have changes that are being reviewed and and processed for
designers um those represent about $5 million of open additional service requests now some of these both on the construction and the design side are probably not going to be approved they'll be rejected and sent back or they'll be negotiated
and the amount will be less um but equally there will continue to be new change orders that come up uh as we progress through these projects um so you know that number will fluctuate thank you thank
you um and thank you for being prepared with those numbers I appreciate that um the concerns about a transition plan you know have been mentioned by my colleague so I won't reiterate that I do
have um two asks though um that if we do if the board does decide to go external to bring on another pmor um that that contract be tied to more deliverables and this is something
that that uh Mrs Paul has talked about many times um but also I think like we need we need as a district to do some very serious reflection about what's worked um with our two previous PMs and
what has not um and one needs to change going forward if that is the direction that we go in um and I I I don't know if that looks like a workshop or what um but I don't want to I do not want to
keep making the same mistakes um and that is what continues to happen um and and I appreciate that we are you know we're fixing some of the smaller problems um and that progress has been made but again when you look at
someone's experience in their Community with the projects at their school and I'll go back to Rickards or I'll go back to straining hand cafeteria there's just delay after delay after delay um and so we really need to do some you know again a reflection on what worked what did not
moving forward um thank you I will finish within my time thank you very good I believe Mrs fam is on the phone yes ma'am I'd like to speak I'll try to make it quick I know we're running away behind but my question is
when will the board be Pres presented um with a uh written synopsis of the backup plan and the event that Adcom does not extend their contract and we need to retain um well we really really need to
gain an alternative way of getting to the finish line so I'd like that to come to the board and I'd just like to know when that can come to the board so we know what we're going to do in the event that this doesn't um come to fruition thank you Dr fton
Miss Paul March did you hear that Mrs fam yes thank you so at the next school board meeting in March we'll have that backup plan yes ma'am thank
you do you have anything else thank you okay thank you um I oh Mrs alhu had a brief thing to add and then I'll end the discussion yes thank you on page 13 the construction close out I know I've been constantly asking
about the financial close out like that's the the final final and and I was like why aren't we putting that on here so I know um Miss Leonardi brought it up why don't we put it on here or any make
any notation towards it Dr fton Miss Paul um agreed I think that it could be added to this we could put it as um the next time this packet comes to the board we can add it in it since you brought it
up a couple years ago um it has been in the bond oversight committee so we do have in the bond oversight committee a separate page that lists um what the phases are and then also which projects are in each of those construction closeout phases this is like such a highlevel slide so you really need
another kind of slide to break down what's in each of the different closeout phases but yes it's in um thank you Timmy it's in the aom monthly report it's also in the Atkins monthly report which are currently being housed on the
BCPS smart futures.com website um so anybody from the public or board members can go to see those reports as well um but we will keep that in mind for presentations to the board in the future you thank you and Dr
Fon so to the superintendent I um I know we kind of changed it in some documents if we could just make sure it's consistent so we're just extremely transparent throughout the continuity of all of our documents absolutely and
thank you for that feedback thank you and I also will be fairly brief I just want want to make a a comment and I understand that it's mushy because we're moving things from smart to dfp but I I
think it's really confusing when the when the workshop is on the smart Bond and we're adding all this information about the defp because they're separate and I think that's what happens is the public mushes them together because we're showing them that way so my
preference is to not highlight it as much on here when we're talk not that it's not important but maybe have it like as a backend or in the appendix or something because that's what's happening is we're
we're conflating the two together and I don't think the public understands the difference between what's smart and what's the dfp so just that my personal opinion I I think the I think part of that confusion is the fact that aom is
managing 10 of those projects so I think that's where the confusion comes in because the public doesn't know uh what's paid for with smart and what's paid for with capital so thank you for that feedback thank you um so I have a couple of quick questions so they they
mostly focus on page 22 and 23 so first of all um danus first on that page page 23 and again I realiz well I I believe it was part of the smart program but I'm not sure where it fits now but we before
you got here and before this was the board we as a school board had a whole workshop on Dania and I thought we agreed on something about how that was going to move forward and we've never seen it again so now it's rolled into
the defp but it was something like when I first I think 2020 2021 it was something that was brought to the board we had a long discussion we were in the process of figuring out which one of the plans I think there was
a b and c something along those lines um I just am not sure where that sits and it it looks like we're not even going to it says project comple in January 26 but we've never had that come back to us again
so can someone just just briefly say where this is at um Ashley carpent win through um the chair oh you are the chair um Dania has a couple of projects so this is again
that messy part that we talked about 334 projects that's more than the schools so Dana has a couple of projects the one that's on the list for completing after October 2025 is the demolition of building two so Dana actually right now
is under construction um it is I can tell you about 80% complete in construction and that's for the regular smart program renovation so it had um music Media
Center electrical improvements safety security upgrades you know some of our regular smart program Scopes and then the demolition of building two is separate from that and is happening subsequent to that so that's why that's on the list for after October there was
a whole discussion about the plague Court and whether there was going to be a whole separate building for the music and and all of that and it never came back to us so I don't want to Harbor on this but if I'll have the discussion
with Miss Paul we can do a followup on that until you where those projects are thank you um really quickly MacArthur High School is that project that's on page 22 is that the science building a smart program run it says Renovations so is
that included MacArthur has the smart program Renovations and then it also has the new building which is the science building as you're mentioning the stems stem Labs um the stem Labs is on the D has always been on the defp list this project the
smart program Renovations is being handled by the same contractor and it's it's part of smart so that's why they're on separate lists okay thank you um um well since we're on MacArthur and and
because you've we've put dfp in here there was a discussion at our last efp meeting um Dr I mean sorry Mr fogan holy brought up about a pool at MacArthur so I don't need an answer right now but I don't see it on the list in the dfp and
I thought it was added or we at least had a discussion about it I think it was a discussion but and we looked into the pool and basically my memory uh uh as I think about it I think the pool has to be replaced and it wasn't in the
scope of the work right well no it's it was a special it was a separate dfp request but I don't see it on here so will that come to us as a discussion in the next efp so it would have to be included in the next thank you that were to happen
so there are 13 projects that are projected to be done in December of 2025 I just would like to say I would love to see them completed by October 31st of 202 you don't know how much I would love that too but and and we'll
work towards that yes um I'm not sure if Dr Folton will have this answered M Dr he was going to answer it but um the long range planning committee there's supposed to be a resolution that's coming to us so we can
understand what the makeup of that is and I believe the draft uh or we're working on the draft letter to the board uh to tell or to inform you of the process uh so yes that should come this week to you thank you and the Very the
last thing that I'll close out with the vendor um evaluations I appreciate that I think it's been a question a number of people have asked and nothing you can do about it but I will just say that these scores are horrible they're they're 50% or little
over 50% 4.3 out of eight average 4.26 out of eight average that's that's out of eight and not 10 so right I know but that's still they're horrible yes it is still hor which speaks to a lot of what my colleagues have said yes so I
don't know what we do with these evaluations but I hope that they are part of the conversation when we look at rfp's moving yeah that that definitely is part of um the uh after Action Report
or um Lessons Learned um to look at some of our vendors that have uh kind of that have disappointed us so I think U we have to have that kind of real conversation okay and I'll end also with I agree with all of my colleagues we
have to know what the facilities assessment is before we really look at phase two of repurposing because we don't want to put money in a place where we may not be housing students it it doesn't make sense I don't I don't want
to stop the progress of repurposing but I think it's important that um we are able to put those together so thank you and thank you so much for the presentation and for everybody um staff that came today we appreciate it so much
the next item is role development Workshop S6 SSE policies I will now turn it over to staff for a very very brief presentation and and for time I'll defer to you if you prefer us not do a
presentation and just take questions taking questions yeah you're welcome Mr do do Dr L know if you do Lano congratulations thank you um if you would just like to at least inter I I'd hate for you to all be here and um so if
you could just maybe briefly introduce what it is we're going to do and then we'll move on from there so again as part of the policy review project the SSP team safety security and emergency preparedness looked at six policies that
needed to be either updated or repealed to come up to 2025 standards so the team work way coward and coward and we reviewed these six policies so we're presenting you today the updates to get any feedback on these six policies from
the public and and the board so the six policies we looked at were 232 facility incident reporting procedures policy 2.4 bomb threat procedures policy
5.7 safety devices for safety patrols policy 1160 safety devices school zones policy 47 assaulting personnel and policy
47.1 Broward County Schools Police and a lot of the changes were either changing the name from SIU to Broward school's police so there weren't any major modifications to any of these six policies okay thank you very much is
there any public comment on the policies okay board member comment anybody yes I okay go ahead Mrs fam hello go ahead Mrs Fam thank you um my
comment is you have the words in there when appropriate which is a very vague and ambiguous term um as far as referring to law enforcement and um I I'm make the recommendation and I'll bring this motion when this comes forward that it's the police that are
experts in the law the police should be making um the decision on what amounts to a crime and what doesn't and we should take the subje subjectivity out of it because um we don't want our um principls that have relationships with
teachers to have to factor in those relationships and the relationships they have with their students so that is one recommendation I would make is that um we don't want to put that onus on the teachers to be experts in law other than
judges and attorneys I think police officers are probably the third most familiar group with what is legal and what is not thank you okay thank you staff did you capture that we captured that thank you okay
anybody else all right well that was easy thank you so much that's it thank you you don't don't be look you recommended no change man
it's like it's easy to do no change okay the next item thank you for very much the next item for discussion is the office of safe schools quarterly report Quarter Two I now turn it over to staff for again a fairly brief presentation
so on this one we have a short presentation would you like us to do the presentation to bring context and take questions or just it seems like a short one short one yes so so welcome everybody I'm Ernie
Lozano task assigned Chief safety security officer I'm joined today by two ladies I don't like very well but the rest of you will love um Morgan nikel and um Maryann Howard are two compliance specialist here in Brower County Public
Schools they hold me accountable every day they're really good at the work they do so without further Ado if we can have the PowerPoint up Miss nikel is going to take you through the PowerPoint really quickly thank you so much Chief
Lano if we can go ahead and start this is for our office of safe schools quarterly report this report will cover August through or excuse me October through December of the 2425 school year it's quarter 2 so we can move on to the first
slide this first slide gives us uh some context for the statute requirement for presenting this information to the board uh in in a public session and the table that you can see that's on this slide is the full quarterly report that we are
