your elected representatives to collaborate openly among ourselves and make decisions that will decide the future direction of our public schools and education of our children here in Klay County. There will be an opportunity for the public to ask questions at the end of the workshop presentation. Questions will be allowed.
Public comment will not be allowed. If you wish to ask a question, fill out a comment card with your question and hand that card to a deputy. Your participation is welcomed and appreciated. Um, and since we have no special guests, I know it's been kind of
crazy the last couple of months. We kind of do. We do. She's on the screen. Just kidding. Okay, we'll start with you then. This is the property casualty insurance. Okay, never mind. Sorry. We'll get with the board after. Jory,
you're up. I Good. Hi. Good morning. My name is Jory Vanderort with Can Can you all hear me? Yes. Yes. Okay. I'm getting a little bit of an echo on my side, but we'll we'll power
through that. So, this is the property and liability uh renewal. It includes the workers comp. For some of you that have been here before, the the um presentation will look a little bit different.
So, we'll go through a couple of the pieces about the market. We'll talk a little bit about the structure of the program. Can you still hear me? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Sorry about that. I pressed a button and everything went silent. But again, I first before I even jump into this, I appreciate you letting me do
this virtually. I usually prefer to come into town and do this, but I have some family obligations that I had to attend to, but I can certainly be available in the future to come out and meet with you guys or certainly on the phone or any
future virtual meetings. So, what we'll do is we'll talk a little bit about the marketplace and then the structure of the program and then get into the the pricing. think that you all have a hard copy of this, so you might have reviewed it, but I'll I'll try to go through it. I'll try
to stop at the end of each slide to see if there's any questions because I know sometimes working through things virtually can get a little bit uh crazy with with some of the communication. So, um you know, like I said, the property market, you know, in years past, you know, a couple years ago, we
were seeing these prices really significantly increasing. had to make some changes to it. Last year we started seeing some reductions and we started seeing that settle down. We saw more capacity come into the marketplace which
then brings in more com competition. That's a good thing for you. Obviously property for you all is a big budget item and so we like to see when there's competition. You know last year the big this is from the various hurricanes that went through
Florida. don't really seem to be affecting the marketplace right now that we've seen if the wildfires and some of the things that happen throughout the country have any negative effect. But so so far so good. Um and with that I we'll
I'm going to move to the next spot to the next page. But does anybody have any questions about the property market itself? Okay. The next page talks just like a couple little items about each of the lines of
coverage and sort of marketplace. The general liability that's like your slits and falls, things of that nature. That market is much more moderate. The auto liability continues to see some rate increases. Um mostly because the insurers are looking to manage, you
know, some of these outside outsized verdicts in many jurisdictions throughout the country and and certainly in Florida as well. Yeah, abuse and molestation that continues to be a difficult um coverage the school leaders ENO and employment
practices policy or coverage that is actually your coverage as board members. It's your Arizona missions that's showing some nominal rate increases the uh excess workers compensation while we don't have new carriers entering the
marketplace. um the rates, you know, have risen, but we've carrier that you've been with has been able to provide some pretty competitive stuff over the years, although we market that as well. And then there's cyber liability as well.
There any questions at this point? So, one of the things or one of the main drivers of some of your besides the market, the other main driver of your insurance coverages are your exposures. And this year, this year the district
and their their team really spent a considerable amount of time working on their property values, which was a good thing to do at this time because we were seeing property rates decrease. And so we're able to offset a lot of that any
potential increase because of u the values. So um you know like I said I wanted to point out that the team itself your team did an exceptional job in research and their methodologies and um
what they came up with was really about a 24% overall increase on some of those property values. The problem was is that you know they haven't been really updated in the last couple years because the way that the marketplace had been
gradually exposed these are the exposures that affect your general liability, your auto liability, your workers comp, things of that nature and those had a more mild uh increase. You know we can see obviously the payrolls coincide with the employees and both of
those went down by 7%. Um the operating expenditures were up a little bit and then uh the student count was was up. And you know the the district's team also worked extensively really to get us
um the these figures and to make sure that they were accurate both from the historical standpoint and you know look to the future standpoint. Do we have any questions on that? So just quickly overall as I mentioned at the outset this is a really good
renewal. There's some mild increase uh in the program but mostly driven by the the property values. we were able to offset a lot of that. But he's so that we go we go out and market the program each and every year to make sure that
we're, you know, leveraging our relationships, that we're getting you the best pricing and the best coverages that are available in that marketplace. Of those 14 42 companies that were approached, 15 provided some quotes and indications and we have a few other
caregivers that are still reviewing um the uh submission. And you know what we're presenting today is um you know since it's June the 17th, the program renews on June 30th. So we'll still continue to work on these different
quotes over the next couple days. the pricing that you'll be looking at at the end of this presentation is really the the maximum that it would be and our goal is to, you know, shave off a few dollars here and there as well.
