met with budget and told that was correct. We were not going to be getting the sack rollover dollars. There were no rollover dollars going back to the school. We passed a motion that night in North area. It was passed unanimously to return the rollover dollars back to the schools because that money was allocated
for the schools and there was never any direction given to the SAT committee that it had to be spent that year for none of the rollover dollars. No one knew that they would not be getting the rollover dollars if they weren't spent. The next morning, we got a call from the budget office that the rollover dollars
were being returned to the schools, but they're still not returning the ACE, AP, and CAPE rollover funds. That money was allocated from the state for those programs. So, we would just like to know how that
money is being spent if it's not being given back to the schools because that's specifically what it was allocated for. Uh, one of our previous motions was to place a nurse in every school in uh,
Broward schools. We have not heard any further discussion on that topic, but we have heard the desire and the need publicly around the district from parents. Future topics. Something we're doing in the north is asking our parents and community what they would like to see presented at the next meeting or what their biggest
concerns are. Last month, we had a variety of concern concerns, but the one that consistently stuck out was the high level of testing in elementary schools. Kindergarten and early childhood parents were very concerned that their kids are not being allowed time to learn important developmental skills, fine
motor skills, play, or just enjoy learning due to the anxiety and pressure of over testing. There is concern that the testing windows are so short and come so quickly which creates an immense amount of pressure for teachers and students especially if they have to miss any school because they may not be
learning what they are required to test on. Kindergarten students are struggling to use technology that they are required to take test on. Specific concerns were raised around performance matters program. I received a a text message, I'm sorry, an email last night from a
parent um at Park Trails and they have a group of parents that want to come to our next North area meeting because they are concerned about um performance matters, transportation. There were transportation concerns, but one in particular, almost done. One in particular that I found very important
to address was a parent whose child is on a bus from Coral Springs to Peters Elementary in Plantation. With a stop along the way, which keeps elementary age children on the bus sometimes for over two hours, the bus is filled with children that are deaf and heart of hearing that are being denied an
interpreter to communicate with. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next is central area. Um good morning. The central area chair is not able to be here today. She's dealing with um uh a sick child. So I
was asked to provide a report on um their behalf. Their last meeting was on October 15th. They wanted to say thank you to Guy Barmoa from secondary learning who provided um a comprehensive and tailored presentation specific to
central. Um one of their major concerns is over testing of young students. Um they uh say that especially in kindergarten there are a vast majority of students taking over 40 tests mo most of which are districtmandated.
And similarly, there are groups of parents in the central region that are asking to go to central region meeting to just talk about testing. They also have concerns about the online platform for young students. They feel that these younger learners would
benefit from having more direct interactions with the teacher and paperbased learning. Additionally, many teachers feel like they don't have time to teach because they're constantly testing. um they don't feel that all of this is developmentally appropriate. It's
stressful for students and teacher teachers and from a data perspective they don't believe that it's truly accurate because when you have young learners that are navigating the technology you might not get a true um presentation of their actual um
understanding of the information. They did pass a motion on um at their last meeting recommending that BCPS um puts a school nurse on every single campus and they also have concerns about
Hazel Health. Um their next meeting is on November 20th at 9:45 at uh Indian Ridge. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next is South Area. Good morning. Um, Antonet Bailey, South area chair in
the south. We are very concerned about redefining parents of middle schools. What is the district doing to market our schools? Charter schools and private schools are sending home pamphlets, but nothing is being done for their middle schools. K through 12 does not offer a
gym for the older kids, and they don't feel appreciated that they're being forced to attend AC school. Majority have voted to leave Broad County school and attend a charter or a private school. Why choose why choose to close a school and keep a C school? A lot of
parents are very concerned about that. Lastly, parents are not in support of the K through 12 younger and older students sharing the same campus. This raised concerns regarding bullying, limited playground space, and age appropriate learning and behavior expectations. a lot of parents in the
south because Walter Sea and Glades are going to be closed or they're not sure as yet school choice is open and they don't know what to do with their kids. So in the south they're going to the meetings because they want their voice to be heard. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much. Uh next is ESC advisory. Good morning, Jackie Luskam, advisory chair. Our last meeting was um October the 15th. We had about 50 odd people there. Um and we passed two
motions. I was late submitting last Friday. So, I'll read out both of our um outstanding motions. Both relate to the cameras in classrooms program. Um, relating to cameras in classrooms program, we recommend that BCPS makes
data data available class by class to ensure that consent, parent consents have come in on a public facing portal. And the background to this um is that more than 1100 or more than a thousand classrooms are eligible for the cameras
in ESC classrooms program but signed parent consent is required on behalf of of each student in the classroom before a camera can be activated. problems with communication or miscommunication, challenges accessing, consent forms in
focus, and suspicion or misunderstanding about the purpose and motivation of the program are factors that have contributed to a low rate of camera activations to date. This motion was brought to encourage BCPS to make its data transparent, providing parents better insight into what schools and
classrooms have achieved um in terms of consent forms coming back. And for those that have not, what proportion of consents remain outstanding? Um staff shared that making per classroom data public could breach the confidentiality of individual students, but the motion
does not seek to personally identify anybody. We're just asking for numbers. Um providing transparency over which cameras which classrooms have cameras and which don't can be bene beneficial on multiple levels. For example, identifying which schools are having
challenges with a view to finding new methods of parent outreach or for parents making school choice decisions, new parents seeking to enroll and parents who have consented needing to stay updated and so on. We made a second motion on October the 15th. Um sorry,
that last motion was from a previous meeting. Um and our motion um was uh for BCPS to make a available the paper parent consent form um and place it on school websites, the BCPS website and
even make it available to ESC advisory. Um other than that we um have been busy busy. our ACE uh autism committee um chair made some site visits to um three
schools she just told me which um with um staff from the ESC department uh sorry Apollo Middle and seminar middle to visit their VE program. This is a a great program um that fosters um inclusion for students at the middle
school um um level. um it was piloted and we didn't know when it that it was piloted. So, we've been asking more about it. Um we got some good fos positive feedback that we look toward forward to uh hearing more about at our next meeting. Our down syndrome
committee uh joined with Gold Coast uh Down Syndrome um organization to uh hold their annual sponsored walk. Um, I also went on a site visit actually with Nicole Mor from North Area to Broward Estates
Elementary. Had a fascinating visit there. The work being done by the principal and staff there is amazing now in running the Head Start and um early Head Start early learning center. Um, it's a great wraparound for the community and I hope that can grow. But any of you who are looking for a a site
visit to make to lift your heart, go there. It was wonderful uh and especially fun um meeting with a principal dressed as Minnie Mouse. Um we've identified some issues um over time concerning contract schools. First
of all, we found out that um students BCPS students who are placed in contract schools. Uh last year we found that those at Bodwin in the prek weren't receiving BCPS emails and hadn't been for years. So that got fixed. Um, it turns out the cameras in classrooms
program won't apply to BCPS ESE students in contract schools. And then yesterday I identified an issue. I hope it's anecdotal, but I fear it might not be. Simone Hollingsworth is kindly on the case. Um, but if a contract school suddenly loses their nurse, who's overseeing that the students are um,
actually having their medical needs met? Um I'm delighted that finally after um a long delay um progress is being made with um communicating with and leazing with um autism South Florida autism
charter school. Um I know some of you have been on visits, some have visits and if any of you want to make a visit, I can make your you an introduction. Um and finally, we had a great um um presentation at our last meeting um by
Richie Bal about progress monitoring that we'd asked for PM1 um assessment data and we got a great presentation and I have to say the work that's been done to lift scores is really encouraging. The the data speaks for itself um and there's a lot to to commend in what BCPS
has achieved in raising scores um for ESSE students as well. There's still a long way to go, but it's um it's great to see. Thank you. >> Thank you. And actually visited Broward Estates yesterday, so I concur with your uh your observation. Uh next is Esau
Leadership. >> Excuse me, Madam Chair. You skipped over the diversity committee. >> Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see you over there. I apologize. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. >> Go ahead. >> So, hello. My name is Erica Hansinger. I am speaking on behalf of um Miss
Narnique Pierre. She is not here today, but um I will come with the Miss Narnique Pierre energy, of course, as we always do. So, um like I said, my name is Erica Hansinger. I'm uh represented um Western High School. I teach there. I'm also
part of the faculty council and um a sue of other things that I do at the school um lovingly. Okay. So, um the diversity committee held its general monthly meeting on October 9th. During this meeting, we concluded that our vice chair elections um identified the chairs
for our subcommittees. Um a finalized list of subcommittee chairs will be submitted once all appointees have been confirmed. The committee remains focused on preparing the annual report and on supporting the district's commitment to diversity, equity, access, and the nine
conditions in their indicators. At that meeting, Dr. Washington and Miss Keats presented discipline data to the committee. The information that was shared prompted a robust conversation about how discipline is being administered across the district. In
order to gain further clarity, the committee requested that the chief of safety and security, Mr. Michael Gregory, attend our monthly committee meeting this Thursday. His participation will help explain how discipline actions work when school resource officers,
school security, and teachers are involved so that the committee can make informed recommendations to the board. To date, the diversity committee has completed three site visits. We're working very hard. During these visits, we are observing facilities, academics,
discipline, programs, resource availability, safety, and obviously security protocols. The committee remains committed to using the nine conditions and their indicators as our guide as we have always done. We are also reviewing last year's visits
observations alongside this year's visits so that we can compare. It's important to do that. We believe this dual review will allow us to provide the board with tangible comparative findings in the annual report. Overall, the sites we visited were operating with in with
the instructional instructional calendar. Facilities were genuinely inadequate condition. However, we continue to see challenges all across with Maximo um and uh the follow through with some work orders. We are also
seeing a decline in staffing across the board um in terms of custodial staffing and those important individuals that are there to beautify and keep our campuses clean and um wonderful for our students. Okay. Some of the schools we are visit are operating um two schools on one
campus and in one case a third program at a separate location and that is Gfream Academy um all under a single funding source and we need some answers. We need to know how um this is equitable
across the board. They are sourcing out uh Gfream Elementary as well as middle school and um a learning center. So we want to make sure that everybody um on that campus and therever um have the resources that they need and that they are um spread uh equally and equitably.
Okay. Um the committee will address these issues in the annual report and we'll offer suggestions to the board to consider. The the diversity committee also maintains a seat on the uh boundary committee. The vice chair will attend um the b our vice chair is Rasheed Gray. um
he will attend them that that meeting in place of the chair to ensure that diversity, equity um and access are represented in conversations about enrollment and school assignment. Um we are asking that each board member um
please please please please please uh check with your appointees make sure that they are participating make sure that they are going through to those meetings. Make sure that they are coming and um representing you all well because if we don't see them then we don't see you. Okay. Um it is imperative that
members attend monthly meetings and remain engaged. Um a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. We are one Broward. Okay. We have to understand that the sex the success of this committee is capped at the level of its least effective member. The committee
extends an open invitation to the superintendent and to um the um uh other schoolboard members, general counsel and the chief of staff to attend any of our meetings. Please, we want you to come walk with us. Come talk with us. See, hear, feel what we see. Um I'm a
teacher. I have TDAs. I want make sure that I go to every single one of those meetings. I'm on the front line. I'm not, you know, I'm not a community member, just a community member or a parent, but I'm literally on the front line, okay? And we want to make sure that you guys see what we see so that we can have a collaborative effort, okay?
Um, and we are all looking forward to the showcase this year and make sure that um we get that word out. Marketing is so important. Um, not just in the district, but in our schools. If we can control our marketing, uh, that would be great. I'm not done. I have to continue. Thank you. Appreciate it. May I please?
Thank you. Okay. So, um, aside from the the chair's reports, um, the district's community roundts around redefining have been very meaningful. I want to thank you all for that. That's been really great that the community is coming out. People are coming out, not only parents,
but elders, alumni, and longtime residents who have helped build these school communities. They are speaking clearly about what they want for their children and what they will not accept. And that is their right. That is a strength. This is evidence that Broward is listening and that the community
still believes its voice matters. I also I want to recognize this is this is me. I want to recognize uh the schools that are modeling what Broward can be. Laneir James um is a wonderful place for
children that need uh that uh environment at that time in their lives. It is a wonderful place and it gets um a bad name. If you have not walked into the hallways of Laneir James, Miss Laurent is doing a wonderful job. I can feel the leadership instructional focus
and there is pride in that school and that school is clean. It is wonderful. Um they had 20 work orders. Um this is something that needs to be done across the district. That is a blueprint framework. We have to take that and whatever bits and pieces of making that
school work, it has to be spread across the district equally. And I don't see it from the south, central and north region, from facilities all the way down to, you know, bus it. It has to be all the way through. Okay. I'm sorry I'm
taking up time, but I have to um the diversity committee is the eyes and ears um of this district. All the diverse all of the committees are. Broward County Schools is the heart of Broward County. The heart is still strong. Our students are showing up. Our
teachers are working. Our principles are trying to make it all fit. That part is not the the part that is not working is some of the systems are supposed to support them and they are not doing so at the level of our students that our students deserve. They deserve better. During a site visit, during my site
visit, I spoke with Miss Deborah Kern. It was good to see staff who takes pride in creating a structured place for students who need a different setting. It's working. What concerned me is the placement mix. You have children who are um in classes uh with other children who
have lower allegedly lower um infractions and then you have children who have higher infractions with whether it's in the district or outside of the district. Those need to be is I'm sorry though that that that needs to be addressed. We cannot house the
same children um who have different infractions in the same place. Jails don't work that way. We cannot work that way. Okay. Um, on on a final note, uh, I went to visit Coconut Creek High. I started out at Coconut Creek High. I love Coconut Creek.
I was very disappointed to see that Coconut Creek High looks the same way that it did 10 years ago. I'm sorry. It is unacceptable. There should not be a smell coming from a school that is so noticeable that we have to leave the hallway. and students
are are made to stay in that environment. It is unacceptable that I have to come back 10 years later and still see the same classrooms look the same way. One of my committee members commented on, "Oh, they must be redoing the floors again." They were not. The
floors are concrete. The walls are bare. Our children deserve better. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next is Esau Leadership. Good morning school board members, ladies and gentlemen. My name is
Lucarian Kawar and I am truly honored to serve as the chair of the ESOL leadership council seating committee for the 2025 2026 school year. As you know, the ISO leadership council exists to
ensure that the voices of our immigrant and multilingual families are not only heard but valued. We deserve we serve as a bridge connecting family, a school and drifted leadership to provide cultural
and linguistically responsive input that is straininess, equity, engagement and academic success for our ESOL students. Since our last report, we have continued to fulfill this important mission. As
October 1st, 2025, Broward County Public School proudly serves 32,649 active English language learners, representing 1,96 countries and speaking
162 different languages. This school year we have welcomed 3,130 new EL student into our district each bringing unique stories, talents and dreams. Our multilingual learners now
make up 13.8% of the total student population as a beautiful reflection of the diversity that makes Broward County so special. In September, we hosted our first ESUL
party leadership general meeting of the year with over 260 attendees. Parin receive essential information about our district. The ISOL program and the many services available to their children
in partnership with the children service council. We also organize a community resources fair for that equip family with practical tools and strategies to support their children's success. Parent left feeling empowered, connected and
inspired understanding how powerful their engagement is and achieing their children futures. At the start of the school year, the international welcome center launched a new series of virtual workshop called it getting ready for designed to help
parents prepare for the elementary mirror and high school years. We held six section with more than 450 participant. These workshop were so well received that they will be offered again from
January through May continuing to strengthen family regities and confidence. The ISOL party steering committee continues to meet monthly. We have developed our annual calendar of meeting and are now planning to host a
leadership training to welcome to welcome and prepare new parties leader. As a volunteer, we proudly support the international welcome center, meeting in person of the center every other month and working side by side with the staff
to ensure that all ESOL family receive the advocacy information and support they observe deserve. Looking ahead, our next general meeting on November 13, 2025 will connect family with the key
Broward County police school departments include ECE magnet program, a school choice and resignment, CTAC, adult education, title one and student services. As always, we ensure that
information is accessible to everyone by providing live interpretation in Spanish, Haitian, Creole, and Portuguese, and close captioning in additional languages. We are proud of the collaboration and progress we continue to see across the district. On
behalf of the ISO leadership council, I thank you. Gracias Merci Moto Abriad for your time, your commitment and your unwaring dedication of the success of our multilingual student and their family. Together we are building a
stronger, more inclusive Broward County Public School. Thank you so much. Oops. Thank you very much. Next is uh facilities task force. >> Good morning board members. Linda Ferrara, vice chair, facilities task
force. Um Kim unfortunately could not be here today. Uh we just wanted to say thank you to Dr. Wanza for her presentation at last our last meeting. Um our meeting for this week has been cancelled because evidently our liaison
has been out and nobody picked up the slack about uh advertising our meeting. So I think we need to look at procedures that are in place that if a liaison is um away for a period of time that somebody else picks up that um portion
of it. We didn't realize that until we went through uh Civic Plus to determine that it was not advertised. So um we see that as a problem. This is not the first time it's happened. So we'd like to make sure that something is put into place to correct this matter. And that's all I
have. Thank you. I'm making up for time. >> Well, thank you very much. Next is human relations committee. >> Uh good morning, uh chair, school board staff, Nancy Fry, chair, human relations committee. Uh we had our last meeting on
Wednesday, October 15th. Uh there we learned uh we are up to now 66 schools that have human relations councils. Uh that's middle school, high schools, and uh uh alternative high schools. So uh we're really glad to see that. we were at 67 last year. So hopefully if we can get a couple more on board, we can uh
break last year's record. Uh during that meeting, we uh approved a motion uh to see the uh inclusive schools guide put in the four official languages of the district. Uh we realize that the guide is only available in English and there's
a lot of crucial information that uh our families need that may not be able to understand the nuances of all of what's contained in that very large guide. So, uh, we requested that it be put into any official language for the school district, which right now, uh, I believe
the four are English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Creole. So, hopefully we will get to see that moving forward and to make sure that it's accessible, uh, for all of our families online. Uh we also discussed uh more about how we're
going to help our clubs at our schools uh gain sponsors if they're having trouble getting teacher uh sponsors for their clubs. And we're trying to look in some different methods of safely having other types of volunteers such as uh SAC members or PTA members uh serve in those
roles again with the proper supervision, background checks, etc. So that's uh something we're looking into. Um going through my notes, they're out of order. Uh we also had our teens summit on 10:24. Uh that was we brought in students from
our human relations councils as well as some of our other pro-social organizations uh peer counseling uh uh choose peace no not violence and a few other groups. They saw a presentation by the students for change foundation. Then
they went into breakouts uh by school to come up with a focus area for their particular uh clubs and organizations. And then it ended with a panel discussion by students to help them learn a little bit more about advocacy
skills and how to um how they can be more involved in their schools. Uh, one interesting thing that came up during one of the breakout sessions was, uh, they were looking at the results of the Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey and they did not believe the results
basically. So, uh, there were concerns about the fidelity of data when it came to that. And I think that's something that we need to consider when surveying our students in general, especially about sensitive topics that um not to just simply trust that data coming out the gate and figure out other ways that
we can find ways to help our students without them necessarily having to disclose information that they may not be comfortable disclosing, but that adults in their lives probably should know about. Um, and then just I was really impressed with our students that led the panel discussion. Uh I heard them say things
like watching school culture is not enough. You have to participate. And uh that speaks again to our students really wanting to be actively engaged in what's happening in their schools. They don't necessarily just want to be talked at and they don't want to just passively give information about what they want to
see change in their schools and have other people uh make those changes. They want to be actively involved in making the changes in their schools and making their schools a more positive place. Um they also had other suggestions about ways to improve their school like having awards for kindness. Uh some schools
talked about having lunch events to educate their peers. These are studentled education sessions essentially during lunch where the other students can participate instead of just being talked at. And that to me just that stood out because I know a lot of our schools have issues with uh
lunchtime behavior behavior noise in the lunchroom. And that seemed like a really great thing that we might want to suggest to some of our other schools that are having lunch behavior issues as a way to mitigate that in a positive manner instead of doing the silent lunch and all of those other things that we
always hear about. And um the last thing I want to put forward is I've already emailed uh all the schoolboard members about this uh but we are looking into doing a uh schools of HRC roundt event uh where we want to we want to have more
of an opportunity to get our feedback specifically from our human relations council students. Uh while it was a lovely event we had um on the 24th, it was not a great time for them to give feedback because it was shortened. Now that our field trip time has been shortened uh to just 3 hours, that's a
lot of time to get information out to the students that we want them to have and have them give us information back. So, we wanted to look into having a round table with our HRC students uh because again, one of our goals this year is to teach them advocacy skills
and uh really sharpen that so that they can be a tool for the district also and that they can advocate for themselves in their schools. And that is all I have. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next is a parent community involvement task force. >> Good morning, Erin Gold chair. Our
parent university team has been busy. Last month, we hosted a wonderful event on college applications where families learned valuable information to help them guide or to help guide them through this overwhelming process. A huge thank you to Dr. Lacricia Cooper who did an
absolutely fantastic job making the information accessible and engaging for families. Thank you to Kevin Williams and the innovative learning team for managing all of the production and technical components. and to our liaison Nadia Clark who ensured everything was in place to make the event a success. We
are very excited about our partnership with our student adviserss. Um as they mentioned they're spearheading the student student university component um on college readiness. It has been wonderful working with Landon Jier and our exceptional student task force
member Khloe Hagood. Um we plan to expand this studentled component to other relevant topics throughout the year. I'm really excited about that. Um, we have additional parent university sessions planned for the coming months, including partnerships with secondary learning and student services, very much
to what Cynthia was speaking to, really getting out the information about these incredible services that we have. So, stay tuned. Um, as part of our discussion this month, we spoke about the intersection of the choice window and the redefining process and the need
for stronger overall communication specifically around middle schools. We've heard this today as well. Um there was a shared concern that many families are not fully aware of all of the offerings that we have in our district for middle schools. And that really is a point where we see families consider
leaving the system. Um we talked about a Palm Beach County resource that really does a good job marketing their choice programs. Um and we um want to look at that um on our task force to see if it might serve as inspiration. Um, something it did really well is showing
kind of the full continuum of pathways um, from elementary to middle to high so families can really understand how they build upon one another. We um, also discussed the ongoing redefining process. Members emphasized
that while expanding innovative programming is valuable, we must also consider geographic access and facility readiness. it came up that many magnet programs in Broward are unique to a single area creating transportation and equity challenges for families in other
parts of the county. So the task force um members um came to consensus on exploring kind of rep replication of high demand programs to increase accessibility and ensuring that existing facilities designated for things like K
to8 programs and magnet expansion are evaluated for quality and capacity before new initiatives that are the same thing um are implemented. Um to ensure that the community input continues to guide this work. Our task force is
planning a redefining schools forum modeled after our secondary forum. We mentioned this last month. Um we will also include a survey to capture feedback. Um and we really just want to make sure we're reaching all the communities um to be part of this process. Um finally, we revisited the
work of our nonprofit forum which connected dozens of community organizations with schools and district staff. The task force is exploring ways to make this an ongoing initiative, ensuring that our nonprofit partners are meaningfully connected to the students, families, and schools that can benefit
from their critical services. So, we're we're talking about how we can sort of extend that work uh throughout the year. Thank you. >> Thank you. And I see the gifted advisory came in. So, are you if you're ready?
>> Hello. Alan Bushkin, gifted advisory. We had our meeting last month. Due to a technical issue with some of the communication technology, we had a low turnout. That's been resolved. Our next meeting is going to be on the 10th of November, next Monday, 6:30, 8:30,
Plantation Middle. Our primary presentation is going to be on school choice. And we're going to pass our last round of bylaws. Thank you. >> Thank you. And we will end with technology advisory committee.
>> Good morning again. Linda Ferrara U chair technology advisory committee. Uh we had our meeting on October 13th. We discussed the uh co-pilot deployment and at that time um n 9,500 licenses were
issued to employees with 62,000 6200 approximately active users which would represented 64% adoption rate. The uh district is looking at a 75% adoption rate. Uh hopefully within the next couple of weeks, the co-pilot will be
deployed to middle and elementary schools um just pending uh the licensing aotment and I know they were trying to move that up from December into middle of November. Um we spoke about AI access policy options
um with some of the programs that are being deployed and uh came the group came to um an agreement that all uh AI all AI products should be uh blocked with allowing the teachers to open up those avenues that they find necessary
for them for their class. We also discussed linewise implementation um which replaces LAN school at this point. Uh it has been piloted in three schools. Uh there include what one of the concerns that uh
was addressed at TAC was followup. Teachers have complained they have no ability to monitor student activity on their computers since land school evidently has been terminated and linewise even though it was uh the agreement was signed in August still has not been deployed to the schools. So
we'll be following up that with that on our tech meeting on Monday. Uh we went through the onetoone laptop issuance which they're hoping to have completed by uh right before winter break. A comprehensive manual was created for device issuance and refresh. The tech
committee will be reviewing that. One of the concerns we have is uh the opt-in required by parents. Concern was raised about lack of disclosure. Uh as to the price as to what is being monitored or tracked on the computer. So therefore um
we feel an open line of communication is important in this. uh if you're signing an opt-in and you're signing in to be responsible for something, you don't know what the price is. That's not fair to the parents. Uh with the devices running between uh $360 to $575,
uh we suggested that those that be included on the opt-in form and the new opt-in form will be sent out. So, we will have a followup about that at our tax meeting. Uh and a suggestion was to offer insurance to parents, you know, who can't afford to pay the $575
outright. If there's an insurance program that can be utilized for them, uh we uh encourage the district to look after that. There's a translation of all the documents to the top languages and deployment dice discussed. We did discuss the choice model, the school
choice model in focus, SIS. Um, we are requesting a visual walkthrough because you can't picture what's going on if you don't have the visual on it. So, we're asking for a visual walkthrough. This replaces our legacy system with uh integrated f focus
module. Um, general concerns that were raised were a need for better communication and transparency with TAC, importance of informing parents and students about device monitoring, desire for centralized catalog of district approved tools, and request for visual
walkthrough of the school choice. Um, there's also a major concern was raised about communication within the district. And we've heard this time after time from each of our advisory committees and our parents that they're not getting the communication. So, um whether it's
November or December, I'd like to reach out to the communications department to come in and let's discuss communications for the district so that we have better understanding and better handle of how we can better communicate the information out there. And we heard it today that items were not being
communicated properly. So I think we need to have a centralized standard program and procedure in place in order to inform parents better. Thank you. >> Thank you. So we will go to board um
member remarks or questions. So Dr. Zean, >> thanks so much. Um appreciate the comment about performance matters. Uh there are >> m just sorry to interrupt. Are we the task force on committee structure? Are we also going to be added? I apologize.
>> Yeah, >> they were supposed to add it to the thing. It was mixed up in the top there. I'm sorry. We have one more report. Um, and that is the final report of the superintendent task force committee. I'm sorry. Thank you for reminding me.
>> It's okay. Good morning everyone. Um, Cynthia Dominique, task force chair. Um, and I'm here with um our recording secretary, Erin G. Um, as well as some other members. I just want to um extend a thank you for the opportunity to be able to work with an amazing group of
people who um really exemplified what it means to collaborate and put um personal feelings and preferences aside and think about the greater good as well as how we move our district forward. Um so I want to extend a thank you to all of the task
force members who worked tires tirelessly over the last um six seven months. Um and we concluded our final um meeting on on October 30th and sunseted on um October 31st. Miss Go will provide
additional remarks. >> Thank you. I want to begin this report with a reminder of where our task force began. At the heart of our work was a clear goal to strengthen the engagement between our advisory committees and the
school board they exist to advise. We set out to examine how these groups composed of parents, educators, community leaders, and volunteers could more effectively inform, support, and partner with the board to strengthen BCPS. I believe this board wholeheartedly
supports the involvement of families and volunteers and values meaningful input from the broader community. The challenge before us is ensuring that as policies are developed and practices implemented, they truly reflect those values. As our task force did our work,
the passion and purpose of our volunteers were unmistakable. Every committee chair who participated expressed the same hope to be seen as a partner in this work and a meaningful contributor to our shared vision. We are entering a critical moment as a
district. The redefining process with its difficult decisions will test our collective resolve. Often in conversations about the need for these hard decisions, the board talks about the number of students we have lost. But it is essential to remember that every
student we lose also represents a parent who made the choice to leave the district. So re-engaging families must therefore be essential to our mission. that requires communication, transparency, and trust. Our task force found that when committees are
wellupported and meaningfully engaged, they become one of the most powerful tools we have for building trust and retaining families. The board has shown leadership in seeking to improve how it receives input on both student learning and district operations through our task
force's work. That process can and should become more inclusive, transparent, and efficient. The yet the current policy 1070 proposal which we were tasked with also evaluating does not fully achieve that goal and it risks
replacing old frustrations with new ones. We ask that you keep several guiding principles in mind as you consider the red line today. The task force remains concerned about provisions that would eliminate the catalog of committee recommendations and require
chairs to step down entirely from committees after two years of service changes that would erode continuity and institutional knowledge to and I know you received an email of a one pager um but to strengthen policy 1070 we
recommend preserving continuity of membership by allowing past chairs to remain as committee members defining clear process processes for me for a member removal, reinstating and modernizing the recommendation process, retaining current leadership limit term
limits, updating supporting materials, streamlining bylaw approval, and increasing coordination between committee and district staff. I want to make sure to note that our task force really did take a s systems level approach to these recommendations, seeking to make the advisory process
more effective for board members, staff, and committee members. When information is transparent and processes are consistent, every part of the system benefits. Above all, we urge district staff and the board to view committee input as an
opportunity for understanding and growth. The most dynamic organizations are those that welcome scrutiny, listen with intention, and evolve in response to it. That is the culture we want to model here. As I close, I want to reiterate that our committees are not
merely groups that pass motions. They are extensions of our community's conscience, spaces where parents and volunteers give their evenings, their expertise, and their voices to help this district thrive. They recognize an extraordinary reservoir of lived
experiences and professional knowledge that brings tremendous value to our schools every single day. If we can strengthen the connections between committees, district leaders, and this board, we will make better decisions and build the trust to carry the district
forward. Thank you. >> Thank you. And perfect timing. Um, Dr. Zean, >> thanks so much, Chair. A lot of great comments today. I want to uh thank you guys for taking so much time uh and energy to have your meetings and to come forward with such great recommendations.