provided by the state and the Department of Education it does describe the number of compliance visits that were conducted so for quarter we have 46 and then of course what percentage of our total schools that is 14.74%
the number of inspected schools with no safety requirement deficiencies this uh quarter were 18 which is 39.13% of those conducted visits what they mean by that is that had zero
deficiencies nothing was found to have a followup and oversight there so we'll go on to the next slide what we did was taking this data and broke it down for you uh between our traditional public and our Charter Public Schools so this first slide goes over those same exact numbers but just gives that to you in
the context of the traditional public schools for your awareness so we had 24 inspected traditional public schools and those schools without any compliance deficiencies found were nine which is about 37 and a half% of that total we
also added on this slide the superintendent objective for a minimum of 95% of deficiency or excuse me compliance so that means those 18 items that they are looking at at a
school these this is the P the average percentage between all of those public schools that were visited both the quarter two as well as the year to date so we can keep an eye on that overall percentage as we are working our way towards that goal for the superintendent
and so as you can see right now we are at 93.7% compliance year to date with it 91 93.1 for the quarter so our next slide is going to give you those same numbers for our charter schools of the 22 visits we had
nine uh again found without any deficiencies and we are at uh the the superintendent objective does not Encompass these Charter Public Schools but we went ahead and just tried to pre present you that information so that
that is 89.6% compliance in quarter 2 and 89.3% for the year to date so to kind of on our last slide to give you a a wrap up of some of this information if we can move on to number
five so we wanted to give you some takeaways here so for our first quarter we did have 22.22% of compliant schools from that quarterly report from the office of safe schools so we have increased that compliance to 39.13% which we are very
pleased to see but we definitely have uh expectation and desire to have that significantly increased we have some areas for continued Improvement of our items of documentation uh gate and door locks as well as saers space markings those
numbers and parentheses are the number of sites that we did see during the quarter with those deficiencies and then I broke it down on the table among public and schools the actions that we've been taking to address these deficiencies are a multitude through different uh
processes and with different departments within our division we have the BTA Department as well as our area security managers are going out to sites they have been going out to sites since the beginning of the year and they are checking documentation but they are also conducting our district compliance
inspections and ramping up those numbers of visits so we hope that that's going to also help to see an increase in our compliance we also have uh changed some procedural aspects like making sure all of our media centers are closed and locked as that is instructional space
and instead of allowing that decision of when it's instructional space use and when it's not we're just we want all of those consistently closed and locked for the safety of our students and staff and then we also have not just the review of the documentation by our a security
managers but uh they're also of course checking those safer space markings where we've seen some of those deficiencies and and revisiting that because we did see some where things may have been put up temporarily with paper and perhaps students might have pulled them down and so we are encouraging our security staff and our and our also our
instructional staff to be monitoring those things as well and make sure that we're following up with that and then the last item there is we just wanted to make sure the board knew that all of these deficiencies were addressed within the required 3-day time frame uh from the state of Florida okay thank you very much um I
believe there are no public comments so we'll go straight a board comments and we'll start with Mrs alhada thank you I'm going to focus on page five in regards with the continued Improvement when you say there was I
guess documentation 22 what what does that mean so that means 22 of the schools that were visited during this quarter the 46 schools had a deficiency related to documentation so near the beginning of
the school year they started out by just giving a citation if one of the documents they were checking for was not available now they have actually uh apologies no you're good so when she's talking documentation so Ernie Lozano BTA chair I took the certificates it
wasn't in the actual folder when the state showed up so if it's not in the folder the school gets cited as being deficient and then they have three days or during that visit to print in produced a folder so the
documentation is the certificates of required training through State Statute that staff is supposed to complete and for us it's not that they didn't complete training it's that the certificate wasn't actually in the folder during that surprise visit from
the state so so we are currently building a digital database so that we can monitor it digitally and and put all those certificates into a digital database by school to ensure going into next school
year we're at 100% compliance prior to and we don't have to send someone to a site we can monitor it digitally when it comes to the documentation items that they are checking it is uh threat Management training certificates it is ceser training certificates uh emergency drill
logs for lockdown severe weathers those as well as our BTA monthly meeting documentation and so anything related to documentation which there are as I was saying there are things that check they are checking associated with having that documentation one of the deficiencies is
they did not have the documentation and then there are associated ones where they verify did they conduct the drills as they should that could also be cited if they don't have the documentation to prove that okay so is the state requiring us to have printed out folder
of the documentation or is the like online accessible folder so again they're they're growing and evolving to house pill 1473 just came out so the expectation was a printed folder but they are now starting to accept digital
folders and and allowing us to have but again the digital folder needs to be all in one place and they have to be in there and available when they show up okay perfect so definitely this is low
hanging fruit this is something that is not you know negotiable as far as also like the I'm assuming this is locking of doors and Gates so so let me just clarify and put your mind at ease so again in the beginning when house buillt
1473 there was confusion across the state about what is an instructional space so schools were allowed to exempt and Miss nikel talked about the media center because some schools don't actively teach all day in the media center students may go in and check out
books but it's not an instructional space so so and Broward we didn't want to leave any gray so when we saw that miscommunication we just set the expectation all media centers are locked so it wasn't that there was this preponderance of open gates and doors it
was more learning the language of what could be an acception and what not and then as we work through the process we cleaned up our process and protocols to to make sure schools were not getting cited for
exemptions okay so the area security managers they're conducting site visits they're they're checking all these things you know I'm very happy that the board tied the superintendent's evaluation into the uh this compliance
piece of it I think it's going to really help um but this is low hanging fruit like safer space markings come on and documentation locking doors Gates so we know what we need to do and I just think
that it's it's so important to make sure that every single person is is doing their job right it's it's we're a team so we want to make sure that no one's propping open doors with a pencil or putting um all this
stuff in the safer space area and our our asms I know they're conducting their site visits I don't know if if it um we can the board can see I would love love to see what their data is uh because they're going more
frequently to our schools and their data will show another picture into this right this was just from the Florida Office of safe schools the schools that they visited so I don't know if that's a something we can bring to a workshop or that's a closed door meeting um but I think that
is also really important for the board to be aware of of what is actually happening on a weekly basis at our schools great and we can absolutely bring that data to a closed door session um for you you to see uh we continue to
evolve with expectations on asms we also because after the state does a visit the principal has to do that followup corrective action report we now require those from our asms when the school gets marked with a deficiency to go over
their protocols in process of how did that happen and meet with director L Roa um to ensure that um we are minimizing and having no deficiencies we want every school to get a perfect assessment um I can tell you last week we were at 86% of
our schools in last week's visits that had perfect assessments that's where we need to be that's the superintendent's expectation on our division that we're at 100% in compliance and that's the expectation we set in our department and
just my last question the area security managers if like let's say I'm an ASM in District 4 do I ever go to a different District to inspect the schools uh good afternoon ma'am yes so the the asms are actually assigned by
Innovation zones right so that's that's been a recent adjustment to our alignment in the in the past year or so so each ASM is responsible for two Innovation zones across the district so those ey zones might you know typically they are geographically approximate to
each other but they might be they might be more separate um but there are cases where asms will go out and conduct inspections at schools outside of their eyes zones especially now in the spring and since the new year like Ernie said um that we're doing the state level OSS
inspections so okay yes so Dr H I would just be mindful that I just want to make sure that you're you're having different eyes look at different schools across the district because you might have someone that come and be like oh yep I know they have this they have this and they're already checking boxes instead
of really looking to see whether that security is in place so so that's been uh specified specifically by me that these these especially these inspections we're doing so let me we've been doing inspections for a long time I think you you know
that we've put apps in place mechanisms in place and asms have been doing these for years um you know I'd like to say this the state kind of picked up on what we were doing and now now they're having us doing it as well right um
now we we are actually using the state's mechanism right so there there is no playing around with that right so no I don't mean in regards the mechanism I I didn't mean by the the person that is actually going into the school and and
looking I don't I want to make sure that we're not just checking boxes is because I have a relationship with the the principal or I already know the school I want to make sure that there's fresh eyes looking at different schools so that we're making sure that those that
whatever is in that compliance standard that we're making sure it's legitimately we are in compliance with that school safety standard and I can tell you um director L Ro and I met yesterday and we're going to start on a weekly schedule where we're doing the same
visits surprise visits at schools across the district so we can calibrate to your point thank you okay Dr holess thank you madam chair so um I do agree with board member alhf there
appears to be um items here that are low hanging fruits that should easily be resolved um and I guess uh my question is uh how is school leadership um involved in terms of training and
bringing awareness to the factors that are being assessed um in order to be in compliance um can you describe that process of how lead leadership is involved and ongoing training or awareness uh that one needs to look out
for the staff and so on to be in compliant and I believe there are 18 factors am I right that are measured um so can you respond to um uh that question so we can kind of understand AB
superintendent Mr loano hold on Dr Lozano sorry thank you so so we is mandatory that my team is at every monthly principal level meeting and they go over the protocols Miss nikiel and M
Howard have created a one pager with all the 18 compliance documents expected through that state visit and it's reviewed with school administrators as the asms visit campuses they're also meeting with the school administrators
and talking through those compliance assessments again this has been a transition year in terms of learning for everybody across the state is House Bill 1473 was just pass last spring and we can expect a few probably changes in
this session as they Continue to update and um pass stronger legislation in terms of school safety so um we constantly is something we have to be just as Vigilant you know Dr Fulton brings fire and teaching and learning
Wanda Paul brings fire and operational my team needs to bring that same fire and Safety and Security and keep that commitment to safety and it's everyday conversation it has to be okay so Dr loano and I am happy to be able to say that sir
congratulations um so you mentioned that your team meets with the school administration um how are they reporting back to you in terms of um getting some
sort of qualitative feedback as to their efforts in um ensuring compliance with these 18 uh factors so when their schools are visited we don't you know they can be among the schools with no uh
deficiencies um because I'm looking at the numbers and when we look at traditional schools what I see here is 32.5% had uh no deficiencies right and then or 37.5 I think it is therefore 62.5% would have some level of