So before we get into the actual instructor of the program, I just wanted to take a minute on this page because I know we have some some new board members, some of the ones that have been there probably seen this and you might have remembered it, you might not. But I
like to always give us an idea as to the type of program that the school board has. Because a lot of times we talk about insurance and the only thing that real thing that we can compare it to is our own personal insurance, our homeowners coverage or maybe our business owners coverage. And the Klay
County school program is really vastly different. It's called a specific excess program. 95 right here where I put the green lettering. But we'll start over here on the left hand side of this chart and which is what's called a
conventional insurance program that is either really your more typical to your your business owner's policy or your homeowner's policy is a policy that provides you limits of coverage with little to no deductible. And the reason
that we put that on the side of this the continuum, the spectrum of being in less control is because when you have a claim, you either have a small deductible or no deductible, and you you report the claim to the carrier, and the carrier takes
over from that point from dollar one, handles the claim, decides if they're going to settle the claim, and they decide with sometimes little to no involvement from you as to how much to settle the claim. and that becomes detrimental for you if you start having numerous claims over the years and then
they want to penalize you for having loses. I saw this just recently with another client of mine that's in a conventional program and they had somebody slip and fall in a pool. They didn't think much of it. Uh the person said they were fine and then a few days
later the person hired an attorney. the attorney reported the claim to the carrier and you know within you know several months a $500,000 uh claim was settled with little to no involvement from the client. So the
better way to do it is really what the Clay County School Board is doing is you're in what we call a specific excess like a protected self-insured program. Whereas you take a large self-insured retention and you buy excess
you buy excess coverage on top of that. And so you're controlling and managing the claims in your self-insured retentions. you have your own, you hire a um third party claims administrator that helps you manage those. You have lots of involvement and you're able to
use your own attorneys to um settle those claims and you're able to, you know, put together your entire team and it ends up in the long run providing a lot more um becomes a lot more cost effective for you. And so I want to go ahead on to the next page just so that
you can get a feel for the program itself. I won't go through every single line of these, but it an idea as to what this is telling you is if you look at the bottom left hand uh corner, you can see my
cursor there on the bottom left, these yellow boxes, all the yellow boxes are your deductibles or your self-insured retentions. And so the first column is your property tower. Your second tower is what we call the schoolboard package
which incororporates a number of liability coverages. You have workers compensation coverage. Equipment breakdown is also known as boiler and machinery coverage. You have your storage tanks and then an active asalent liability.
And then I talked about on the previous page about your retentions. I know this chart is a little hard to see even when it's printed out. But from a property standpoint, you will have a $100,000 self-insured retention for the
liability. You have a $200,000 self-insured retention on the workers's comp. A $500,000 self-insured retention. And so those are things that you know you're working with your claims administrator, your attorneys are involved, the risk management team is
involved in in doing the investigations and really trying to get these claims settled to the best that uh that they can and you know under the thresholds of the excess insurance. Anybody have any questions?
Not yet. Go on. So this is the page probably everybody has already seen because I believe we do have a handout on it. Um but see that this is the figures that came in. Column one is the program that's going to be expiring on June 30th
and column two is the apples to apples comparison of um column number one. So the number two is the renewal. The column number one is the expiring. And so overall um
you know we were looking at just under a 5% increase. As I mentioned the main drivers of the increase there are the changes and increases in those property values but we want to offset a lot of that uh through pushing the excess
property carriers for uh some rate reductions in those layers. So it wasn't a dollar per dollar 25% increase across the board. we were able to hold that uh at the 4.38%. You know, we always like to give you
options. Uh the biggest option for this was, you know, the excess workers compensation. So, we're talking about this line right here, if you follow my cursor. and um you know that it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense for you to be
taking on you know another $100,000 of retention for each and every claim only to yield a a one time savings of $18,000. We looked at um the claims themselves and you know this there's a handful of
claims up in the 3 400,000 area and with jury verdicts are and the cost of medical you know we just that's one of the problems with workers compensation is that you can still have decreasing amount of claims but even though you can
get one and it still you know pushes the envelope obviously on the actual costs themselves, the medical cost, the medical inflationary costs. And so that that was really the um the the difference between columns two and three.