Uh I just want to make a few comments and then maybe if I could chair just ask two questions. Um for those who are frustrated with performance matters u you're going to have to get into a line of people. You know sometimes the district's um
uh assessment it may actually be the best in breed software and still not be perfect. Uh there are also other instances where we buy something uh in a haste. You know, we start a new certification program, we run to the market, we try and buy a a program, it's
clunky. Uh but the feedback is received. Uh people are making better decisions going forward. Um and I'm impressed with the data that we're gathering around software. We're not only finding duplicate software or sometimes almost duplicate and making hard business decisions about that, but we're looking hard at teachers, at students, at
parents, at anybody that's using the software and trying to come up with a a better uh set of things because it's so such a big part of our curriculum. I'm curious, chair, about the courtesy lunch. Somebody mentioned that courtesy lunch has gone back to the sandwich and
I think non-fat milk or water. Uh is that in fact true? >> Dr. Fulton. >> Thank you. I'll start and I have Mrs. Paul add in. Um, as of right now, it's my understanding that we're not giving them a courtesy lunch. We're still doing the charges of students, meaning if they
don't have um the money to pay for their lunch, they're still getting a hot lunch. But some strategies that we suggest because we're getting a lot of charges right now and um some of the balances are exceeding what's in each school's account. We do understand financial situations are changing every
day with our families, especially with the federal shutdown. So, we're sending out some information so our families know that you can apply to either um receive free reduced lunch at any time. We want to make sure that that is available to them because situations changes episodically, meaning um
yesterday I was fine, today I'm not. And so that we want parents to understand that at any time that you can apply and that those applications are turned real quick and then their status can change. And we want one of the other things that we're doing, we're having um our uh
guidance council, social workers that are working with the families and helping them to assist them and getting them the information. I think one of the advisory chairs just shared that parents aren't familiar. So that we're working with communications right now as we speak to continue to get that message out to all of our families that if you
are charging lunch and your situation, financial situation has changed, please fill out this application because you may be entitled to getting a free lunch or a lunch at a reduced cost. Uh Miss Paul, um if I miss anything, please add.
>> I believe you covered it all. Uh Dr. Fulton. In addition, you know, we do serve breakfast to our students, but we are uh have a a real deficit uh on charges u as a result of us kind of
trying to bridge the gap between C uh and the loss of it. And so, uh, our students are really, um, and parents are really, uh, creating a debt situation. And so, we're
going to send out I heard of, uh, a suggestion from one of the committee members, and we are uh, uh, along the same lines of providing additional communication to the parents. Uh, we don't want it to negatively infect our students and being able to go on field
trips and so forth. So we need to ramp up the communication. We'll be sending something out uh to our principles uh shortly uh so that we can um uh make sure that the parents stay informed and also we have reached out to cities to
help us uh with um with this uh student uh debt. uh some of the uh cities have really stepped up uh and we thank them for that but we we definitely need more participation on that front. Thank you. >> Thanks chair. And the the reason I'm
picking at that I mean it's an interesting issue all by itself. Um we have a much bigger issue though like kids don't learn when kids don't eat. And we have now watched an evviseration of SNAP benefits. We've watched the
evviseration of Medicaid benefits to up to 14 million people in the United States. Um that is going to have an effect on people's disposable income and their ability to pay for lunch. And as a board, we need to think very hard about what our reaction is. We cannot boil the
ocean. We cannot feed the world, but we might have the ability to feed students during the school day. And um we need to think very very hard about that. It's not a small amount of money. Uh Miss Thompson brought a great item earlier to um you know kind of help for a little
bit for a little bit of money. Um that may be off by a factor of 10 or a hundred in terms of the real need. But our obligation is to educate students and a student who hasn't eaten, a student who is hungry. I know the free lunch is there and I know most not most but in some schools most of everybody
and sometimes everybody qualifies for free lunch. But in the other parts of the world where there's a gap between uh kids not eating and and getting a courtesy lunch that is insufficient in terms of nutrition, I don't think we're meeting our our requirements as Broward County School Board. So, um I will
continue to do some research on that and see what we can do in the near term. Uh we just found out from the federal government yesterday they're going to pay half of a month in November and then stop. >> Yeah. >> Um that it's subject to court ruling and things like that. I'm not going to get into the politics of it. I just want to
make sure that our kids can learn. And it may be that we didn't really understand what the need was to feed them so that they can actually learn. And I don't want to lose an A-rated district uh because outside forces didn't uh continue to fund programs that they've funded forever. So, uh workshops
are designed to talk about things like that. It's a big hairy issue. Uh I'm going to keep talking about it till we find a solution. For those of you that want to talk about school budgets, it's a complicated thing. It isn't just a rollover issue. It isn't, you know, um,
uh, an easy issue. Uh, it's wonderful that schools have their own budget. There are unique needs in every school. Um, I will just point out to you that the budgeting system that ends up with an a certain amount of money available for schools is all part of the big budget process and we are in the middle
of a budget crisis. And so to say something is unacceptable is fair. I think that's an honest appraisal of a lot of things including some of our facilities. uh to say that we can do something about everything that's unacceptable is probably not true anymore. We ought to do our best. Uh but we have to deal with the realities of
what we're giving on an ESOL issue. I'm I thought maybe you would address this, but I just got back from the Council of Great City Schools meeting up in Philadelphia where they took a poll of urban districts, just a speak out loud uh tour, and urban districts were
somewhere near 80% of their enrollment decline was due to immigration enforcement. what you just described is we still have 32,600 students here in English u language learner population right is that less than last year
>> Dr. Yes. Is is less is less than the last year. >> Terrific. Um uh is your anecdotal information suggest that immigration enforcement has had an impact on the number of students here that are in English uh language learner programs?
>> Yes. >> Okay. Of course. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. Um, and on blocking a AI apps, uh, there's just this huge mountain of good AI and there's a whole bunch of AI that we don't know about yet. Um, and then there's the big AI question which is, you know, is this
machine going to replace humans, right? Which is way way down the road, right? But, but there are extent in current software that we're already buying AI that's being added all the time. So, for someone to say something is an AI program anymore is ridiculous. Every
program is baked with AI, baked with advanced algorithms. You can't you can't code anymore without AI helping you generate the code. It's just a thousand times faster to do it that way than to do it the way I learned in college, which was 10 million years ago. So that's fine. But but to think about the
ethical application of good rules for AI implementation is very important to us. And to the extent that um we can learn more about that from our technology committee, the better off that we'd be. It is a it is a difficult issue because there's no like coding standard for
ethics, but we need to create one for our kids because um the federal government again has not helped us with social media. They refuse to provide any kind of liability to social media companies. And so they're free and clear to do whatever they want with absolutely zero liability, including allowing kids
that are way below uh appropriate ages to use those devices and use those tools. We've got to find a way as AI becomes more and more commonplace to figure out for our kids kind of an ethical standard. And last thing, chair, are we participating in the Florida Youth Survey? Is Broward County doing
the Florida Youth Serve or the I'm sorry, I might have the name wrong. There's one survey we're not doing anymore. We've been told we cannot. What is that, >> Dr. Fton? There we go. Thank you. >> Sorry. Yes. >> And are we not participating in that? >> Dr. Washington.
>> Good morning. >> Good morning. Jody Washington, director school culture student support. We do not participate in the youth risk behavior survey, but we do participate in the Florida youth survey. >> Oh, terrific. So when we were talking about the survey the human relations committee you were talking to one we do
participate in not the one we don't >> I believe so it was the name that was the name of the survey that was on because they presented it to the kids in a PowerPoint presentation then asked them their thoughts on it and the overwhelming consensus was that doesn't look right so but it was the I took down
the name of it was the uh sorry Florida youth substance abuse survey >> terrific and that is the one obviously we do participate with >> the greater name of it is the Florida Youth Survey. There are substance abuse questions within there and also some mental health questions for high schoolers. >> Terrific. And Dr. Washington, is that a
survey that uses some techniques that we ought to be suspicious of their results or are they using the same techniques as everybody else? >> So, it is done by a research company that is contracted by the state and they do a random selection of about 20 schools and within each school they do
10ish classes. So, it is a a randomized small sample. >> I'm with you. But, um, other than the sample size being small, but in a big district like ours, 10% is not the end of the world. You said 10% of classrooms. >> No, about 10 classrooms at each school
that they select. There's about 20 schools and then about 10 classrooms per school. And it's public and charter. >> Yeah. Terrific. That and that's something the board needs to know. Like when we get survey results, we don't often get like qualitative information around it. if it goes to one or two% of
our population, even if it's random, it's very hard to generalize from that, right? Um, so that's just a good lesson for us, I think, is when we get survey results to kind of look a little bit harder at all of them, not just that one in particular, but all of them to make sure that there's a big enough sample. I
would love it if the staff could help us whenever we get survey results. Um, you know, give us a little bit of quality information. Um, because it it would take us forever to each of us to look up and try and deduce, you know, whether or not this is like a gold standard, a
silver standard, or less than silver. >> Thanks, chair. >> Thank you. M I'm sorry. Yes, >> just to address the ethical usage. We've uh started that discussion back in September. So, yes, we were on it. There are some SOPs out there. I'm pulling those together so that we don't have to
create the wheel. Again, I don't believe in creating the wheel. So that we're going to move forward with those. Just to let you know. >> Great. Thank you, Mrs. Alhad. >> Thank you. I support the the motion by the North Area Advisory.
Their motion was to we move that the district return the accountability funds and SIP rollover dollars that schools had left over from previous years to the schools. it came from and they be afforded 120 school days or until the end of the 2025 2026 school year
whichever is longer to spend those funds. So my question to Miss Batista is in regards to Florida statute 24.1215C. Are we allowed to limit the time frame that the SIP rollover of funds are
spent? And if we did limit those that time frame, would we be in violation of state statute? >> Miss Batista. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Pursuant to that statute, if the this is only as to the um school
recognition or school improvement funds, uh you know, the lottery allocation. So, as to those funds, they are made available by the legislature specifically for schools. And if there is leftover money uh according to uh
some reports that I have seen from the auditor general the monies should go back to the school and should not be comingled with other funds. >> So should we be putting something in our policy in regards to speak to the time
frame that the funds have to be spent? >> Miss Batista. they you don't have to put anything in the policy as to the time frame. Um the you know the monies should stay with the school. I don't think there is a
deadline for which the funds need to be spent. In other words, if they're not spent within a year, >> could you talk more into the mic? I can't hear. >> Sorry. Um so if the if the funds are not spent uh within a year um you know the idea is
that the funds should be then continue to be spent for the um the allocation that they were intended to be spent for at the school. if yes at the school if that's the way
that the uh monies were um you know um sent from the legislature for a particular school or I don't know how that process happens uh from the um you know from the legislature to the district and then the district I think
is the one that um provides those funds to the different schools. >> Okay. So Dr. And based on the motion from the north area advisory, do we have to does the board have to take any action? >> So the board doesn't have to take action. The schools uh the money was
returned back to the school. So it's sitting in their account. Schools are being encouraged to highly spend the money because it's meant to be spent on educational experiences for the kids and any unspent money will roll over into the next fiscal year. >> And Miss,
>> sorry. Okay. >> When when we thank you, Miss Aladaf. When we made that motion, we we weren't aware of that statute. We became aware following. We have been told that they will be given back the rollover funds
every year. Um so I think we're past that. We are still concerned about the rollover ACE AP CAPE facilities. There were a whole host of rollover dollars that the schools weren't aware would not be returned and they were just cut off
at the knee. So, we were concerned about the other rollover dollars as well. Thank you, >> Dr. Fton. >> So, most of those dollars went back. Um there's a few um funding um sources that we're looking at and then we'll have some decisions um moving forward. But
well, I will say that um October 17th, we provided all of our schools with budget updates because we were aware that they wanted additional information so that they could be mindful of if I have a deadline to spend something, then if I know the deadline, I'll have it spent by the deadline. So, we have
committed to making sure we keep the lines of communication open when it comes to budget. So, we providing them budget updates. So, as far as the school accountability money, the school um recognition funds, they do have that. And again, we will continue to communicate with principles that we are
encouraging them to spend the money on the kids, but any money that's left over at the end of this fiscal year, it will it will carry over to next year. And then, you know, the plan of what it was to spend on the kids needs to be executed as well.
>> So, it will be carry over to their school budget. >> Yeah. It stays in their school budget and it will carry over to the next fiscal year. Any unspent money >> in their budget. In the school budget. Correct. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. Uh my next question is regard to the transaction
fees >> and um if a parent decides to pay in cash, would they still be paying a transaction fee? >> Dr. F. >> So that's no. um transaction fee is
online fee and I think it's a convenience fee for like uh credit cards but if they come into the school it's just a if they're if they want to pay $10 then they pay $10. There's no convenience fee added on top of that. >> So I'm being told that parents who are
paying cash are also being charged a transaction fee on top of that. So if that can be better communicated to the schools because if that shouldn't be happening then >> they shouldn't be charged that fee. >> It's just a convenience fee like sometimes when you're buying something
online it's an extra charge but if you're paying cash there's no additional charge to that. >> Yep. Okay. It just needs to be communicated better because I don't think that's happening. >> Thank you. And then um just the last thing, I appreciate everybody from the committee that came out to speak today
and you know as we're going through this redefining process and it's so important that we build trust with the community when the board makes decisions on things that we we keep with those decisions and and move forward and work with the
communities to collaborate with them and and to build that trust. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. Um, Miss Dominique, >> um, in regards to the, um, funding lunch
balances, um, some students when they're coming in with cash, we're being told that they're being turned away and saying that they're not accepting the cash and that it has to be done online. So, there needs to be consistency in what schools are accepting and and the processes for
food and nutrition. Um because right now parents are being told different things. Um and in addition to the school accountability um I just want to ensure that in addition to the recognition funds, other funds that are available to
school advisory councils that require a vote um for expenditure include any remaining balances from class wallet. It's the $300 that the state gives to every teacher and whatever is not spent
goes back to the school. We I want to ensure that all of those funds are rolled over. >> Dr. F. >> So, two things. One, we will communicate because we was not aware that if a parent came in or student came in to pay cash that they were being denied. So, we we will recommunicate that to make sure
that kids have the opportunity to pay in cash to avoid the convenience fee. But the second thing, the class wallet, any unused funds, um, right now it's open for teachers. The state gives teachers $300 to buy classroom materials. So, anything that they don't spend by May 1st is returned back into the schools
and it goes into the school accountability fund. And that is the fund that we were talking about that does carry over if it's not spent. And SAC is the governing body that determines how to spend that money. >> Thank you, Dr. Holes.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to thank the committee chairs for um your uh input and feedback to us. I know there are a few um recommendations here from
the committees, the diversity, human relations and north area. So, as far as human relations, and I'll go to that recommendation. Um, the human relations committee recommends that the inclusive school guide be available to all parents of broad county
public school students in the official uh school board languages by this school year. So, Dr. Fulton, um, how doable is this um, in in making this available in in the different uh, official
schoolboard languages that we use? I'm not sure how many languages we have as official languages in Bar County School. So, is this something that's doable and what would be the challenges in getting this done? >> Dr. F, >> it's doable. We're actually doing it right now. We're doing the translation is actually a thick document, so it's
taken some time, but we are translating it into all of the official languages. So, that's currently happening right now. >> Got it. And is there a time frame for that? >> I'll let Dr. Washington answer. Good morning. Again, they didn't give me
an exact date that it would be done. Due to the length of the document, it will take a little bit longer. Usually, they get things turned around within like 10 days. Um, but as soon as the committee made the recommendation the very next day, we submitted the documents to um be translated. So, um I'm anticipating it
hopefully before Thanksgiving. >> Okay, great. So, certainly by sometime during this school year, correct? >> Absolutely. >> Okay, great. All right. So, I'll move on to North area. Um, North area had a couple of recommendations. So, um, I'd
like to ask some questions on the nurses. What are the challenges to have a dedicated nurse in every single school regardless of student medical necessity? >> Dr. Fton. >> So, the challenge is only um budgeting. uh we did a analysis on what will it
cost to uh complete the gaps in terms of what schools that don't have a dedicated full-time nurse that means there every day it would be about 3.5 million >> okay and can you explain Dr. in the process of selecting schools uh that are
currently receiving a full-time nurse. >> So, we do it based on uh data um and also the needs of our students. >> Okay. So, um so schools without nurses, how are those
students needs being met? >> So, I'll start. I'll let uh Mrs. Hollingsworth and the team fill in, but we do that in many different ways. each school that don't have a dedicated nurse. We have on-site um staff there that are trained to help with some day-to-day needs that students may come
to the clinic with. We also have realigned the schedules of some of our nursing supervisors where they dedicate um a full day at some of those schools. And then we've been working with some external partners that been providing some inind services to help us where the
need is greater. Um Miss Hollingsworth did I >> you well done Dr. Fulton. Thank you. Okay. So, Dr. Fulton, if if any of those schools initially that you determined may not need a full-time nurse based
upon student data, what if during the school year, one of those schools um have students enrolled, one or two, with significant medical issues. What would be the process then? Would there be adjustments to have a nurse at that
school or how would that be handled? >> Dr. Miss Hollingsworth. >> Good after or good morning, pardon me. Simone Hollingsworth, chief student services officer. Dr. Holes. Um what happens is as students enroll, if they have individual health care needs, we um review those with the the family with
the release of the medical professional and then nur then a nurse would be provided if that was something that as Dr. Fton mentioned that on-site staff could not do because it rose to the level of needing a nurse. So it's a very fluid situation. Um we sometimes have
days or weeks where we have two nurses added. Sometimes we have students leave. So we're constantly fluctuating and providing that support where it's needed. >> Okay. Thank you. And Dr. Fulton, I would highly encourage for uh uh the schools.
Um, and I'm moving over to the concern about um rollover funds for schools that uh there is something in place to encourage those schools to spend the money because that's why they have it. It shouldn't be rolling over. I'm sure there are needs and I used to be a
member of the school advisory uh council for actually I was a chair for a couple of them. Um so those funds should be spent. Um so what what can we put in place to ensure that the schools that are not spending
um that they're helped into how to spend? >> Dr. Fton. >> So um right now we have not yet received the school recognition funds. Normally it comes around late October, early November. So when that funding comes, we we do a um mass communication and we can
certainly recommunicate the the importance of spending it down. I do know the SAT committee also governs that too because every month at a meeting they should be going over the budget and seeing you know the beginning and the ending balance from the last one and then also we could monitor it at the
district level and to make sure that we nudge if we need to nudge schools to say hey I notice your budget hasn't been uh moving so uh please make sure that you spend the money on the students that are with us today >> right and it would be interesting to see if there's a trend that exists with
specific schools that are actually not doing it because I'm sure majority of them are but there may be a trend in certain schools that are not uh spending the money. So I hope we can identify those schools and help those principles
to spend those funds. So regarding the diversity, the diversity committee made a recommendation um uh well the diversity committee um is requesting that the district provide committee with arrest data by school um
and that the district provide referral suspension expulsion data by school and the data will need to have demographical data to include but not limited to race and so on. So Dr. Fulton. Um, is there a a concern providing this information to
the diversity committee? It appears that this is relevant to um the what they do and the information that they that they determine is necessary to do their jobs better. >> Dr. Fton, >> there isn't a concern. I know the request came to Dr. Washington's office
and u providing that data is something that we're readily able to do. The only concern comes if there's a because they uh my understanding the request is to get it uh broken down by schools and then broken down by demographic ident identifiers. So if there is a a sample
of less than 10 then it will be difficult to give that because once you have a small sample then by sometimes process of elimination you can probably identify who that kid is and we don't want to do that. So if the sample is larger than than 10 we can do that uh by
school but by district as a general data we can definitely provide that and I think we have been but we'll continue to do that for the diversity committee. >> Okay so Dr. Fulton I can I I believe I recall that this information was requested in the past I'm not sure it
seems very familiar so what is the time frame to which this can be provided to them based upon the constraints that you have to provide this information >> Dr. Washington. >> Good morning again. Um the suspension
expulsion um discipline referral data is provided every year in the annual report. The new uh data request was the arrest data that is data that has not been previously requested. Um and so that data will be provided to the committee. >> Okay. So Dr. Washington, can you provide
the committee with a time frame to which you can get give them this information? >> Yes, we'll get it to them this month. >> Okay, great. So I have a few more madam chair and then I'll be done. Um in terms of um in terms of the I I believe I
heard a comment it might have been from the diversity chair. I can't recall regarding metal detectors. So um uh I don't know if um if Chief Gregory or can can answer this but uh can you attribute
a decline in in vapor use to the to the use of metal detectors? Is there someone in >> Good morning, Michael Gregory, chief safety security officer. I would be hesitant to to
say that the metal detectors caused the decline in um vape incidents that were reported. However, we do notice a correlation between the two statistics. the implementation of the vape detectors
uh correlate with the decline that we saw as opposed to an increase year-toear. They correlates with a decline in the number of vaping incidents that were reported and u in that next year after the vape after the uh metal detectors were installed. So I
think we could go that far and there is a strong correlation. >> Okay. So, Chief Gregory, would you be able to provide the board with any type of data to suggest that metal detector use in schools also result in a decline
of vaping? >> We we we could speak to, like I said, the correlation. I can't 100% say it was the cause. I don't have empirical evidence to say it caused it, but I can say there's a correlation there. And uh we
could expect that to occur wherever we roll them out. >> I understand. But I was wondering, and I'm not sure who this would be directed to, if your department could provide um some research data, not just for Broad County, but in general, whether or not
metal detectors result in a decline in vaping in in schools. >> We could look for that and and respond back in a a follow-up. >> Okay. Okay. And lastly, uh, Chief Gregory, what are the benefits and challenges to having metal detectors in Brock County Middle Schools?
>> Uh, there are a few. Uh, particularly the implementation of the metal detectors requires a staffing commitment. uh to use them prop appropriately, be able uh in uh to inspect the students going through the
system to be able to pull those aside that uh have an alert uh and can and the other staff to keep the line moving as well as an overseer to intervene if there's any questions of uh searches and and the like and or any student that did not want to cooperate to have a
supervisor on scene um to be able to address those types of situations. So there's a a staffing commitment as well as obviously the the equipment cost uh which is this wouldn't be much different than it is at the high school level. So we know what that number looks like. >> Okay. So Chief Gregory, do you see any
benefit or uh to Broad County schools having metal detectors um in middle schools? You did um mention the challenges to doing so. What are the benefits you would say in having metal detectors in middle school? They would be equivalent to those that
we see in the high schools. It would be another layer of security in which we could uh identify uh weapons potentially andor other sort of uh firearms and the like that uh may be attempted to be brought into campus. >> Okay, great. And u madam chair, I'll
just go on my last topic which is testing. Um I did hear some concerns about testing anxiety and Dr. Fulton. I believe in the past we've had discussions about testing anxiety and um uh part of this is attributed to uh some may believe it's the it's the amount of
testing that we're doing. Um um and some may attribute this to the um content of the testing and so on and so forth. Um I think I'm more concerned uh as to students understanding why you're being
tested. So um I I believe it's important that um that is conveyed to students. Um for example, I've received conflicting um uh reasons when someone is asked or students are asked or parents uh the
purpose of say PM1 testing in fast. Um and some may not understand and I have seen that myself as to what is the reason for PM1 testing and often times we do comparatives with say PM1 last year and PM1 this year and quite frankly there is no meaningful comparison if
you're comparing PM1 last year to PM1 this year because PM1 is supposed to ascertain the learn the the knowledge of the kid at that grade level starting at that grade level to determine what kind of learning gaps exist so that can be
taught. and monitored in PM2 and 3. So, uh the question is is do we convey to parents and to students um the why in testing as opposed to the concern about how many times we test and and what
initiatives do we have in place to ease testing anxiety among our students by helping them to understand the why and and lastly the the the purpose of testing really is not to create stress and to punish students. The purpose of testing is to determine what their
knowledge base is and as teachers is to make sure that they gather that knowledge base. That's our job. That's the role of the district. So, how do we address the the the why and and make sure students and parents understand. >> Dr. F, >> I think Dr. um Holless, you did a good
job with with framing that. I mean, probably would have thought you were teacher before. So, I would say um you're absolutely correct on all fronts. I think the purpose in stating um framing the why behind why we do things in school so students can have a understanding of you
know their role. But what I will tell you is that uh we use many different opportunities to communicate to parents and also to students. Sometimes we leave them out the equation. They need to understand the why. They need to um we call it take ownership for their learning because it is their learning.
So um most schools do it during open house tend to give a frame of what the whole year is the different um PM progress points which there are three. Uh teachers also do it in their individual parent conferences when parents come in to have a conference and when our students take any of the PM
results there are parent reports that are provided by the state as well that we actually provide for our parents too. I know schools may go above and beyond and um do their own communication in addition to what we give from the state with the parent parental reports and
also when the data is available uh it gives them a a um a way to read it like what does it mean because when you get PM11 data you may be very afraid because it is um it is data before instruction it's just what did my child know before
instruction started because it happens within the first two weeks of school >> correct And it also tests them on all of the standards that the students will be exposed to for the entire year. So more than likely the student is always at a disadvantage because it hasn't been taught yet, but it's just given a frame
of what they know because if kids come in um knowing a lot of information that guides us because why teach them things they know? Let's let's accelerate them and moving them forward. So um we need to continue to make sure uh testing is a big monster. Uh and it needs to be broken down and we try to do that in
many ways but most importantly is making sure our students own their own learning. They understand the testing and they understand the importance of doing well because what we don't want is students to not take it important and then uh because the results are important for us because it helps guide the next steps for our students and also
it has major implications for especially high school students you know getting into college and things of that nature. So we will continue um exploring other avenues that may have been untouched to make sure our parents understand the purpose of testing but most importantly our students and to do everything that
we can to ease the anxiety. I think it's natural but to ease it as much as we can >> understand. So Dr. And what I'll say, and I guess this is the teacher part of me, um, at the beginning of the school year, um, and I've I've had those complaints, uh, on a reasonable level
come to me as well that the parents are very concerned when PM1 results come out and a student has a level one or a level two um that this is significantly impactful to the students um, self-esteem, self-worth, thinking that
I'm starting off on a bad footage. So, how do we as a district at the beginning of the school year ensure that every single teacher understand that they can explain the why of PM1? So, for one, students don't start out being deflated. Um, secondly, parents are not filled
with anxiety that my student is starting out not doing well because the the the the purpose of PM1 I if they were to get a five on PM1, then might as well they go to the next grade level, you know? So, how how do we convey what it is we're doing? Because um we're not doing
a good enough job of it because I'm getting those concerns all the time from the students and from the parents and unfortunately it is consequential to the students because once their motivation is diminished that impacts everything they do for the rest of the school year.
So, how do we how do we properly make sure there's an action plan in place at the beginning of the school year that all of our teachers understand how to convey the right message to our students that they start off and knowing that okay, this is what I'm lacking and I'm
going to gather this information by the time I get to PM3. >> Dr. Fton. >> So, so the communication uh means that we're doing I think we need to continue those and perhaps perhaps add some more things. What I've seen some great practices at schools where uh it's known
that PM1 is just informative. This is just to show what you come in knowing what you have mastered. And then PM1 is used to goal set. And I think that's really the most important way to use PM1. So if I had a level two, level three, now I want to goal set where do I
want to be when PM2 comes? And then you use that data to to monitor did I meet my goals? Did I not meet my goals? and then you benchmark it mark benchmark it to where you want to go for level three. So uh PM1 data while it's not majorly
important to to make determinations, it's important to determine the course that we are taking and to set goals for learning for that particular year. That happens uh the best way to to make sure that it's translated for the students. It happens in the classroom level with students setting goals and in most of
the classes when you go to you can ask some of the students what are your goals or let me see your progress monitoring folder. they can open it and show you this is where I had this is where I was for PM1 and this is my goal for PM2 and then the other question that I always ask tell me how you going to get there because I always like to know what your
plan is and oftent times they can articulate an amazing plan or what they're going to do to own their learning to be able to move their data coming forward >> understand so coming next school year in August um can this be I know teachers come in a week before students can that
be an emphasis uh for teachers to to to be trained ained how to convey this to their students and the goal setting is one technique to ease the anxiety for testing. Um so they don't start off thinking they're failing or the parents don't start off thinking my child is not
good enough, my child is not doing well. So can that be a part of the teacher uh um pre uh school in August before they start um training or uh that you know that we provide yearly? It it can be and also it's it's a message that we
communicate um not just at the beginning of the year but throughout the year on um the usage of data data is just informing. It's not to make you know those kind of decisions where a student may feel that I'm not good enough. It's just informing informative. So we will continue to do that. I think perhaps the
the reset should always start at the beginning of the year and then marking it on how we're going to go from that point forward. So your um feedback is well taken and thank you for sharing that. Okay, Madam Chair, thank you so much. And I'll just mention that it's important to all of our teachers and to all of our parents listening that at the
you know for students it's for us we don't want any student to have testing anxiety and I I think the main way to um assist with that is to ensure that our students and our parents understand the why and why we're testing. Thank you, Madam Chair. >> Thank you, Mrs. Rupert. Thank you. Um
really quickly, I concur with the human relations and the diversity motions. So I'm supportive of that. Um on the point which I think came from central DAC, more paperbased testing and
obviously problems with performance matters. um more paperbased testing, especially in the elementary schools, um as it actually pertains to performance matters. Uh because performance matters for the younger kids, they can't scroll
back and and see what they're um you know, as when as a reading teacher, you you give kids the clues and then that's that's in their toolbox and that's what they learn to do. They can't do that. if they have to keep scrolling, go back, read the question again, go back up to
the top, go back and read the question. So, we have to find some way to be able to um correct this because um as you know, I know as a reading teacher is that um kids, the majority of them, if
given more time or put in a paperbased testing do better than um when they're on the computers, especially in the younger grades. um the FTF liaison being out um and they
couldn't meet for that reason. So um the fact that it was also not advertised, what can we put in policy or handle in procedure to avoid this in the future? Um Madam Chair
through you to Dr. full >> but I'll tell you um when when it was brought up we already working behind the scenes to correct that. So >> okay so when can uh when can we expect that? >> It's done. >> It's done. Okay.