deficiency is from the 24 schools that's would be about 15 schools if I'm correct so um how how do we ensure there's this sort of um continual ongoing exchange with leadership and your department that they're actually looking out for these
18 factors and Reporting back on their success in doing so so um the goal here can be achieved in reducing the schools with deficiencies because I I appreciate there the data showing that we're trending in the right Direction but still
62.5% uh having some deficiency is not necessarily a good number would love to see that shrinks down so describe the besides just meeting with the school administration what is the ongoing um effort in terms of them responding back
to you or giving you feedback and so on and so forth so we can make sure that we're at a better number so I meet with these two ladies almost daily or weekly we're in conversations so miss Nik if you want to talk about your process with
schools absolutely uh so not only are we just providing presentations because I know sometimes when we're at our principal meetings and those level meetings it's they're getting a lot of information but I believe a lot of these one-on-one visits especially like director lorosa was sharing that we are
mirroring that state visit so they're going to be having those dialogues and those one-on-one conversations as well uh specifically on all of these key things as much as we've tried to that over the years now it is exactly those items that we're kind of following along that same visit structure additionally
we've been able to expand what we're doing in our review of of documentation and trying to get in front of a lot of any deficiencies we may find uh so of course we've had our BTA team that goes and is looking at these document or the certificate and training requirements uh
also expanding our reviews of our drill log documentation because there is even some minutia with in that of documenting the fact of law enforcement was informed 24 hours in advance for a a lockdown drill so it it depends on what those key factors are some of them on Rua so we
have those built into our drill logs if there is something so much as just a clerical error in documentation that can end up being a citation so that's where we've been working very hard and very happy to have our a secondary compliance coordinator to be able to expand uh the review of all of those documentation
items for 350 schools almost uh so that has I think really been helping to progress with where we're going to improving that and ensuring that everyone is getting that communication because additionally we know that a lot of our APS end up doing a lot of our
security requirements and a lot of them are put in charge of some of those security measures so we are having a lot more dialogue directly with them as well uh to make sure that all of the information is being filtered and filtered properly and and so like we said though it's all a team effort so with all of those different dialog
options we hope that that's going to continue to improve that understand and I appreciate having those dialogue options but Dr heurn how do we um and I and I believe Dr lazan and his team and the others are doing a great job but how do we hold the lead the school
leadership accountable because they might be given the information uh that this is what we're looking for but how do we hold them accountable that they're actually carrying these out go ahead Mr Dr Lozano so we now
include as also like we include the asm's now on the the visits we include all the drill information to the principal supervisors the directors of teaching and learning so they too can monitor um the drills that take place
the safest spaces in the classroom and those safety checks as they visit classrooms not classrooms as they visit schools and they enter a campus is you know did someone Freedom at the gate was it locked was there somebody there those
protocols too so when when we received the state report it's also um cc to the principal supervisor as well for specific followup okay so um you know as we're discussing safety and I I
appreciate all of that I think that uh not just School leadership but those um who report to school leadership um that everyone has a role to play and that everyone has some level of accountability um in order to keep our school safe so the other question that I have and then I'll be done um I know
that we have some data here on Charter Schools as well um what is our role with Charter School compliance I'm glad you asked that question sir so so your role as the corporate board because you as the board are directly responsible and it's your responsibility
as a board corporate to hold the charter schools to the same standard we do traditional schools in these visits and we don't differentiate in our department from Charter to public right there's kids in those buildings and we have to
ensure the same safety compliance so we hold the charter schools to the same accountability standards that we hold our traditional sites to okay so how do we enforce compliance in charter schools and how do we um get cooperation from
them because their data is not that much different from ours um so uh as a district and in light of the safety of our students whether they're in chared schools or traditional Public Schools uh how do we enforce their compliance and how do we get their cooperation so so we
have to again first it's statute driven as well so our asms are assigned to Charter Schools as well and they have to go out to the charter schools and do the same state compliance checklist that we do with our traditional sites uh Miss
Miss nikel has two dedicated staff on her team that monitor all the charter compliance um their certificates their drills everything that we hold our traditional schools accountable for
Charter Schools under Dante Collins team and school choice and Dr Wan's team um work with us we send non-compliance letters we have send non-compliance letters to Charter Schools we followed up to ensure um that the governing board
when there is a compliance issue that they follow up and we ask the same questions you're asking me right did you provide corrective action to that school administrator who who was not compliant or did something that wasn't in
alignment with his safety practice so we hold all charter schools to the same standard and we follow the same Cadence as we do with our traditional sites okay and I appreciate that Mr lazan so if there's a particular charter school that
should be reluctant to adhering to the requirements as as shown here with 18 factors what are the consequences or what what kind of a consequence would that particular um entity face should there be reluctance to adhere to the 18
factors of compliance so we would work with their governing board and what we would do is we would have to bring the issue to you the board and you could look at based on the severity of the infraction would you as a board want to revoke their Charter right so that's the
power you have as a board to look at whatever safety infractions and if you as a board thought it was so egregious you would make a decision as a board what you would like to do with that charter school and their Charter and you
would maybe leverage your power as a school board to ensure they took the appropriate actions that they need to take to come into compliance okay I appreciate that response because I know that some of our board members are new and I think that information is relevant um should we run
into an issue because the safety of children whether you're Charter Schools or traditional schools uh cannot be compromised we must um be uh diligent in terms of our efforts to make sure our kids are safe so thank you sir appreciate it you're welcome Dr
Zan Dr hus thanks for bringing this up because you know charter schools are our compe mates in many regards we compete we want to offer such a great product that more people uh choose traditional Publix and Charter there's nothing wrong with that at the same time we need
charter schools to go to Tallahassee with us in lobby we both want more money for kids to be spent we also want them to go Lobby for better uh definitions of what safety compliance really means including actually measuring Safety and Security rather than measuring a piece
of paper that shows that that somebody completed training even participating in training by itself doesn't make you uh uh safer uh I don't view that as a particularly uh good thing what bothers me and we kind of look at things like uh a scale for construction vendors here
and we joke that they're at 50% and we're at 40 which means 60% of our schools have something that they were deficient in right a lot of that's documentation I hope like Miss alev says that's a that's actually not an indication of Safety and Security but it's a measure of you know
like paying attention to the details and I'm just not particularly happy with these results I love the fact that that we're doing well on page three we don't show the quarter one results what were those Dr Lozano Dr heurn Miss
Nigel thank you uh so from quarter 1 we had uh 18 site visits conducted which was 5.77% of our total schools four of those were what were found to not have deficiencies so we had
22.22% uh compliance I appreciate that I'm actually looking for the on the bottom of page three we say quarter two is 93.1% compliant which is taking those 18 elements over the 24 schools and and doing that which I think is great what
is the equivalent number uh for quarter one uh so I do apologize I can get that for you what I do have is with the follow-up I we had just started tracking that in December when that was created as the objective so I have that amount but it was from August through December
and then adding the last two um two weeks of December so I do apologize I don't have no worries but Quarter Two is 93.1 which is great right that's a that's a a good solid uh you know score but since our year-to-date average is 93.7 higher than that IP suspect uh
quarter 1 was also higher than quarter 2 which means we're not going up in a key metric of of Safety and Security so I think we are but I think the total number of schools assessed in quarter 2 was a lot more than in quarter one um Miss n said we had what 18 schools from
18 to 46 that were visited so our sample size in quarter 2 was a lot higher than quarter 1 terrific okay and so we didn't wait that by quarters we waited it by sample size of schools correct that's all great um but just put me down as somebody that's upset I'm not going to
be happy that 60% of our schools are not compliant even though they're largely non-compliant for documentation right that was the number one thing that they weren't there I view this uh chair and Mr superintendent as an easy fix and why wouldn't we want to make sure that we're
100% compliant I mean this is uh this is as Miss ala pointed out very clearly this is not a difficult thing to have papers in a file and if you're not putting papers in a file what else are you not
doing like hello like we don't want to go relitigate everything that's happened in Security on school sites in the United States but why aren't we having all of our pieces of paper in a file when an inspector walks in when we know they're coming we are on the same page yes sir
thank you let's fix this and next quarter let's be 100% thank you I don't nobody else raised their hand so um I'll just finish this up I you said everything Dr Sean I was um thinking same as Mrs alhad it
seems simple enough to be able to lock the doors have safe spaces marked and to have documentation we should be the beacon of what the right thing to do is in light of what has happened here and I
to see that we're only at 39 not even 37% and the charter is at 40% that have no deficiencies is disheartening um although the other compliance part looks like a good number it should be 100% um
and I I think until we hold leadership accountable whatever that looks like I don't know you know what accountability piece looks like here but we know it's true as students right if we don't hold them accountable whether it's with a
grade or um yesterday at Dana the teacher said she was going to called the student's parent and the student was crying and she fixed her behavior so you know it doesn't have to be a crazy thing for accountability but until we start
holding people accountable and and as school board members as we go to school visits it's part of my checklist it's things that and if I see something I let Dr heurn know hey you know I was here and someone should check it so I think
we also play a role in making sure every time we go somewhere making sure we're looking at those same things is the gate locked is there someone there are the doors locked um do we see safe spaces those are easy enough things that we could play a part in as we go to school
visits so if I could just close this out we are getting recognized nationally I was invited to speak in April at the national student Safety and Security conference and we're bringing the team and we're going to talk about all the great things we do here in Brower County
public schools for Safety and Security I can tell you you know schools are a living organism too right so it seems simple enough certificate safest space we got cited because one of the classrooms just had been painted and they painted over the safest space and
the next day the office of school safe schools showed up right that's going to show for that school is non deficient but that helps us get better cuz now we know as a team and the schools we got to account for those kind of things so all of those little things help us the
school SRO retired they hired a new SRO they didn't change that certificate right even though both were trained so as so now those processes get put to Broward school's chief of police when someone's changed we got to make sure certificates so again we're we're
constantly trying to get better none of us are happy with not being at 100% And that's our goal every single day and the comments you made here that I can clip and play at principal meetings will also go a long way to help set the tone for expectation so I appreciate it thank you
and I appreciate that we are I know we are looked at in that light people come to us but when we're getting a presentation and the presentation isn't 100% it looks like are we really there so you know it's just important but