The final page was just the notes, you know, really more like a summary of what we were talking about. You know, the there were 42 markets approached. 15 15 quotes had been received and presented. We we're still reviewing and so we'll
continue to work on these numbers. Um, as I mentioned on the previous page, the regal rates did improve significantly year-over-year and are very competitive in the marketplace. The workers compensation rate actually was flat. The excess property rate, what I
didn't get to on the previous page was that it actually decreased by 18% while the property values themselves increased 24%. So, you can see how we um really try to offset that. and and so the like I said the the main differences between
what you're seeing are are results of the the 24% uh change in property values and that's really it. Is there any any questions any items of discussions? I wanted to ask on on the page with the
renewal exposures. Um I know the student number is a a guess and I guess we'd probably rather be higher than lower, but how real is that number of 41,000
546? We'll see. We'll if you go by all Klay County students, it's a very real number. Okay. Many charters included DJ all under the umbrella. There's a such that
the previous year but the the real reason for the cost increase is property value. Correct. Correct. Okay. So even with the number of students that that would mean no but I just wanted to
verify how many that was that number was provided around March I think so I don't know if things have changed or if they were looking at something different um when we get new people answering the questions they may look at things from a
different angle. Yeah. Any further questions? Thank you, Jory. Thank you, Jory. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Again, I appreciate you allowing me to do this virtually. And if any if any has any questions, certainly you can reach out to me or to the risk management folks
and I'm happy to get on a call with you. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you. [Music] No more special guest. Okay. So, Sorry. I don't know why I was I was thinking that was going to be um district
presenting that. Um anyways, before we move on, I know we haven't been able to do this last couple months because of policy and everything that we've been that's been going on, but I wanted to discuss with the board. Is there anything that you want to bring forward? Anything you want to put on the agenda? Anything you want to talk about? Um just
kind of want to go around and start with Mr. Al. I have a couple things. Um, I had talked to you guys about maybe having a teacher chat or forum in the summer and I have some dates because I need to email the teachers that have signed up
and wondering if we could get to that real quick to see if any of these dates work for you. I was hoping to have everyone there, but if we can't make it as many as possible would be great. And then I will and I'm gonna ask Miss SWAT if we come up with a date. Maybe we can use the Orange Park room over at the
Orange Park High School Career Center where I did last time. Y So I have some dates in July. Teachers thought it was better after the leadership and then after 4th of July and then maybe the week prior to going back to school, but I have on here July 24th
21, 28 or 30. So towards the end of July, I can't do the 21st. Can't be 21. Um, I can do the 24th. What was the other one? So 24 would be okay with you. Mhm.
Can everybody do the 24th? I can. I can. Is the 24th good? You're talking about afternoon? Yeah, afternoon. Like evening. Yeah. So like maybe everybody, you have kids, whatever it could be. What time would you guys like it to be?
I was thinking maybe 3 4 o'lock. I think um I know like teachers too if you're wanting them to come if they have kids waiting for a spouse to get off work. Yeah, we could do it later too. We did it at 6:00 last time. I think that's good. Do you guys think 6:00 on the 24th?
Okay. Is that good, Mrs. Miss Watts? I'm looking July 24th and that's a Thursday. Yep. Yes, it is open and free. Perfect. That was so easy for us this time. Are you hearing that?
Yes. What What room did you say that was in Orange Park High? It's um in the It's the teacher learning center. So, it's that next to the adult community center. Yeah. In the back. Go down the Okay. Then I'll get to setting that that
up. And um many of the teachers are very excited and so I think it's going to be a great um I don't really know how to get the word out to all the teachers. I could only get the word out at the level in our newsletter. Well, our our newsletter won't be out till August. So,
can we do like uh Miss Dennis, can we do like a little flyer and get send it to all the teacher emails? Mhm. like generate a little flyer like, "Hey, we're board's going to hold a teacher form." We can do that. That would be great. And then I'll email the 32
numbers that I actually have right now. Text them and let them know and then maybe they'll tell other people at their schools as well. So that's perfect. Quick quick question on that. Um are we going to have an agenda for that meeting or So I have to work on that because teacher chats are what teachers want to
chat about. So, we'll have to, I guess, for sunshine reasons, come up with the language for such a thing. Um, it's really about the state of education, what's going on in classrooms, what we could do to help them. So, from a lawyer standpoint, I
don't know how we would advertise that type of forum. Yes, ma'am. So, I can I can get with u Miss Bonnie. we, you know, again, because more than one are there, we just want to make sure we, you know, put the public notice out, make sure it's accessible to the public. The sunshine law does not require a specific