>> Well that's good. >> Okay. Uh the superintendent's task force report. I appreciate the hard work that everyone does and I pref, you know, I I definitely appreciate the the chairs of all the separate committees as well. Um
teacher input before purchases. Um when I was first a chair, I've been a chair, first um a school board member, truly um the committees, and I'm just going to say it, they were much more
appreciated and utilized for their expertise. And why I mean by that, and there's a reason for very many of our committees, uh teacher input before purchases, and that's with our tech committee. it would make it a lot easier
if the issues are kind of um fixed when when it goes to that committee and it's vetted through them. Um the same thing with diversity essee by not giving them not only the opportunity and the time but the respect
that they need and should have. So, um I know we're going to talk about that later, but I just truly um it makes our jobs easier. I I can tell you that. And I miss the connections that I have with all the
committees. Um it's it's truly a shame that their voices have been diminished. And I hope that this board rectifies that situation. Um, I think that was I think that was it on
on that. Um, and and once again, I appreciate all the work that you all put into everything and looking forward to the further uh conversation. So, thanks. >> Thank you, Mrs. Leonardi. >> Thank you. Um, with regards to the school lunch, I was really excited to
see that we now have like a an easy place to donate to um, debt student lunch debt relief on our website. like we asked for a few months ago. So, I'm very excited about that. Um, can someone walk me through what happens with that
money? So, like I am a generous community member. I donate $500 through that website. Where does that who decides like where that money goes? How does that money get to where it's going? >> Dr. Fton. >> So, I'm g see Wanda Paul if you can
address that. Good morning through the chair. So the money is donated and if it's designated to a certain school, it'll go to that school. Uh if it's not, uh then it will just go to where we have deficits uh
across the district. >> Okay. I mean, um how is that like because there's deficits across the district, right? So, it's managed it's managed through Miss uh Mary Moulder in our uh food nutrition
department. And so, as I said before, several cities have stepped up and have contributed uh and that money stays within their city. Uh but others uh where we have deficits uh the $500 has been uh uh for each school has been just
basically used uh effectively. And so similar to you know how they manage the financial aspects of the department they go and they uh try to erase the deficit uh at our schools. Uh but that's you know again the debt is more than the
money we have. And so uh we will continue as I said previously to reach out to parents uh to let them know that the uh students are carrying a deficit. Uh but also I think there was a question
uh about um if a student pays in cash uh is there a convenience charge? Uh there's not a convenience charge if they pay at the school and they don't go through my school bucks. If they go through my school bucks that's where the convenience charge is is implemented.
So Miss Leonardi, I hope I answered your question. >> Yeah, I guess maybe I'll ask for a followup. Um, I'll send an email. I would really like to know, >> I guess, how much because I'm looking at the website now and it says don donation designation. It's obviously not required, nor should it be.
>> Um, but I'd like to know like how much money is sitting in that account, how frequently it's distributed, um, how it's decided, where it's distributed. Like I I I think having some transparency around that would be helpful. Okay. just to ensure that um
because as we heard today, as I continue to hear, there are schools that have needs. Um so just making sure that the money gets to the schools with with needs. >> We will post additional information on the website to address those concerns.
Um and you know, uh a memo is coming out. U I just have to review it and and uh let Dr. Fulton review it. Um, I just got off the phone with uh, Miss Moulder and so we've have been working on that for a while to make sure that we get it
right and that we're keeping everyone informed. So, we'll we'll get that out shortly. >> Thank you. And just I mean one idea would be also to have on this donation page to have like the overall debt for the district listed so that people understand like you know if if the
overall debt is $10,000 someone could wipe that out if they they are so able to do. Um so I I just think uh we could this is great. I'm glad we have this. Um I think we can always be improving. Um so I would really love to see that
happen. Um, and then I just want to reiterate something that has been brought up tonight, which is the concerns around testing um, and doing so electronically. I continue to hear from parents um, and from teachers that it is increasingly difficult to get
accommodations for paperbased testing. Um, and I mean, I think we heard Miss Rupert talk about it. We heard several people talk about just the and I know that some of this is out of our control, right? um that that a lot like the fast testing has to be done online um and that we obviously have to prepare our
students for doing the online testing and whenever we can I hope that we pursue paperbased testing for our students because I I do hear that it is very difficult for students a to just like navigate it online but b stay focused um and and I I heard repeatedly
especially from elementary school parents uh that when their children are doing their work on the computer uh their children are very easily distracted by other things on the computer. Um so I I hope that those concerns can be addressed uh quickly.
If I if I might add um Madam Chair to the cafeteria, I'm I am aware of that if children do bring cash to the cafeteria, they do not get their change back and it is told that it goes into their account, which I really don't know how it would do
that, but that has been the precedent for a very long time. I have four children that's gone through the system. >> Thank you for that input. Uh Mrs. Thanks, chair. Um, thank you everyone for your presentations and for all of
your hard work informing us of what's going on on around the county. I really appreciate that. Um, I just briefly for the diversity committee. Um, thank you for your report. I maybe we could talk about this outside of the meeting, but
um, I'd like to follow up with you about the Gulfream situation. So, that would be fantastic. Thank you for bringing that up. Um, I just wanted to circle back and I don't want to beat a dead horse, but about the funds, the rollover funds, because I'm still a little
confused about that. I don't know if we've answered. Um, I think that it's really important that we're all on the same page about which funds are statutoily required to be rolled over and which the district has the ability to take, you know, like that we're
supposed to be fun spending funds for this year's students on this year's students. I think that's the policy that we're um uh using right now. So I instead of people being upset and confused and feeling like their money is being taken,
I I think it's really important that we are informing everybody about exactly what funds are going to be rolled over and which will not. just communicating that will um I think cut down on a lot of confusion and people being uh people
being upset uh for the um so if we if we could do that and because I don't understand either so I would just so that I can explain it to other people. >> Dr. F. Yeah, Miss Bowman, I did mention earlier that we will be committed to providing um at least more frequent updates regarding budget so principles
would have the information. >> But even if so, you know, because Miss Morris was talking about ACE funds, my understanding from before was that those will go back to the that they're not going to roll over for a particular school. So, I think we just have to be very clear about what is going to roll
over and what is not so everyone's on the same page. >> Understood. And and that would be all funding would be provided in any updates that we have. Okay, thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Um, and to the to this the school lunch conversation, um, just in my experience
as a parent, you know, we're getting I have no I have no control over what my kids are doing when they're at school. So, they're apparently eating school lunch. Um, so I'm getting a lot of I get constant text messages, emails, and calls that they're have this debt, but
something that isn't available is a link to pay the the debt when you're getting the notice. So, you know, that's taking an extra step. And I think an easier way for the parents to pay would
help because we when people are donating to um the fund to pay the the pay the school debt, I want that to go to the kids that need that need that assistance, not people that just haven't paid because they don't know what's going on and their kids haven't paid for
the lunch. So there we really have to come up with a better policy or way that we're going to address that. Um I have paid my students debt but it came back again but I you know just so that we're the money is going in the right place and just a link or I don't know
what program we're using right now but just making it as easy as possible for the kid for the the lunch to be paid for would um be good for everybody. So um that's my comments. Thank you. Thanks, guys. >> Thank you. And I will I just have a few.
We'll finish this up. Um going back on the school lunch idea. So I I'm confused a little bit and I don't think it's happening universally. So if a student gets a courtesy meal, should that be charged to their account?
So when you say so kids are getting hot lunches. >> I'm if if someone's given a a wow a butter >> it's weird to say that >> no no butter >> they're not g they're not getting that they're getting a whatever lunch is being served >> but we're being told from people who
have students that they are getting >> we can get those schools but the the process has been they were getting whether they can pay or not they're getting a hot lunch. >> Okay. because that that's the concern we our thought was um you know when we we
did the money and agreed with it I just want to say if there's courtesy lunches being passed out I don't think our expectation was they were being charged for that um although we our preference was that they were getting a hot lunch but I'll just briefly because
>> yeah I I think there's some confusion and this is where the fracture is is that every student is getting a lunch so my son if He I I also am uploading money and there is a fee. Um but if he didn't for that day and I can pay for it, they're giving him a free lunch. That
money should not go to him because I can pay for his lunch. So he should be allowed to charge whether you have to a secondary is not being allowed to charge whether it should go against his, you know, you can't get a prom ticket unless you pay this. That's one way to handle it. And you can also identify students
who why are they not bringing money, but they also don't qualify for free and reduced lunch. the school social worker could identify that student and reach out to those families. There are no wild butter sandwiches. The answer that I was given from the district from the district is that wild butter sandwiches
were the courtesy meal, but they're not giving courtesy meals. They're giving hot lunches to everyone, but they're charging it from the angel fund. So, those funds should go for the students who need it. And the other students maybe if they're allowed to charge, then we can pay it back. My son doesn't need
the money from the district. So there's just it's just the break it's there's no universal plan at the schools. >> Actually there is >> hearing the dis. Yeah because I don't know how we would know to identify the difference but miss uh miss Paul sorry
>> so so I mentioned uh and thank you for that. Uh so we are in transition. Uh we are going to revert back to the wild butter sandwiches, but we want to give you notice that we are we're serving hot
meals now, but we have to make that conversion. And you're absolutely right in terms of at the secondary level uh where um the we see an increase in the in in uh debt. Uh we're going to attack that first. And our intent is to um
provide the money for those students that need it the most. and that's mainly at the elementary level. So, the memo will come out. We'll provide additional information on the website, but we have to re transition back to the free meals. And no, they're not being charged for
the wild sandwiches. >> Okay. And just listening to that, I I'm just going back to the discussion the board had. I believe the consensus on the board was that we didn't want anyone walking away with a wow sandwich
>> because right but and they're not now which is I believe what our consensus was but what I'm hearing Miss Paul say is they're reverting back to it and I just that gives me pause because the board gave direction and it staff's
changing the direction without bringing it to the board. So I I'm have a little I I think I understand why because obviously the amount owed now is is going very quickly but why would that
not have come to us and and I believe it will the memo will give us choices but our recommendation and again this is academic prior to the the memo going out and uh superintendent's uh approval but
I just wanted to give you a heads up that we're running uh a tremendous amount of debt uh now over I think it's in excess of 100k uh across the district and so uh we have to pivot at some point
but we're not going to uh implement anything without the superintendent's knowledge nor or the board's approval. So uh that's kind of where we are. The memo is kind of setting it up given that information where we are in terms of
debt. Uh and we can break it down by um by uh region or district or whatever. Uh we're going to put that on the on the website, but we are running a a tremendous amount of debt. Uh there is a difference between the debt at the
secondary level and the other levels. And so we uh uh the the debt is running highest I believe uh because people uh think that you know they are charging and and not being aware of the the debt
that they're incurring. And so one of the campaigns we're going to do is provide uh that information on a website and possibly um uh do the popups again, which people are saying is annoying, but I think it's a good way to reach out to
people and you know just to be aware of what our financial status is on this. And so all of the recommendations I heard from the committees are definitely important uh to kind of uh keep the communication flowing on this. >> Okay.
>> Uh we're at 60% free and reduce at this point 59.6 uh and so those mill applications are still increasing for free and reduce. So that's an important part of this too. So I I think uh again we will uh provide
that information uh to the board as well as the public shortly. >> Okay. And I would um Dr. Fulton ask that maybe it come back to us in a workshop setting so that we can have a discussion as a board moving forward before any
changes are made. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Um and the last thing that I well I guess two things uh back to the school funds. So, I have a couple questions because Miss Batista actually alluded to it. Can you tell us where the school
accountability funds come from? I know they come from the state, but where you said something about the lottery money. So, are the school accountability funds the only money we get from the lottery through the state? >> M. Fatista
>> according to the statute um that's that's what it looks like but I would um would like Miss Mrs. Johnson to chime in on that. >> Okay, Miss Johnson. >> Can you repeat the question?
>> Um the school accountability funds, I know that money comes from the state. Miss Batista um alluded to the fact that it came from the lottery. So, can you just verify that? And is that the only money we get from the lottery because I was under the impression that um a lot
of the money we receive from the lottery is >> was taken back or is not >> okay through the chair. Um there is no lottery money that is coming through from the state to the district. >> Okay. >> The last year of that was 2020. >> Okay. So where does this the
accountability fund is that just a line item in the state's budget >> to understand these all these funds certain ones are categorical funds that are have the assets to carry over and a lot of funds that has been carrying over yeartoear doesn't have that specific
statute or requirement what is required for workforce do dollars to be carried over rec school recognition dollars to be carried over from the state >> okay So um if the school spends all their accountability funds this year
like LA they spent it all last year and they are waiting for their accountability funds which should have come but haven't come yet. How are they going to achieve their SIP goals if they don't have their funding? Because don't they have to it's a sack like all those
funds are accounted for in terms of what your SIP goal um SIP goal is. So, if you have that and the money's not here, like are they just in limbo until those funds get released? There there may be some confusion and we
may have to uh perhaps do a follow-up because um sometimes the the the words are used interchangeably. School accountability funds and school recognition funds are two different funding streams. They're not the same. Every school doesn't get the school recognition because that's based on um
how students perform. So, if you get become an A school, you get school recognition funds. If you improve your letter grade, you get school recognition funds. And for our um alternative schools, our behavior centers and uh that get ratings, if they get a commendable rating, then they also get
funds, but that's school recognition funds. That's different and not every school would get that. I believe you're speaking of school accountability funds which the annual um appropriation from the state stopped in 2020.
So it was per FTE. I think it either was $10 per FTE or $50. I can't remember. But you get that you got that every year. That doesn't come anymore. But what we're speaking of is the money that has just been sitting in those accounts from rollovers from the years since
then. But additionally in that account, what we do put in there is the the classroom wallet um return monies. Every teacher at every school will get $300 to spend as they wish. And anytime there's anything that's not spent from that $300, it goes into that school
accountability fund. >> Okay. So, just to be clear, school accountability used to receive funding from the lottery. It does not anymore. But money that hasn't been used is still sitting in there. The only money that goes in there is class wallet for
accountability school recognition that schools get yearly depending on their academic performance for lack of a better I think that's right but miss Johnson correct me if I'm wrong just trying to get it all straight >> that is correct and the state provide
those fundings every year around the same time so we're expecting those funding sometimes in this fiscal month and when we get allocated the resource it will be allocated to the schools Okay. And the funding is tied to the SIP
goals because that's how they pay for their goals, right? Using the money. So if the because the money was supposed to come based on the memo that came by o the end of October and now we're four days into November. So do we have an
idea of when that money is going to be released to them? Because you said it hadn't come yet. >> The school recognition funds. So, we're we're waiting for school recognition funds. Um, it it it has not always been the same time every year, but
consistently it's around October, November. >> Okay. So, they should be expecting those funds. >> We are we are ready and waiting. The memo is ready. The the U meetings we have with principles and SAC chairs are all on the books. We're just waiting for the funding. >> Okay. And then the ACE Cape AP funds and
all of that. So that money, does it roll over if they don't use it all? Because I've heard this from principles before. Let's just say their cape money, they are keeping it because they want a big item, but they can't pay for it in this
year, so it rolls over so that they can get enough to get it the next year. So does that money continue to roll over? Because we heard that it didn't. Um, and if the money's gone, where did it go? Where does it go? I know the district takes a portion of it. Um, is it at a
certain point if they don't use it, it goes back to the district? Because we heard that they said the money disappeared, but we don't know where that money landed. >> I just have Miss Johnson to probably uh give a better explanation. >> The cape funding, all those funies have
different requirements. They are for students, but those requirements and certification and things that they're supposed to spend to support kids. Sometimes there's a a lack of reconciling what these money should be spent on. Currently they are using
there's over expenditures happen on the general fund which is the FEFP funding and then you see your Kate funding sitting there not being utilized. You really ate up into some of that funding source. So it's important that we reconcile and this the school site
reconciled those fundings too because we had a overage expenditure of last fiscal year at the school site as well as district office over hund00 million. So you're expecting to roll over dollars and your spending of FEFP at the same
time. So that doesn't that doesn't align to be fiscally sovereign as a district. I could I don't disagree with that, but my question really is let's say there's a principal who received cape money and
they're going to purchase some big thing for students that I'm going to just make up $100,000 and they only got 50,000 in the cape money this year. So they're expecting the 50,000 next year to buy that big thing. Is there a process for them to
>> We're working with if there's a need right now, we are working with those school sites based on the needs and allocating those resources support those need >> because that was I mean I just made up numbers but that was what I had heard from >> and I will also share probably about a month or so ago we met with the high
school level chair because it mainly impacts high school and um we asked them to put together a matrix of what what are your immediate needs that you need right now and then we were able to um meet those needs. So, we're just kind of dealing with it on a case-by case basis.
>> Perfect. Thank you. Um, quickly, I know we have to move on. The ESC mentioned something about paper consent form availability for opt-in for cameras. Um, can you just speak to is that available? Can we make it easily available?
We we do have uh paper consent forms available. U Miss Hollingsworth, >> I'm gonna have Miss Egan come up and answer to that, please. Diane Egan, executive director of ESSE. We do have the paper consent form available both at the school level and
we did post it on our website. Um the school can upload it into focus. The u most direct way is to go directly on focus to get it, but if they're having difficulty then we do have access to the form. So, we put an explanation on our website that you can the most direct way
is to go to the process through focus because then it automatically records it and sometimes when we just do the paper form there's a delay because we have to wait for them to upload it but we do have it available in both at the school and on our website. >> Okay. And uh one last question to make
data available class by class on a public portal in terms of how many consent forms have come in for that. Can you just speak to does that violate
some kind of um furpa or or anything in terms of privacy for the students? What would that look like? I I have some concerns about it, but I just want to address the question, >> Madam Chair. So, >> I'm sorry.
>> May I >> I hear you, but I don't see you. >> I'm right here. >> There you go. >> I I I was just going to ask what what would be the purpose of that? >> The question was so that people would so that there would be more transparency on >> I'm just concerned that would be
utilized to get to the other parents. >> Well, right. That is also a concern I have. That's why I'm asking would it affect privacy? Like if you know there's 10 people you could ascertain which two if there's 10 in a class. So I just want
to address it so that there's a clear understanding of why there's a concern um because they brought it up and I know that we're really trying to get the the cameras into the classrooms. So, Miss E. >> Yeah, we have the same concern because of the small class sizes for many of our
students, classes of students with disabilities. We're concerned that that does kind of pinpoint if we say how many in the class have approved it. So, we um stick to the language to respect the parental rights bill both for people who want to say yes and for people who do not want to say yes, we want to make
sure that their privacy is protected. So, we do have parents that have reached out to us and said, "I know there's nine people in the classroom and everybody I talked to at the field says that they signed it and um they want to know who didn't sign it. We're not giving out any of that information." We either say that
the classroom has met the criteria or it has not met the criteria so that we're not um revealing anybody's um personal choice. >> And is there something where it lists all the classrooms that would be eligible? And then would that make sense or is that also kind of overreaching in
the privacy and do we really want to tell people what cameras? I'm just asking questions out. >> We're going to say yes on the overreaching. >> Okay. All right. Um, may maybe I speak to that because this directly affects it relates to a
motion that we bought. And if a question is being asked as to why, it might be nice to revert to us and I could explain some of the why. I did touch upon it. We did actually make clear at our meeting when Mrs. Zegan mentioned at our ESE advisory meeting, well, that might potentially identify students. So, if
you've got, and Dr. Fton just said it in a previous item about if you got 10 or less students you can't pro provide data but 10 or more you can and um we also made the point well there are other ways you could do it maybe like a green lighting you know is your is your classroom on a red light like nowhere
close to getting parent consent is it on an amber light is it on a green light recognizing that we don't even have a list of which schools have it and which don't recognizing that I have asked for the data that you guys get and I don't get it I have to read about it on
Facebook. Um if if the form did if our motion was responded to and the form has gone on the BCPS website. We also asked for it the BBC BCPS website, the school website. Um and to ES advisory, I've had
nothing. I'd like to know when it went on the BCPS website and when it will be going on the school's ones. And and also when we talk about it going on the website, they're still also not addressing the fact we want paper forms going out to parents who haven't yet
submitted a form for whatever reason. So they have in their hands a piece of paper to sign. >> Thank you. Um is it possible to send a form home for those? How I mean you can
follow up. How many have not filled it out? I know we get the monthly. how many have and how many have said no. Um and how many classrooms have cameras, but we is it possible to know what family what students haven't responded
at all and send them paper forms? >> Yes, the schools can do that. Um and we certainly encourage them to do that when we have them reaching out to their, you know, we feel that we did the district-wide communication first and we feel that parents respond best to the people they know. So, we encourage them
to reach out to do that and we have encouraged schools to send home the paper forms if they're not getting the um electronic version because they can upload it and it still gets counted as as um you know relevant you know as soon as they get that form back and it's uploaded.
>> Okay. Madam Chair, I'm sorry. Hey, may I make one important point about the data? Um, because we've been told data and that the latest was October the 1st that 6,656 parents adopted in, 957 adopted out and just 37 out of,00 classes had got full
consent and of which 28 have been activated. We have established that of those of those um figures given of how many parents have responded. The initial notification asking people to respond went out to way more than just the 8,000
parents whose students are in these ESSE classrooms. It went out to every student with a disability other than gifted and uh speech only and language only students. So, we have a real big difficulty with the data that isn't
being whittleled down into has have we even got, you know, how many responses have been received from people that are even relevant. These 6,656 could be nothing to do with the cameras in classrooms program, but they just signed a form anyway. Just so you know, because you're getting the same data that is skewed.
>> Thank you. We'll look at that later. Okay. Thank you so much. And thank you all for coming today and bringing us the issues for the time that you take to to discuss this. And um you know we appreciate you very very much. We are
going to Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see I just need one minute. Um in regards to um from the beginning of the school year, is it a true statement that all kids were provided a free lunch if they didn't have the money to pay for it?
Yes. So, I have a problem with that because that was not, I believe, the intent of this board. If someone's living in a million-doll house, they should not be provided a free lunch. So, we need to go back and figure this out because the students that need the free
lunch are not getting it. And then ones that can afford to pay for it can afford to pay for it. So, I'll just leave it at that. So what I will say also, Miss Albert, there is a I guess a amnesty period at the because the question was at the beginning of the year. So at the beginning of the year up until I think
October, everybody will get a free lunch while we're doing the application period. So I just wanted to make sure I answer the question based on that. >> Yeah, I still have a problem with that. And then my second thing, um, I received an email from Representative Mitch Rosenwald and he has a link to the
Broward Food Assistant locations of 2024 with a Google Maps link. I think that is amazing. It provides where you could find uh meals, food pantry, food bank. So, if we could put that link somewhere on our website would greatly be appreciated.
>> I just emailed um Mr. Perez and uh Miss Wilson to send it out to the parents about five minutes ago. >> Ah, we're on the same wavelength. And then the last thing is um I know in the past I've heard radio stations where they've helped to raise money to pay
down the debt for food lunches. So I think we should be connecting with our local radio stations to have those type of donations going on our radio stations. Thank you. >> Thank you. And that concludes our first
um item. So our next item is going to be rule development for policy 1070 advisory committees and their membership. We are going to have a presentation by staff and then we will be joined by a member of the
superintendent task force when we get to questions. And since it is rule making that means the public will have the opportunity to ask staff questions. Thank you. Did you sign up for public? [Music]
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schoolboard workshop. Before we move on to the next item, I just have to give some exciting news. So, the Shiva Venicu Temple actually just walked up and handed us a $1,000 check for meals for students. So, we want to publicly say
thank you for that. Um, and it'll get added to the the list that Mrs. Leon already asked for and so we can thank all of the amazing people in our community that have donated to this really um important and needed cause. So, thank you so much. I will turn it
over now to staff for a presentation on policy 1070. >> Madame deputy mayor. >> Oh yes. >> Um so it's a will the board if they want the full presentation. I know we're a
little behind. Uh just a reminder this was presented at an earlier workshop on August 12th. So this is the second uh workshop uh before the final uh vote in a board meeting. Uh so most of these changes are from the August 12th uh workshop that uh board members gave us.
>> Okay. Uh I guess I'll leave it to my colleagues. You okay for no presentation and just to go straight to questions? Okay. I just don't want to get yelled at again. Okay. Um so we'll go to public comment. And again I just want to remind
everyone this is a rule making workshop. So you can ask questions. If you're asking a question of staff, the clock will stop um for them to answer it. So the clock will only run while you're asking a question. If you're just giving public comment, the clock will run
through the three minutes. So I just I know I just want to make sure everyone's aware of that. So the first person for public comment is Natalie Lynch Walsh. Dr. Natalie Lynch. >> Good morning. Um, before I start, I have uh because I like to educate. I have
three handouts before we get rolling here. And we used to have a process for handouts. We don't seem to have that anymore. And I see I'm already at 247 and I haven't started yet. Thank you. >> Are you guys of all policies, this is
the one you guys are going to roll the clock on? >> Can you please restart? I haven't started. >> She was just asking for it to go. Please restart the clock. 3 minutes. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Not a good start, guys. Not a good
start. Okay. So, this for me is where we draw the line in the sand today. Starting today, we if we if we do not do the right things today, that gets factored into the rebuttal I'm writing. And I know you
guys are thinking what when is this rebuttal? I don't fling things out there. I'm like a slow burn. So it will be documented like a dissertation is documented and then conclusions and then complaints. This is not the board's doing. This is
staff specifically your superintendent and your general counsel. But you guys are always worried about your chief auditor for some reason. So the handouts that you just received, one, the first one is a matrix
with the language that was removed from 1070 when the committee back in 2021 was bamboozled into removing it. that needs to go back in because the problem we have with this language
is the language that's currently in there gets us into violating 120.52 and that pesky thing called um uh invalid invalid exercise of delegated
legislative authority. So, one of your handouts is um the matrix. The second one is the background information on that state stat on the statute that has gives you five years to get your rules in order and you have to review your
rules for these several things. the definition of an of an invalid exercise of delegated legislative authority. And what I've done is mapped the language that gives your superintendent
unbridled discretion, which is what your superintendent exercised on 529 of this year when he sent me a letter removing me from all committees based on a pack of lies, which everybody knows were not true, but
nobody's done anything about. So if you all you have to do to fix this is restore the language that was removed. This policy also references policy 2409 which has what would disqualify you as a
volunteer by further referencing 2404 disqualifying offenses. There's also an AG opinion on providing guidelines to your superintendent. So you have board members have a process. it it makes no sense for
non-board appointees to not have a process. So, you're in violation of D, E, and C of this statute by not putting that language back in. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I think there's a pel of people behind me. >> The next public speaker is Latricia
Greavves. You ready? Okay. I was I was waiting for Miss Hixon. Thank you. Good morning. I understand this is a workshop. I will um be very directly to the to the point. Um good morning, Madam Chair and staff and
board. On policy 1070, I will ask that you adopt the recommendation process, keep the term limits for the chair, specify a removal process, as well as um to do public facing for volunteer interest.
My other point, final point that I do want to actually bring up in regards to policy 1070 is that on Thursday, October the the 9th, um I was appointed to diversity committee um as a chair. And I know this is a workshop, not a school
board, so it's going to be a question. Um, as a nominating committee, I do know that the school board always says see something, say something. As a nominating chair, I did notice that in the bylaws that was actually adopted on June 18th, 2024 that a chair nor vice
chair can be a schoolboard employee. Um, it was stated um at that time by the chair that it can be. Staff did tell the the chair that the policy does trump the bylaws. I took the initiative as the nominating chair after of course taking my ethics um training and keeping
integrity. I followed protocol, reached out to my school board member to get clarification. Um I did get a um ask her to reach out to um the general counsel. The general counsel did respond back and did state
um that a school district employee serving as a chair of vice chair of the diversity committee. The answer is no. And the response was, "No." Article 5, section one of the diversity committee bylaws adopted June 18, 2024 clearly states that the chair or vice chair cannot be a district employee while
schoolboard policy 1070 governs how advisory committee operates. Nothing in that policy overrides this specific bylaws restriction. And so I just want to let you know that they did do the um elections um and I was removed prior to the election actually happening for the
vice chair. the vice chair um process was ran by the chair who did the nomination process and they elected a schoolboard employee and they did that based on John Sullivan's email that stated that he was okay with a vice chair being a schoolboard employee since
it happened the past two years and his email was read into the minutes. So my question is you may want to try to align your bylaws and policies. That's what's going on in diversity. I'm here for the children. I'm here to do what's right. I see something that's not right, I'm going to do what's right. That's what's
written and I'll follow what's in writing. So, um hopefully um there can be some consistency going on. Um Dr. Washington was there throughout the whole process where the chair did do the nomination process uh for vice chair,
which I don't think that's, you know, I think that's against Robert Russo order, but I'm not an attorney. Thank you. >> Thank you. The next public speaker is Dr. Trudy Gervanovich. >> My name is Dr. Trudy Germanovich. And uh once again, I have to use my teacher
voice and remind you are not supposed to be working on your computers, reading prior things. You're supposed to be looking at the speaker as they speak and whether it's at your dis or up here. Thank you. I began my teaching career over 50 years ago in three different
states. One important part of my experience in Broward County was the incredible volunteers who were parents, business reps, and other community members. I'm very concerned with the redline version presented today for policies uh policy 1070. I hope you keep
the language as close to the present policy as possible since it it has recently been reviewed and approved in 2024. those committee members um and I agree um that we do not believe you
should replace chairpersons every two years. Learning to run a committee takes time and commitment. The four-year limit with the extra twothirds vote to possibly retain an officer past this point should remain in policy. For some reason, it appears that this board is
not listening to those who have been volunteers in this district. The board you still aren't watching. Sorry. eyes up here. For some reason, it appears that this board is not listening. The board has flip-flopped several times on
your direction. Mike, I would remind you that you probably did not like being termlimited, and you are paid the same as a be beginning teacher for the part-time job that you do. You also have a full-time secretary, and many people in the district at your disposal. These
volunteers do not have that. They have one other person in the district to help them do the things and that's great, but you need to think what you're doing. My question is why didn't the board allow a complete report from
the superintendence committee? When will the committee at least get a half an hour so they could introduce the training manuals and talk about how 1070 should remain the same? I'd like an answer to that. Thank you.