thank you so much for what you do thank you for the presentation I'm sorry my thing came off thank you so much next up is um the exceptional student education policies I will now turn it over to
staff for a brief presentation and I will just say since you sent the policy to us you don't have to go through it if you just want to introduce it for a quick second um and then we'll go to public comment okay I'm just going to take a
brief two minute recess so staff can come and get situated s for bu l e Beacon where all oh there's John thank you again um the next item up is the exceptional student education policy
and I will now turn it over to staff for a very brief presentation good afternoon Simone Hollingsworth Chief academic officer I'm here with Diane Egan who's our executive director of ESC Stephanie aosta Castro who's our director of compliance in ASC Susan Hoffer general
counsel as well as members of the IT team so um we're here to um share with you high level the uh State manded uh policies and procedures that are in your document as well as the cameras in classroom so we can go straight to class uh questions if you like before you do that Miss hollandsworth I know we have
some pertinent information um from our legislator so I want Mr Sullivan to give us an update before we get started sure so just to remind everyone bar high schools was the only District in the pilot program as it relates to cameras and classrooms and certain classrooms uh that legislation and pilot program has
sis uh has since um not come into existence so it's no longer in Statue however there is a legislation moving in Tallahassee and I do expect other bills to be filed as well uh so point is uh whatever the board decides today on a policy through R making may be impacted
and may have to come back once that uh legislative session's over because we do anticipate the potential for legisl ation that would impact the policy thank you thank you okay public comment uh Steve Mo uh Moyer and Jackie
lka thank [Music] you madam chair members Mr superintendent congratulations new members my name is Steve Moyer I live in Cooper City um the state pilot camera program which Mr suin just mentioned is
now Suns set it was carefully crafted it was based on uh similar statutes in Texas Georgia West Virginia and they've all had those cameras now for over 5 years currently there's about 10 states with similar camera laws draft policy 4900 which is before us says parental
review of the video of the incident will be limited solely to the incident if no incident was captured no review shall occur the district is proposing to deny a parent access to view video of their own children and their own public school classroom when nothing happened earlier
I heard talk of trust um in the PowerPoint which is uh in in the agenda regarding policy 4900 there's no mention of the recommendations by the ESC advisory to delete this language what has been added is found on slide 13 which is if a parent is denied access to
view at camera to camera Professional Standards would handle the appeal was this really the board's intent on how to handle this to tell parents no you can't see the video and go talk to Professional Standards pass what you like and call it
what would call it what it is the draft policy does not protect students it protects staff at the expense of students there's documentation of our Public Schools denying access to video because there was no incident when indeed there was there's uh documented cases of video being supplied without
audio completely changing the context of any incident and in my opinion to protect staff the vast majority of our district instruction our direct instruction and support staff do an outstanding job under very difficult circumstances but in an organization
this big there may just be a few that should have perhaps found another profession these are our Public Schools staff by our public employees the only reason this District even exists is to educate our children the cameras in question are paid for with our tax
dollars they will be videotaping our children in our classrooms and you want tell us no video for you um we won't let you see the video of your child in your school because nothing happened this is not how we build
trust um The District's history of protecting staff at student expense is is not particularly good and I would hope that you would pass something that would protect students and not be a sham thank you thank you next Jackie lusum
thank you I have a question first if I may there's actually two policies in one item here so do we get three minutes to speak to each item there two policies it's not being mentioned what's happening with 4800 and why it's there miss
Batista since they have the there are two policies you can give her um the two to three minutes per policy okay thank you um so because there's two things in one item going on in here so to address policy 4800 first that's the
um ese policies and procedures they came to you for approval August 21st they've been actually worked on since May when the state um Department of Education had asked districts to do so and there was a tight timeline ticking at that point for any amendments to be made and submitted
back to the state there was in fact though an ES advisory general meeting in the meantime but they weren't presented there and I did come to your 21st of August um meeting and point that out that they had not been kind of looped or presented back to us and that that part
of things was lacking um the answer was given that because of that taking timeline to resubmit tweaks to the state that was why and then I invited staff to come back and present to us um after the fact as to what the tweaks were that had been made I just don't want it um
misconstrued from the presentation the PowerPoint that you've had that there has been some presentation of the ESC policies and procedures to ESC advisory and that we've done any kind of review we have not we simply were presented with the the few minor tweaks um to that
200 odd page document um at our August meeting or sorry September meeting um so I'm not kind of entirely clear and it's not being presented on the PowerPoint as to why it's now back being brought back here but I just wanted that um corrected
um I just then I'm going to uh hop over to the to policy 4900 um each of you should have or board members a document um from me which sets out the Matrix um a policy Matrix in the
left hand column is the proposed policy 4900 and then paragraph by paragraph sets out the feedback the ESC advisory and District advisory policy subcommittee which was later ratified by the full District advisory committee um
gave during the looping process none of us I think were aware that then in December after we had provided feedback there was going to be a staff internal meeting which would determine how much of that feedback would come back to you and how much of it would be or not be
represented in the um PowerPoint before you so there are some crucial elements of feedback that we gave and we're the folks who have been on the other end of this that want to to collaborate with you in in shaping up a really good policy um Mr Moyer um was instrumental
in this pilot program coming in and keeping monitoring on it um and indeed in the legislation now coming before um the um the state to possibly renew it districtwide so I think getting it right here is really important we did provide really good valid collaborative feedback
and I don't know why it hasn't been passed on to you so in the three or whatever minutes I've got to do it that's what I'm reduced to doing we would love to have been or to still be a partner at the table so I provided all of you this document um and I've highlighted in yellow the particular
elements that are crucial to address today in our humble opinion which include a a a part that Mr moer just mentioned um but also other critical elements such as um uh
when um review when there are reviews of um camera footage uh if there has been a determination that there might be reasonable suspicion of there having been an incident uh in your draft policy it says parental review of the video
will be limited to solely the incident and we added in discussion with staff and we provided our rationale why that this also needs to say and to a period of 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after the incident anybody who works with students with disabilities um it
knows that um anteceding and uh following um factors play into the reasons for a student's Behavior and the interactions that a student might have particularly when we're talk about non-verbal students with complex learning difficulties and um very
different ways of communicating it is crucial that you're reviewing what went on before an incident what interactions there were whether there was escalatory um triggering factors uh to certain um incidents so we didn't bring our
feedback um to be awkward we brought it to be collaborative we had wonderful discussion at our October meeting and I just don't know why that hasn't been brought back to you so I can only ask you that you do um address all that also at the end I know some parts um of
policy some things go in policy right and some things go in procedure and we have urged that there be collaborative work done with us to draw up the site manual that um by which this policy is implemented I know from experience often
we'll have a policy brought in but we don't have a kind of framework for its implementation and the protocols and procedures around that and we have a lot of feedback from parents and knowledge from the parent end of ways that can help to implement that smoothly if there is to be a site implementation manual
which there does need to be we need please involvement in that um and right on the back page I've highlighted the whole of the of the page where we had submitted feedback that might be useful for that manual for example the frequency with which letters go out to
parents even letting them know uh that they can request a camera in an ESC classroom um so I urge you to please work through blowby blow these um items of feedback we've given you I'm here for the duration of this item if there's any questions if I'm allowed to come back to
the mic I would love to be able to explain our rationale for some of these things because it really is important thank you thank you any other public comment board member comment okay seeing none I have a lot so
um I'll just go through oh okay um so if we look at the policy well first I guess my first question would be can you explain to us what the changes are on the Powerpoints not very
clear about 4,800 um it it says it has a blip here but can you tell us what the changes are for 4800 is it just what's in the green box on page
four it has timelines and and actions but I'm not sure what what we're doing with policy 48 Miss Hollands were thank you Miss Acosta Castro can address that hello
good after afternoon so closer is that better for policy 4800 what we wanted to explain with this slide was kind of the historical of how it ended up back at a board Workshop this policy is a state driven process it is the exceptional
student education policies and procedures this item was reviewed and discussed at the August board meeting and during that time we the state has to give its final approval once the state has provided its final approval
following the board approval we then bring it back to provide it with a local policy configuration for Brower County Public Schools so that when we speak about this locally we're able to refer to it formerly as 600.4 and now we're being asked to reorganize so 4800 would
be the policy so this was just the timeline of when the state gave us timelines when we brought it to the board and when the state gave us the final approval okay so we're not making any changes we're not making any changes since it came to your approval in August
that is correct perfect just wanted to clear that up Miss Hixon if I may the document itself for the state manded PMP is almost like the sack bylaws when you do that that there's only very small amounts of items that can be edited or adjusted just for some comparison I
remember that conversation okay thank you um okay now to policy 4900 um and I appreciate this coming to us I asked about this policy was hoping oping that we would start the year with something
but we're here now so I'm glad to see it um and as Mr Sullivan um mentioned and Miss Batista did a great job also of comparing what the proposed bill is as um compared to what the policy we have
is and it looks like most of the changes just are adding charter schools to public schools in the policy moving forward although it may change um that look like what most of the changes were in the original um pilot policy that the
state had for us so I just have a few things I'd like to suggest based on the ESC advisory recommendations that they had so on number 1A where it says a parent must
complete and and it says and I think you meant to put submit but the word submit is not in the redline version here so they must complete and submit so I would ask that we add the word submit
there um I have a question on one of the suggestions that they had so on letter B where it says um after receipt of the request from a parent the suggest suggestion from the ESC advisory was to
put within 30 days after receipt so I'd like to ask staff if that is a reasonable request um whether it's it or staff that we would be able within 30 days to put a camera in a classroom because I don't want to put something in
policy that we can't do we don't believe that we can do Dr heer yes um actually we'll ask um Mr Davis and Mr Lozano because I know or Dr LZ I know both of them deal with installation of
cameras and probably miss Paul some of it's it some of it's facility depend on uh the scope uh I I can speak to that my name is is Rob zimam and I manage video surveillance projects and I manage the HP 149 project uh the implementation of
those cameras for 3 years um we feel we can comfortably install up to 300 cameras a month if if if if that would now if more cameras are needed um we could increase the number of people that we would we would bring on but ideally you know
based on HP 149 um the pace was not near that so uh initially uh I think we've we've had about 700 parents interested so that would be an initial load but after that