agenda. It's helpful though when it's recommended. So, you could, you know, whatever y'all come up with, we can, you know, whether it's a question and answer or just the state of education. If it's one agenda item, we can kind of work with that. But we can um I can get one, Miss Miss Bonnie, and we can make sure that we Okay. Can we advertise it maybe
as like a town hall? cuz that sounds like more like what you're looking for is just for us to listen. Well, it's listening and I have an actual format that I've done some research on that will help them get very organized and about topics in general and then people could talk about those topics, but
they'll generate the topics themselves. So, it's really um mostly listening and having some empathy and just hearing at a different level um what's going on in their classrooms. So yeah, I don't think we're going to be
discussing a lot. We might have questions though, you know, that kind of thing. I just want to show what to expect as far as like are you wanting us to speak? If so, like I I want to know ahead of time what we're talking about. But so it'll start with probably them generating topics, right? And then
people could sign up for those topics to share if they have ideas or um you know, stories about what's actually been happening in the classroom. And I want to tell you that it's not hard to be compassionate about
what they say. I mean they what happens in the classroom is the most important thing I would say in child's education um other than maybe that home connection supporting us. And so they they need to have a venue where they can speak
freely. And at this point it I mean it's good for us because a lot of um teachers trust us. So I think it'll be I think it'll be good for us and I think it'll be great for them. So and the only other thing I wanted to ask if we could put on
the agenda either August or September for a workshop. We currently worked our way through these. Um I brag about us all the time and I gave Tom a hug at the um FSBA summer convention and he was so moved
and I have to tell you what he honestly said was um and then I hugged him again because I just felt like I just like it was a really a really great thing for me that we did something so enormous. Most people don't understand the depth of what we did. But he said,
"No wonder you're in a county. You're the nicest district we ever worked with." And so I just wanted you guys all to know that. I only see what happens here, right? When we were like asking to change things and I would say it's not really confrontational, but that kind of
discussion happens. But when he also talked about the kindness and the generosity of the district and how easy you guys were to work with, I wanted you to know that. So thank you. Um, so the other thing now that we worked our way through there, there's part of um I
would like us to put on the agenda the student code of conduct and go through it by section. I would like to leave that to Mr. Broski and our chair to determine, you know, how to move through that. It's a very big project. I'd like to make it smaller, more user friendly,
specific, to the point, and very like our policies where parents don't need to read through 30some pages to decide uh to sign. Um, I'd like it to be done by sections so that we have time to
see if there's changes we would like since we just redid our policies, uh, to see if there's areas we'd like to move forward in a different direction, keep it the same direction. So, um, that's what I would like to see happen either starting in the and I say starting August or September because changes I've
learned a lot in my last couple of years. You start August and try to get ready for your changes the following school year. So, I feel like it wouldn't be very stressful um for the district or ourselves to have plenty of time. So, that would be up to you. Would it be easier to do it in September
starts? Yeah. Yeah. Wait till September so the ow budget and all that stress cuz I know it's all hands on deck with the budget this go around. Um so September, can we do that and prepare plenty of time to do that and do
sections? you guys can divide it, you know, cuz I think some sections like we've gone over like, you know, cell phone policies and tobacco, some things are already done in it, but there are other things I've looked at for now my third year that I we haven't talked about it all. So, I just think it would
be good for us. So, you decide then. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll get with We'll we'll try to do September and then I'll leave it up to him to decide sections. we can start from the beginning or whatever he thinks would be beneficial. But thank you for
your time. Yes. Other than what I brought up the last time, just a brief I think the board needs a brief education on the self-funded way you'd account for things. So I don't think we necessarily have to invite the Bailey group. I think
Michelle or someone from our accounting department. So you want um at the next workshop a probably presentation on that. I think we just need to explain the changes that are coming and how the funds will be utilized in the claims not
necessarily to be applied to reduce premiums or it reduces co-pays and claims. Okay, that's it.
I have nothing. I don't think um I told Mr. Rossy this morning I felt a little out of place because we've been preparing so hard for these last few workshops with all the policies. I didn't know what to do. Um I felt like I was forgetting something this morning
because of all the hard work that we have done um and the amount of policies that we had to bring in every day. So uh or every workshop. So I have nothing um currently um or at this time. So uh Mr.