Thank you. Next up is Terry Pur. >> Oh, that the question to the staff. >> You don't Mr. Sullivan, but it it's to specifically the policy changes, but
>> I want to know why did not give some kind of report. >> They did give a report. There was they gave a report a couple of months ago at the board meeting. >> I'm sorry, but this is another rule making time. This is when we can go over
this again. Many of these people were not at that meeting. They probably did not see that report was just completed. I believe thank you for that. Mr. Sullivan, do you want to answer why wasn't Mr. Hill,
>> I mean that final report was given to the board a couple months ago. >> Uh August 12th, so I didn't feel the need to Our time is limited. We only have eight hours for a workshop. >> Yes. >> Thank you. Okay. Next, Miss Pruis.
>> Hello, Terry Lopez Price. I am a career educator and the vice president of the Broward Teachers Union. I have never seen her so angry. And you know, it really is something to to look at to see how the time that the volunteers are
putting in is being messed around with um when you I think you don't understand how important the community voices are. And it really bothers me as someone who almost two decades have been on the
district advisory council. I was first appointed by um Anne Murray. So since about 2008, I've served and now I'm I'm on the committee as well. And I've done a lot of work with the equity and um diversity committee because I I happen
to have taught children of poverty and it was very important for me to be able to make the voices heard of those students. These people work. They bring their time. These rooms are filled in the evening after they have worked a
full-time job and they are, you know, really really trying hard to get messages to you. And I'll be honest, after all the years of my trying to speak about what's going on, sometimes I feel like you don't want to hear the messages. And it's unfortunate, but you
know, we we want to be heard and we want, like she said, to be looked at when we're here standing and speaking to you. We want to understand that you're hearing us. It's very wrong for you to limit it to two years. These people are
elected by their committees on a yearly basis up to four years. And it takes that long to learn how to do what you need to do. And if our committees want to extend their time, that shouldn't be your problem. That shouldn't be your concern. There are a lot of things
happening right now. We got disappearing money. We've got the lottery money that doesn't come in. You got all kinds of things that you can busy yourselves with to find the money that we need for our students to pay people in this county and yet you want to limit the time of
volunteers who come. I know almost all of these people because I'm in those rooms with them. I see how hard they work and I see today that you actually were listening and and giving back and forth which is very good. But I'm going to ask you to please make sure that you
do not involve yourselves, please, in limiting the amount of time that our committees are able to choose the people on those committees. These people work hard. They care. when I brought forth situations because I wrote a book a long time ago called Voices in
the Halls. I wanted my my students pleased to be heard and these committee people heard them and things were changed and we worked on I was on the subcommittee to change how we grade things. These are important things that we're talking about. We're talking about all the students and it's on our time
and I'm asking you please to stay away from the community input time and how long they can serve. >> Thank you. Next is Brookie. >> And I do have a question. Why? >> Is this mic on? Okay. All right. Uh,
good morning. I'd like to start by pointing out that the current red line in front of you today is not what was directed by the board on August 12th. It's also not what was presented to you on that day. There have been substantial changes made and for staff to not present to you today about those changes
I feel is misleading. It is not what you've already read and I urge you to look at those changes and compare it to what you've seen and what you directed staff to actually include. We're here today at a fourth workshop on policy 1070 with workshops occurring on March
4th, June 24th, and August 12th. This comes after the policy was reviewed and approved in 2022 following input from the policy 1.7 workg group, which was another task force that worked diligently to give you all input on what
this policy should look like. This is not normal. It amounts to an exorbitant amount of staff attention and board time to changing the policy that governs the district's most dedicated volunteers. I ask that you direct staff in no uncertain terms to incorporate the
recommendations you've received from the task force and the speakers that you hear today, including retaining the 4-year term limit for chairs. um incorporating a specific removal process for committee members as well as
implementing a specific recommendation process that will support two-way communication between the board and its committees. I hope to see that the agendas going forward focus on student centered issues and the large challenges facing this district and public
education. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Next is uh Mr. Pete Sanjum. Good morning. I was fortunate enough to be selected for this committee. I won't tell you how many meetings or hours we spent uh
working on things, but the committee discussed at length all of these policy changes. Some of those were effectively changed within the policy while others such as um who can serve on the committee and length of time were not
agreed to as is written in the final format of this. And I would just like to make three fairly simple suggestions. One is I do think that schoolboard employees should be allowed to serve on committees. I think they provide input
where they're inside and many people are outside that. Second, I don't think that a person should serve on more than one committee unless it's a special assignment done by the superintendent or by schoolboard members. I think that
increases the number of people who provide input to the community. If you have one person serving on five different committees and a lot of times people don't show up to give the report, you have one person speaking and you're
not getting a breadth of experience that you should receive. Uh the other thing which I would suggest is that it does take some time to learn how to be the chair of a committee and I do think the two-year restriction is too short. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Next is Mary Ferdick. Good morning. Um, I don't really have a lot written out, so I hope this comes out well, but I do want to say this. There's no way to estimate the true value of community involvement in our
schools, either economically or what they give to you as far as the ideas they bring to the table or whatever. And volunteers work tirelessly throughout the district to support the entire public education in Broward County. And having worked with the parent community
task force for many years and having forums with school-based people, I'm always kind of overwhelmed by what our school-based volunteers do as well as our district volunteers. Um, we have to have these people if we're going to
continue as a vital school system. capturing their input um as well as as as the input of those who are not involved is critical if we're going to thrive as a um as a district. Um and it's imperative that 1070
facilitate this. We had our final meeting Thursday night. I'll just cut to the chase here. And I'm sitting there and everybody's behaving well in this meeting and following the lead of our chair and what they're supposed to be discussing when I focus in on page 17 of 19 number four and read that if you are
this is totally changed from what was there before. I didn't bring this to hand out to you, but I could I could show you the previous version and I could show you what it said. So right now, if you pass this as is, I will no longer be able to serve on the parent community involvement task force because
I was I am the out I was the outgoing chair. So with the end of my service as chair would be the end of my service with that committee. Now is this probably incorrectly done maybe. So my question was and the question I'm asking to each of you and I will tell you I
have served not just with the district the county and the city on numerous boards but I have served on numerous community boards so I kind of like think I have a little bit of experience with being in boards and organizations
I have a question for you who is writing this we've given you a lot of suggestion and most of our most meaningful suggestions are on the not included list. So my question is, if it's not the input of the community that's framing
this conversation, who is writing this? Who's giving you these redline versions? Who's the author that seem to change from time to time? I believe in each and every one of you. I said this at the parent community involvement task force last night when I
we spoke last month and I'm I'm looking at you, Mr. Sea. You spoke out about your support for the community. several of you did. I believe you support us. I believe we support you and I hope that when you get a final version of this, it will be one that absolutely enhances,
encourages, and promotes parent community involvement. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next is uh Aaron Go. >> Hi. I'm going to keep You've heard from me already today a couple times about this policy. Um, but I want to reiterate
a couple points that I've already made. Um, one of those is one of those is exactly what Mary just said. I do believe that each of you welcomes community input wants parents to show up and participate. We have to make sure
that our policies and the process that governs the creation of those policies align with those values. So that is first and foremost. Um, and we've had many people point out issues with how we've gotten here and maybe we haven't
followed that vision. Um, I want to specifically speak to um, one piece of this red line that concerns me and that is the removal of the cataloging of committee recommendations. Um, we've completely taken that out. I will tell
you as a task force we spoke at length about actually wanting a more transparent and responsive process for that and it wasn't just for the benefit of community members. It was actually for the benefit of board members. We've heard board members say I'm just hearing
about this for the first time or I didn't realize that or I'm a visual learner. when I hear odd, you know, reports given verbally, I don't always process it fully, right? Organizationally, tracking what committees are making motions about is really critical, and I'm very, very
worried about us losing that. It does refer to policy 1020 as being where that's going to be governed. The red line for that is out. It doesn't really provide an additional process for that. So, that's just one very specific point I think it's important for us to consider. Um, one more thing, and people
have spoken to issues with term limits. Um, I am very afraid to lose Mary Ferdig on our task force. So, if just for that reason you could remove that provision, um, about committee chairs having to not be on a on a committee after two years.
But the reality is our task force and I think this board has tried to start putting things in place that will expand the diversity of who is participating in these committees. the school the schoolboard cannot exist in isolation. You need committees giving you good
input. But the reality is those things are going to take time. So cutting down now on who can serve as chair and who can serve on committees and how they give you input. It can't happen right now. We have to give time for these other recommendations to sort of take
hold and then maybe down the line those things would work. But right now, the pieces that are in here are going to decimate this group of people and much broader who are showing up. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Jackie Luskum.
Um, my apologies if I step the tone up here a bit. I am done with this process. I am done with the insult, the condescension and the contempt that is constantly meated out to advisories and
committees and volunteers just do trying to do their freaking job. We need to stop. You have got far more important things you could be talking about. Look what happens when you get us around the table collaboratively and you talk with
us, not about us and without us. Not to staff who don't know us, but I'm sure they know their jobs, but they don't know ours. For about the last year, some of us have been reduced, as we are now,
to talking to you to save the future of our advisories in three minute increments because some of us weren't even deemed important enough to even be on the task force. We had one committee represented twice on the task force. We had people who had nothing to do with
us, had no outreach to us, and I totally um admire the people who tried to steer the course and keep things going properly. In 2022, policy 7 1070 went through an exhaustive, thoughtful review process. A dedicated m committee met for
over a year. The result was was policy that mostly recognized the challenges of volunteerism and the factors affecting advisory efficacy and sustainability. For this board to reopen that process and look to dismantle the mechanisms put in place to help advisories survive and
thrive takes us back in the opposite direction. This red line derecognizes the realities and propose and proposes plowing ahead without understanding regard for the consequences or those it will affect. I'd like to stop the clock and this feels like a ridiculous game show, but I've got a question and I'd
like to know first who when we ask a question is going to answer it because three, four good folk down here have asked questions and not even had them answered. So, please stop my clock. I would like to know who's going to answer questions when we have them. >> Well, we've had three, four people ask
questions and then sit down again and nobody does anything. So why did >> Mary asked you who did the red line? Let's answer that because that's my question. >> It's entirely relevant because we
started this item off with you being told that you've seen the presentation before. Well, if you haven't noticed for yourselves, the anger out here is about the fact that you have been presented with an entirely different red line with things that have appeared from nowhere that
even you didn't direct. Stop the clock, please. So, the question is, who did the red line? That's not coming out of my time. Put my time back. This is how ridiculous we're we're reduced to this horrible process of having to beg for our survival at a lept turn. It is just
so demeaning and contemptuous. You need to drop this whole item and move on. We're talking about how you're going to feed kids and we haven't resolved that. But you want to spend time over and over and over doaging and that is what it is.
Your advisories, please stop. We've had this process of first of all it comes out that the superintendent wants to shut us down. We read about it on board papers at 9:00 at night. We have proposals to merge us. It's going to make us stronger and more accountable
and accountability accountability and transparency. Seeing one of the authors of it over there sitting laughing at me saying this now is just about summing up where we're at. Laughing at the distress and the demeaning spectacle that we are
reduced to here of nobody understanding what advisories do because if they did, you wouldn't even be sitting here entertaining these proposals. I am so done with it. We asked a question. We want it answered. >> Can you please answer the question? Who
wrote the red line? >> I did. >> I'm responsible for this policy. The red line. >> One second. But someone asked a question. He hold on please. For someone to yell out that he's a liar. We cannot have that.
You asked him a question. He answered it. We This is It's the issue is back and forth. >> Don't look at me. I didn't say that. >> I know, but I'm just saying someone answered it >> and that's the answer. He said he wrote it. >> I did not say lie. My second question is, is it true that this is the same
presentation that went before the board before? >> I never said it was the same presentation. This presentation, the red line is based on the August 12 feedback that we received from the board, not the same presentation. >> So, at the beginning of this item, you were misled because you said, "Do we need the presentation?" And there was conversation about how you'd had it
before. >> That is not what I said. >> There are now strikethroughs in the policy targeting ESSE gifted and ESOL advisories, the three grassroots advisories established to represent for specific student subpopuls. The reason the clause is there that has
been explained over and over and in fact it's qualified by language later in the same paragraph that has not been removed. This is just a entire hot mess. Again, here we go. I've got 14 seconds to fight for the survival of an advisory because I wasn't even allowed to be on the task force and we just reduced to
this ridiculous nonsense at a microphone. This is not an acceptable red line in any way. You need to just get rid of this item and move on. >> Thank you. Next is >> and loop and loop the policy if you're going to pursue it.
>> Thank you, Nicole Morris. >> Why why isn't a question though like why what they had to be more specific. Why is he busy with this when >> so just >> okay it's really not a question but I
will say this item was brought asked to be brought back by a board member months ago and it's turned into this but the answer to why is staff did not just bring this back it was asked to be brought back by a board member Nicole
I'm I'm sorry miss more Nicole Morris Okay. Yes, please. >> We need to stop, Miss Mo. Miss Morris. >> Okay. Good. Good morning. Um, I just want to start by reminding you all that
we're here because we have kids or had kids in the district. So, we we are here for a purpose that serves our families. and whether that grew into something bigger along the way to help serve other families like it started with a pure
intention and I believe that you all are sitting on the school board. I've worked with a lot of you closely. I believe that you have really good intentions. I think that there is um maybe a fractured relationship with advisories in the district but I think that we are are
here for for our children. So let's keep that in mind. Um, term limits. I don't understand why we would change it from two to four. It's hard to get someone to be the chair. You all serve for four years. That gives you time. That gives you I'm sorry, four to
two. I'm like so discombobulated right now. Um, that gives us time to really be able to do the work. My son graduates next year. If I serve for chair, it would only be for two years. So, this is not self- serving. This is because I have seen I understand it is hard to get
someone to serve as chair. Please allow them to stay at four years. You would not want to be cut to two years. Um removal of a chair. I I just don't agree with that. I think if the bo by the superintendent, if the body elected someone, it should be sent to the body to decide whether that person is
removed. Unless someone just ran somebody over with their car that morning. I don't understand why we would allow the superintendent to pull someone that we elected to be our voice. Um motions on the agendas. So the recommendation process, our liaison are
not clear on how we're to get recommendations to you and the policy is suggesting that we give it in our committee reports. I have twice given recommendations or or uh brought emotion that wasn't that no one picked up on. I
sent um questions to Miss Hixon. Thank you for getting those answers to us because it's extremely extremely frustrating when our committees bring us uh concerns. We bring it to you. The the superintendent says, "We'll get back to you." And then the next month you ask
the same questions and he says, "We'll get back to you." And we have to remind you, you said that two months ago. We like to take the answers back to our committees. We don't want to waste our time. We hope that instead that you'll figure out a way to help us with uh move our agendas forward with forward- facing
that's a word everyone likes to use way for us to track the answers. Um some of the committees their liaison are submitting their motions on a form that I've never seen before. Jackie here has has been in the district longer than
anyone I know and she has never seen she's never seen the form and so I know my a my motion was put on the agenda because I asked for it to be our liaison need to be better trained and helping us and I would just say that these folks we
I asked Jackie to go out with me to Broward Estates Elementary because we there was some ESC concerns. She took the day off of work because she cared about someone else's kid to go and make sure that they were being taken care of properly. So, I hope that the
district would give some respect. We want to be collaborative and make sure that our kids and your kids are all taken care of. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next is Alan Bushin. And when you come up, can you please indicate what city um you live in? Hello, Alan Bushkin, Sunrise, Florida.
Also the gifted chair. >> These are interesting times right now. I'm a new chair. >> It's it's it's okay. So, I'm a new chair, but I started
volunteering about six, seven years ago, starting with ISO, being the gifted rep. Then I started going to the gifted advisory meetings. Then I decided I'd step up to be a gifted vice chair.
I don't know why. Maybe I just felt comfortable at the time that, you know, I've been doing this for a while. May maybe it's my turn. So that's where I'm at. So I did two years as vice chair and now I'm a new chair here. And this is going to be a
hard sell to somebody else seeing how things are going on right now to bring in new talent to help cultivate people. These term limits are going to hamper that tremendously. So we really need to stick with the four
years because I don't know who I can get next. It's going to take time. training issues. I don't know how the liaison are getting trained. I thought I saw in the presentation that the training on the
new website was done and the new website was rolled out. My understanding is that our liaison at least got a bit of highlevel training and they are getting training on the calendar in a couple of days. So I'm kind of confused as to how
something said was done is still in the process. I don't maybe it's just the implementation is going on. I don't know if anybody could answer the question as to the status of the liaison training and how effective and how expansive it's going to be other than what I got was we've gotten a high level refresher.
>> Okay. If you could stop his clock for a quick second. Um can you answer the question about training? >> Sure. Training continuously. So they've received some training that will continue to provide training. >> Okay. >> Does that answer do you want to be more
specific on your question? >> Is there a handbook or a guide that's going to be giving out along with committee training? >> Uh sure. We can develop a handbook for our uh our leaison. But um again, we've provided training. We'll continue to provide training.
>> I'm sorry I have to interrupt. >> No, ma'am. I'm sorry. It's his turn. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. Let's get back on track here. >> Go ahead.
[Music] >> Okay. I think I'm good now. Thank you. Sorry. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> Yes. Thank you for your thoughtfulness. >> That's what I thought. we're going to see in the presentation today.
>> You you cannot yell out from the audience. >> I I >> Okay. Well, it's done. Your your time is done. Okay. We're going to move on to um board discussion. And just as we do that, I want to um we're going to do
something a little different. If you have a question for a specific committee chair, please let them know that you're going to ask them a question. they'll come up to the podium and be able to answer that question. Miss Dom um Mrs. Dominique is sitting here to answer
general questions about the task force and any recommendations. So, you can direct those to her, but the other committee chairs that are here, if you have a specific question for them, they'll be able to answer your question, which we typically don't do, but um just let them know so they can come up to the
podium and be ready to answer the question when you ask it. Um any board member discussion? Well, I guess I'll start. Let's know what had it there. I have a couple of um
things. So, on page I didn't know I was going to go first. So, um, just in general, there's a couple of places throughout the policy where the exceptional student advisory council, Esau Leadership Council, or the
gifted advisory are are all crossed out. And basically, it's where it's waving them. And so when I went to look at and I couldn't find it everywhere, but when I looked in the bylaws of ESC, ESC has in their bylaws that they have a
sort of rotating membership, which makes them a little different than normal um not normal but other sorry other um committees. So when they're talking about the idea of of training everyone
and then specifically membership, I I believe the reason and I had this discussion with staff earlier. Why were they why were they there in the first place? If um if it didn't make sense to have them there, there must be something in the bylaws. So I went to check on it and I
could only find it in the ESC. I had a hard time. gifted bylaws didn't that I saw anyway didn't really mention it and I couldn't find it in ESOL either. Um, but I'm guessing so if if Miss Luskum if you wouldn't mind coming up to the
podium and explaining to us what makes the ESC advisory unique in terms of membership that originally had them as being um classified like school advisory forums.
if you could please answer that. >> Well, it goes back decades, so I can't account for how where it originated. Um, and thank you for asking us because that's the difficulty here. We have not we have had none of you come to us to ask this before and it's incredibly
difficult to get anybody engaged in understanding it and you're being told false things by staff and and it's all gone off the rails. The reason we are different and and there is a myth around the fact that we have an an obscured membership as the superintendent stated
on a document at one point. No, we don't. We have seven elected officers. The seven elected officers are required to do ethics training. We have nine schoolboard appointees. The nine schoolboard appointees are required to
do ethics training. All those people vote. All those people have names, faces and they sign in and they are identifiable as are every other member of per person who I'll stop while there's a board member discussion going on.
This is what we mean. Um so beyond that then we have folks that come in the room who might come for a particular topic. They might come along at the beginning of the year like what they see come for the rest of the year. They might only come for two meetings. So in order to just ensure we
don't have just any old person moving in and moving out and having a vote um going way back for as long as we can remember the school board had set our bylaws that allowed us um our general membership to be anybody who had attended two out of the last six
meetings. So when they sign in, they get a voting card because it's all shown on the membership records and that prevents it just being anybody that just comes in for one to, you know, pursue an agenda. >> Okay. >> Does that answer it? >> That does for um for ESC. So thank you.
So I'd like to ask the same question to the gifted chair >> if you don't mind coming up and explaining to us what your membership looks like. I'm just trying to put this into context as to why those three were
pulled out and if something has changed. >> Yeah. Hello. Right now, our membership primarily consists of parents that show up to our meetings on a rotating basis. We have a small quorum to help with
that. We've got a 10 member quorum that we need to conduct business. Sometimes it's hard to get that. our parents come for their specific needs or when they have a specific complaint. >> Okay. But so in your bylaws though it
doesn't and maybe I was just looking at the wrong thing, but in ESC that's specific that they have you have to go to two meetings in order to be considered general membership. So is there somewhere in your bylaws or somewhere in policy that states that
your membership fluctuates like that often? >> Yes, I believe there was. I was just trying to review it and find it. >> Okay. >> Again, for you. >> Okay. So, I appreciate that. And I don't Is the ESOL committee chair still here? >> No. >> Okay. Miss um
so in the gifted advisory um uh policy, it states that their uh quorum is five members. Um and in the Esau policy it states that their um I'm sorry gifted is 10 and Esau it's
five members. >> Okay. I >> um and they have an executive board and again because uh many of these committees focus like support groups for parents. They come when they have issues. They don't come if they if they don't have issues. um that executive
board that is elected um helps to um qualify towards their quorum and those members are required to be trained. So my issue isn't a whole lot on the training. I mean all members obviously
should have some kind of training. I get that part. My the the question more is more on the membership piece of it and why those three groups were initially pulled out as waivers because they clearly somewhere something set that
membership different that allowed them to be waved as the school advisory forums are able to be waved because it was there now it's being crossed out. So, I'm just trying to figure out does it make sense to leave it crossed out because I believe that we had a school
board member ask for that to happen. So, I I want to be clear as to why that came in the workshop that we had. Someone said, "Why don't they just all follow the same rules?" So, I think it's important for us to understand that so that we know whether it should be
crossed out or it should just stay. So it looks like Miss Far would like and I don't really want to start a precedent of that. So I um >> she's the OG. >> Yes. But if you want to just very briefly give us a history as to why that
was there. >> Yes. Um ESSE Esau and Gifted never had it was never meant for them to have board appointees. ESC got a a board appointments because of one board member requiring that in their policy. So
therefore they had to scrutinize how their attendance was taken. Um and that's why gifted and ESOL don't have board appointees in them. It was never meant for them because it's supposed to be grassroots like the school advisory forum. Gotcha. >> Okay. So that's that's part of it. The
reason E esseil and gifted are within the policy was to help them identify who gets what because there was always for the last two decades it's been questioned and for those who don't know been around for 30 years those um were
always questioned as to who gets trained in what. So new members coming in was it did do they have to be trained in the ethics training? No. But as an officer, yes, because we wanted to make sure that there was consistency between all of the officers. And the language that was written here and in this policy 1070,
95% of this policy was written by general counsel's office back in August of 2021. So therefore, it was truly scrutinized as to the language that went in there. We wanted to make sure everybody was covered. We wanted to make sure that
everybody knew and understood their functions and the responsibilities because there were be too many violations that were occurring. I sat on this committee to revise the policy for two years. We met two and three times a month. So it was truly scrutinized as to
what was placed in there and why. Could you have any further questions? >> Thank you so much. So my um my recommendation then based on all of that information is that they should not be crossed out throughout here. there obviously were pulled out for reasons um that make
sense and so I that's my first thought. I'm everybody when you speak you can weigh in if you're going to speak. Um the next thing that I wanted to ask about was on page 14 of 19 where it says the bylaws of each school board
established advisory committee as well as any subsequent modifications must be approved by the school board. The school board shall vote on bylaws within three months of submission for vote by a committee to the district liaison. Um, Miss Batista, my question is, does the
school board have to um vote approve the bylaws if they're coming from a template that the school board gives to the committee. So, all they're changing is the details. So um your question is do they legally
have to be approved? Correct. If you are um appointing you know committees and um and trying to have a standardization of what the committees look like uh then the bylaws should come to the board uh for their for approval.
just to make sure that they're um continuing to operate within the guidelines. >> Right. Well, so the second part of that was if the board were to give them a template and all they did was fill in >> the difference. That's what I'm saying.
So even with a template where it's all the same information, I don't know. It keeps sounds like it gets hung up that it's coming to us and we haven't seen them yet. I know that we had a discussion about this um earlier on and
the the bylaws just seem to be getting I don't like the word stuck, but somehow they're they're not coming to the board. I don't think I've ever I don't remember ever voting on bylaws and I'm here five years. So, um I just don't know. I don't want to make policy that we're not
following I guess is the point of what if we're not approving them should be >> but we haven't so we're definitely not following our policy so and I know they just have to do them every two years but
that means technically I should have seen some of them so >> I recall a time when they would come to the board many years ago so I'm not sure you know what what was the breakdown? >> Well, I'm just going to make an a mention that I have a concern if we're
we have policy and we're not following it. Should it really be in the policy? Chair. >> Yes. >> If I may, um the template may work for a majority of of advisories and committees, but it doesn't work for those specific groups that we mentioned because of the um differences in
membership. Um, additionally, when the 1.7 workg group um put policy 1.7 now 1070 together, they did create that template. Um, I don't know if that template was ever approved by the board, but the question is if that template is
approved by the board and only certain um sections are being changed to accommodate the specificity specifics of that committee. doesn't need to come back for another approval. Um, I could
understand the other committees would need to create or change that template further to match the needs of their advisories. Um, additionally to the point of approval, um,
several of the committees that do submit their bylaws, it first goes to legal. And I can s tell you that district advisory submitted their their policies for district area and school advisory in 2023
and we just got those back on October 28th. >> So, Madam Chair, Um so um my office doesn't review the bylaws. We have never reviewed bylaws from the committees.
Um, the only times that there is a bylaw or anything from a committee that would come to the general counsel's office is when there is a a vote by the majority of the committee to have something
reviewed by the legal council and then through the liaison it comes to us either a question, it could be the bylaws if you choose that to come uh through a vote of your committee um for for our office to review. But because um
I believe that the uh the actual template was put together by the general counsel's office at some point um that they do not come back to us for review. >> Okay. I was going to ask Mr. Sullivan something but he got up. Mr. Hill, maybe
you can answer that. When committees have bylaws, what's the process? Where do where does where do the bylaws go? >> Thank you, Madam Chair. So when the committee approves their bylaws, they do submit them to the liaison and then they filter them up through the chief of
staff's office to place them on an agenda item for approval. Um for example, if you go back to the June 18th, 2024 board meeting item double P1, the diversity committee brought their their policy with their red line, their their clean their red line as well as
their bylaws. So if they're ready at the time that they do bring their policy forward to the board, they will include it. But a lot of times our they have um approved their policies and they say, "Oh, now we're still working on our bylaws and they are going to bring their bylaws later." So a lot of committees are still working on their bylaws and
they will bring them back later, but when they are ready to bring them back, it will go to the committee liaison and then to the board on an as an agenda item, but it does not go to the legal council's office automatically. >> Okay. Thank you for that answer. And I know that Mrs. Aladded asked for an
update on that. I don't know if we ever received. >> Yes. So, she asked for an update as to everything that has been submitted to the legal um office as well as what's pending and I do believe the general counsel has provided that list. >> Okay. So, there are some in legal count.
Okay. So, then I would like to suggest that you that the office of communication give us an update since they're not in legal as to whose bylaws need to be updated. Where are we with this? because it seems to be a continual conversation.
>> Yeah. And the superintendent has asked us to provide a memo to the board. So that's forthcoming. >> Perfect. Thank you so much, >> chair. Okay. The the polic 1070 governs the committees. They can't make changes to their policy or bylaws until 1070 is finalized. So although we have made
changes and we've previously approved them, they all have to come back for review and revision to make sure they fall in line with 1070. >> Okay. All righty. On page 17 of 19, um, couple
of things here. So, letter B, um, so it's c letter B is all crossed out. I would my I would like to ask that we keep it and read it read differently. So be I would like to say approved
recommendations shall be cataloged by district staff and presented to board at committee report meetings which goes along with the 1020 policy and it can be referenced there if you want to. Um but I I agree with um
the comments that have been made that just trying to capture it from a an an audio an auditory report um makes it very difficult. We have a process if they have recommendations they get attached to the committee report to me that's cataloging
and they you present them to us which is the policy that or the procedure that we're following. So, I'd like to capture that in this process. And when it's your turn, if you have something else you'd like to say, um, >> chair, can I just understand that from
the menu when it comes to us? I think what you said is you want a sentence that says, "Approve recommendations shall be cataloged by district staff." Period. Is that the whole >> No. Approve recommendations shall be cataloged by district staff and presented to the board at committee report meetings.
>> And that's the complete section B. >> Yes. >> Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. Great change, by the way. >> Thank you. Um, section A, so election of officers, A letter three. Um, I I've said this from the beginning. I will
continue to say it. You, you can all chime in, but I also agree that it should be remained for four one-year terms. um and that after thereafter an advisory committee appointee or member may not serve as the chair of that
committee for a period of two years following the conclusion of their term as chair. I think we don't have a long list of people. I understand the reason that it was recommended to reduce that to two but um I don't agree. So again,
you can chime in when it's your turn. Um, your turn. And at the end of that sentence, so I' I'd like to get rid of number four, but move part of number four to the end of number three. So number four says, a twothird majority
vote of the members in good standing in attendance is in in attendance is required to extend any chair's term beyond that described in section >> 11. 11 A3, which you wouldn't have to put that part because it would still be
in section 3A, but leave the 2/3 and end section three with that sentence and get rid of section 4 because I I don't believe that we anybody including staff wanted for to say um during the subsequent committee election cycle,
individuals who have served two consecutive years as chair shall not be eligible for nomination or appointment to the same committee. committee. What that reads to everyone is if you've been the chair, you can never you can't be on the committee again. I'm pretty sure that was an error. So, I think it's just
best to get rid of that entire um section because or if not add a nomination or appointment as the chair, but I don't think you need to put that because in number three it already says you can only serve as chair as a certain
amount of time. So number four, add the first sends to the end of three and then get rid of the the rest of them. >> Chair, just to be clear, you want to get rid of the section >> section four. >> Just to be clear, the last sentence says you can't be a chair on more than one
>> committee. You want to take that off? >> No. No, I'm sorry. Yes, that could Yes, that could actually be it for number four, I guess. could could go in three, but I so the first part the the first sentence and number four move to three
get rid of the second sentence al together and then number four could just be that you can only be chair on one committee in the same academic >> maybe starting with the word members and all the way to the end. >> Yes. >> Thank you ma'am. >> Did staff get that?