um probably with every month based on the past of HP 149 we could easily handle it okay so my qu question is if we were to add in policy within 30 days after receipt of the request from a parent I guess just yes or no would that
be something we would be able to fulfill because I don't want to put it in policy if we're not going to be able to make that happen well if if if if we could have time to look at those metrics a little more I I I think that definitely for the initial initial installation
we'd want we should try to keep to 300 a month so two months but then once we get up to speed in HP 149 we never fail to meet the 30-day installation time frame ever okay okay so if that's the case I'd like staff to maybe look into the adding
in the within 30 days because if we just say after receipt whatever the time you decide is a doable time if you don't have a timeline in there it could just be open-ended like we see a lot of our work so I think it's important that we're
very clear with the parents what the expectation is you request a camera here's when you can expect it to be in so I won't necessarily say 30 days I think you should go back and you know thank you very much thank you back to us
thank you great and letter D under one it's crossed out so I just like to ask staff why they cross that out Miss holworth Miss aosta Castro it is important to note that when we first brought this policy forward there
was also a consideration on instead of having a a parent make a request we brought forward the maximum dollar amounts to outfit every classroom with a camera that was meeting eligibility so at that time we felt that if every camera if a if a camera was being
installed in every eligible classroom then there would be no need to remind parents that they had to re-quest however if the direction of the board is to have have the parents request the camera on an on a basis then we would be more than willing to put that back into
policy okay um because I think right now we don't have it in every single classroom so I think it would be important to keep that not Redline it for that one so thank you on page two and the pages are kind of
messed up but it goes to number three so um before says before I can't find where it is here um sorry
monit anyway before a cam a video camera is placed and um the suggestion was to add the word activated but for some reason I can't find where that Roman number okay down here
I don't see it I don't oh sorry Roman neral 3 where it says before a video camera is placed um the suggestion was to add the word activated so placed and activated in a self-contained classroom I think that's
also an important word because you could have the camera in there for a month and it's not actually working so I think that that was a good suggestion so if you could add the word activated on there thank you um a number one a on page two after
d so letter D number one a a school shall um it says retain video recording so ours ours is 30 they're asking for 45 so I'm wondering I mean they're asking for 90 so I was wondering if we could
compromise and make it 45 5 days so retain a video recording from a video camera placed pursuant to this section for 45 days after the date the video was recorded instead of just 30 question would be to it is it
possible to keep that longer than 30 days yeah Rob again uh the servers have a retention settings of 30 days 90 days I think can go to 6 months a year so 45 days would require manual intervention that that would not really be I got so
it's either 30 or 90 yes yes ma'am okay um okay I guess i' leave it to my my board members I don't see why is there a problem with keeping it for 90 days just would be the amount of server space would be significantly greater so so
right now with the servers that were purchased for HP 149 they could support 900 cameras with um uh 30-day retention but if you increase it to uh 90 those those same service will support
a third to 300 cameras okay so we would which is what we have right now is 300 but it possible we're we've have 700 requests right right so so we would have to that would say require about $150,000 more in servers okay so we can leave it
at 30 for right now um on ran numeral four letter B it says um the principal must protect so the the well actually let me go back up to 1A so
1 a the school or School District shall conceal the identity of any student who appears in a video recording but is not involved in the alleged incident um and then it says the faces of staff are not to be I'm sorry um it just end ends
there but this is actually somewhere else so can we add the faces of staff are not to be concealed or blurred and audio shall not be modified or muted because if I'm not mistaken that's part of the state law I can about the audio part I can
answer that question um I think the language you're thinking about is in the potentially new statute and we don't know if that language is going to make it or not okay so my preference is if it's POS if it's I know we're going to have to change things if there's a good possibility
that the state law will include that um I don't see why we wouldn't be proactive in the policy that we're writing um we we don't there's an there's somewhere else that I read though that we don't conceal the faces of Staff like when
we're showing things so I I mean I guess I can have people weigh on that but I would like to add the faces of staff are not to be concealed or blurred and audio shall not be modified or muted because there's you can't tell a whole story on
a video if you can't hear the audio part of it so if nothing else I think the audio should definitely be that that part of that sentence should be included and we can sure so the faces of staff are not
to be concealed or blurred word and audio shall not be modified or muted okay and you can weigh in after if people want to weigh in then on letter B um I would suggest changing the sentence to say the confidentiality of all
Student Records contained in a video recording must be protected it's not just the principal so R it says the principal must protect protect the confidentiality that's a heavy lift on just a principal I think it's the system that's supposed to do it
so the confidentiality of all Student Records contained in a video recording must be protected so you just cross out the principal must protect the and addin must be protected after recording I'm almost done okay
um on page let's see here letter sorry my paper looks different than this paper does letter four no letter five session three so number three under B so
number five this is on page two letter B number three parental review of a video of the incident will be limited to solely the incident um I
we should I think and was requested to add in to a period of 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after the incident because sometimes if you're only looking at one snippet and you don't see the whole picture of what happened it's very
hard to assess what really happened in that in that incident so you would add to that sentence and to a period of 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after the incident and the number to add a number
four which is actually in your PowerPoint to say that this is something that's actually um we are going to do so I don't think it's a big ask to add a number four uh the video record made available to the parent will become an
educational record of the student because we say that on page page 12 of the PowerPoint it says that if the footage is pulled within 30 days the footage is retained as an educational record so it's already in
something that you your response was oh so I know um and that is actually a good timing because that was that was the end the last thing I'll say is that um I'd also go asked the superintendent to do a
manual a procedure procedural manual that indicates how all of this is going to work along with the policy so thank you Miss Thompson I just wanted to weigh in I think keeping the retaining of um the
recordings for 30 days is better just cost effective server space is extremely expensive and will probably only go up so I think 30 days is a substantial amount of time um and then as far as blurring or concealing staff I think I'd
rather wait for the State statue to pass before we include that in ours but that's it thank you anybody else Mrs bman um I'm just curious about the
timing if the statute's potentially going to be passed in the next couple months if if we're just going to be doing the same thing again twice and we should be waiting until we're following the actual statute to make sure that we're doing that
correctly um and then uh see I I just had a couple question for you guys um having this uh policy in place as we have in the pilot program have you seen any negative effects on
our ability to do hire and retain ESC teachers and AIDS as a result of them being video monitored constantly all day long staff than I was just trying to be
appropriate good afternoon um so certainly um we did not because that was State legislation as well that was something that was um obviously the teachers union was in agreement with so we prior to this new legislation that's on the floor we did meet with um the
union about that and that wasn't at that point a concern okay well that's actually very reassuring um so yeah my only comment would be to maybe wait until we actually see what the statute is um so that
before we finalize this thank you Mrs rert okay um thank you um Miss Fon for giving us the uh phase two implementation of focus update last night um I appreciate I'm just actually seeing it now so um I
was trying to work on it as we're as we're speaking um I just have to be brought back to when Focus came up into a conversation before we purchased it and I am among other people could see
that there are vast problems with it and especially about migrating everything and we were truly assured that there would not be a major problem that we'd be able to go forward and um I don't know maybe I'm continually naive but I'm losing a little bit of that my little
naive T is kind of waning but um when you have one person pop forward and say this is what's happening with me and then another person and then it's a group and then it's a huge number of groups so um for me that we needed something like this
before beforehand I appreciate that it came out last night but I know that they've been asking for for these things forever especially having to do with um their updates you know as a mom of three kids who are under the ESC umbrella and
gifted yes the I'm I'm just confused because we're on the camera this is about the cameras I'm not sure why you're you're talking about Focus well because I wanted to okay but we have to stay on on the cameras so there'll be a
time when you can come back to the focus but um we we're very short on time and if this is specifically about the cameras well then I'll I'll comment on the cameras um as a mom of three kids under the isy umbrella I would definitely want to have access I
understand that we uh it's not going to be a pilot program moving forward and should we wait or not I say no let's be a leader uh let let's change the policy so we're ready to go um from our perspective so I would support all the
changes that Miss Hixon has recommended and also the ESC um committees so uh I'm definitely in um in agreement with that and that was little less than two minutes thank you and I'll will come back to focus thank you so much Dr Zan
thank you chair chair how many other districts in Florida have cameras in every uh eligible classroom Dr F oh it's uh Miss Hollingsworth Zero from we were the only uh District in the state that was selected three and
a half years ago as the pilot um I'm very concerned about racing through this and I'm usually the go fast guy but um I can't stand to do this and then wait four or six weeks and then we get directed by the legislature to do
things differently um I'm not sure that being identified as an unfunded Target for a pilot um guarantees that following that pilot and expanding that pilot you know three-fold um is what we want to do I'm
really concerned about the 30 minutes though chair and I'm curious why the staff did not add that recommendation because there's a balance here between needs of the parents and the exposure of an extra 60 Minutes of instructional time in a classroom right
and the staff clearly did not want to include the 30 before and the 30 after and I'm curious why Dr fton staff go ahead and address that please miss Costa Castro I don't want to say that it was omitted when we brought the policy in October we were asked and tasked to go
back to three of The Advisory groups and what we brought back today was trends that we came across I know we didn't get to do our full presentation but we brought back Trends and what was said across those three areas we haven't actually made any adjustments to the draft policy that was submitted in October from to the draft policy that's
posted today we are looking for guidance and direction from our school board on how they want that policy to be um presented to them at a regular Schoolboard meeting for when it's time to actually vote on it all right I'm I'm now very confused um we don't have advisory
committees to sit around and imitate house plants you went to three advisory committees and then brought the same document back we were bringing back the information through the board Workshop because this is not to vote on so that we could then make the adjustments based on the guidance from the board to be
able to bring It Forward at a regular Schoolboard meeting so that you could vote on it with the input that you had from the communities and that the policy that was presented at the regular board Workshop would include or exclude what the board wanted to see in that policy and um through the chair to our Acting
Superintendent is this what you understand looping to be Dr fton let me Reas the question yeah uh this this policy went to three advisory boards who all made I'm assuming that they followed suit with ESC and they had
ideas and thoughts and things that might have done it and then the the staff might have made changes to the policy on their own but none of the changes for the Advisory Board are included in the red line they're not presented to the school board because we're coming back to another Workshop this is exactly when we would like to hear what the looping