Broski. So next on the agenda we have a presentation um by our family and community engagement department. You know it. So this is Karen McMillan and um and Tori Gise. Many of you might
know or may not know that that Karen retires here in like what do you got a week? Two weeks. Two weeks. Right. So Tori is kind of taking over the the helm there. So they're going to co-present uh this morning. It became really apparent
uh to us when we back when we formed our strategic plan a couple years ago. How to engage parents uh and our community is very important to the board uh and it should be. If parents have students 86% of the time, it makes sense that you
need to engage that group and also um get that group to engage with the school system. It's well known fact that that parents that engage with the school system, their students do better in school because they are engaged, right? And so we kind of created a presentation
and and not to spoil it and tell you the end before the beginning, but really two things. one when we started to do the policies we had a meeting in which you said hey we should do an inventory of what are the things that we are currently doing right it doesn't make
sense to approach this at like hey let's do this let's do that the first step would be what are we currently doing related to engaging parents in our community and we're going to share that information with you but then also uh enrollment uh trends I think it was Miss Gilhousen
in the last workshop I believe it was was asking those sorts of questions. The budgets the budget discussion uh that that came up kind of plays into that a little bit. So, this is kind of a mixture of those two objectives in there. So, with that, I'll I'll turn it
over to Karen. All right. I appreciate the introduction. So, let's go ahead and dig in. And like he said, this is this presentation does serve two purposes. One, to address the concern of where are the kids going? And two, as Miss Hansen
has brought up several times, what are we doing to engage the kids, right? Because we do recognize the importance of this. So, you actually I'm sorry. I apologize. So, you guys do actually have two documents in front of you. You have a booklet and inside the booklet is the
presentation that mirrors the booklet. So feel free to follow along with whichever one you're most comfortable with. The same information is in both. The presentation is a more abbreviated version of it though. All right. And the first thing you'll see is the executive summary that kind
of goes over um the work that we have been doing in the community relations department, family and community engagement specifically, but and how hard we have worked to build that foundational knowledge. Like Mr. Prosky said we have to inventory before we can
decide what next steps are. So we did do a lot of inventorying and building processes this year along with collecting some additional data and pushing out some initiatives and the introduction covers how much we do value
that partnership with our families and with those community members. We don't take it lightly and we recognize that it was a priority with the board. So since it was a priority with the board um as well as a priority with our families and our schools um this is as a
result of the strategic plan goal number three um we formed the family and community engagement department. Um so you'll see in front of you you have our goal number three. It is to engage families in the community in the educational process to create robust learning opportunities and partnerships
that support and prepare students to be successful throughout the K12 educational experiences leading to graduation and beyond. So around this strategic plan, goal number three, we we we accomplished a lot in year one, uh one that you are
very familiar with was we standardized and supported the volunteer system. And we'll share what those numbers actually look like after just this one short year. We delivered and supported language assistance, language assistant devices at every single school. So it
does not matter what language a family speaks, they can go to the front desk and get support with registration and get their questions answered. And not only does it support English language learning families, but it also supports the hearing impaired families. Um, we sent out a parent survey and it
actually is an annual parent survey where we asked parents, what do you want family engagement to look like? What do you want communication to look like? We asked them how they felt about the services that their children receive. And believe it or not, 91%
of the respondents are happy with their overall child's educational, excuse me, experience. Um, also to engage all of the stakeholders, we also met with the school leaders and district leadership
to see what how they also engage families. We developed a field trip process and we h we now have first time ever data on all the field trips that happen in our district. We developed a summer camp process because we recognized the
importance of giving kids the these extra experiences. But teachers needed guidance, school leaders needed guidance. We refined the district school and teacher communication platform. We marketed and promoted school and
district achievements. We initiated new district and school websites and the ripples from this are immeasurable because that that's also where our communications enhancement came from. We streamlined registration guidance. One of the things the parents said in their
parent survey was our website was a little cumbersome. So, we've really really been looking at cleaning that up and auditing what those trails look like. Every month I downloaded a withdrawal report and an enrollment report to look
at trends. For the first time ever, we started sending out withdrawal exit surveys to families that moved away or to families who chose an alternate educational option. We represented and marketed Klay County
District Schools at community events. You saw our tent at the fair. We were at the bicycle rodeo. We'll be at the back to school bash at the Thresher Vorn Center. We supported districtwide events, state of schools, art show,
athletic awards, all county chorus, all county band. We're there. We're supporting them and we're looking for ways that we can enhance the parent experience, which really they just want their children to have a good experience, right? We also supported annual national
events, month of the military, child, dads and donuts, things like that. I know Terry regularly pushes out resources and information for schools, but we cannot look at enrollment trends without discussing the voucher system.
Real quickly, just a quick explanation of the different voucher options. FTC, the Florida tax credit is one that has been around forever. It was for families of poverty to have a pathway out. Not a pathway out, a pathway to an alternative
educational option. That's a better way of saying it. Family Empowerment Scholarship, Feso. Families can use their funds to go to private school to apply to private school tuition. FESUA UA is unique
abilities. These are for kids with special needs. Families can choose to homeschool and use their funds to support services for their child's special needs. The PEP scholarship is the scholarship
where personalized education plan families can use the funds with whatever pathway they choose. So let's do a little historical walk. Forgive me. Thank you. So little joke.