Okay. And I I think there's also a concern that if so following in Robert's rules, it says if you if a position like if you don't have someone to fill the chair or ch vice chair position, a
new person that the person that's in it would continue until you have a new another meeting to put someone there. And the concern in this item is that the superintendent and district staff are going to be running the committee. So I
don't know how I think it just really needs to be words smmiththed more than anything else though that it doesn't appear as if because it says until such elections occur the committee's designated district liaison shall coordinate with the superintendent to facilitate
committee operations in a limited administrative capacity for purposes of scheduling the next committee meeting. Um I that reads as if the superintendent is going to be in charge of committees. I'm sure he has enough to do that. He doesn't want to have that
responsibility. So um maybe it could just say the district liaison. It just reads as if the district is taking over the committee if they don't have a new chair and vice chair. So if somebody
else wants to add way to fix that. Chair, would you like that now? >> Sure. >> Um, I had suggested in my notes the most tenured member present >> shall coordinate the superintendent shall coordinate uh shall facilitate the meeting the uh facilitate the committee
meetings. >> Okay. Which is similar to the mo that our policy for the board. So I would be okay with that. or Chair Hixon. You know, the common language in Robert's rule is that um the person that is chair
would just facilitate until a successor is elected. And that's worked um previously. It's worked historically. Um and I think that's the language that the task force supports, >> right? But but the problem here says in the event that both the chair and vice
chair positions become vacant. So it's saying that there's no one there for the chair or the vice chair. So that wouldn't make sense, >> right? So then the next person would be the recording secretary or other members of the executive board. >> That's why he Dr. Zean's suggestion was
the most tenured person in the committee. >> Okay. So ti typically within the bylaws it'll specify succession. Um so it'll go from chair, vice chair, recording secretary, corresponding secretary, communications chair, another member of
that um elected executive board. >> Okay. All right. So we could use the term officer >> until such the committee's designated >> executive. >> The bylaws are nested within this policy
and if this policy specifies who's going to take over meeting and again this is a very very small point. Um you know the board may choose to designate what happens next and if it doesn't then it can go to the bylaws. So uh we just have to figure out what to do and move on. >> Okay. So until such election occurs, the
committee's designated liaison shall coordinate with the most tenured. >> No ma'am, the committee's most tenured member present shall facilitate committee meetings. And again, it >> okay, the committee's >> that's up to the board to decide if they want to dictate it or they can just drop
it out and you could you' follow the bylaws. >> Member will facilitate committee operations. >> Perfect. Thank you. >> Okay. All righty. That's um Thank you. That's it for me, Miss Thompson. Miss
Yeah. >> Thank you, chair. Oh, thank you, chair. You echoed many of the comments I was already going to make. Um I agree that the two year restriction is too short and that it should stay the four-year. Um, and then also my concern that the
chair the pre on page 17 that Miss Verdig brought up. I believe that a previous chair should be a be able to be a part of the committee. >> Um, just not chair again. >> Yeah. Um, and then I also agree with
having a catalog of the committee recommendations and I agree with your suggestions. >> That was easy, Mr. Sea. Thank you, chair. I've got a question and then several comments to follow.
We heard from Miss uh Greavves on the diversity committee uh about an issue in which somebody was elected uh to serve I believe as as as the vice chair. I I think the the result was who happened to
be a school board employee and um what I took away from that was that there is currently some sort of conflict between the university committee's bylaws and the school board policy. Um I I'd like some clarification from
Miss Batista on that. I mean, I I would have to imagine that the policy would would trump, but um I I want to know what the specific conflict was and if it still exists as of today, >> Miss Batista. >> So, I don't recall the the specific
conflict. Um I'm not really sure what um um the uh lady was speaking of. Um, but if there is a conflict between the bylaws and the policy, yes, the policy would trump. >> Well, let let me ask it this way. Can a
currently pending employee of the Broward County School Board serve as a chair or a vice chair for any of these committees? >> I believe the policy says that they can >> they can >> they are able to. >> Did I miss did I mishar the speaker?
>> No, you did not. I have bylaws in writing that was adopted on 2024. I haven't written or employ. >> So this isn't the only committee that this exists for. um that that exception
is in policy and bylaws in policy and bylaws for district advisory council area advisory councils ESC Esau gifted all of these parentled groups so that there's no conflict between the person leading the committee and and serving um
the community. >> Okay. But what what I what I'm trying to understand is are there committees in which the bylaws say no, you can't be a schoolboard member and serve as a chair or vice chair? >> Yes. >> Okay. A board employee, excuse me, that contradicts with with the policy.
>> Um, no. I believe within the policy it states that um the bylaws would be referenced in certain instances. >> Okay. >> The policy the the committee's governing policy and bylaws. So it's not just in bylaws but it's also in policy that
certain committees the chair cannot be an employee resi or an employee residing in a certain geographical region. >> Okay. So it's specific to the committees where you'll have that restriction. Chair Batista or if we want to pass it to the
>> So there are certain committees where um for example you know the school advisory forums and or the school advisory committees or whatnot that they have to have certain representation um that is specific to those committees from like a particular geographical
area. um you know they they already have uh participation by either employees or or whatnot. So there may be occasions where um that would be a conflict to have the chair or vice chair be a an
employee. >> And and if I may, because I I remember the email um they referenced that I said. So if you read the policy, it says in the event of a conflict between provisions of this policy, those contained when other policies are within any advisory committee bylaws or within
any other document related to any advisory committees, the pro the provision of this policy shall govern the first paragraph >> and then also also encourages board members not to appoint uh employees but does not prohibit them from doing so.
>> Okay. So I I I guess what I'm what I'm trying to get to the to the bottom of of of here for purposes of this question is on those committees in which there is a is a restriction about serving on uh as a schoolboard employee. I want to make
sure that all of those bylaws are clear as to whether or not that can or can't happen. Obviously, in full conjunction with our policy, it's it seems that there was some a mishap on the committee which from what I'm hearing from mre
from this from the speaker that resulted in potentially election results getting thrown out and having to go to a new election which obviously I don't think is in anybody's best interest to have that happen. So, was this bad information in this specific entrance with the diversity
committee? Is this bad information that was given to uh a a member of that committee or to the committee at large or how did we get to this point, >> Miss Batista or Mr. Sullivan? So again,
this these are board established committees governed by 1070 and 1070 does not prevent you from appointing uh an employee to a committee and or it does not prohibit them from being chair of set committee.
Now if you want to make it clear in the policy that they can't do that that that would be entirely up to the board. These are board driven uh advisories. So staff really doesn't have a a preference one way or another. It's all 1070 is all how the board wants to govern their
appointed committees. The committees in which it is not appropriate for a school board employee to serve as the chair or the vice chair. Okay, those have to be outlined in the specific committees bylaws. So the
members on the committee and the people who are serving are are aware of this. I'm I'm trying to understand and let's let's narrow the focus. Let's narrow the scope. I'm trying to understand how this happened on this diversity committee with this specific example in which an
election was held that apparently from what I'm hearing had to be overturned. >> I can't speak to what happened their elections or overturning. I'm not aware of that. I can just say when I answered their question, I relied on the policy that governs 1070. Okay.
>> And supersedes their bylaws. Okay. Um, >> at least as the policy is written. Now, >> chair, may I may I inquire from from from the speaker as to what that they were relying on before this election was held, which obviously does not jive with what the policy was?
>> Um, yes. Go ahead. >> Hello. Okay. in the the um bylaws is article 5 section one and it specifically says the chair shall preside at all meetings of the diversity committee and will be an exofficial
member of all subcommittees except the nominating committee. Chair or designate will represent the diversity committee at all district committees that apply to the nine conditions outlined in the CCC settlement agreement. The chair or vice
chair shall not be an employee nor receive renumerations from the school district in the policy that the current chair as well as the
staff supported in the policy 1070. They um >> they kept utilizing section 3 A one and where it says membership composition
or committee and they were saying it says when a member of the staff is appointed by appointed to a committee that has been delegated authority that normally is exercised by the school board. the staff member loses
his or her identity as a staff member while participating as a committee member and is accordingly subject to the sunshine law. So I did not and this is the book that I received from the Leia zone after my ethics training and at diversity training. So I got this
directly from the layer zone. So, I'm not I I got this from district and so I wanted clarification because there was a very outraging um issue when I brought this forth as the nominating committee. The leazison
said they were not aware of this and they said sometimes it's good to have new eyes. So, that's what prompted it. And so I following protocol reached out to my school board member to get clarification from general counsel um because the staff was telling as well as
the chair was saying that the policy trumps the bylaws. And so the response from general counsel was that it does not and that a chair nor vice chair should not be a schoolboard employee. They continued the elections. Well, they
strategically had me removed and then they did the elections in which the chair ran the elections. The chair of the committee, not the nominating chair, but the chair of the committee ran the elections and they voted in a school board
employee. I stayed silent that whole meeting. >> Is that individual still there? Yes. >> Okay. >> Miss Batista wanted to say something >> please. >> So, okay. So, the the question that was asked of me and now I have the email here. Um, can a school district employee
serve as chair or vice chair of the diversity committee? And the answer was no. Article 5, section one of the diversity committee bylaws adopted June 18, 2024 state that the chair or vice chair cannot be a district employee. And
while policy 1070 governs how advisory committees operate, nothing in that policy overrides this specific bylaw restriction. If the committee wishes to propose a change, it would need to follow the amendment procedures outlined in policy 1070 and article 11 of the
bylaws. So if they would like to change the bylaws, they can. Um but you know, they would have to go through that process. >> Okay. So, so what I'm hearing is article 5 subsection one of the diversity committees bylaws specifically bar
employees from serving as the chair and the or the or the vice chair. that is the law of the land and that what's in place in in policy 1070 specifically 3A1 which as I'm reading it now it's kind of just like a a general statement that
when a member of the staff is appointed to a committee they lose their basically identity with the school board and they're acting independently. This doesn't this uh provision again article 3A1 of policy 1070 does not necessarily get into the nitty-gritty as to whether
or not an employee can be a chair or a vice chair. So the bylaws in this case would trump. >> Okay. So um for for the benefit of the speaker I I'm it sounds like you may have gotten some contradicting contradictory information or confusing
information. um what I'm hearing from from from council uh makes makes sense to me and and uh hopefully in in future elections we don't have to go through this now knowing what this is and and and I certainly apologize that there was
this level of confusion before uh before the most recent election that you guys went through. But I I I think to me it's the article is is is clear in conjunction with the policy that you cannot in this particular committee, you cannot be an employee of of of Broward County Schools if you're going to seek
this position. >> And just to let you know, there currently is an employee that is the vice chair, okay, >> of that committee. Just to let you know. >> Well, well, that's certainly a secondary issue that uh we're going to need to um to look into if if we have someone that's that's violating the bylaws. Uh,
and hopefully they were not relying on uh on on the bad information and um I'm going to work with with staff to um to see what uh what can be done about that. So I appreciate Miss Greavves you bringing that to my attention to excuse me to the board's attention. >> You're welcome. Thank you board. >> Sea, did you want to suggest something
in this section that says if the bylaws prevent it so that it's in this policy as well? It's clear. So, um, I'm going to table that for a second because I I just want to make some comments and I don't want to lose any of my my steam on
on a lot of things that I've heard. Um, generally speaking, in regards to our committees, our volunteers, the work that they do, um, the benefit that they provide to not
only this board, this operating body, but to all of our schools, to all of our kids, to all of our teachers, to all of our um, administrators. Um, I think is invaluable. I think it's tremendous.
I think that these people um are doing this for the good of our community, for the good of their kids. I I don't think that they get enough credit for the work um that they do. And um it's
disconcerning to see the tension between the district and our um our volunteers. It really is. And when I see people that I know have worked very
hard on this and have focused and have brought a lot of good ideas and a lot of imaginative ideas over the years um come up to the podium very angry and we saw some nearly in tears over what they
perceived to be as negative treatment. Um that's very concerning to me. I want everybody in in the in the audience today who come and who came and spoke, everybody who's watching uh on the feed or anyone who's who is in the earshot to
know that as far as I'm concerned, um I appreciate the work that every one of you do for all of our kids, whether you have kids in this in the public school system or in the within the district anymore or not, I still appreciate everything that you do for us. You are
heard. You are uh you are valued. And sometimes, you know, it's it's it's easy to forget all of the hard work that you guys do because maybe, you know, we only get to hear from you once a month or maybe people don't read all
their emails that you guys send me. And for the record, I read all my emails. I may not respond to all of them, but I certainly read all of them. So, um I I I do want to say that I am very um gracious and I am very appreciative for all of the work that
each and every one of you do and for the services that you provide to our kids, to our teachers, and for the benefit that you provide to this board. We may not agree on some things from time to time, but certainly and and I and I hope I speak for all of my
colleagues up here um when I say I I think everybody can agree that you provide an extremely valuable service to all of us and we are very very grateful for everything that you guys do and when you come and you take the time and you
speak to us um we listen and we do um we do hear you That being said, uh, Madam Chair, if I can revert back very quickly before I yield the rest of my time. um in regard to um
in regard to the to to the issue that we're uh dealing with now or that was presented. Um I'm going to reserve comment because I'd like to have some conversations with staff on some some some questions that um I want answered and when this
initially comes when this eventually comes back to us at a board meeting um I may have something else to say about the current makeup and current structure of the rule. Thank you. Okay. Um All right. So, next is Ms. Mrs. Bowman.
Thank you, chair. Okay. So, thank you to everyone for your comments. Um you know, I just I just want to kind of ground us again to just to remember we're all here
because of our kids to educate the children in Brower County. Um, and I think and I do think we're all here for that reason. And right now, as you all know, we're facing many challenges. Um, and so I think that, you
know, like the what I hope that we can accomplish is that we use our energy to be united because we're all here for a common cause and to not use so much energy inner fighting. I I think this is applicable to a lot of
different areas of life right now, but I think it's so important that we can come together because we are here to educate the children and every single person needs to be contributing to that so that we can have the outcomes that we want and to be able to kind of survive what
you know the challenges that we're facing right now. Um, and I and also, you know, I always say this whenever we're talking about this, and we've talked about it on many occasions so far, but the advisory committees exist to advise the board. We cannot be everywhere. We need you all in the
community getting information and bringing it back to us. We have our appointees um so that we know what's going on because we can't be everywhere. And we are actually working hard to do as much as we can, but we can't be everywhere. So just to focus on the
purpose of this exercise and I I want to kind of go back to the how we origin how we came to this point because I I want to look I because there's some tension here and I just I want to and I might not be remembering correctly so
please correct me. I'm sure someone will. But, you know, just going back to the spring, originally we came um I there was a workshop that was pre presented some uh suggestions about how we could uh consolidate and potentially
eliminate some of the advisory committees which people did not like. And so the superintendent um at that same meeting formed the task force um to for the purpose of addressing the
composition of the advisory committees and again if I remember correctly I don't think that policy 1070 was originally part of that task force uh directive. It was really just to look at how we were going to do how we were
going to go move forward with advisory committees. So um the task force came back with three options. Two consolidated the advisory committees. One kept them the same and you know we heard from everybody. People had different opinions and the board uh
decided to keep them as they were and the task force also came back with a lot of suggestions of how we could improve policy 1070. So there's a tension there that had nothing to do with the board or the directives
of the board that came from the task force. So just so we're all on the same page, I don't think we opened up this 1070. So that um this is just moving forward since we have this >> this is she only if she asked you a
question. >> But um just just to um clarify. Yeah. So 1070 I believe was part of the original um request from the board for the task force to also look at um uh how advisories were formed and how many
advisory we were have and then 1070 was included because it would so heavily dictates how advisories are governed. >> Okay. I thought that they that was come that came back from the task force because there was no way you could do the committees without doing the Okay.
Well, anyway, see, I told you if I'm if I'm incorrect, please let me know. Okay. Yes, it is a long time ago. Um, but you know, to Mr. Survey's point, there's a lot there's a lot of tension right now. There's a tension between different committees. You know, I um there's tension between the district and the
committees. There's obviously unhappiness with the board. So, I I just can't stress enough. We I we need you to help us, but we also
need to be united. We're spending so much time we have all these huge problems that we are facing right now and we're spending so much time on this that I'm hoping that we can, you know, reach some conclusions. I and so I
invite every single person here to please give a little so that we can move on from this and you know you're not going to get everything that you want but if we if everyone gets what they need or most of what they want I think that we'll have accomplished what we need to today. Um, also we did have
training manuals that were resoundedly rejected. Um, a few so I'm not sure what the status of those are, but we were talking someone was talking about that earlier today. So um, when I mentioned training manuals before, it was for the um, leaison.
>> Okay. So >> and I believe uh, we had one um, the same time they presented their recommendations but I don't believe it went forward. >> Okay. So, are we doing something to to have training manuals then?
>> I'm sorry, can you repeat that? >> Are we going to have like an updated draft of the training manuals available or we >> we can provide the ones that we have currently? Yes. >> For for the for the committees and the liaison.
>> So, I believe I'm sorry I think I misspoke before. There's um there are um training manuals for both Okay. >> But we didn't go forward with that. So I guess we need to >> No, I'm sorry. We We did. I I was confused. So >> Okay. So we have training manuals.
>> Yes. Okay. Okay. Um Okay. So I um I also to go back to the idea that we're not looking at the is there an intervening draft of this that we're not that we don't have
because I went back to look at the uh what is it August 12th >> agenda we didn't have a draft of a of a policy I don't think there you gave us feedback on the policy and that feedback is captured in the red line.
>> Okay. So you haven't seen the red line um before, but you have seen the unwritten. >> Okay. So the the red the this draft is tracking what we had proposed. There's no like hidden changes in this that aren't from the original. >> No hidden secrets in the document.
>> Okay. Thank you. Um Okay. All right. So, just to get to to get to the actual policy changes, I had a couple questions. Um, on page two, D8,
it's a Roman numeral 2 D8. Two of 19 does. So this um says that the superintendent can um let's see other okay so there
the superintendent can create other advisory committees that are I guess outside the purview of the school board that have various decision-making functions. Can you give an example of when that would >> the task force? >> Okay. But they're advising. They don't really have decision- making.
>> Well, they're making decisions to present the recommendations to the superintendent and their board. >> Okay. So, that's the definition of decision- making. >> Yes. >> It's not a binding. It's not binding the
board. It's just a present. I >> it's a recommendation that the board would consider. >> I don't know that seems it seems okay. Is there a definition somewhere of that because that just is confusing to me. >> Okay. >> And uh I'm sorry that language actually
already existed for the most part. We just moved it up. >> Okay. >> If you look at F where it's stricken. >> Okay. Okay. Um then in in on page 17 11
three >> A3 >> 17 >> I'm just wondering at the at the end of the red line I'm just wondering why if you have a vice chair the vice chair wouldn't just become the chair and then you appoint a you elect a new vice
chair. What's the purpose of having a vice chair if you're going to elect a chair later? >> Can you repeat the page number? It's page 17 um 11 A3 the last part of the last sentence.
>> But that's only if there's a if there's a vacancy, >> right? But you have a vice chair who presumably would become the chair. It says it says the vice chair s sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh sh shall assume the duties of chair until the committee elects a new chair to serve the remainder of the term.
>> You would need a some sort of election because then uh the vice chair position would be vacant. >> Right. So I would suggest that we the vice chair becomes the chair and then you until you and then you elect a new >> vice chair. >> That's what the red line currently. So
red line says in event of vacancy in the chair position as a result of these provisions the chair shall assume the duties of chair on an interim basis until the committee elects a new chair to serve the remainder of the term which they could elect the vice chair who now is the interim to be the chair
and that way they'll also have the possibility of selecting a vice chair. It can rates of two vacancies the way it's written here. So they need some sort of election to to fill the vice chair. >> Yeah, you'd have to fill a little vice chair. I think that you should fill the vice chair. the vice chair got elected and is becomes the chair. Instead of
having the vice chair serve as the interim and then elect a new chair, have the vice chair fill the position and then >> I think we're saying the same thing, but if you want to word it differently. >> Yeah, I do. I I would I would like it to say the vice chair shall assume the duties of
the chair and >> and I don't know who would do who I don't know that we need a vice chair and then something about and then we till we and then you and then the committee will elect a vice chair to serve the rest of the committee >> if that's how you want or the rest the
remainder of the term. Sorry, >> it it's fine. It's fine by me. Um I I think we're saying the same thing. If there is a vacancy, the vice chair becomes the interim chair until the new election for the chair to serve the remainder of the term, which could be the interim vice chair, I mean chair,
and then they can select their new vice chair. >> I'm sorry, I was asking a a question for a board member. I'm not sure what the public has to do with this. Ben, >> what would be the easiest thing to do? >> I think that's going into the weeds in
the policy um bylaw state um that they would hold elections because they're all elected positions. So, you can't just assume an office. It's like a um a board member like the governor could appoint someone in the meanwhile but ultimately that position would have to be filled by
election. Um and so it's the same for these the vice chair would serve in the capacity until they are able to hold elections. Um and at that point if the vice chair wants to run for chair they would be elected and then they would elect a new vice chair. >> Okay. I'm just thinking about like how
we do it with the president and then you're the vice president and then you become the president. So, I'm not totally insane, but you know, whatever. Um, you guys, okay, that's mine. You guys do that. And then I agree with um what Chair Hixon's uh proposals were for
the changes. And that's it. But please, again, we need everybody here to help us move this proc to move our district along. So, I just hope that we can all collaborate and cooperate. Thank you. >> Thank you. And before I go to the next
person, which is Mrs. Rupert, I'm pretty sure. U Mr. Sea, can you weigh in on the suggestions that I gave um because we need to know. So, one was changing the two years to four years. >> Hey, chair. >> Yes.
>> We're not done building that menu yet. >> Like like can we build the menu and just vote it once? >> Well, we're not voting, but Mr. As people talk, you can add more into it, but we miss we need to know if they agree with what's already been said.
>> The people that you're asking to weigh in haven't heard from everybody on this board yet. >> But we've gotten we've gotten answers from the other people. I I know it builds, but we that that will be forever. When it's your turn, you're supposed to weigh in on what's been said before you.
And I skipped that part with Mr. Sea. Everyone else did it, just not Mr. Sea. So, Mr. Sea, we could do it quickly. >> Thank you, chair. Uh, I'm not in favor of the change. I'd like to see the foyer remain. >> Um, keep the ESC gifted in Esau as
waved, not redlined throughout the policy. >> Correct. >> Um, catalog recommendations that I gave. >> Repeat the recommendations on the catalog >> to uh approve recommendations shall be cataloged by district staff and presented to the board at committee report meetings.
>> Yes. Delete chair not staying on the So delete that part that says that once you're done being a chair you can't be nominated or appointed to the committee. >> Can I have the section please that you're specifically referring to?
>> 17 section A4. >> A4. >> Yes. to get rid of the second paragraph >> beginning with additionally >> uh during the second sentence because the sentence basically says if you've
served as chair you can't be on the committee anymore. >> Yeah, I'm in favor of that strike. >> Okay. and then changes from on the next page which was page 18 at the top to say until such elections occur the committee's most tenured members will
facilitate committee operations and delete where it says district liaison shall coordinate with the superintendent >> yeah I don't want the superintendent >> okay perfect thank you Mrs. Drup. May I speak? >> As long as at some point
>> as long as some point before you turn over your time, you answer those. Okay. How about I'll have you ask me that when I'm done speaking. Okay. It's unfair. All right. Um, who knows what? Let's just start at the beginning here.
A quick question to staff on page two of the PowerPoint. Um, request to the school board to the right on the yellow part. Financial impact. There is no financial impact for policy reviews. Do we not have coward
and coward anymore? Miss Dr. Fton. We do. Okay. So, >> if I may, madam, >> I was kind of still talking. >> Oh, I was trying to um compliment her response. They only review certain policies, not every policy. >> Okay.
>> Power and cover. >> Did they look at this? >> Not this policy. >> Not at all. >> No. >> Okay. And is there like a rubric for what they were going to do and what they don't do,
which is probably in their contract? Um, the reason I asked this is because it says financial impact and there is no financial impact for policy reviews. There is because we hire them. So, it may not be this particular one, but you know, I figured, oh, they don't mention
them anymore. It's been a while and maybe the contract was up. So, that's really where I started from. You know, I do everything sequentially. So, um, next I'm going to flip to seven. Okay. Um, all committees
now have a staff liaison that will attend their meetings or is it group by group? Is there a formula for who their lea liaison is or does everybody get one? >> Dr. Fton staff. >> Uh, sure. So depending on the committee
uh so we try to match it up with the subject matter expert. So uh someone from facilities would have someone in uh in that area and that that individual's uh consistent so it doesn't it doesn't change. >> Okay. Sure. So for our FTF our
facilities task force committee have we had facility people that go there and present to them whenever they have their meeting? >> Dr. Fton staff >> uh I can I can only talk about the lison. The lison's uh always there. I'm
not sure if there's been specific uh requests of uh staff to present. >> Okay. So, you're saying the regular person shows up, but if they've asked for um Nor Rert to come to that meeting uh because they want to talk about
adoption, I don't know. So, I'll go, right? Um absolutely, we go. And I don't we need to kind of speak to that because I do know that that is a uh a problem when it comes to um committees as well um as to they don't feel like they're
getting their their true people coming to them who can kind of really express the district's um role in certain ways. So I I do hear from that from from different organizations. Um but then again we also have groups that I know
that uh Simone has gone to ESC etc etc but specifically the facility task force is one of the ones that feel that they need to um really occasionally see higher up staff. Let's just put it that way. So that's that's a conversation for
the board. I don't know if it belongs in this policy or not but I would be remiss if I didn't say it. Um I look through the August meeting and um a lot of this back and forth here is um contradictory.
Let's just put it that way. And um which and I think Chair Hixon probably got to this when I when I grabbed some tea and peanuts here. Um to bring it back to how can we help today? you know, how do we get closure to this? Because otherwise,
I will tell you, we'll be easily here for two more hours. So, um, I want to be able to move things along to make sure that that our our committees are appreciated and are, um, getting our full attention. This can't be done today. There's just no way it's going to
get done today. So I would suggest that it would come back to a workshop way before we have to vote on it in is it December or January? >> It would depend if it comes back at which which workshop. >> I believe there's enough consensus that
would um substantiate significant change. So it would be a December not November. >> Okay. So December workshop and then >> well no right now unless the board directs us otherwise this would be presented for a board vote. Okay. Well, as one board member, I I
won't be voting for this. It's way too early and I don't feel that the actual conversation is done well here today. Um that's just that's just it on that. Um for term limits, I believe a fouryear or two two years, I don't care. But in in
one term amount for two years is way too little. People barely getting their feet wet and they know what to do. So I would definitely do two twoyear or one fouryear. I don't care which. But we have to understand that and I I am one
of those people that when I was a parent and actually still now all board members we actually represent the board on various uh community and state um businesses and organizations and nobody's giving us uh
any information to saying that you can't be that person anymore because this just you have a certain uh information, you have certain background and talent and you've been there long enough to be able to help the people that are coming behind you and that's incredibly important that we do. Um I think that
truly starts with uh respect from both sides. But I can tell you it it is not the same relationship that we used to have in 2010 when I was elected, 2011. It has gone down every single year. And
I am at that the only person to be able to see that debacle as it's gone lower and lower and lower and it's gotten worse. So I know that sometimes when you when you want to make things better, it's it gets to be
kind of a hot mess and then you could work it out. But it's very hard to do that when we have volunteers that are in tears that are so upset their faces and their necks are turning red and they're just here to
help our students and the district period. Um, so I I apologize for any one of you feeling discounted, unwanted, unappreciated,
and I'm going to say it, humiliated. I I feel that. I feel that for you. And I've also been the parent in the audience as an advocate year after year after year after year. Way before I became a teacher and way before I became a board member. Year after year, nothing, no
comment. People got up and ate and just didn't come back to the deis and you never got eye contact. But let me tell you, it doesn't have to be that way. >> We can't govern this way. We can't be successful this way. And we certainly can't ask our our volunteers to be able
to get back up again, pony it up, and then come to the next meeting and get the same response. That's crazy. So, I personally would put this back onto a workshop. I would include the entire
August red line conversation minutes, etc., etc., and really have it gone word to word, comment to comment. I hope staff is listening.
On my right, >> not you, Andre. I'm waiting. I'm talking to >> Yeah, I'm trying to say about staff and what I want for this to come back. Okay, it's important that you hear that
because you're not if you're not listening to me, you're the heck you're not listening to the audience and every single person here needs to do that. But also, you need to be treated respectfully from the audience as well. >> So that's that's it. Um, so I would personally have that come back, have
that conversation, bring back what we agreed upon years ago and then let's just start in commonality instead of having two sides going back and forth. Commonality that is all I expect from that. I have particular
uh questions and I of I can't do this right. It's too confusing. It's too important. And I you've got multiple documents. Some were just handed to us today and
you're trying to reconcile them. And I I refuse to ha to to promote this kind of chaos. I don't want the carousel horses to come back again.