comment was so we could talk about it in an open forum and then give direction back and I'm so I'm confused because that's been the the practice of the looping up to this point and I think we just uh Ste right past advisory committees and are we waiting till the next step and then we'll use their input
before we come back to the board Dr Fon if I may um so historically what we've done is included the feedback in the backup not necessarily that we would re include it in the red line so if that wasn't done in this case what
we'll do is provide the board the feedback before you take a vote in the next board meeting which would be the next step in the ru making if we decide to do that I know I stepped out of the room when there was also a question on the legislation so um the session starts in March so we would have an indication
whether a bill passed uh sometime in May I do uh so there's a question that I think is a reasonable question whether do you want to enact a policy while legislation is moving because it would potentially impact the policy but as it relates to to going back to your
specific question on looping it doesn't mean that staff will change the red line but we should always include the feedback for your consideration as part part of the backup so if that didn't happen here we'll make sure we do that going forward and if we follow the ruem
for this we would include it in the backup for the board to vote um just as a suggestion um now that the board has taken its rightful place in identifying which committees ought to see something through looping which is written in our own policy we just never followed it for a long time now we are it might be
useful to think about a format with which their feedback could come uh they have one now with advisory boards give us their recommendations not their motions their recommendations and um there's a staff uh column for their reaction to the recommendation that's great I mean that
that's you know kind of looping in reality rather than looping just a loop um so if we have comments from our advisory committees and staff wants to say this one's great this one's rotten this one we can live with but probably wouldn't want to that's all great I mean we need to have that information we need
to have that debate and we would be informed by it um so some kind of format like that I could see very helpful if it doesn't need to go in the red line there are certainly changes that I've watched advisory committees make that did lead to redline changes in policies because somebody learned something new and they
said oh that's what you know Focus does or something and then they go in and and fix it or just typos or hey can you add this chart uh you know that kind of stuff so um I just want our advisory committees to be heard we can include that and we did something different in
policy um 1020 so we actually had a community meeting where there was an opportunity for the public to go uh ask questions and provide feedback from staff so that was conducted in the evening In This Very Room uh with myself Miss Batista and Mr Hill so we captur all their feedback again uh we're not
changing the recommendation for the board to take a vote on um but we did are including all their feedback adds back up to the item absolutely it's wonderful and I and I look forward to that discussion I wish we had had it today uh I understand we're not going to but I cannot wait to have that discussion we need so I think you're
referring to 1070 so 1070 I think was originally for today it was originally today about this one oh this one oh yes it was okay you were right John I was talking about I think you're talking about that one was and we'll get to it
when we get to it but um but no I can't wait we really we really have some work to do on that and we will uh I'm confident figure out a way to make sure that our advisory structure and that our input and things like that are are brought forward in a in a helpful and productive positive way we're also doing a community meeting for that as well
that's wonderful I chair am very nervous about being a pilot where we on our own dime which really makes me angry because if the legislature passes a rule and says oh we want County one to go do this you better bring a wheelbarrow money you
can't just pick a district and say you know go do it if we lobbied to get that and it didn't come with money then we got to fix our lobbying um but that's not cool to do an unfunded mandate for 3/4 of a million but I'm not sure that by doing being being the stucke for that and having to
pay for it means that we need to do a th more classrooms there are no other districts in Florida that does that is that correct we were the only District involved in in that pilot program uh so we were technically only District authorized to do so within statute terrific I'm going to want to go back a
step when this comes forward and talk about kind of the ROI on going from 300 to more and we didn't even get to 300 right in the pilot we got to 277 or something right so we didn't even do what the legislature told us to do without any money I don't believe there was a a predetermined number of
classrooms that we had to have cameras in it just authorized uh parents to make the the request of of cameras within the classroom ah okay and and to my colleagues there's this wonderful chart in here that shows the number of days between a request and being video provided right and there's only one day
over 30 that was one that took 35 days uh to do that so uh the 30 days I think makes a lot of sense but I'm going to want to step back one and say What's the value of doing this now this is all our own money right 1.9 million that's that's just upfront cost and then after that there's still
maintenance and replacement uh cost thereafter I would do anything to protect uh these students um and and then the last point is I'm still concerned I haven't heard the answer to my question which is taken me a long time I'm sorry what is the staff's reaction to the 30 minutes before and 30
minutes after chair Dr F Mrs aasta I don't think that we would be opposed to it but then again the superintendent would be bringing the policy back so we just have to work with our appropriate committees to put that in there and work on the terminology so it could say 30 minutes before and 30 minutes
after and if I may too I I I understand the ask for it um having reviewed other documents before and and dealing with behavior incidents or anything you're always looking at the before and after so although you look for that incident time there is always that lead in and the after that just natur really happens
but understood that it makes people feel more you know comfortable with it being written down there I I just want to understand that 30 30 before that if a parent asks for um uh a video of an incident that may have happened uh School staff looks
at it largely the principal uh guiding this and and find something that that incident could be turned over or the 30 minutes before and the 30 minutes after what if there's no incident is there nothing turned over Dr Folton Miss
Hollingsworth Miss hoffstead has taking that well that would remain to be seen of how you want to word the policy if you want to include that they see what's in the video period or if there's an actual incident that actually occurs that's made it by determination by the principal terrific and chair how is our
policy written right now that's before us would they see it or not see it according to the policy has drafted Dr Folton Miss h i I believe they would not be able to see it unless there was an identified incident okay so so they'd either see an hour plus the incident or they'd see nothing according to either
the current policy or what the ESC advisory is recommending uh as a time when it I'd really like to see some more data on on kind of uh ensuring that this is the absolute best way to spend our money and what what we're going to learn from it I suspect that there's a lot um but given the fact that nobody else does
it and we're kind of taking a pilot that was unfunded mandate to us um uh I guess I'd also like to see more on the results of the pilot you know what what did we hear from the parents uh when they did request it how much more satisfied were there my my suspicion is it's huge and
this is a good investment but I'd really like to know more about it uh given that we're leading the state in uh purchase and installation of cameras and before I go to Mrs alad my my suggestion or my request was to allow parents to view the
video regardless whether there's in or not yes and there's State leg the state legislation the bill that's coming forward looks like it has that wording in it and if that bill goes through every school in the state of Florida will have to have this policy so the
request of bringing the policy forward was to be in front of a state bill as opposed to behind it wonderful want to put that in context maybe if that's the case we want to get ahead of the legislature and ask for the money to that that that comes with that mandate and before we turn it over to one of my esteemed colleagues I just need to say
happy birthday to miss ell yes excuse me Rob Zimmerman if I just want to correct uh we actually installed hp1 321 cameras we purchased 300 as the project was ending um we moved some cameras
around over the life for the project we had I believe 321 installs and we've now since removed 25 from classrooms at at the request of principles the original concept was is that uh in any given year there might have been about 100 20 140
active but we never removed cameras thinking the district might uh eventually put them in all the classrooms that was my direction and so uh they were they were put in an inactive State thank you yeah thank you
so my question is in regards to the cameras do they have the ability say there is an actual like medical emergency inside that classroom would say the Broward sheriff's office in the realtime crime Center be able to access
that camera Dr Fon staff please address no why not they were that that was not what was purchased for the legislation so they um and my it friends I'm going to probably they're going to want to
knock me out so it's almost um on the it would be like a fishe lens so that it had full um review of the classroom and then the audio and visual but it wasn't you know connected to anything outside of the classroom they were wired to the other um you know monitors that you
would review such as your outside um cameras and hallway cameras so do the cameras have the ability to be looped into with the brow Sheriff's Office realtime crime Center Dr fton staff uh
Rob Rob Zimmerman um HB 149 the cameras were on separate very segregated servers um no one had access other than uh the principal and anyone that the principal might designate in rare cases perhaps an
assistant principal um and and I apologize what was your your question so my question is does our cameras that we currently already own have the capability to have like BR Sheriff's Office from the real-time crime Center like for example now if there's an
emergency situation they can pull up the cameras based on anou with us to get eyes on the scene and be able to better assess what's going on that is technically possible they in the past were not permissioned that way okay but the
cameras do have the capability and again it's not just the camera it's a server right more important to make that happen is the server yes the permissioning would be done on the server yes if if I may u Manny castan executive director it
operations and and just to expand on on what uh Mr Zim said these were not designed as surveillance cameras so they're not connected to the surveillance Network that the school uses and that is part of thatou which shares the cameras with the the
sheriff's office is it technically possible to actually make them part of the surveillance system technically it is I I don't know if that would satisfy though the requirements of the statute to keep those cameras separate and for the purpose of just monitoring the
classrooms uh as laid out in the original statute although the board can definitely modify the policy as it sees fit mhm okay interesting and then in regards to the financial impact and the bill that is
now going to be running through legislation is that is it's funded or unfunded currently moving forward this year Dr Folton so I'm going to I'm back V it up to Mr Sullivan in terms of legislation it does
not include funding um it has never included funding in the pilot program and just to be clear the board has never been opposed to the legislation what the board has always asked us if they were going to make us do it was to fund it is this currently on our legislative platform
we um I have to you got me good I think it is but hold on uh well if it's not it should be amended to be on our legislative platform as we go through this so I'm not opposed to being proactive in trying
to bring the language of the policy with what we believe I guess the legislation is going to propose um yeah I mean I would just say we we should really be uh proactively getting
our lobbyists to try to attach funding to this it is yeah it's thank you continue thank you oh yes it is it's it's there I just want to be we asked for it before okay well thank you so much thank you for your presentation um
we look forward do you have did you get what you needed from us okay I just want to clarify we are able to now um at the direction of the board bring back es policies and procedures to a regular school board meeting for adoption as policy
4800 um yes and then once the bill passes no I'm sorry policy 48 oh oh the other one yes yes I'm sorry yes ma'am yes I'm sorry okay so we'll BR we'll start the paperwork to bring that back to the regular school board meeting and then the same question for draft policy 4900
with the legislation pending would you like us to go forward and bring to a regularly scheduled board meeting the policy that could in be in effect and when would you want that effective date to start immediately or with the 2526 school year okay I guess that's a good
question because we can't vote today you can bring right I would say bring Bring It Forward we'll either vote it up or down right yeah but just to be clear right I know it'll have to be changed if the bill
goes through so we're bringing it back which is fine we just want to make sure we understand what the board direction is so you want us to bring the policy as within as soon as possible before the legislation if the legislation passes then bring it back to adjust the policy