I do get so passionate about it. My husband's on the regular talking about, "Hey, calm down. Calm down." So 2122 cuz when all of these came into being, there were guard rails in place, right? To protect the state, to protect
school districts, to protect families. But as each year passed, we saw some guard rails removed. This year, the guardrail that a child had to have attended a public school prior to qualifying for the scholarship, that
guardrail was removed. This year, we saw the cap go up for the number of vouchers they were going to provide, but also no longer is it just families of poverty. Now, it's families of poverty and middle class. Right here,
2324, we see House Bill 1 come into effect. Now, all the guard rails are off. A family's earning capacity is irrelevant. And the number of vouchers they're going to provide, irrelevant, right? All the
guard rails are off. 2425, you see House Bill One taking full effect. I'm going to give you a second to just kind of look at each of the sections. And something that we included in your book that we thought was really important to note was that Florida is
home to seven out of every 10 students nationwide using a voucher. Wow. Yeah. Like that that was kind of a shocking piece of data when we came across that one. Now let's come back home. Let's look at
what's happening in Klay County. So we have two pieces of data here. We have projections. Now remember projections are what we base our budget on, right? Our projections. 22 23 we see the projection in yellow. We see how many
children showed up. The 10day count. The 10day count is what all districts do. This is where we do that butts and seat count, right? The warm body count. We met projection. 23 24 comes. We didn't meet projection.
Two things happened that year. One, House Bill One comes into effect. That makes making projections a moving target, right? And we had a charter school open up with more grade levels than we anticipated. Again, a moving target.
2425 comes, House Bill one is in full effect. Again, we're not meeting projection. There are two more pieces of data that need to get taken into effect that are shocking. 25 school year graduating class, largest
graduating class in US history. Did you know that? Incoming kindergarten class, smallest in US history. These are the COVID babies. This is the co year, right?
So, it's not a matter of where are the kids going because again, look at the blue bar. Just look at the blue bar because as Mr. Broski says all the time, facts, not fiction. Projection is a moving target. The blue line are facts.
Notice there is not a mass exodus from Klay County District Schools. We're maintaining our enrollment and in fact marginal growth each year. Would we like to see more growth? Of course. And we will constantly be looking in the communications department of how to
improve family engagement. constantly. It's a priority of yours. It's a priority of ours and it's a priority of our schools. So, two pieces of data that I look at are the movement, the migration number,
the migration data, and what we're getting from home ed charter schools, private schools. Now, this is just two pieces of data. I look at all of it, but this is just two pieces of data. And this is just after the first
day of school. So, I want you to be clear. This isn't the big summer movement. This is the second day of school to the last day of school movement. We see once school is started. You see this in this number? They moved here to Klay County
from outside of Clay, outside of Florida or out of the country. Moved this number. These are people who came to us from home, from a charter school,
from private school after the first day of school. This again same two pieces of data after the first day of school but this is withdrawal. They left us after the first day of school
moved away or left us to pursue an alternative educational option. Now I will tell you you cannot just how do I go back? You can't just overlay
these two pieces of data. They're not a onetoone correspondence because there are a ton of factors that go into enrollment. There are a ton of factors that go into withdrawal because we did not we're we're not counting early graduation. We're not counting dropouts.
We're not so there are other numbers that figure in. So you cannot just overlap and say well this math this doesn't math out because you can't do that with this data. This is just two pieces and we know there are other school
choice options in Klay County. We know there are private schools and now that private schools are getting taxpayer money, they they they have money now to expand offerings to expand grade levels to expand their buildings.
We know that we have three brickandmortar charter schools and one virtual charter school. We know home education has seen some growth, but we know we're the superior product here
in Klay County. I'm a 30-year veteran here. I raised my kids here. Like, nobody loves this county more than me. But talking facts, not fiction. just the services our our school choice options we offer the accelerated program
options ID ACE dual enrollment AP we offer fine arts we offer athletics we offer monastery and that doesn't even count the ESSE and the ELLL services that kids get and the mental health
services kids get we are the superior product. We are outperforming. I'll get off that soap box again. I feel very passionate about this.
So, we went from the state and we looked at that voucher usage, the vouchers getting pushed out. Let's look at what it looks like in Klay County. So, there are a couple of specific data points that I want you to intentionally look at. The first one is just the yellow
bar. So just the yellow bar is the vouchers getting used in clay counting. And you see I'm going to use the word exponential again again. An exponential growth
across literally just three years. Right. Exponential growth. Yeah. But look at the difference between 23 24 and 2425. That's huge. Huge. Yeah.