So that's all I'm saying. I absolutely really beg my colleagues that we need to go backwards to go forward. Bring back the August one. I believe Miss Alllet have started this in like
2021 or 2022 wanting to make sure that this was workable. You know what? Otherwise, we are never going to get the respect of the community. We will never get the the trust of the community again. unless we do this. So, I as one
board member would request I can't do a motion because it's not a business meeting that we go back to the August one, work on it with staff, work on it with Miss uh Dominique, um work on it with the other members. I I don't know. I
don't want to dictate how that that work's going to get done. It just needs to go back and we need to have a commonality conversation as to we can support this, we cannot support this. And that's as simple as it is. Um, Miss Hixon, I'm done. Uh,
yin at this point, but ask me the questions and I'll give you the answers, okay, that you need from me. >> Four years. >> Yes. >> Keep ESC gifted in Esau as waved. So, okay. >> Catalog recommendations. >> Yes. Delete chair not staying on the
committee. >> Yes. No to not delete. I'm sorry. Chair can stay. >> Correct. >> There you go. >> And change um from superintendent to most tenured member if there is no chair of >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you.
>> Next is Dr. Zean. >> Thank you, chair. I have three cleanups. Um, on page 11, uh, under seven in the red, uh, line, second sentence says, "This list shall serve as the official registry." I just prefer it to be a registry. I'm not sure that um I I take
a list of people when I'm out talking at schools and other places and people walk up and want to join. I just don't want them to be confused that, oh, we're not on the official registry. Well, I think it's a registry on on 11 in the new type. >> M. Dr. Zean, can you I I don't see a number seven on page 11.
>> 11. >> Roman numeral sovereign red line Version, page 11, first paragraph under V I >> Okay, thank you. >> No worries. Just um strike the the official and replace it with the article A
on 17. Uh there's still a little confusion about uh whether or not you could be chair in the current version. So I'm on XI11A3 and I think in the redline version um first sentence without a minimum break in service as chair because even that
language the way it's written can be interpreted as you need a break in service as in get off the the advisory committee and that's not our intent today. So it would read no individual shall serve in the capacity of chair for more than two consecutive one-year terms without a minimum break in service as
chair of two years. So it cleans it up. Same uh change on the following sentence. Upon completion of two consecutive terms as chair, the individual chair term shall conclude. And again, I just want to make it very clear that that chairs do not need to go away. This
is the Mary Ferdig amendment. By the way, if you're former chair, we definitely want you to stay. you you've gained uh tons and tons of experience. So that's my second set of cleanups. Finally, on the last cleanup uh on 18, I think we've got that one already. Uh we
shifted on the top redline version to most tenured uh member present. If you'd like to catalog my votes, I'm ready. >> Okay. Four years. >> No. >> Keep ESC gifted. Yes. Catalog
recommendations. Delete. Chair not staying. And you already said change the superintendent. >> And then my three cleanups. >> Uh yes. So >> that's easy enough, I think. >> I'm sorry. >> That yours were easy enough to >> I like being easy.
>> Thank you, Mrs. Leonardi. Yeah. Um I agree with the proposed changes from the chair and Dr. Zean. Um, and I I want to just take a moment to thank our volunteers for your continued service and dedication to the district.
Um, I know that that uh it's not easy and that you do this out of the goodness of your hearts. Um, and I want too easy to sit here uh and be criticized. Um, and I I think that, and I've said
this before, if we could take the temperature down a few notches, um, I think the collaboration would be much easier and more productive. Um, and that starts with speaking to each other respectfully. Um, I don't know that I
can make a difference in saying that, but I I do feel that it needs to be said. Um and and again the people sitting here uh who are not elected officials really don't have an opportunity to publicly defend
themselves. Um and I know that is difficult. So thank you to all the parties involved who are working hard to improve our district and uplift volunteer voices, parent voices, community voices, student voices. Um, and I think we all have a responsibility
and obligation to do so in a way that would make our students proud. Um, and in a way that that makes our community feel that we are a functioning system and district and body of of volunteers and staff. Thank
you. >> Thank you, Dr. Ho. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. So, I want to um thank the committee chairs for their input and I want our chairs to
rest assure that this board respect and appreciate all of our chairs and our committee members. We may disagree at times, but disagreement is not negating the importance and the appreciation that we
have for the work that you do. Um now the changes reflected here in this policy um came from board recommendation reach on August
12th. Um I believe uh timely succession of leadership is important. Um this board actually um have succession of leadership on a yearly basis. November 18th will be when
we will engage in that. And normally um this board chooses chairs once a year and occasionally for two years.
Board members are elected every four years. Our committee members can serve indefinitely. However, these changes are recommending that the chairs are being rotated every two years. So, I
don't believe that we are asking anything differently than we have of the board in terms of leadership succession. Now, I believe it's a responsible thing for us to do because leadership succession uh encourage
development of talent. It creates continuity. Uh research shows that it mitigates risk when you have unexpected departures of chairs. It also helped to develop depth of leadership and retain talent. Uh so I
am supportive of the changes we recommended on August 12th. Um I believe those changes will allow for a better a greater depth of leadership
um among our committee um our advisory committees. Now in item four, Madame Chair, the changes that you recommend uh in terms of on page 17 to cross out to to to not cross out the first part of
item four to get rid of it entirely. I am not in agreement with that. I am in agreement with crossing out a twothirds majority. I am uh I agree with Dr. Zean to add um just
minor modification. Uh so it's clear that we're not saying that chairs cannot continue as committee members by simply putting after appointment um as chair where it would read eligible for nomination or appointment as chair to
the same committee for the following academic year. So I think that's just a minor change to make it clear. Um, for item four, um, the board relies on our advisory to advise, as board member Bulman
mentioned, and to keep us informed. And as a board, um, we want our advisories to prosper and to thrive. As a board member, we may have conflicting views on how this can be done, but I believe our
mission is the same. And I want to again uh when I look at for example recent changes that we've had in board chairs where I believe um Miss Erin is now the chair of the parent task force and my appointee Jesse is the vice chair and I
can see the the um shine on their faces in assuming these positions and Miss Fertig uh recently became the chair of the audit committee. I just think uh having a wonderful rotational schedule will enable uh succession of leadership
and we'll continue to glue and keep our committees together. So I am going to continue to support um the two years. However, madame chair, for item four, whether the board decid if the board decides on four years for item four, I
am supportive of removing the 2/3 majority vote of the members um keeping that crossed out section and I am supportive of the language continuing even if it's four years uh as it is in
red in item four. >> Okay. Um then the other question is about the red line in to get rid of the crossing out of ESSE gifted and Esau as they're waved throughout here because of
their unique >> uh yes. >> Okay. And cataloging recommendations. >> Yes. >> And then changing on page 18 where it says um district leaison and superintendent changing it to say most tenured member. >> Yes.
>> Okay. Thank you. And Mrs. Alhadef, did you want to weigh in on those changes? >> Can you just um clarify what you mean by cataloging recommendations? >> Oh, so on page
on page 17 of 19, letter B at the top, it's crossed out. And the suggestion was to leave have it read instead of being crossed out. Approved recommendations shall be cataloged by district staff and
presented to board at committee report meetings, which is what happens right now. >> Yep, that's fine. >> Okay. Yeah. So, I'm Yes on the four years and yes, yes, yes on all your other ones.
Um, but before I go, I just want to my appointee, uh, Danielle Hoffman made these recommendations. I just want to give it out to the board from the task force to strengthen committee effectiveness
and to strengthen communication, increase transparency, and empower our committ. >> Thank you. Oh, >> wait. One thing I do um want to ask staff as far as re recommending and
establishing a clear transparent removal process for volunteers not covered by policies 249 or 20004. What are we doing about that? Actually, I was I forgot to mention that
the first time. So um that can be if you want to recommend it and we can discuss it. So in in easier terms a due process. >> Yep. I make that recommendation. >> Okay. To add the due process
um where would you my recommendation was going to be to add it on page 13 of 19 under F where it says removal of committee members other than schoolboard appointees. There's a one. So if you added two or where where would you suggest
or page 17? Okay. on page 17 [Music] talks about election of officers. >> Okay. Where you had is fine. >> Okay. Because it talks about removal.
>> Um and do you have suggestions on what that should look like or There just has to be a very clear, transparent process. Okay, let's have everybody weigh because I
think we're at the end. So, let's weigh in on who agrees with that and we'll leave it. I if I'm not mistaken, there was already some language written to that process. So would you be okay with the language that was was originally in
it and then it was taken out? >> So >> are we talking about section E or section F? >> F the removal of committee members other than school board appointees. >> So right if I may deputy >> where are we? >> Yes. Go ahead.
>> Um so if I may so um this only applies to committee members who are not schoolboard appointees. So if a school board appointed a a committee member that has a a process where the board member who appoints them could resend
their membership if they're not school board appointee. Um that's why it's uh written in here that the superintendent has authority to resend their membership. But it's clear it has to be uh a direct violation of a law of rules or schoolboard policies andor committee bylaws.
Sorry. What page? >> Um 1309. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. Right. But what is the removal process? >> There should be very clear rec rules governing that process.
>> Well, I know the process when uh recently happened the the superintendent provided a memo to the board. So I don't know if you want to memorialize something like that that there's got to be board notification if such action is taken by a superintendent. Can I just just because I recently went
to that policy workshop, it it was really clear too not to be specific about what the process is in the policy. Maybe if we put in there about there will be some kind of due process and then the procedure part is
>> I'll let Miss Batista jump in, but I'd be careful about mentioning due process because they you don't want to you don't want to uh >> please do not talk from >> I don't think you want to memorialize something in policy that can set you up later for a different kind of situation.
Batista, >> due process is something that um is an entitlement under the constitution when there is a life or liberty that is being challenged by someone. In this particular case, because it is a um you
know the issue here would be about committee uh membership or volunteers. uh volunteers do not have pursuant to con the constitution a um right to be a volunteer. So therefore the due process
that normally attaches to those rights does do not attach to a volunteer role. Um and that's the reason that that um section reads that way. I I would
surmise that is because um the volunteer does not have a right to due process. There was a process that was followed in this particular instance you know in the recent uh events. Um there was a I mean
there has to be a reason or there has to be some process followed but due process is usually um I there is a connotation that the person can then challenge that and either you know go to a hearing or have some sort of a a process. So um I
I'm not sure what you mean by like due process. I mean there is a process but not due process. I have a suggestion because it doesn't say that in there. So maybe if we reword what the recommendation Mrs. Aladev just shared
with us. So maybe two would be the superintendent will establish a clear transparent removal process for volunteers not covered by policy. So it doesn't say due process but it will say that there will be a process.
Yep. >> Then it's at least in policy that there's there has to be a process and I don't I don't know if it needs to be board approved. Can since that's under the superintendence, do we have to approve it?
>> No, that would be a process that the superintendent would develop for that. >> You you could say you could inform the board though. That's not a process. That's just establishing a precedent. Yeah, that's why my suggestion would be to include that the superintendent has to provide the the board with the action
that he's the action that he has taken. >> No, I I think there but it should be the same process. I think we want to be consistent. So I don't I I wanted to say I I think what Mrs.
Al-Hadf is also saying is we want in policy that there is a process that has to be followed when there is somebody being removed from a committee. So we can't dictate that process but we
can say we want there to be a process and policy. Am I capturing Mrs. valid that what you're >> I don't want to speak for you but I know that we can't and if but it doesn't make sense in policy to write the procedure
>> so if we just say in policy there must be a process that captures are you okay with that I'm okay with that >> did you capture what we were saying >> yes ma'am >> okay
anybody disagree with that >> we're Okay. And I I just would add to finish it. Thank you for that. And just add to this to address what Mrs. Rupert said. I appreciate that. Um we want to to be
collaborative. And I will just say we've had this policy come to us four times and we've spent today almost three hours on it. So, I I think we've captured a lot of the concerns that the committee had and it's coming back recommended to
make some of those changes. So, I personally would not like to see this back as a workshop. I'd like to be able to vote on it um and and move forward. >> Chair, >> anybody else? >> I just have recommendation about that.
Um, I have a deep sympathy with Miss Rupert's position and and it's not about how many times we've seen this or about the importance of it, although it's totally gerine, but it's really about writing in plain English and making sure that we have a version that the public
can understand when they read this policy how they do it. So what I would ask if chair you want to move forward bring this back to a schoolboard meeting that uh the staff take some time and if they need to make some changes that are purely grammatical and writing style and
and clarity uh that they should be permitted to do that uh and bring it forward. They might highlight those in a different color. They can be blue lined if they want to. Who cares? But um we really need to be very communicative with people on this uh policy and u I
don't feel like we've met that standard at this point. >> Thank you Miss Thompson. >> Thank you chair. I just had wanted to clarify will this policy be getting looped before back to the meeting? >> No. >> We have looped and looped.
>> So looping um process is either dictated by the superintendent. uh he's not recommending that or directed by the board, but I will remind the board that there was a task force that met countless hours that went through this policy and has provided their recommendations. >> I can't even come on. Play by the rules.
>> Okay. All right. Thank you all. Thank you very much for um for being here. >> Chair, I just have um a few quick questions because I didn't do my public speaking because I thought there would be a little bit more dialogue here. But in terms of a removal process, I will
just say that a concern that we have in the case of district advisory last year, the committee was not notified that their chair was removed and so there was no ability for succession planning. So there needs to be a clearly defined process and the committees need to be
included in that. Um, additionally in terms of the language um, regarding the vacancy of the chair and vice chair, the most tenured member may not want to step up and facilitate um, the work of the
advisory. That is why you have those elected officers that have demonstrated that they're willing to serve. And so we should follow in line with what succession typically is and just keep it to the elected officers. Additionally,
um board member Bowman asked about the training materials. Um the board had directed staff to hold a roundt to get feedback on that and that still has not happened. And so liaison have been trained. It's now November and your
committee chairs, executive officers, and members um have not been trained. And to Mr. Sea's point about um item section I or 1A on the first page. Um if
there's any ambiguity about whether 1070 trumps bylaws or bylaws trump 1070, I think that there should be some language on there because the bylaws are being approved by the board anyways and they will be made to align with general provisions of 1070. Um
>> thank you. >> Thank you. Um, Dr. Fulton, can you address the roundt? Do is there a date to have that with the chairs about the training? >> I don't think so, but I'll let Mr. Sullivan probably share.
>> It hasn't been scheduled yet. >> Okay. If we could work on that. And also, I know um they talk about the websites in here. there there's still some concerns about the um the website and the usability of it. So if we could
look into the websites for the committee committees and someone also mentioned that not every committee has an email address. >> So as far as we know the websites are up and running and then if there is anything that you're having difficulties
with please work with your liaison and we'll make sure we rectify that. But as far as we know, websites are up and running. We should have all emails um established. But if that's not the case for any particular, just let the liaison know and that's the way that we can make sure that we troubleshoot any
difficulties you may be having. >> And deputy, they have um we've sent numerous emails and they still don't have access. In addition to the websites, uh, committees have not been reached out to to say, "Hey, here's the information that we need for you to, um,
ensure that these websites are up to snuff." >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yes. Thank you. So, if we could just >> kind of circle back on that and make sure. All right. Thank you again. >> Before you leave this item, could you give us a summary of the votes? Like, what did we express preferences for in
terms of seeing the on the next? >> Well, there was no votes, but consensus I think it's preferences actually. >> Yes, preferences or consensus. So, um there was consensus to leave it at four years. There was consensus to keep ESC
gifted ESOL um waved so that because they have those unique memberships. Um there was consensus to catalog recommendations the way we have been doing it. Um there was consensus to delete that sentence that indicated the
chair wouldn't be able to stay on the committee. Um and there was consensus to change from district liaison and superintendent to most tenured member um in the succession process in the event that there was no chair or vice chair. Um and there was
consensus because no one said no to add the removal part that the superintendent would would devise or there would be a process um that would be shared with the board >> and those three clean up >> and the three yes the three cleanup items as well.
>> Okay. Did do you capture all of that the same way I just >> and then just a two3 piece? >> Oh yes. I think everybody would >> there was consensus for that. >> Yes. to move it up in the other sentence >> to put it back in and put it as part of number three. >> Right. Correct. Okay. All right. Thank
you again so much. Um we appreciate it. We're going to take a quick recess to get ready for the the oversight bonds committee. >> Thank you all. [Music] [Music]
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Thank you and welcome back to the school
board workshop. Our next item is the bond oversight committee fiscal year 25 quarter 4. I now turn it over to staff for a brief presentation. >> Go ahead, Mr. Shim. >> Thank you and good afternoon. Uh Omar
Shim, director of capital budget. Um I have this is for the quarter ending uh June 30th uh 2025 and the meeting for the bond oversight committee that occurred in uh September 25th. I have Latha Krishna here to uh give the board
a briefing on that meeting. >> Good afternoon uh Madame Chair, board members and Dr. Fulton. uh we met at Boyd Anderson and and the principal Mr. Griffin was very gracious not only in welcoming us but uh showing us all the
improvements that were made uh due to the smart bond. So he was very excited and thanked us for uh making it happen. Uh I have uh not so much a report on the
last meeting but some recommendations from our board members. A lot of the uh most of them are engineers or in the building uh area. So they had some recommendations as to the next bond uh
um uh if it's coming. So basically uh the committee recommends the district uh doing a staffing analysis uh well before uh any decision is made and not looking at this program but
moving ahead to the next. They also had uh some in uh recommendation on having projects ready to go to minimize the delay and if the projects are ready to go and the funding is available and
there are no contracts or design this causes a delay and a lag. uh the recommendation is to build up a bunch of projects that can be rolled in and uh it will pre uh present evidence of progress right from the beginning. Uh at the last
workshop Mr. Tracy, I believe, had mentioned the disconnect between someone at the desk going through a planned review and a two-dimensional drawing and the person in the field going out there and seeing the site and having a
three-dimensional view and there were lack of coordination and things may change when the field person goes out. uh and leading to further delays uh especially as he mentioned at the final inspection and the committee felt that
that should be avoided. Uh it was also suggested that the use of a modern building program uh BIM or building information model was uh uh was recommended to be used because it allows
for a three-dimensional walkthrough and I believe that program is available uh to the school district. Okay. Uh uh the district does have the program. So the committee highly encourages that it be used in future products. Also uh it
was recommended to train the inspectors to get them out and look at the job site. Uh they felt that was very important that looking at the job site will give them a better understanding what of what was going out in the uh
going on in the field and walking the site and feeling it. And also that these inspectors and land reviewers need to go periodically uh out to the field to see if they c they can catch any issues in time and
not wait for the final inspection. Uh preparation time they felt it was uh is key. Uh I was here for the smart bond and it was done with very little lead time. uh schools were asked for a wish list, but
some of their items might have not been very practical. If they uh it may help if the administrators and school community, parents and other stakeholders walk through an actual work site and see the amount of time, work
and disruption it may result in. This may change their idea of what they want. And uh also to eliminate the fact that uh with the smart bond many of the parents and the students that were in that school are gone. They they have
moved on to the next school or out of the school system. So it will be important that they understand uh that some of the projects that they're asking for may may not be done within the time frame that they are there. And lastly,
uh we've discussed a lot of community involvement at this meeting that community involvement is a key and there was very little time with the last bond before it went to the ballot and there wasn't extensive community involvement.
Uh some of us were involved as PTA. Uh we were at several community invol uh events including a soccer game, an NASL soccer game. I believe it was the Fort Lauderdale strikers uh uh handing out uh information about the uh uh upcoming
ballot um issue. But uh I think with the redefining schools uh town halls and community uh participation, it has given us a wonderful blueprint to follow and I commend Dr. Wanza and her team for doing
an outstanding job in involving the whole community. It would be our recommendation that uh the board hold town halls of this nature involving the entire community and let them know what's coming and uh what is
uh in in store for everything. So that was our recommendation but we also thank as this was our last meeting. We want to thank Omar Rafiki is he here? Millie and the staff for guiding us through. We also uh owe a lot of thanks to Bob Nave
and Tax Watch that were with us almost at the end and and they kept a strict eye on the finances and that uh helped us a lot. And also to all of the other consultants that worked uh on this project with us. They were wonderful in
their presentations to us and making us understand uh what uh what we were going through. So thank you Thank you so much. We'll go to public comment. Dr. Natalie Lynchwalsh. >> Afternoon. Dr. Natalie Lynchwash,
Plantation, Florida. I'm trying to calm down from that cliffhanger a few minutes ago. Um, and I'll be sending you guys electronic copies of what I sent before. So FTF,
which I got on in 2011, so I predated the bond. And the only person that predates me right here would be Mrs. Rupert, who I think we share the PTSD. I don't know about you, but every time someone says the next bond, I cannot help but have an outburst. And I keep
hearing musical youth singing pass the duchy because whoever whatever people are smoking who keep saying next bond please pass it on the lefth hand side um because it's not going to happen. We are repeating the same mistakes.
I took an accounting degree, an MBA, and a PhD in leadership, which means I understand systems and processes and when they're not working, and applied that to facilities from 2011.
In 2014, FTF asked to be part of the BOC, and Runy said, "Nah, nope. We want to have different people. You guys will still do what you do." Okay. We asked to help vet the needs assessment. We were told, "Nope, we're good." And they took
the results of the needs assessment. In 2014, there was no long range facility master plan. It's 2025. You want to know what you don't seem to have getting off the ground? There's no master planner. I've done a
public records request for the solicitation in whatever form it's currently in. The board, including some of you that are here, passed a framework when AECOM was here that involved having a master planner create what? A master plan with
a what? A long range facility master plan steering committee, which your superintendent sunseted in January of this year, almost a year. We're we're creeping up on almost a year of no steering committee which was comprised
of external and internal stakeholders. Most of the advisory chairs who know the district hasn't come back. Every time you ask him, he tells you, "Oh, we're we're working on it. We're going to put new whatever." But you don't have one. And then there's no transparency in the
facility condition assessments. An FCI is not the same as a Castaldi because what's missing from FCIS and was missing in 2014 are discussions about educational adequacy and structural issues. And then some of
these and these FCIS like I've seen Bennett, those are not real numbers. None of those numbers are making sense there. I sent you an email. There are buildings with lower FCIs today that haven't been touched as part of the bond than the FCIS in 2014. I don't know how
that's possible, but anyhow, um, things have never been worse and you guys are on the verge of repeating the same mistakes and that's why I keep having outbursts at the words next bond. >> U, we'll move on to board discussion.
Anybody have any questions or comments? Mrs. Rupert, >> thank you. Um, mine were pretty quick. I mean, I don't even think I'll use 10 minutes here. Um on page 101 of the book, um I just had a comment about ADA
closeouts. Um this is for Atlantic West Elementary School and uh it goes through 2027. My and my question slashf followup I hope will be that um we're not
hopefully we're not having a pattern of leaving ADA work to the end. So, I would like to to know when um when those are. You don't have to tell me today. You can do it in the followup. I don't want to give you any pressure on that. But I just um I really pulled the ones that
were on in my my district that went all the way to the page and I'm not sure if they go into 28. So, because the page ends, Dr. Fulton, >> we have noted it as a follow-up. >> Okay, perfect. Um same thing. Okay. at
Atlantic West, which is the same. Okay. Um, hold it. I would love a an update on C. Robert Markham. It um has us being done halfway through 2026.
I've been there for recently and it does not look anywhere to be close to that. So, an update on that. Um there and they also flagged it for budget reasons, budget adjustment. So, I'll need I'll need that information.
Um, okay. I covered 112. Okay. 133. I'm working it out here. Uh, red level for Cross Creek School. Um, it has it being done in 2026, but I don't
understand what the red the red level is there. I couldn't find it under uh the flag aspect um or any information. Um yeah, so that an answer for that one because it's risk level red and
I think it's 40. Okay. Um Dave Thomas Education Center East. I have the the joy of representing the east and the west. Dave Dave Thomas centers and um this particular one we as
a board had a um like a quasi resolution and in order to go to the city of um PMPO Beach to see if they would be interested in doing workforce um housing and uh I believe that the project itself uh because of the facility uh the shape
of the facility um it would everything stopped there in 2022. So my question uh is sorry it has it getting finished in 2025. Well that can't possibly be true because we're not working on it anymore.
Um so a little followup for that as to where we are in that process. Um I'm big on if we put it in the book and this is our information and I know that we as a school board already that was a board item. We all voted on it. Um, so that should be part of this project uh
request there too. Um, Deerfield Beach High School once again goes through 2027 and then the page doesn't continue. Uh, so it just makes me a little nervous because I'm I'm looking at what has to be done and it's risk level red. I'm thinking it's going to go into 2028. And
if I'm thinking it, everybody else is thinking it, too. Um, Deerfield Beach Middle, Deerfield Beach High, Deerfield Park Elementary, Red Level, and some of them I know are are safety things like fire alarms and
stuff, so I don't didn't really want to go into too much safety issues on that. Um, I'm almost done, guys. 192 One more. There we go. Okay. Uh, red flag for
Monarch High School. It also runs through 2027. So, I want to know, you know, where when is everything really going to be done because it does it needs to be updated. And 228, just two more. I'm almost
there. Um, PMPO Beach High School risk level one. They go through 2027 on this page. Um, Quiet Waters Elementary risk level red. And
I think the last one is 262 is my last one and that's Tedar Elementary School. Uh, it's in the risk level of red. So, um, just follows up for that for me because they are, um, ones that have been, you know, I know
behind and I know that we're trying to get work done as as quickly, efficiently, and and done correctly. So, um, I want to make sure that I have, uh, the answers to this as, well, sorry, the answers to these questions. So, when I'm out in the community and people say, "C,
can you see this school?" It still looks the same. So, I I would hopefully be able to say um yes, but we those were some safety things that we had to do and we've done them and we're working on the inside and you won't believe it. It's going to be done by X. So, um that would
be super helpful for us um as the word of the day uh forward facing uh with the public. So, thanks. >> Thank you, Mrs. Alida. >> Thank you. So on page 15
or I guess page nine with the it says we have 204 construction closeout projects and I always kind of talk about this the financially closed out why are we not capturing that there and what would that
number be or is that in involved with the 204 >> Dr. Fton. >> Um, staff, please. >> I'm sorry. What page? What page is that on? >> Um, on the computer 15 of 498.
>> With a little chart. >> Yep. >> Okay. the primary renovations process charts. >> It's nine at the bottom of your pages. >> Yeah, I I got it. >> Yes. >> So, the the question is about the the
financial closeout. >> So, so basically that's a part of the closeout process. Um, and so it's captured in the actual uh closeouts of the the projects.
>> Yeah. >> Ashley Carpenter with Atkins Realis uh through the chair. Um on page 27 of the report we do break down the 204 so that you can have more visibility on um sorry it's 27 on the computer I think it might
be 33 of the PDF um but it gives the number of projects in each of the phases of closeout so that you can see again this is as of June 30th but as of June 30th there were 128 projects that were fully closed and then you know different
numbers from that 204 or in the other phases of close out. I don't know if that if that answers your question. >> Okay. So, the 128 is completely done. >> Correct. All purchase orders closed and
um capital budget is able to bring the um financial closeouts to the board where the money goes back to the reserve. Any leftover monies would go back to the reserve >> on those. >> Okay. Okay. And why don't you capture that on page nine?
>> Um, page nine is more of a summary and it's uh page nine is also repeated on page 24. Um, but that's more of a summary. So, it doesn't list all of the closeout phases. So, we have additional breakdowns on page 25 and 27 that kind
of give more context on that summary. So on page 30 or 25 on the bottom, >> is that a current? Is that currently what we have? >> This is as of June 30th. Um that shows a
little bit more of Yes, that also shows those closeout phases and then also breaks down the construction. Um because on page yeah it basically just breaks down the phases into four, five, six, seven,
eight, >> nine. >> I mean for me I I think this this really captures the complete picture. So why wouldn't that be on page nine? >> I mean I feel like everybody's looking on page nine and they think that's the
complete picture, but it's really not. Page 25 is leaving out um the initial phases. So, it's really starting with construction, but we can look at trying to really show all nine on one slide. I agree with you. I think page nine is
really where people go like first, you know, first hit. That's where they're going to go before they if they ever make it down to the facility section itself. So yeah, we can work on um for the last report detailing all the phases out clearly there rather than summing
any of them up. >> Okay, cool. Thank you. And then um how much money do we spend in marketing annually for smart >> Dr. Fton? >> Mr. I believe that that's a subcontract of
of the AECOM contract. So that would be in the details of that. I we'd have to look at that or or give you a followup on that. >> So it's already part of the contract of what we already paid. >> It is. Yes. >> Mhm. Okay. Just
I don't I just feel like it just money is I understand to communicate to what is completed and what's done, but I rather just see the money be put in and get the jobs done.
You know, it just kind of seems like a waste where we could capture, you know, a beautiful library with our own staff than paying for that. But if it's already spent and done, then
is it already spent and done? >> Dr. Fton, >> staff, >> I believe, if I may answer, I believe that was part of the original um uh package 11 years ago. Uh and so that is
a subcontractor GR that does a lot of the uh public uh facing uh items for the smart program. So that's been consistent over I guess the 11 years of the program.
Okay. Well, now that we're done, not really done, but saying we're done, if there is opportunity to save money in marketing within that contract, I'd like us to look at that.
And then my next question is in regards to what's next? Where do we go from here? Because we're not done, but we're saying we're done. And I know I talked about coming back
with a report. So, so where where do we go from here? >> Dr. Fton staff. >> Yes. The the final report um will include month end October information. um you know we we're just closing the month now and we're we'll provide the
final report will have all the information as far as what projects will remain and those statuses and the board should get that in early December after we close the month and and develop that report. If I may also based on the last meeting, I believe you you and the board
wanted to have additional updates on where we are with the original smart items. And so uh we will continue to uh uh report on that uh to the board. So just because they're moving over into the capital program, we we will still
look at them uh separately as smart items. and Atkins uh Miss Carpenter and uh Miss Kulie are aware of that and so we'll continue continue to report that. >> And how often will be reported? >> We will uh report it quarterly uh which
is the cadence uh that we had I think during the smart program. So we'll continue to uh do that. >> So January would be the next one. >> Uh I believe that's what we discussed. So yes. >> Okay. Um,
okay. So, yeah, I I mean, again, I um just want to make sure that we continue to be proactive and trying to be as
efficient as possible to move these 100 projects or whatever more forward. as efficiently as possible and and then also let's continue to proactively
communicate and talk about it. I just don't want things to be not forgotten, but just like we're moving forward like this didn't happen or exist because it did exist. and and we still have to be
accountable for these smart projects that still need to be completed. I think it's very important even though we're saying the smart program is done that we know there are smart projects that still need to be completed through the entire
process where we get to 100% in the closed section. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um Dr. Seaman, >> thank you chair. I just want to note uh for my colleagues um slide nine again a
really big number here and I just want to interpret it the right way uh superintendent with anyone that you think it is appropriate for this under active construction we have $850 million which is roughly 50% of the combined capital expenditures on construction
since 2014 is that a fair assessment >> staff >> we have $850 million in active construction. That's half of what we allocated to construction since 2014. Is that correct? >> Approximately. >> Okay. Within $5 million.