yes yes and chair can can I also ask for the advisory council's comments when that comes back please absolutely yes Miss Thompson Miss yes I just don't understand why it's going to change in like two months we're going to take up board time to discuss a policy where in
two months the legislature could change it again just being time effective right and I'll just tell you my perspective on it as why looking at the changes that they had most of them that the bill is
doesn't have as much as we do and mostly in the bill it just adds and charter schools so the bill is requiring not just Public Schools but charter schools to follow this policy so what we're doing and what we've asked for in
changes is actually more than the bill is going to ask just based on I mean other bills may come forward other bills may come forward so I think a good compromise is um give the superintendent the discretion to bring it back as soon as possible possible pending legislation
meaning if there's a bill that comes between now and the next board meeting if he feels it this is going to be too much of a change then he would wait to basically allow the superintendent to make that determination okay I how does everyone I just personally ex wanted
this to be as you all know in August so I feel like we're way behind trying to get it through these are our most vulnerable students they can't often times speak for themselves and the camera is a way to make sure if an
incident happened we know what really happened and how we can make sure it doesn't happen again and so that's my urgency on wanting to move this forward in the best way that we can we have some limitations we only have 300 cameras
there's 700 um you know requests for it we where do we find the funding funding all of that is part of it but to do nothing to me seems just like a safety hazard for our vulnerable students so that's the other thing is is the timing even if we did pass in the March board
meeting you only have a few months left anyway of the school year but I think the best compromises allow the superintendent to make the determination is that okay with everybody well it I mean it'll give the chairs um um feel good about it it'll be in August but it'll be August next year
so not not what we what we were looking for well I you know I just to do getting better is not I just not think a good thing all right thank you so much we can't we're in Ru Mak okay the next no this isn't a Ru making oh yes it is I'm sorry I'm sorry yes it is it's very
confusing how that all works out but thank you and and I apologize for prolonging things but given that we had a looping process and then our all of our feedback didn't get brought to you I think it's only fair that we get heard so thank you for all the discussion there were some points though that were
on my Matrix that had been missed so this was feedback that we had provided to staff they had this Matrix in November and you haven't gone through it so what are we to do stand in silence or like this is a good opportunity to be discussing it to get to the point about
not racing ahead we were told in August that the superintendent hoped to expedite this within a month that was last August also you did already kind of tell parents we are doing this you haven't said we're kind of thinking about it we might or we might not um the other thing with the state legislation is not necessarily going to pass not
necessarily going to pass for this year not necess necessarily going to have the same format so I think it is important to go ahead if the state then brings in its own uh initiative with anything different um then pivot then but this is actually um a make or break deal for
some parents who do not feel comfortable this year with their kids now in ESC classrooms that don't have this cover it gave them great comfort before there are folks who have left your District because you no longer have it or are talking about doing so if you don't so
that's not to to threaten that's just to provide some legit feedback from um our community um there were some points still to be addressed or or I mean if you don't wish to just say but um a point that Mr Moyer had brought forward which again is on my Matrix is on page
one two three four of my two three four of my Matrix at part section four part be item three where Mr moer had said
talked about parental review of the video of the incident will be limited to solely the incident if no incident was captured no review shall occur we provided the feedback which was not brought to you um but from ESC advisory and and um as I say again it was
endorsed by District advisory sub policy um policy subcommittee and then by DAC generally and Technology advisory also reviewed all our feedback and didn't have any OB ction to it so when we talk about only Trends were brought back to you that was a trend of all three bodies that looped it um we had wanted the
wording in there if no um we wanted the wording remove where it says if no incident was captured no review shall occur um there were some other points in 30 seconds I'm not going to be able to cover them but this was why I produced this Matrix it took a lot of hard work and we had really wanted every last um
point in it um addressed also just to a point down here that was um made on section one part B uh where the question have been asked within 30 days of receipt of the request from a parent a video camera should be operational blah blah blah a question was asked down here
and the response was a non sequor um you were told that they can manage to install 300 cameras a month nobody's talking about a quota per month they have to be installed within a certain period of request it's not a per month Affair thank you and I just maybe ask
you thank you for sharing the Matrix with me can you share it with all of the scho all of you have it so okay I didn't know that you sent it to everybody I sent it to everybody okay perfect thank you any other okay thank you so much um so you
everybody's you're you've got your marching orders all right thank you so much the last item for today is the overview of the building department I now turn it over to staff again for a very brief presentation as we have a Time certain at 4:00
Sarah and as the chair said the time C is at 4ock in Rec no we don't do this okay okay um um let me ask my fellow
board members do you we got the presentation do you want them to go through it or you want to go right to questions well public speak I'd like them to go through it okay quickly quickly yeah good afternoon uh Miss
Hixon superintendent heurn and board members uh we're going to give you a quick overview of the building department it'll take about two hours uh the the the first slide is an introduction it talks to the purpose uh
of the building department next to me I have Miss peara um aala uh taru aala who is I call her Miss pear if that's okay she is uh the person that uh I entrust
to run the building department and as you can see the slides are very uh very granular in terms of uh the services that are provided uh by the uh building department that's slide or page three uh in 2024 the department at a glance it
talks about um the reviews The Plan reviews the inspections the portable inspections as well as the ahpa inspections uh a lot of the the line share of the workload is uh with the smart
program so current and internal Uh current internal and supplemental staff you can see the bottom line there that we have seven employees we have nine Phil or seven uh vacant employees uh we have nine fill positions and a big number I want you to pay attention to is
the 75% of the work is outsourced in the building department and you can see the different trades that we have inspectors for uh this is a comparison of the other surrounding school districts and uh all of those surrounding school districts
have a similar model to us they have in-house staff plus supplemental uh uh individuals to uh help do the work of the district and then the next slide talks to money and the cost analyses that the
board uh asked us to do some time ago and to Outsource the department is in excess of $6 million our current budget is 2.5 million and you can see the variance in um the wage Gap uh between
our internal staff um and what do would cost Outsource and here we talk to the benefits of retaining in-house staff as I said uh previously uh uh the majority of um our
district surrounding districts are in-house staff with uh supplemental or augmented um contracts to help with the workload the next slide is analysis of the submitted time and I'll let Miss pla
talk to this so on this what we want to say is um if you look at it it's often said that a project is in the building department the entire time that it's from inception through permitting a
project it's only in the building department for the time is being reviewed so like for example the first one is seminal it was in the building department for 125 days however it was with that pmo with for
439 days while the architect was making the corrections so it is not in the building department for 564 days and that's that's something that I wanted to uh highlight uh in terms of
you know speaking the same language when we talk about being in the building department it was submitted but if there are things that are wrong with the plans it goes back to the architect it doesn't sit uh at a with Miss pea and holding the plans that's not how it works and so
as you can see the the days that is out with the Consultants is really uh the time the time that has elapsed it this speaks to uh what I think the board has asked us to do is accountability so if
it's in the building department we should not or in the uh Consultants queue we should not be waiting $439 uh days for them to turn that project back to us and so when you look at the time how this relates when you
look at the time impact analysis A lot of that time is when things have to go back to the architect uh so uh I just want to make sure we're speaking the same language and one of the things that I uh charge myself and team is to make
sure that when we speak we speak with uh uh uh Simplicity not the complexity of and not the jargon of what contract trors use and what we use in a profession that we speak plainly so that everyone can understand how this works
uh so one of the B things that Miss pea has done is uh you know kind of streamline the process as I said before she's part of our meetings as well as Nathan behind me I think he's still here they they we all sit at the same table and work through these things uh uh to
make sure that we are moving these projects forward so under the new leadership I'll let Miss plar talk to this so what we did was we noticed that um a lot of the times the projects were were having four and five and six resubmittal so we said let's do
something on the second time that we review and we send it back to the consultant this let's have a standup review let's get together let's go over the drawings let's discuss the issues whether it's code preference design criteria that we can fix let's do that
before we we sit around again and go through the fourth the fifth and and all of that so so that's what we did and that's what uh has worked for us and that's how uh after uh like we said under the new leadership we were able to
expedite a little bit more uh the next slide um the building department Miss pear can talk to the current uh initiatives and a lot of this movement towards uh trying to improve is
all of us sitting at at the table talking about some of the challenges of a project uh and figuring out a way to expedite it to move it forward because as I said before when I got here a lot of projects have been sitting for years
and so we uh work collaboratively together uh to try to accelerate them and that will be kind of the vision as we go forward for the capital plan also so the things that we learned from the U uh smart program
uh of ways to improve will carry over into the capital program so what we did with the plan reviews is what I said uh we we now allow like 14 days for a plan review except when it's a brand new school then we know it's more
complicated we tend to also accelerate it and prioritize it when it's a brand new school like right now we're working on Markham and we are prioritizing that one we also uh tend to do the roofing plan reviews they used to take
like a lot of resubmittals and we've come to the point where the the the contractor and and us as the plan reviewer have learned and we can expedite a a roofing plan review in three to five days we also
um are doing the inspections we are turning around inspections in 24 hours we are doing inspections on the weekends after hours at 8:00 at night on holidays because we have the supplemental staff and they don't work the same holidays as our staff even though our staff also
participates or not we we are the days that we don't work they work so they are just doing inspections any time of the day uh some of the initiatives um we and I want Miss mer uh PL to take
a uh um credit for the electronic plan review because one of the first things when I got here and I went into her space and I saw all the paper and I got the heie jibbies so she already had a solution for that so yeah she said to me this is a lot of paper so now we're
going into electronic plan review and we are super excited the staff is excited they they have tablets to go out to the field we're working with a um a a vendor out of Louisiana and on they're being
great so the staff will have the tablet with the drawings and be able to check you know the the the the inspect do the inspections right there and actually res the inspections right there and we'll have real time results on everything that we also have for plan review the
the screens already on their desk and so we're moving pretty fast and I want to thank Trey and uh his technology team for helping us expedite uh this uh new system uh I think it will pay dividends in the future so thank you Trey and your
team for that so in conclusion the uh BCPS building department uh does other things besides C compliance it acts as our owner representative uh they perform we
perform Plan reviews inspections to verify the work performed that it is to code that buildings are safe to occupy and the district is receiving the contracted work or receiving what we pay for basically yes the thing about this