Huge. Because House Bill one, right? They removed the cap of the number of vouchers they were going to give. But here's what I want you to look at as well. So, homemed, homemed is this third bar right here. Coming out of COVID,
homemed was huge. People felt the need to home their kids to protect their kids, right? We understood that. We did. But then you see it stabilizes back out, right? But what I want you to notice is
though the voucher usage in Klay County is a huge growth. Notice you don't see a mass enrollment in those other options. And what that means is families who have never been in Klay County District
Schools, who have chosen to homeschool, who have chosen to private school for their lifelong, now have funds available to them to apply to that choice option and they're taking advantage of it. So again, it's
not a mass exodus from Klay County schools. It's people who had not previously qualified are now using funds. [Music] But we do always want to win anybody
back who thinks that there is a better option because we do need to make everybody aware of how good this option is. So some things we're doing is a big kindergarten enrollment campaign. We do recognize that if we get kids in kindergarten,
we potentially have them for life, right? Our elementary schools are doing kindergarten tours. They're doing kindergarten signing dates. If you follow our elementary schools on social media, they are doing the most unique, adorable things out there to engage
to engage families and to support their registration. We're doing exit surveys because we do value the feedback of families that have moved and of families that have chosen another option. We are working on our communications
because again the family survey said we need things to be better. We're working on making it better. It's been a priority for yours and a priority of ours. We have six focus schools that are experiencing declining enrollment. So,
we've expanded our controlled open enrollment I'm sorry, our controlled open enrollment campaign to a bigger area. We are hosting more school events than
ever and I mean thousands across the district every year. And again, the volunteerism, the value of having our parents be an integral part of our schools is so
important and we are working every day on supporting them getting in our schools. This is one of the postcards that Trudy made that we're sending out for is this a kindergarten one or a controlled open enrollment one, Terry? That one is
during open school. So, we'll be sending that out targeted to some people. And the flip side has great like five facts that are great about our schools. Um, and also has a QR code that takes them directly to the registration link for Horning Island Elementary to help get
them registered with the school number and everything to call. So, all of our principles we've been working with closely um to individualize their so student pictures. Uh, we have real student facts on the back of what is offered at the school to personalize it
um with leadership. to get kids to come to their neighborhood school that all of them are A's and B's. Yes, I know there are very high performing schools, right? And a high performing school district. So, this is a good time for me to segue
over to Tori. These are future initiative. Um, she's very passionate, but so am I. I'm a current um, you know, I've been in Klay County my entire career since 2017 and I also have a child in Klay County school. So, she's going into second grade and I love being involved in all of the um school
offerings that our school does for um to engage their families. Um something I'm excited to obviously continue everything that Karen has put in motion, but I'm excited to start developing out is PFO PFA and PFO opportunities um to kind of streamline the process a little bit
more, get some common language, some common ground amongst these um organizations and encourage again that parent and community participation. Um we are also looking at offering alle course offerings to those that are currently in um a different school
choice option so they can come and maybe a high school student can take AP biology and have that lab component and just come in for that course. So we are looking into that. We're excited to explore that. Um we are going to continue um with the website communication enhancement. We are launching rooms. So, if you have a a
child in Klay County schools, you've probably gotten a couple of text messages and we are um really excited to um promote that and hopefully get that engagement prior to the first day of school starting. And then expediting event check-in was something that was really near and dear to our specialist
Paula's heart this year. Um she um launched it at OBV this year, one of well the biggest elementary school in the district. And um something that comes out of this is kind of twofold. again, always prioritizing student safety, ensuring that everybody is checking in through one point of entry,
but also really um encouraging families to come while not while honoring their time. It's very difficult if you've ever been to an awards ceremony or anything like that. You know, there is kind of a very tedious process to checking in and making sure that everybody has a badge
and everybody is um able to be there. Um so that is something that we're really excited to expedite um at multiple schools um in the coming year. We're going to continue to enhance our business and community partnerships. We're going to continue with um the
community um credit union partnerships this year with the school of the month. Um and we are looking to enhance those as well in the coming year um to build more community partnerships for all of our schools. And then we are also excited to again continue to streamline
the process for clubs and summer camp sponsors to provide that opportunity for parents, but also to encourage students to connect with their peers at their schools or at a neighboring school in a positive and productive way throughout the summer. So the the next part of your book kind
of is it's like a menu of things that are happening in our schools and across the district. And I just need you to know that the events that are listed here are just scratching the surface of everything that is happening out there. So let's just look at a brief overview
of some of these events. So the first thing that comes to mind is academic andformational events. We all know about open house orientation conferences. Our title one department, our ESAW department, our ESC department do an amazing job of also providing
events countywide and school-based depending on the needs of the community of that school um for all of our families to attend. They mix it up. They do some, you know, as many as they can during the day and then they do them at night and things like that to make sure that as many parents and families can
attend as possible. Um so you some of you have been to academic competitions, Battle of the Books, things like that. Um we have a the countywide science fair and um math field day is always a fun event to attend and we also um offer a lot of English language learner um
opportunities for parents and community members to attend as well. And even outside of the academics like our schools are a hub for the community. We have community building events. Multiple of our many of our schools host
carnivals and festivals and trunker treats and it truly does become this community event that binds our families with our schools. We have field trips we have and I'm not
not no spoiler alert. I'm not going to say how many field trips, but field trips AC within our community across the state. I mean, when you get in high school, some of these kids are traveling across the United States and experiencing things outside of their
community. You'll also notice that many of our high schools, junior highs, and elementaryaries welcome their alumni back, and we see the graduation walkthrough. Um, homecoming events
and holiday and seasonal events are huge. If you have any kids in our school system or ever did, you have been to you have been to these. Every school hosts those. We also host um an array of events both
at the school level and districtwide for parent engagement and support. These look like school advisory committees, PFAS, and PFOS. Um that's the parent advisory groups, the communication support networks. You likely get a if your kids attend K County schools, you likely get a newsletter from the admin
every week or a phone call um to let that you know what's going on that week. Um support networks as well. We also offer a ton of parent education and workshops related to anything you can name regarding mental health, regarding um ELLL learners. You name it, we
probably do it. But we know there's always room for improvement. Yeah. And you remember the smart the smartphone safety event like that was responsive to what parents were asking for. That one was a heavy hitter. Mhm.