That's pretty pretty close. All right. And um to people's perceptions about Broward County Schools not getting things done, they're going to point to that all day long and they're going to say, "You still have half of the money for the
past 11 years in active construction." And I know that we have accelerated the pace of getting things done, but these statistics are difficult to understand because they're stock statistics. They're not flow statistics. So, we're not seeing statistics about what got
done except when we look at our schoolboard meeting agendas when we have final closeouts and release of retainage, you know, because then we're moving those 13 programs from uh active construction to construction closeout. And then to make your point, Miss Eld,
there's still a lot of work to do. There's invoices to clear, there's financial closeout, there's warranties. Uh there's a whole roughly 12 months of time uh for many of these projects to get things done. But I'm not as concerned about closeout because that at that point people are using the library,
they're using the building, they're using, you know, anything that we built. Um it's a matter of administratively closing. What I am concerned about though is we still have 50% of our spending for the last 13 years still in active construction. And that's just a
lot and um it may be very close to moving over into you know financial closeout but there is a need to do better. There's a real need to do better and we have to um think about um about
the perception of the community and maybe the reality of this past 13 years is that the pace has been slower than our community expects. And so um we continue to need as a board, you know, more uh understanding about how we're going to increase speed and agility and
get things done. I don't agree with Miss Aldf about the 2014 list because a lot of the stuff we said in 2013 to do a 2014 bond we don't need to do anymore. It doesn't make sense either. It's a school that we repurposed. It's school maybe it's not even operating anymore. It's a Dave Thomas, you know, that got condemned and so we're converting it
into other things. So, a lot of stuff happens in 11 years. So, I'm I want to get that report. I think it's going to be a useful report to talk about, but I don't want to whistle past the graveyard and not recognize that 50% of this money over the past 11 years is still in active construction. And we've got to
figure out a way to accelerate our ability to get things done. And uh and there there's just no running from that. I don't care what page you point to in this 498 pages. I don't care. Miss Rouper brought up so many uh projects that are in in in red status. you know,
um, we still have to prove to the board and then we have to still prove to the community that we can get things done and we're not there yet. And so, um, I I'm I'm applauding the efforts that we've had so far. Uh, but 50% of our money still in active construction for
the past 11 years is a boatload of money. Do you have you you look like you want to comment on that, >> Mr. Shim? >> Yes. Uh, I just wanted to clarify because on page 289 in in the book, it gives the financial figures as far as
the what's in the the entire program, how much has been expended and the remaining dollars. So, even though that's that dollar amount is in active construction, that's the total project dollar value. That doesn't account for the amounts that's been spent. Um but if you look in on the figure on the
financial figures in that section, it'll show you that the the program is 1.7 uh uh mill billion dollars. Um and that uh we we have remaining imbalances of 143.5
in purchase orders and 55.3 in in in in balances. So that's, you know, that's just under $200 million left to spend in the program. So, we've spent quite a bit in the program. Those are just dollar values of active projects that shown in the in the construction section. I just
wanted to clarify that. >> Would you then be able to say that $1.5 billion is an active use by students or schools? >> Yes. >> Terrific. I really wish we would talk to people about that. like like um it's almost like with the
policy we just spent like 17 days on. You know, it helps a lot to get material that's that's ready to discuss. And I keep thinking that we're we're we're not communicating the goodness here. We're not communicating that we're exceeding
uh the scope of the original project by 18%. We're not communicating we got $ 1.5 billion done and in use. And to me, that's what the community understands. If a student can go into a library and use it as a library, that's a source of joy for them. You know, that's that's
what we're here to do. And that's not captured in any of these flow or or stock statistics. Um, but we need help, you know, telling that story. And I and I hope maybe in the next 3 months we can come and move forward. I know that 31
months ago we agreed to end the smart program. Uh, and that's I think still a very wise decision. We've got to figure out how to move to a steady state of uh of a construction or a capital project uh where we're actually getting things done and being nimble and agile uh as if
we were a private sector company. There's no standards difference in Broward County between what uh Citrix should be able to build in terms of a new headquarters or West Marine should be able to build as a brand new building in downtown Fort Lauderdale and their expectations of us getting things done
for kids. In fact, they some ways think we should be able to do better because there should be this great imperative to get it done for the social good. So, thank you for this uh this work. I look forward to that. You said in December we're going to get uh something and I just want to clarify what that was. >> January. >> January.
>> No, there's something in December as well. You said in December, early December, we're going to give you something based on closing out stuff from this quarter. >> Yes. Uh the the we typically deliver these or send an email to the board when we deliver this to the bond oversight committee. So the report will get sent
to the board in early December >> and then you'll present it in January. >> That's correct. >> Terrific. And will that be the last report chair of this board? >> The January one will cover us through Halloween of 2025. Is that the last report or are we just shifting to quarterly capital reports? Yes, that
will be the last bond oversight committee report and then we we could do quarterly uh meetings as as needed by the board. >> And I'm sorry, chair, can I want to be clear about this. Are we requiring quarterly reports of this going forward? >> Um Dr. Fulton, can you have um Miss
Chief Paul? >> So if I may, uh we talked about identifying the smart projects um quarterly providing that. But yes, we need to provide a capital report also to the board.
>> So I want to keep I I I want to keep the same cadence that we have. >> That's great. >> Currently regardless of whether it's smart or capital, but to keep that same quarterly uh cadence. >> Terrific. Chair, is there any objection to keeping going with the quarter? >> No. Anybody have any objections?
>> Mrs. Al, >> I just want to make sure that the smart projects are identified and tagged appropriately. Yes. >> And I think we could do that with a capital and construction report where it's tagged for smart like that should
never go away until >> Yes. >> until Miss Aldiff tells us we're allowed to. I guess >> call it former smart projects or something. >> Thank you. >> Well, I I want to be clear about that. There's going to be things in the wish list of 2014 we never do.
>> Yes. and >> we're descoped. So, >> there has to be a point where we're down to, you know, a smalish number of things that we're not doing and we have to like put a ribbon around it and move on. I don't know when that is. >> Thank you. I just have a quick question. Um, piggy bagging off of what Mrs.
Aladev said. So, for marketing, is that money already been paid to AECOM in the contract? Is there a way to scale it back? Dr. I don't if if staff has an answer. If not, we may have to um do a follow-up on
that. >> So, that's part of the um if I may, that's part of the monthly invoices that we provide. But um Gar does not charge us if they're not doing the work. So, they it's based on the work that they do.
>> So, who decides the work? >> So, for an example would be the Parkway uh meeting that we have coming forward. Uh G is uh part of that uh community engagement piece,
>> but we're not marketing SMART any other >> No, I mean they do ribbon cutting. They do you've seen them do ribbon cutting uh uh various uh pieces of the smart program over the past I guess few years.
And so that was, as I said before, originally built into Acom's contract um with as a sub consultant. Uh that's how GAR is uh acts. And so again, they've been part of the program, I
guess, since its inception. >> So is there a like a cap on what we're spending on that with them in within the contract? We can provide you information of what's been spent thus far in a followup if you would like to look at that.
>> Well, I I don't I mean we've spent what we spent. That's not the concern. The concern is moving forward. What would we be >> that that is part as I said before that is part of the current contract we have with AECOM. >> So I that's the question then. Did we
give AECOM a cap on what you could use for marketing? Is it just open-ended? I I think that's really >> I can let uh >> question is >> I can uh I don't know if Miss Carpenter could speak to that. >> Okay.
>> Okay. She's our financial >> overwatch there. >> Hi, Ashley Carpenter with Atkins Realis. Um, as Chief Paul stated, it is a part of the current PMO contract which is
finishing in January. Um, and there has not been a cap per se on communications and marketing. Um, the it is certainly very possible for us to provide as a follow-up the amount that's
been spent thus far. um in the next contract for the owner's representative. Um you know, we can look at um if there's a certain amount of communications and marketing that's
required, you know, putting that into the next contract, but we're right now at a point where, you know, this contract is finishing. >> Okay. I just wanted to to know if there was a way to to scale it back, but Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Any other questions for the bomb? >> Only I think that that's a question for the record, right, Chair? Like we want to know like >> yes, they're going to >> in writing whether or not there's an ability to descope the marketing effort out of the POR contract. >> So in the followup, if you could give us
what we've spent so far and based on the contract, what are possible steps to to reduce that and make sure the money can go in the right place? Okay. All right, perfect. Okay, thank you. So,
I'm gonna um thank you staff and um the bond oversight committee for all of your work in doing this is a big big task. So, we appreciate it. Um we are going to I'm going to give you an update on what we're doing. We're going to move into our closed door. We are going to move
the collective bargaining agreements and the um office of the chief auditor budget analysis for discussion to another workshop. So when we come back from closed door, we will go to the behavior threat management testing of charter
schools and then end this workshop and move into our special schoolboard meeting. So we will recess for at this time we will now move into a closed door session that shall last for 60 minutes. All persons not scheduled to attend the closed door session, please exit the
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meeting. Our last item on our workshop is behavioral threat management testing of charter schools. I will turn it over to staff for a very brief presentation. So I um at the last meeting when I was requested to bring this information back
for this workshop, I reached out to our neighbors to the north and the south as well as reached out to our general counsel because uh one of the concerns that board member Alhadev had was um whether or not the district has any liability um involved in not providing
audit coverage of charter schools where the behavioral threat issues are are concerned. And so, um, the general counsel's memo identified that there was no, um, liability where that was concerned, that each of the, uh, charter
schools has their own, um, board of of directors, um, that are responsible for complying with the same laws that this board is responsible for complying with where that item is concerned. And uh in talking with our our neighbors to the north and the south, we found out that
they don't provide any behavioral threat coverage in their traditional or their charter schools and that um their respective coordinators are who that goes to. And now that there's been a change in this new system that's being
uh put together by the folks at the state um and they're limiting the access. It's not really limited actually. It's it's the same access that folks had before. We just had access to some records that helped us to do some of the additional steps that gave us the ability to audit the both the process
and monitoring uh of the program. Um, so it looks like we're going to have some um some tough sledding in the future trying to figure out how we're going to do anything meaningful over and above the training uh portion of it and identifying that the timelines and the
training requirements have been met. Um, so with that in mind, I'm I'm happy to answer any questions that I can. Uh if I can't, I'd be happy to follow up on that, but I think um this is probably a shorter discussion than we may have originally thought. >> Thank you. Um and we have public
comment. Madam >> Chair, >> um hold hold on. We have to do public comment. >> Uh first up for public comment is Dr. Natalie Lynch Walsh. >> Good afternoon. Dr. Natalie Lynchwal, Plantation, Florida. I think we probably need to have a workshop on time
management in the near future. Um, anyhow, uh, good thing I brought dinner. So, this item I'm glad to see because I went it made me read the state statute and the Florida administrative code and
lo and find out lo come to find out the state wants to audit your behavioral threat assessment. So in the statute that's referenced by August 1st of each year, the office of safe schools, there are three things that they're now going to do. So I think maybe a communication
with the state as to what that might look like in terms of the scope of what they are now going to be auditing would be warranted because they are going to one evaluate it each school districts and charter school governing board's use of the statewide behavioral threat
threat management operational process the Florida specific behavioral threat assessment instrument and the threat management portal for compliance with this subsection Two, notify the district school superintendent or charter school governing board as applicable if the use
of the statewide behavioral threat management operational process. This Florida specific behavioral threat assessment instrument and threat management portal is not in compliance with this subsection. And three, report any issues of ongoing non-compliance with this subsection to the commissioner
and the district school superintendent or the charter school governing board is applicable. So, I would be on the phone with the state finding out what they think this process is going to look like. And it looks like you're going to have more money to put back into your
office of the chief auditor budget because they won't be doing as extensive uh auditing of behavioral threat assessments. And why would they if the state is now going to do it? But we don't know what that's going to look like. Anyway, um that's all I wanted to say. And I got to go look at this. Uh staff keeps creating records when in
response to my public records requests. Thank you. The next public speaker is Felicia Schuman, but I don't see her in the audience. So, okay, I will turn it over to board discussion. Mrs. Alade, >> yes, thank you for those comments, Dr.
Lynch Walsh. I would have hoped that Mr. Rose, that would have information would have came from you. I think that's really applicable to the conversation. So my next question, Mr. Ruth, would be will you be following up with the state
and seeing how that process is going to be working with if they are truly going to be doing the audit and then the DCPS do not have to. >> She's asking if you're going to follow up with the state to make sure that um
you truly get the information that was just mentioned. I I had followed up with the office of safe schools and spoke with them and when I I said to them uh we're not going to have access to some of these records anymore now that this um state portal system is going to be
limited to the uh uh districtbased and and school-based threat management teams. And I was told uh you shouldn't have had access to any of that information previously even before we opened up this new portal in August. And I said, "Well, how would we then be able
to do our audits going forward looking at the process and the monitoring?" And they said that that's something that's going to be handled by the coordinator and then the office of safe schools by monitoring that portal and all the information that goes into it. So, it sounds like they've already pretty much
come to a conclusion that having an audit function is less important than making sure that the behavioral issues are curbed at the moment that they're starting to occur rather than the auditors go in and look at it later because if they've stopped any potential
um bad actors from doing what they otherwise may do, I think that's really what the importance is of the program. >> Right. But Mr. Rose, are we responsible for doing the audits on our uh PTAs and the charter schools or the state
responsible? Who's responsible? We would, if I understood you correctly, we would not have access to uh records at traditional or charter schools, but at traditional schools, we would certainly have easier access and maybe
have access at charter schools for looking at the training portion of this, making sure that everybody is trained properly and that their teams are documented um for uploading that information into the system. Her question was who's responsible for
auditing the threat assessments >> the at the charter schools and the traditional schools. So at the charter schools they have their own teams that are put together by their board of directors. They are responsible for uh auditing and not auditing they're they're responsible for putting together
the management process of this behavioral threat management process. From an auditing standpoint, the auditing is happening at the level of the coordinator and at the level of the state. There is no other um allowance currently for an additional auditing component. >> So the state's auditing.
>> Okay. So So to clarify, you're saying that the the charter office of state schools is doing the auditing at the charter schools and at our schools. >> Yes. the but to be more specific, one of
the things that the statute clearly calls out with regard to audits is that they're auditing who has access to the system and then when items that would bubble up from the local uh folks uh who have their own coordinators at the
respective locations that information would bubble up to this uh office of safe schools at which point they would handle it from there. >> Okay. Okay. I mean, ultimately, Broward County Public School Board is responsible for the safety at these
charter schools. So, I just want to make sure at the end of the day, whatever we have to say or do or communicate or audit to these charter schools that we are doing what we need to do. And Mr.
Ruth, as our chief auditor, please make sure that we are in 100% compliance for what Brower County School Board needs to do to be in compliance with state.
>> Yes. And that's why I reached out to uh general counsel's office to to review and determine what exactly are the responsibilities and liabilities of the district in this situation. And I think that's spelled out pretty clearly in the document that I attached to this item.
>> Okay. >> Okay. Thank you. Any other board comment? >> No comment. >> Okay. Um so that concludes the items for the workshop today and at the direction of the superintendent. The following
agenda topics are tentatively scheduled to be addressed during the upcoming workshops. So for December um the advisory committee reports the district strategic plan redefining our schools noncba supplemental payment discussion
preession legislative update and district budget update and in the January workshop will again be the advisory committee reports then the joint board student discussion u mental health college prep and policy reviews for human resources 4.9 corrective
action and legislative ative affairs. Please note that the order of topics and the scheduling remain tenative and are subject to adjustment at the superintendent's discuss discretion. >> And then chair, >> yes, >> I just want to add the two items that were removed from today. We'll try to
make them fit in the next two within the next two uh workshops. >> Great. Thank you. >> And chair, just um one other idea. Um either on the early workshop in January or the second workshop in January, can we make sure that we get back to the budget? Um,
superintendent, >> I believe, um, we the budget um item is in December, but we can >> um, get back to you on the January one with this, uh, once we, uh, the superintendent's back. >> It says that, yeah, December was district budget update,
>> and I'm proposing again >> to add every month we do the budget until we get past Yes. >> the current condition that we're in. >> So, can we please add it to January workshop? >> Okay. Yes. Thank you. Um, at this time, do any of my colleagues have anything to
bring to the board or student successes to share? >> Okay, Mrs. Leonardi. Thank you. Um, first I want to bring up that uh we're having a community conversation for redefining for Seagull
and Wooden Rogers at the Wooden Rogers Media Center on November 19th at 6 p.m. I hope that my colleagues can join us because um it is a part of the redefining conversation and the students at those two schools are from all over the district. So um every one of you has
students who are will be impacted by by that change. So again, November 19th at 6 p.m. Um, I also wanted to recognize uh two things that are happening this month. Uh, this month is veterans and military family appreciation month. So I
just want to um acknowledge and recognize and thank uh our service members and their families uh who are sacrificing a lot to keep us safe and um I hope we can we can continue to celebrate them throughout the month. Um, also November is no Movember. So you may
notice that some men in your lives are growing mustaches to bring awareness to prostate and testicular cancer as what as well as mental health and suicide awareness among men. Movember is actually like a an organization that uh advocates around men's health. Um, and
they've issued a report this year for and it's called the real face of men's health report in the United States and it looked at nationally available data. Um it talked a lot about the life expectancy for men is much lower than it is for women. Um mental health concerns
and suicide are on the rise for men. Um with one in four men reporting poor mental health in the last year. Um suicide is being is the top five cause of premature mortality for men. Um and it identifies different risk factors and different needs um facing men's health.
Uh and so I just wanted to to bring awareness to that. And I also wanted to discuss um we have like a a mammogram van that goes around and offers free mammograms. I know the University of Miami offer has a a van called um the
game change van, I believe, um and offers prostate screenings. It's a a simple blood test. So, I'm wondering if there's a way for us to as a district, just as we advertise the mammogram vans, um partner with the University of Miami and advertise around that um so that we
can get our men uh healthy and and safe. Um and then I just wanted to bring up one last piece about uh school choice, the school choice window. Um I appreciate staff looking into uh extending that window and putting that communication on our website. uh per
redefining. I do have a concern that um it is being done through focus this year and I'm wondering if that creates an extra barrier um and with our enrollment concerns um I'm just wondering if the district if anyone at this district has thought through that
>> Dr. F. So thank you for the question. I would have to be able to follow up because I would have to defer to Dr. Wans and she's not here tonight. So >> Got it. And I guess I would just hope that we're monitoring um if the school choice applications are uh at a lower
rates um maybe on a weekly basis than in previous years just so we can keep an eye on it. Um because I am hearing from parents that it it does create an additional barrier and I understand that we we're trying to get more people on focus um but I don't want our enrollment to suffer even further um because of
that. Thank you. >> Thank you. And I just like to remind every or if you don't know, let everyone know the district is doing some collection for um the people that were affected in Jamaica. So if you'll look at our
website, you can either donate items or donate funds. I would ask um encourage all my board members to do that. I went on last night and made a donation. So um hopefully everybody will be able to do that. that we have a large number of people in our community that were
impacted or their families were impacted um by the hurricane and I hope that we could all step up and help them. Anybody else? Okay. Go ahead. >> Um I just wanted to report back to the board about um one of our new K8 schools
which is the former Coconut Creek Elementary and now Academy of Excellence. I I got to tour the sixth grade area and it was remarkable. Such great learning. Uh everything was bright and um the kids were just very
very much engaged. Um and really felt um happy because I said, "Well, what is it what does it feel like to be at your school through sixth grade instead of going on to middle school?" And they all really liked it. and most of the kids, which I was happy to hear, uh, were from the neighborhood and get to walk to
school. So, that'll be awesome. Um, you know, as they continue and, um, I'm looking forward to many visits there. And I just wanted to share that with, uh, my colleagues and and the public because there always is a bit of fear when we do, uh, different configurations
of schools. Um, so just say this was this was nice. This was a a good thing and uh, made me smile all day. So, thank you, Miss Miss Thompson. >> Thank you, chair. I just wanted to remind my colleagues that we have two redefining additional redefining
meetings coming up. One Thursday at Dillard and then also one next Thursday, November 13th at Myar High School. We are closing schools in these communities. And I can tell you it is imperative that the entire board shows
up and hears from these communities. I've been having community meetings at 12 of my significantly impacted schools where that is the theme is that they don't feel like we care about what's going to happen to them. So,
>> I understand it's a Thursday night and I understand that we represent our districts, but I'm planning to be there on Thursday, both Thursdays, and I hope my colleagues join me. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um the scheduled order of business for the schoolboard workshop of the school
board of Broward County, Florida. Oh, I'm sorry. >> Before I close, Miss um Dr. Fton wanted to add something. >> I just wanted to and thank you Dr. Mrs. Hixon for providing the information on the hurricane release drive for our friends in Jamaica. Um we are collecting, we started on October 31st
and the collection period will run until December the 19th. Some of the drop off locations are any of our regional offices. You can also drop it off at the Brightar uh union headquarters, also at the Broward Teachers Union uh here at Casey Wright and also our TSSC building.
We are taking all inind donations and also monetary donations. And we would like to thank our partners um our student council association, our Broward PTA, PTSA, our Broward Education Foundation, our Broward Principles and Assistant Principal Association, our
Broward Teachers Union, and also our Bright Star. So this is a collective effort on amongst Broward County um as a city to be able to support our and and some of our children are affected too because they have families over there. So we definitely want to make sure that
we do everything and anything to support our friends in Jamaica. Thank you. Thank you. The schedule order of business for the schoolboard workshop of the school board of Brower County, Florida has been completed. Seeing no obligation, I now adjourn the meeting. We will switch over
to the special school board meeting. Hey, hey, hey. [Music] Down down down down down down. Heat. [Music] [Music]
Hey, Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]
[Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] What are you doing? [Music] Welcome to today's special schoolboard
meeting. We are happy to have you join us and we are thankful for your time and dedication to our district. This special schoolboard meeting of the school board of Brower County, Florida is now called to order. Uh before we get started, I we have to take a vote to extend the time because we are at our eight hour limit
per policy. So, we have to vote to extend the time. So, I I don't want to necessarily give it an actual let's say for two hours just to give us enough time. All those in favor of extending the meeting for two hours say I.
>> I. Any opposed say no. No. >> Okay. >> We do. We need to take a >> No, you got it. You got the majority. >> We got the majority. You did. >> Did Mr. Sea vote? Zean said no and Nora said no.
>> Okay, just checking. >> Okay. 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 board room 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. I pledge algiance 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. >> Thank you. You may be seated. As we prepare to begin our special school board meeting, 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. Today's special schoolboard meeting will operate in accordance with the
schoolboard policy 1020 and the board will review the items as advertised and presented by the superintendent. The superintendent released a revised agenda with certain changes for this meeting and published it on the school district's website. The chair finds pursuant to section 120.525
Florida statute that good cause exists for such changes and accepts the revised agenda. May I have a motion and a second to close the agenda. >> Second. >> Been moved by Dr. Zean, seconded by Miss um Thompson. All in favor of closing the agenda, let it be known by saying I.
>> I. Any oppose say no. The agenda is now closed. May I have a motion and a second on item one? direct the superintendent to transfer all remaining funds currently utilized to fund the handy lease agreement. It's been moved by Dr. Zean, seconded by Miss Thompson. It has
been moved and approved. It has been moved and seconded to approve item one. Um, public comment, Dr. Natalie Lynch Walsh. Good afternoon, Dr. Natalie Lynch Walsh, Plantation, Florida.
So, there are really two issues at hand here. One is can you legally get out of this lease? Um, and then the other is uh to echo the question from this morning, why why was this even a thing? I appreciate Miss Bulman bringing the
item, but this demonstrates perfectly why your advisories are important and why it's important to make sure that they are being supported properly. The facilities task force has been tracking
and it's been a recurring item the move from Rock Island to wherever since the sale happened in 2021. I sent you guys an email with various attachments demonstrating that even when the board
tries to be proactive, if that's not what staff wants, that is not what's going to happen. While I was chair of the facilities task force, I managed to get ahead of Sam Bay wanting to move to the TSSC building
because we were trying to reduce administrative space and reusing an administrative building does not get you there. However, this time around when somebody decided to lease space in the Handy Building, we did not find out
about it until after the fact. staff does not attend FTF meetings and the board item did not mention Rock Island, so it didn't stick out. Plus, it was a couple of weeks after your superintendent had removed me, so I might not have been focused on your agendas to try to stop this before you
approved it. So, now you've paid rent, wiring's been done, expenses have been incurred, and the public is outraged because it doesn't make any sense. And remember, this is not the first year you've been doing redefining. This is not the sec. This is like the second or
third year. And I sent you the second attachment was a board member followup where staff requ where staff was requested to do a cost analysis of moving from Rock Island to an underenrolled school. Do you think they
ever did that? No. They brought a presentation in 22 and your chief of sta your now chief of staff can attest to that because his name's all over most of this because he ended up task assigned over facility planning for a period of time. So they never did it. They had se
six pros for moving to TSSC and one con and then one pro and seven cons for moving into a school. So this school board could have seemed proactive except that staff didn't want that. And then there's been radio silence, misinformation,
and this did not need to happen. So, I'm interested to hear this conversation about how you get out of this, but how you got into it is even more important, and I will be turning this over to the inspector general because this was fraud, waste, mismanagement textbook. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Um, we'll move on to board debate, Miss Mrs. Bowman. >> Thank you, chair. Um, so this uh item uh involves a contract of commercial lease
agreement that we approved on June 17, 2025. Um, and I just want to kind of go through a little bit of what the history of this was or the facts as we knew them to be at the time. So the item the item was brought, we voted on it. There was a
representation on the executive summary that we had either a 90 or 180 day um termination clause for convenience which upon f uh closer review is not actually
included in that lease. Um then on June 30th uh the schools of hope uh legislation was expanded significantly to allow school uh charter school operators that operated schools of hope
to co-locate in schools that are under capacity. uh on o on August 10th, 2025 was the first I believe the first day of our school or that week, we realized that we were um having a significant
underenrollment that exceeded our expectation, the projections that we had for the school year. And then um on October 8th, 2025, we received letters from um Mater Academy, one of
the school of hope charter operators, identifying 27 schools in our district that are under capacity that they would like to colllocate in. So, this is um a very sensitive and important thing that we're
addressing right now because of th all of those facts. We are in a significant budget deficit situation. we don't have any money, but more importantly, we have space that we need to fill
or we will be vulnerable to having the schools of hope come in. And so, we are not in a position right now to be in this lease. I, you know, the south and the central parts of the county are in particular
are facing redefining. We're discussing proposals to close schools. We're um Miss Thompson, like she said, is meeting every day with different schools, uh talking about what's going to happen to them, facing hordes of people that are
very upset by this. I've been working with Miss uh with Dr. Wanza to try to find partners to fill space in the schools in district one. I know other people have. Um, and so we're all working on this and then we've
got this lease out here that's costing $500,000 a year. And while the lease was effective June 17th, my understanding is that we haven't actually moved into it. Uh, presumably we're paying for two leases because we still have the Rock Island lease in
effect. And um the bottom line and you know we've also expended costs to wire it and what have you but we need to cut our losses right now. We um have to be very v vigilant.
We are responsible to the taxpayer to the people of Broward County and we have a fiduciary duty to them. And so this is something maybe we could have gotten away with in the past, but this year in this situation right now, we cannot do
this. So, you know, unfortunately, we don't have the the quick out that we thought we had, but there is a termination clause and uh with all due respect to the landlord, we are we have to do everything that we
can to try to get out of this lease. So, I think, you know, we could make a good argument based on the termination clause that's in there. And at the very least, we need to negotiate something cut our losses, not take any more funds to be moving into this place, and figure out
somewhere else we can take the money that we were going to spend on this lease and renovate another of our properties that we have space in, and, you know, also avoid schools of hope coming in. So, thank you. I look forward to what my colleagues have to say.