too is um she she has a very unpleasant job I'm going just be honest with you uh because she has to be the person to push back um and make sure that we as a district get what we paid for and
sometimes that is extremely unpopular and uh but I would tell you that I have uh Full Faith and confidence in Miss pear and her team to get the work done and to protect the district and so we have gone through an evolution in a very short period of time uh Miss
pear represents the new leadership in that department uh she's a professional uh she makes sure that we hire professional licensed staff that are solution driven and not uh the the pointing of the Fig uh fingers and we
have dedicated staff that supports her so in conclusion um that's the build building department in a very brief overview if you want to stay afterwards uh Miss uh plar can go into my new detail on every one of these slides so
uh thank you for your time and your attention can I just also it says board discussion and guidance so are you looking for us to give what are you looking for us to give you guidance on um just the continued support of the board I think that we have um uh the
right person heading up the building department uh I think that uh one of our challenges going forward will be uh to replace staff that has uh uh will leave us over the next few years and these
folks are very hard to hire uh and we have to look at our compensation for not only the building department but just quite honestly our whole uh construction building and fire uh because uh we are
not they can get paid a whole lot more on the outside and so we have to find out what that sweet spot is to get as I said before build the bench get qualified people in here to carry on the work uh Miss pear has promised to be here for another 50 years so uh we don't
have to worry about her position but I mean just going forward that is something that is very critical not only facing us but I talked to a counterpart uh in in Palm PE Beach he's actually chief of facilities now I hired him uh when I was in Palm Beach and they have the same struggle that we do uh being
competitive getting people in here with the proper licenses and experience to do this work thank you Mrs ruper let me I'll just mention though at 4 o'clock we have to pause the workshop to go to the hearing and then we'll come back to the
workshop so I don't want you to feel cut off okay quick as a bunny I'll wait for the 10 minutes though oh five sorry you're right okay um page 12 the initiative unknown participant is now joining I'll just keep talking um who
who does currently the electrical plan review in-house or a vendor electrical no she's electronic electronic we don't do any electronic plan review we do plan review drawings this is where we're moving towards right now we have three
sets of drawings submitted we we do have a a program that was built in house but it's not for electronic plan review so the Jo our hard copies we input our our comments online and then it prints out a a a
record but it is not I'm lost because the page 12 talks about electronic plan review so that's where we're moving to so right now we have a very manual process so this is the new uh program software that we are moving to and in the process of implementing okay and
have we already bought that yes yes okay and just bought it what was the cost uh the cost is going to be $40,000 for two years okay and that includes Hardware software the the whole Shang um
okay and so none of our people are obviously trained on this yet so we'll be hiring I guess the v a vendor to do this we that's what we're paying for the $40,000 the vendor who's going to come from Louisiana trainers and all that and
with the help of the IT department we'll be set okay and then uh another question I have is about the the fire alarm maintenance is that currently done inhouse or is it a vendor fire alarm maintenance so that that's not part of
the building Department's responsibility uh that is under the Fire official and our um I think we contract a lot of that out Nathan can you speak to that for regular maintenance or for permitting
and inspections inspection so he is the Fire official and he's responsible for uh the inspections go ahead na s Chief Fire official um board um so uh we have fire inspectors that do plan review and permitting just as the
building department we work closely together we're in the building next door so they're reviewing the plans we're on their discipline and we're reviewing the plans on on our discipline that's okay so through the chair through the superintendent um then we already have
our own people in place that that are doing this currently right now it's not a vendor correct the vendor is going to be for the electronic program to implement that software and to guide us in the direction of you using it and and to go into the full implementation okay
that's perfect thank you um and when it talks about where we should be going uh with the building department uh my my question really will be more to the superintendent when the organization chart comes back around um I don't believe that fire should be reporting to
Dr Lozano um that it it needs to be someone who's credentialed and and all that area so we have to be prepared for when that part comes up as part of the um uh the org chart so I want to make sure that we as a board know that that's
going to be part of it as well um hold on I think okay and we already talked about 75% almost 80% of of contracts uh are done with vendors so I've already uh talked
about that I'd like to actually see the the full breakdown on that as a as a followup you know to see where exactly our money is going is it going to certain uh vendors is it uh are they local are they uh at of State in Louisiana Etc so um and then if there
people are are here at our our facility for a certain amount of time for the the contract um duration I would assume so just that is that is a followup so thank you okay so we are going to pause the recess the workshop so that we can move
into the public hearing unless you think you're done with this portion then we can conclude it no I think there's a few other nice try yes nice try so uh say if you say recess then thank you I said yes we'll recess
again the workshop so that we can move into the public hearing e e e e e e
e e e welcome to the public hearing of the school board of Broward County Florida for public comment on the science K12 instructional and digital materials recommended for adoption in 25 2025 2026
this public hearing of the school board of Brower County Florida is now called to order our primary focus is to create a safe and productive environment for all participants please be reminded of the exit doors that are clearly marked for emergency exiting while in the boardroom refrain from obstructing the
exit doors all attendees must occupy a seat with the exception of media once the boardroom has reached its seating capacity attendees will be directed to a designated overflow area upon activation of the fire alarm system please exit from the room in an orderly fashion and
continue to exit the building and remain outside until the authority that has jurisdiction has deemed the building safe to return thank you for your cooperation all please rise for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America Al to the flag of the United
States of America thank you are there any changes to the agenda Dr heurn there are no changes thank you may the chair have a motion in a second to close the agenda second it's been moved by Dr Zan seconded by Mrs
rert all those in favor of closing the agenda say yes yes all those opposed say no motion um motion carries May the chair have a motion in a second to move the items to the floor yes so moved it's been moved by Dr Z and seconded by Mrs
rer to move the item to the floor as we prepared to begin our public hearing we are reminded that our vision is 100% proficiency for all our students as an a-rated School District our Vital task is to sustain this achievement we will continue educating all students to reach
their Highest Potential our theme this year is believe in power achieve one Broward the purpose of this hearing is to keep the public and the school board fully informed as to whether the district is using found policies and practices that meet the needs of students and warrant public confidence
in the district's operation the law requires that the public be given the opportunity to provide input to the adoption of instructional and digital materials this is the public hearing to hear public comment for the 2025 2026 instructional and digital materials
adoption for K through2 science is there anyone in the audience who wants to address the item you must register at the back of this room I will call on each of you after the superintendent's presentation each listed speaker will be given three minutes to address the board this will
allow for each person to be heard and for the business before the board to be handled in the most expedient manner we thank you for your support of the Broward County school district and for your attendance at this public meeting Dr heurn will now give a brief overview of the instructional and digital
materials recommended for adoption in 2025 2026 thank you madam chair good evening I'm pleased to submit the instructional and digital materials planned recommended for the K through2 science adoption in 2025 2026 for the school
board's consideration and adoption Florida statute 106.4 requires public access to the recommended instructional and digital materials and a school board hearing to receive public comment bar County public schools has the duty and responsibility
to provide instructional and digital materials to support instruction the material selected must be aligned to the academic standards and reflect the most current information each year based on the state adoption cycle District staff and teachers review instructional and digital materials for designated
subjects and select the best suited materials for use the subject area reviewed rotates each year allowing the district to supply students and teachers with current materials the selected adopted materials are generally used for 5 years for the 25 26 school year the
the designated subject for review was science for K through 12 recommended titles include digital components and interactive features now the District staff from Innovative learning will provide a brief presentation of the recommended instructional and digital materials for the K through2 science
adoption for the 2526 school year following the presentation staff will be available to answer any questions thank you good afternoon once again we are here to present on the the public hearing for the science adoption and in agreement with all things
previously stated our process is in alignment with the uh Broward County Public School strategic plan supporting the goal of early literacy the goal of science proficiency and the goal of College and Career Readiness additionally all statute has been filed
in relationship to our process so that it is an uh Equitable process that has uh transparency as far as the review of all instructional materials as of July 1 2024 there was a definition change to what adequate instruction
Mater materials are defined as and Brower County Public Schools is in alignment with that process and our purchasing uh experience is inclusive of digital materials and uh paper-based materials and we have the flexibility to
uh buy accordingly so that we are fiscally sound if we can go to uh excuse me slide number four so with the process in order to maintain our transparency we do use the Ed credible tool which houses all of the
responses from all teachers that participate in the review process it also goes through a rating scale as well where that data is kept so that we are selecting the highest quality of curriculum for our students but the subject matter experts from various
departments including secondary elementary and content area prti practitioners participate in this review to ensure that we are in alignment with all uh State Standards so that our materials align additionally uh we uh did have a
revision in our Statute in 2019 to make sure that we were in alignment with the commitment to eliminating the common core and we are following within that tradition just for a point of clarification the science K12 adoption the list of approved materials on slide
six was approved on 72 2024 and updated 1212 of 2024 and all of the titles listed in this presentation are adopted and approved by the state you will see uh on slide seven uh
through nine you will have a robust list of all of the core courses that we are covering within science additionally uh these uh uh all vendors are inclusive of having print and digital content as
previously mentioned again we want to highlight that when it comes to our AP courses the instruction materials uh Place advanced placement courses are not purchased by the district they are purchased by individual schools and that is dictated by what those schools offer
based on their master schedule so I wanted to make sure that that uh was clear that those dollars are not included in the overall request for the instructional materials um adoption uh because that uh particular uh line item is absorbed at the school level for AP
courses only all other courses that are in uh the curriculum that all students have to go through K12 uh that are general education are uh outlined in this um
presentation and that would conclude our uh presentation but for your edification we do have a robust uh section with appendices where you would be able to click the hyperlinks for every single textbook so that you could go through in
detail uh what the courses offer within that text additionally these links are available with on uh in the Brower County public school's calendar on today's date of the public hearing also on the Innovative learning website and that would be available to the public through the duration of this process
until we actually come to an adoption and we also did the the appropriate legally public notice where the link was also offered along with the list of materials and that would conclude our initial presentation and we would be open for any questions you may
have thank you speakers will now be called to the floor by name and are requested to State their name and address I think just the city you live in before beginning their comments each speaker will be allowed three minutes to address the
board Madam chair we have one register