>> Miss Thompson. >> Thank you, chair, and thank you, Miss Bulman, for bringing this item. I think it is imperative, well, two things. So, first, I think I probably echo a lot of my colleagues frustration that the executive summary of the lease said that
there was basically an easy out or a termination with or without clause, but then the actual contract language that was not what was actually in the contract. And back at the original meeting this was passed, I had
hesitation because I knew that we did have this under enrollment issue. Was it as significant as we now know? No, we're finding out things every day, but there was that hesitation. And I remember looking at the executive summary and saying, well, there is a termination
clause. If we have to enact that, we have that way out. and then to find out later that it's not it's just very important that this information the staff is delivering to us. We read several contracts every board meeting
that the executive summary is accurate. And then I just want to echo also what Miss Bulman says at my community meetings. This contract has been brought up because they're saying you don't have money to keep my school open but you have money to fund district staff. And
that's the sentiment that is echoed throughout all of these conversations. And even though I explained that we are looking at cuts, there will probably be layoffs. There will probably be other contract changes, that's not what people are hearing in the news,
and we need to start speaking with our actions and not words. And if there is a way out of this contract, then I think we need to take any option to do so. Um, so I really thank Miss Bulman for
bringing this as rapidly as possible and unfortunately I have another community meeting so I will be joining via video thing. Thank Thank you so much. >> Thank you. And just Miss Batista can since it was brought up is there a legal
way to get out of this contract can you maybe address that um before we move on? >> I will defer to Mr. Cooney. Thank you, Miss Batista. Uh through the chair, Miss Hixon. Thank you. Uh so, so this particular lease, like most other
outside party lease agreements, doesn't have a termination for convenience provision at all, but it does have the annual appropriations provision, and that's the article that was cited in Miss Bulman's uh board item. So article 21.12 clearly states that performance and obligations of the tenant school board
in this case shall be contingent upon an annual budgetary appropriation by its governing body and that if the tenant does not allocate funds for the payment of services or products to be provided under the lease, the lease may be terminated by the tenant at the end of the period for which funds have been
allocated. So that does give uh us an avenue to defund and to extricate ourselves and terminate the lease. Uh it doesn't have any exemptions. It doesn't go into detail about uh the funding mechanisms etc. So at this point that's
that's really the only mechanism that we have. >> Okay. I have more questions but I'll ask them when it's my turn. Dr. Holus. >> Thank you Madam Chair. So, um, board member Bulman, I appreciate you bringing this item to us. Um, I I I think this is
certainly, um, relevant and important that this is brought forth. Um, I did mention even before we, uh, had, um, uh, the hope schools issue that if we don't act as a board in in filling the empty spaces we have, others will act on our
behalf. And I did say that uh in the past we do have budget deficits. We are closing schools. Board member Thompson who uh is joining us online shortly. Um she has schools that are potentially closing in her district. I have schools that are closing potentially closing in
my district. Um so this is concerning. We have a significant decline in the number in our in our student population or student enrollment. Uh this has resulted in significant amount of funding loss. Um, we have just a
tremendous amount of empty seats in Broad County. So, as a district with emerging financial concerns, uh, leasing spaces is not what we need to do at this time. It is important that we redirect our funds. There are schools in my
district and other districts where families have abject poverty. They have economic hardship. There are communities with significant economic hardship, communities with homeless children, uh, schools with major facilities issues. We have to be very very um careful and
responsible in how we spend money. We have uh uh teachers who deserve to be paid more. We have students who are not getting the maximum resources because we have funding issues. Um, so this is concerning and so um I am going I thank
board member Bulman uh to bring this forth because we're just not in a position at this time to be leasing spaces when we have significant amount of emerging spaces because of declining student enrollment. So thank you board member Bullman. Appreciate it.
>> Mr. See Thank you, chair. Um, I've got two aspects I want to address on this. Uh, first and foremost, I want to talk about the wasteful spending aspect of this, and then I'm going to get into the, um, executive summary fiasco that happened with all of this.
Um, I can certainly appreciate the fact that this contract was voted on back in June, obviously before the school year started for this year, before we got our uh enrollment numbers in. Uh, and I'm also happy to see that um it would appear
that um this is is coming back because some folks are displeased with how all of this this uh this went down. Uh I don't think it's any secret that this county is hemorrhaging money. Uh we are operating at a deficit. We're losing
students. We're losing staff members. And certainly the current business model, as I've said many times, is not one that is sustainable. We certainly should not be spending millions of dollars on office space when we have empty schools
and other buildings that are not at capacity. And I realize this was uh this contract was entered into before we got the letter from the the letters, excuse me, from the Mater Academy. Um but in my
mind, this was a mistake um from the very get-go. And we need to find a way out of this contract. And I hope this board will support me in instructing our council to exercise whatever option, whether it's it's provision 2112 or not,
on finding a way to get out of this terrible, terrible contract that will cost this district millions of dollars if we do not take immediate action. Um, that being said, my question to the dire to the dis the excuse me to the general counsel is this. Miss Batisa, pursuant
to article 21.12, are you confident that this is a viable way for us to terminate this contract with any potential financial liability from the landlord? >> Mr. including >> there's no way that we can prohibit uh any kind of litigation against the
school board if that's what the question is uh it is the most viable mechanism to terminate the contract as it is written and I agree with you Mr. Cooney. And that leads into my next question. In the majority of contracts I've reviewed, which I tend to do being
a lawyer by trade on this board, I do read contracts that are presented. Um, I found it to be that it's our standard language that we generally have termination provisions in our con uh in our contracts, whether they be 90 days, 120 days, 180 days, whatever it may be.
We usually have that that clutch that that termination provision. Why was that not a part of this contract with Handy? >> So, this is not our form of agreement. So, this is a 33-page agreement that Handy authored and provided to us for
our review. Um, so the provisions in there are perfectly legal. Um, staff is perfectly well uh able to recommend the agreement under the terms provided. When I looked at it initially, it's 43 pages actually. Um I noticed that that many of
these these um terms and conditions are not favored by the school board and we don't typically have them. Um so that's it. So the agreement itself was was legal as to form and content. Uh the it was a a a ownorous one-sided type
agreement but a legal agreement nonetheless. >> I'm certainly not suggesting that the contract in question was not legal. I mean it's it's a contractual agreement. um parties can generally in this state contract for whatever they want, right? My question is if it's standard for this
district and for for for this county to have provisions, termination provisions in most of our contracts that allow us to get out basically as a matter of convenience. Why was that not bargained for and why was that not included in here? Were you presented with a contract in which you were told take it or leave
it. These are our terms. Were there no back and forth? Well, I I don't typically get asked to engage in negotiation with uh the opposing party. So, this is one of those cases I was not asked to engage anybody. >> So, I want to make sure I understand the process. Okay. We were in the market for
a property. We found one that we liked apparently. Um and for the record, um most of this, if not all of this this negotiating, um I I believe would have happened in in early 2025, maybe even going back to 2024, right? I believe so.
>> Okay. So, we find the property that we like, we contact the landlord, and what do we say? Just give us a lease and we'll sign it. What was the procedure? >> I I think you have to redirect the questions because I'm not involved in any of that. Our office is not typically involved in stuff at all. >> I I I'm just I'm trying to wrap my head
around how we get such a one-sided contract that we don't negotiate with. I mean, I I see some of the edits that your office does, that the general count that General Kas office does. Um, I generally agree with a lot of our form contracts and the language and the verbiage in that. I'm just trying to
find out why in this particular case we did not have our standard termination provision. We do this is not a form of agreement again and we do not impose upon an opposite party uh a determination provision that we would
typically have in our form of agreement. That's not something that administration would impose upon the agreement and especially when it comes to commercial leases that are are drafted by the opposite party there. I've never seen one that come through our office that contains a termination without cause
provision. >> Dr. Falton, can you have staff but that did the contract or negotiations if it wasn't through legal counsel answer Mr. Severa's questions? So, I would first say Maryland. If it
didn't go through legal, who would it go through? >> So, do you want to explain what the process is for um this contract in particular? >> Right. Well, in my understanding on any lease agreement, it would go through um
portfolio management uh department. So, Mr. Aabuso's department. Okay. So, Chief Paul. Okay. Miss Paul. So that is correct. It will start with Mr. Aabusu, but it goes to legal for
form content and uh you know just to make sure that it's legally sufficient. So that has been the process uh since I've been here. >> I I want to make sure I understand this. We get a contract from a landlord or
from any vendor. It goes to Mr. Akapuso's office first. to make sure I assume substantively it has everything we need and then it goes to our legal department and our legal department does not have the ability to negotiate the terms of the contract in any way, shape or form for the betterment of this
district. Is that how we operate? Is that accurate? >> I'm sorry. Are you directing that to me? >> I'm I'm directing it to either you or Miss Batista. Was that what is what I just said accurate? >> We have the ability to negotiate. Yes,
but that's not the that's not the course of business that we've taken in the past with regards to leases. >> It's not your course of business to review a binding lease agreement to make sure that the district >> I review them. >> Okay. You review them >> negotiate them. >> Okay. And you don't negotiate. You just
make sure that they're that they're legally feasible, that there's not an indentured servitude provision in here or something crazy. We identify uh provisions in the agreements that are not typical and are not favored, but we don't strike them and remove them. So, we bring that to the attention of the department that's bringing the lease
forward and presenting it to the school board for a consideration of approval. And that's what we did in this case as well. >> After your review of this contract in which you decided not to negotiate a potential termination provision, did you go back to Mr. Akapuso's office and say, "Hey, this is missing. This doesn't have we usually have those types of outs. We
don't have it here." Did you bring that to anybody's attention? I didn't bring the termination provision to their attention, but I did bring other provisions to their attention and I did not get any feedback. >> Why was the termination provision not brought back to Mr. Aapuku's office? >> In my experience looking at outside
leases that are not our form of agreement, they typically don't have a termination for convenience. At least a commercial lease agreement do not typically have them. So this does have an out with regards to funding. If you don't have the funds, then that's your mechanism to terminate. So therefore,
that would that satisfied any kind of minimal legal need to protect the district. There's no reason to have questioned why the administration was going to present the lease to the board for consideration and for the need for the lease. There was no there was no red flags that
were raised on this. >> If I'm a landlord trying to rent a commercial property for $2.5 million, of course I'm not going to give you a termination for for convenience provision in the in the lease. Nobody in their right mind would do that. If they if if they did that, they wouldn't be a very good landlord.
It's on us to find things like that. And I know we've done it in the past. I've seen them. I I I'm I'm struggling to understand why it was not done in this case. And and it's it's so important, Mr. Cooney, because apparently somebody thought that it was because they put it
in an executive summary. It's not that crazy. It's not that outlandish of an idea. If someone from staff put in an executive summary, somebody thought it was in there even though it wasn't. I'd like to move on, chair, if I may. I think I've I've I've gotten the information that I need. Um, in
regarding the executive summary aspect of this, um, I don't know what's worse, the executive summary of the fact that we didn't have the needed provision in here. Um, I I've said this before, um, and I I I'm
certainly not being braggadocious by any stretch of the imagination, but I am a lawyer by trade. Um, I read, I draft, I interpret, and I sue I sue over contracts as a profession. So, arguably, I have a leg up on um, as opposed to some of my colleagues who maybe don't
deal with contracts as much as I do on a regular or a professional um, basis. A lot of us rely very heavily chair on these executive summaries. They do. They look for the importance. They look for the substance. They look for the
proverbial meat and potatoes within uh whatever is being presented to us without having to necessarily do a deep dive like I do into a 44page contractual agreement with other parties. This mistake
in the executive summary would have led the reader into thinking that we had a way out via a potential 180day notice of termination provision. That's what was presented in the executive summary. The problem is obviously as we know that there was no such provision allowing for
a termination. The actual language in the lease agreement was the polar opposite. It wasn't a termination provision. is you need to give 180 days if you want to extend for an additional 5-year terms. How on earth was that
confused? The summary in in in all regards could not have been uh could not have been more wrong. And when we finally uncover this, there's some media stories on it. Some
of us become aware as what's happened and we ask for backup documentation and what do we get? We get another memo saying that there was a scrivener's error in the original version of what
presented to us. Now um believe me chair there there's no irony that is lost uh in all of this in the most recent memo which said which spelled the word scribner's error wrong. It spelled it with a B. >> Mr. as opposed to a Z. >> I I don't mean to cut you off.
>> I'm going to finish chair if I may. >> Yes. >> I'm going to finish chair if I may. >> So, there is no irony lost in the fact that we misspelled Scriber's error in the executive uh follow-up memo that we got. Um, however,
what really irked me about all of this is a Scriber's error is if somebody misspells my name, somebody puts an extra M at the end of my name, that's a Scrivener's error. or if I get an extra hyphen in a name. That's a scribner's
error. A scrier's error is not when you mix up whether or not a contract can be terminated or extended by 180day notice. That is not a scrivener's error. This in my mind, chair, is is is unacceptable. And I'd
like I'd like to ask the following question. chair, who drafted the original executive summary that was presented to this board before the June uh 17th vote was taken, and who drafted the executive follow-up uh summary that we got explaining that this was a quote unquote
scrier's error. >> I'll have Dr. Fulton answer that and then we'll have to move to another board member on the list because we have a policy about five minutes and we're way beyond five minutes. >> I appreciate the extra time,
>> Dr. Fton. Thank you. Uh, Miss Paul, both were out of my department. >> I'm sorry. Was that Was that a punt? I I I heard that out of my department. She said it was it her the um
>> the department >> her department. >> Okay. Do we know who in the part the department drafted it? >> I approved it. >> Okay. Did you draft it? >> No. Um out of my leasing department, real estate and leasing department, but I approved it so I could respond.
>> And and was that the first original executive summary and the follow-up that we received with the scribers era explanation? >> Yes. To my knowledge, yes. >> Okay. Thank you. Are there any additional safeguards, Miss Paul, that we can put in place in your department to make sure something like this doesn't happen again?
>> Definitely. In terms of if we enter into a contract, uh making sure that we coordinate with legal to make sure that the um termination clause is included. >> Thank you. Thank you, chair. >> Thank you, Dr. Zean. >> Thank you, chair.
um this body made a mistake and it's uh it's easy to um point fingers at other people, but I'll point out every time you do that, you're pointing three fingers at yourself.
It's our responsibility to review contracts. It's our responsibility to ask questions. And it's on the Broward County School Board for making this mistake. I don't think that we can walk away from our own responsibility. I think we got
to own this as well. We're going to terminate this contract tonight. All the other details, we ought to take some time and think through these processes. We have certainly learned some things about legal review and about negotiations in Brower County that are surprises to some of us and we
need to tighten those up and make sure that this board is aware of everything that we have to approve. Clearly the legal review was different than we expected and that's an area in which we can make some uh dramatic improvements. But at the end of the day, we had this item in our agenda packet. Uh we had
time to review it. Uh we could have asked more questions and I'm just not going to point fingers at the staff and say it is the lawyer's fault. It's the real estate department's fault. It's our chief operating officer's fault. We blew this with a capital W and a capital E.
This is our mistake. And so if we're going to cancel this, which is great, and I appreciate that, Miss Bowman did some amazing work uh to get this to us. Uh the damage will be minimal. Uh we will find space for the
staff that we're going to go there in in better spaces. And I'll remind people that we're doing a bunch of other things to save money, too. We are closing this building. We voted nine to nothing to do that. We are actively moving uh lease space into this building. We are moving staff from buildings that we have sold
or leased into schools and we are doing everything we can uh to make sure that we're being as efficient as possible going forward uh with this space in Broward County. So this is a black eye. Let's take it as a black eye. Let's heal. Let's fix the things we need to fix and we can fix um and let's move on.
Thankful that this had minimal damage. um and thankful to the the people that are still here to help us fix this. Uh Madame Superintendent, if you don't mind, um could we get a follow on from you of lessons learned from this
particular uh uh item, you know, both for for kind of general staff improvements and for schoolboard improvements to make sure that we don't do this again. >> So, that is a yes and thank you, Dr. Zemer. We actually are prepared to do a afteraction after this board meeting.
Um, and we are ready and able to follow the direction of the board. >> Thank you. And chair, last question. Did this cost us any money? >> Dr. Fulton, >> defer that to Miss Paul. >> Yes, it did. Uh, it was the deposit that
we put down, the 80,000 plus uh 425. Hold on. Let me make sure I have the right numbers. [Applause] Thank you. So, it was deposit the deposit we put down uh $85,000
plus the rent for June which was $198 and then the subsequent rent was 425. We have not paid the November bill. >> Terrific. So there's more of a cost uh than anybody should be happy with.
>> Right. And um you know that's that's uh that's very unfortunate but we are fixing the problem. I hope uh madam superintendent that we can you know learn from this and and make sure that um that we are more thoughtful about how
we describe things and we do things in a different way. I for one, Mr. Superintendent, is going to be looking very hard at kind of the relationship between our different departments negotiating versus a legal review of that negotiation uh to make sure that our side is fully represented. Uh I
think we have to accept um the way things have been and that's you know not the way you do things in the modern world. As Mr. Sea pointed out, lawyers need to be fully um empowered to do what lawyers do well, which is to ensure that we get the best deal that we can out of
every deal. even if it's a pre-formatted contract from someone else, um we've got to do uh as a body, we've got to spend other people's money uh with a great degree of fidelity. Thanks a lot, chair. >> Thank you, Mrs. Leonardi.
>> Thank you. Um and I I agree with Dr. Zean uh that this board needs to take responsibility for this as well. Um you know, like you said, it's easy to to try to blame other people. I think we all can take some accountability, at least
those of us who voted for this item. Um, I appreciate Miss Paul taking ownership for her department, and I appreciate Dr. Fulton uh informing us that they will be doing an afteraction
um on this after this meeting. But I still have some questions and concerns. So can someone again uh help me understand the process for negotiating this contract like the collaboration that happened between our
real estate department and legal? >> Miss Paula and Miss Batista. So the the process is that um not not just for this contract but in general the um user department which would be in
this case um the real estate department uh would um you know identify whatever lease they're looking for or space they're looking for. That's something that that department would do. Uh once
they find that space, they would um negotiate uh from usually our template um a lease with that other party. In this particular case, for whatever reason, they accepted the the contract
that was presented by the the um landlord. Um once that those items are negotiated by that department be it in this case a real estate department in other cases it could be any other user department then it comes to legal to um
review as to substance and form and that's what we um sign off on. If we obviously see something that is um different from what we normally would see as in this case um Mr. Cooney I know wrote a couple of emails to that
department um and he did not re receive a response as to some um issues that he identified with the contract and um you know from that point forward uh from my department's view if
if operations of the district would like to have a particular agreement for whatever reason we do not question the business operation part of of the of the deal. We only look at it to make
sure that it is uh legally sufficient. >> Okay. I don't know. Did Miss Paul want to add anything? >> Mrs. Paul? >> No, I don't. >> Okay. Um why do we under do we know why Mr.
Cooney did not receive a response to his email flagging certain issues in the contract? Miss Batista. No, we do not. >> Mrs. Paul, >> that is something I'd have to look into.
I was not aware of that. >> Okay. So, it sounds like to me that there is a communication lapse that I think um should be unacceptable for our standards. So, I hope that that is
remedied. Um, I I heard Mr. Cooney say that this is a this seemed like an ownorous one-sided agreement. So, why didn't our team negotiate
something that wasn't ownorous and one-sided? >> Is that question for Miss Paul? >> It's legal. >> Yeah, Dr. Fton. directly that to legal. >> Well, it's been established legal
doesn't negotiate that piece. So, it would have to be >> Let me ask a different question. Let me ask a different question. >> Was did legal represent that this was an ownorous one-sided agreement to staff in any way?
>> Miss Batista, >> I I believe so. Yes. I didn't use the term ownerous, but I said that there's um multiple provisions that are not favored by the SPVC, such as indemnification and the duty to defend the landlord, etc. I didn't use
the term owners, but in my words, you have a 43page lease agreement. Um, it's well written, but certainly in favor of of the landlord. >> So, you you use the words not there are several provisions that are not favored by SBBC. >> Correct. >> And
>> that are legal, but they're not favored. >> Right. >> Right. Um, and you did not receive a response to that? >> No. >> Is that acceptable? >> No. >> Okay. Um,
what message does this send to other organizations as we look to do real estate transactions um in the coming months and years? >> Dr. Fton. Um well well seeing it play out like this
certainly it doesn't um make any other businesses or anything look like they want to go into an agreement with us if we entered a contract and now we're um perhaps probably putting a pause so I can see where there's questions and concerns regarding why we got here and how we got here.
>> I guess I I look at it from a different perspective. If I'm an organization looking to do a real estate transaction with us, um, and we agreed to an agreement that was not favored by us,
uh, it looks like we are open for people to exploit us. And that is certainly not my position. Um, and it's very concerning to me given the the position we are in with under enrollment and so
on and so far forth um with with what we're trying to do with our schools. Um, so I guess I'll ask what I think are the most important questions, which are what accountability measures
are being taken to remedy the fact that the nature of this agreement was misrepresented to the board. >> Dr. Fton. So, like I said earlier, we definitely have to do an afteraction and determine um where the gaps were or where did we not follow process or
procedure and make sure that we hold those accountable for anything that went outside of what is expected to whenever we're doing an agreement or at least an agreement with with anyone. >> Okay. And then the same question goes to the fact, you know, what accountability
measures are we going to take um regarding the fact that we were presented with an agreement that was ownorous and one-sided and not favored by us. Um because I'll tell you what, like the board members up here, we are hel being held accountable in the court
of public opinion. Like we're getting the phone calls and and we are embarrassed by our vote on this. Um, but what how is staff being held accountable for not doing more to protect this institution um from an agreement that was not
favorable to us? So certainly as Miss Paul stated, we definitely have to go back and um check with the owner of the the person that um entered the agreement on our side with BCPS and to see how we did not work in conjunction or in collaboration with legal because certainly when it comes to agreements,
we certainly want legal to be the the biggest adviser on that, making sure we're entering an agreement that is u not in favorable of um anyone else but in favor of us. >> Thank you. If we vote yes on this item, can we
expect legal action from the the organization that we're leasing we entered in the agreement with? >> Miss Batista. >> Uh Mr. Cooney. >> Um it depends. Uh I obviously wouldn't want
to get into the details of of what would be favorable to them versus us, but um it depends on the relationship that we currently have with Andy. I know we have other lease agreements teed up that have not come to the board yet with Handy. So perhaps there's room for negotiation
>> if there were to be legal action and I guess it would depend on what what that would look like. Um do we have any idea of how much that would cost us or is that too far in the future? >> I I couldn't range a guess right now.
Um, it would really depend on the u if there was a complaint filed, what they filed and how they articulated that. Um, so no, I couldn't give you a guess at this point. Sorry. >> Okay. Um, I appreciate Miss Bulman
bringing this forward. Um, I really hope that the commitments that were made here tonight around doing an afteraction, holding individuals accountable, um, so that this does not happen again, putting safeguards in place so that this does
not happen again, um, and sending the message that we are not up for exploitation um, when you're doing business with us. I really hope that we make good on those commitments. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Rupert.
[Music] >> Thank you. Uh, this has been a debacle from the get-go when the standard clause to end the contract was not included. Um, I understand that the review from legal is customary, but the other party created the document. So, I'm incredibly
disappointed that the contract still went forward even though our attorneys on record stated it was not in our best interest. Um, I have a few questions. Did the superintendent's office have the attorney's hesitance on record?
>> Dr. Fton? >> I don't think so. >> If not, which is where I thought you were going to answer, then we have a bigger problem. Okay. Why was this hesitance not shared with the board and certainly with the superintendent before
the vote? Miss Batista. Well, hindsight is 2020, but um normally that's not the the procedure, right? We try to work with the user department and not elevate uh a situation to you know
the superintendent or the board. Um and you know the process would be that that department would you know obviously respond to us and try to um negotiate better terms with the guidance from legal
>> and thank you for that. Um, but it still doesn't really answer the question as to how it kept going forward when there were moments along the way that could have been stopped. Um, also I want to thank the advocates and people from
committees that were here today because they were the canary in the mine and this certainly to even get it to the point to have this conversation and awareness was from advocates and asking
questions and I wrote and I asked for followup which Mr. Sera Vera I can't talk sorry Mr. Vera so eloquently said that um you know there was there was errors in the followup but also um incorrect information about us being
able to get out of it. So bringing it back to that point. So I I was doing quick math English major so I give me you know a little grace. Uh we lost close to $147,000. [Music]
Is that correct? Mrs. Paul, >> I was adding the numbers up from you. 85 19800 425. >> Yes, ma'am. >> That comes to >> I should have did it. >> You're correct. >> Oh, I thought you said that isn't the number. >> No, no, I was saying you're correct.
>> Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you. I was like, "Oh my gosh, now I'm a math major." Um, so we lost that money and um, yes, that that was my next part is that what can we expect? And I know we don't want to actually put out our bargaining
aspect, but um, we do all the other ones with with handy that are in the wings. Um, I would certainly pull every single one of them and make sure that they are vetted with our learned attorneys and given the opportunity to work with the
real estate staff and get answers beforehand and certainly not come here. One of the reasons why I'm disappointed is we took a long time to get here as a board to try to get the confidence back
from the community and um this doesn't help moving forward with that. Um and the fact that erroneous information or incorrect information was shared um that's not a
good look on us either. So what's going on? Sorry. >> Am I okay? >> No, sorry. You're fine >> then. Um, so I'm looking forward to the after report, but uh I also think that we need to really take a deeper dive
than that. Um, and find out how the heck this happened. So, >> agreement, please. >> Thank you. I ha I have a quick question. Um, so I think we're missing some
dollars in the total because we said there was the deposit June and July, but what happened to August and September and October? You said we didn't pay November, but I'm guessing we paid August, September, and October as well.
So that would be another 42,500 times three. I have uh if I may uh Mr. Shim will explain that the dollars. >> Okay.
>> Uh Omar Shim, director of capital budget. Yes, it would be $85,000 uh for the deposit uh $19,833 uh for June and then $42,500 for uh
July, August, September, and October. that that's been paid for a total of about $275,000 or just under. >> Okay. Well, I I mean, just to point out that it wasn't just the the one month
because that was not clear. Um, so I just have a couple of questions. First, early on when school board member Bowman was talking, she mentioned something about paying lease to both Rock Island and Handy. I just want to be clear, we
own Rock Island. Yes, we don't play pay lease. >> We sold it. >> So, we're paying a lease to them to stay in there. >> I'm going to defer to Miss Paul, but I know we sold the property. >> Okay. We sold the property and we are not paying a lease to to be at Rock
Island. What we are responsible for is the maintenance uh uh for the areas that we occupy and then after that after we get out the urban league will tear down that whole facility. >> Okay. But we're not we're not leased
paying a lease. Okay. Thank you. Um a couple So I guess my other question and I'm sure every people are listening. We do have a long-standing relationship with Handy. Um, and sort of to Mrs.
Leonard's insinuations that she was giving over there, you know what? Handy does a lot with our homeless community. Um, they do a lot with us as a district. So, how I just want to know how the district
would frame this in a way that doesn't hurt the partnership that we have had with Handy for a long time. Like I and I do have a concern also with the idea that in terms of a lawsuit I we did fund
this in our budget. So to back out of that at this point I think would be my concern. Like I get it for the next school year and and on. But it's already been budgeted. We already went into an
agreement with them. And I'm not saying I don't want to get out of it, but I'm just looking at the legal part of what would that look like. We've paid we're halfway into this year already. So I if Mr. Cooney could just kind of give his
thought on is that something that that would be a big flag? Is that what it >> Yeah. Now we're we're getting into the details of something that I would need to contend with. >> Okay. So, I have a concern um about that. And I just on a flip side want to
say most of the time we're complaining that the our legal department is is looking into things too much and that it's taking long because they're putting the items back and forth. So I do want to just say that, you know, the legal
department often does do the job of looking at a contract and looking out for the best interest of the district. So, I don't want anyone to walk away here thinking that legal doesn't do that on a regular basis because I can tell you from many conversations with Miss
Batista that um that that that definitely happens. So, I I appreciate the item. I do agree that we should be putting our our staff in places in our own schools and places where we have
space, but I do have a huge concern about how this alters and affects our very positive and needed relationship with Handy if we just back out in the middle
as opposed to finishing a year that's being funded already. um and and not moving forward in the next school year. So, those are my thoughts, Miss and we'll finish up with Mrs. Bulman. Thanks, chair. Um I I wanted I had a
couple follow-ups about the legal um beating that legal is taking right now. Uh because you know when I also do this for my day job. So, um, the a commercial lease agreement is
generally very pro landlord. That's not an unusual thing that's to have happen. That's how they write them. So, the fact that the executive summary said that there was a termination clause was amazing to me and I thought, hey, great. This is great. I actually think that the
um allocation clause was very good. I believe Mr. Cooney put that into the into the lease. So that is very helpful to us. Um Oh, it was already there. Okay. So then I mean so that so that was good. I don't think that the lease is
particularly terrible or unusual. Um but I do think that there's a an overarching issue of why we're having this lease brought to us in the first place when we are underenrolled, have a ton of space and plenty of places to put
people. And in fact, again, like I said in the beginning, you know, we're out there trying to protect our schools, trying to represent our communities, try to do the least amount of damage and every and here we are fighting over a lease that we should have never had in
front of us in front as far as I'm concerned. Um, in terms of our relationship with Handy, this this is a tough one, but this is business and we've been through a day of very
tough budget realities and so we're going to have to make some tough decisions. I think it's going to come down to this as well. I mean, and obviously we don't know how much it would cost to litigate. Obvious, you know, ideally we would work out an agreement with Handy and get out of the
lease. We've already paid them a ton of money. And if you look on the other side of it, we are going to have to pay a ton of money to move everybody into the handy building and then move everybody out of the handy building. I mean, there's there's money that's going to be spent somewhere. So, we have to figure
out how we want to cut our losses. I'm not sure what other leases are coming down the pike, but again, we have a lot of space that we need to fill up and schools of hope coming breathing down our necks. We've only had letters from one of, I believe, seven different operators. So, I think it behooves us to
be looking into how we're going to be renovating our schools to make it work for us because that's where we need to be putting our priorities. So, I um there's a lot of unknowns, but we're going to be spending money either way. So, I just hope that as a
district, we're not getting any more of these proposals coming to us and we're figuring out how we're going to use the space that we have effectively. Thank you. Thank you. And I >> call the question. >> Okay. All those in favor of calling the
question say I. >> I. >> Those. >> Those opposed say no. No. I had something I wanted to add. What? All right. All those in favor of the item say I. >> I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Say
>> I. >> Any opposed? I don't hear Dr. Zean on the phone or Dr. Hoess. >> Alf. Yes. >> No, we got that. >> Dr. Holess, are you on the line? >> I'm sharing them all on the line,
>> but they I didn't hear them answer. Dr. >> Make sure they unlocked the mute just in case. >> Okay. I don't think you're muted, but >> all is answered. >> Yeah, >> I thought I thought Becca said, >> sorry, did you get me? I said yes. >> Yes, I the two I got the two of you. I
just didn't hear Dr. Zean or Dr. Hoess. >> Yeah, >> I got that. Thanks. >> So, minus Dr. Hoess and Dr. Zean. >> So, it's seven no 70. So the motion passes.
Okay. The scheduled order of business for the special schoolboard meeting of the school board of Broward County, Florida has been completed. Um before I do that, I just want to mention real quick that there were also other things attached to moving into Handy. So we
asked what we paid to Handy, but there's a a couple $10,000 that also went into wiring and stuff. So, I just wanted that on the record. Um, seeing no obligation, I now adjourn the meeting. Have a great day. >> Hi, you've reached out.