We also recognize that a child has basic needs and if the basic needs are not taken care of, it's hard to take care of those academic needs. So our schools are also the foundation for taking care of some of these basic needs. We do have three community partnership schools that
don't just support the child, they support the entire family. We have health and wellness services that are available to kids. You'll see food pantries and food and clothes closets in several schools across our county that support our students.
So there's these are just a few of the numbers to speak to family and community engagement. We have over 414 business partners supporting our schools, supporting our students, supporting our school
district, high school and junior high students, athletes are a part of over 4,000 athletic events. This was a shocking number for me. This is every year. This is not a 10-year aggregate. This is one year.
For the first time ever, we have We know how many field trips were taken in our school district. We know where they went to. We know how many kids went. We know what teachers took them, what schools took them. 1,345 field trips were taken this year. One year. That's huge. Over 200 fine arts
events, many of which you guys have attended. in 10 months. This is our I love this number. Over 10,000 volunteers registered in Raptor in 10 months.
And of those 10,000, almost 2,000 paid themselves to go get fingerprinted because they recognized the importance of having that additional layer of security. And they respected our request. We we feel phone calls every day and not
one person is angry about this layer. We have 20 title one schools. One of the requirements of a title one school is to host at least three parent events that supports the academic success of the children in that community. And they don't just host three events at those
schools. They host many more. It's just those three are meant to close that academic gap that can sometimes happen. So, we look forward to increasing all of those numbers. No pressure at all. Great job, Karen. Um, kicking off this
department. I'm really excited to continue the work, the amazing work that Miss County is doing in engaging families and communities. We know it's a priority for you. It's also a priority for us and we want you to recognize that. And so we are always open s suggestions for moving forward and we
hope to continue um increasing those numbers into the 150th school year for play county district schools. Yes. Nothing like a good data set to finish excited about that. No doubt Karen's a
rockar and gouty and we'll miss her retirement. Dory do a great job. This was a priority of the board. This what we've been doing. Really, this issue came up well over a year ago. This is what we've been doing during that year to do this place where we are now.
So, you just continue on or anything? I just I just Yes, ma'am. I learned something in my FSBA conference. I know everybody's like, "Oh, right." But it's fairly simple. many districts. I mean, we talk about the strategic plan all the
time and this is a result of the strategic plan. What I'm asking is when we add items to an agenda, I would like to see what strategic plan item that goes for so we can build a
trail of how we're actually like a short and long-term goal trail. So like if we if we're working on parent engagement somewhere in the agenda it should say the strategic nothing should ever be done in our district unless it's part of the strategic plan. That's
basically it. And so we need to let people know we're actually working on the strategic plan when we make changes in it. So I think most districts they're not getting into a detail. It's like a blur addresses this part of the strategic plan. Yeah it is. So you currently we have spot on the agenda
item. It's the strategic plan goal. lists out the the goal and and also the strategy. You can certainly look at where is it on in the agenda for each item on the agenda item of every item that it's aligned to the strategic planning goal and they can click on it.
Mhm. Yeah. It it actually spells out and writes in wording what the goal is and what initiative or so we have a trail of all these changes we've been making. I think it does that for the board members view. Does it do that for the public's view? So they can see we're working on
it. They if they click on the item within each agenda that I publish, they will see they can see that piece of it. I've never tried it. So I think I think to the board members point, right? There's so many things you can do, right? You can find yourself going down rabbit holes. Oh, let's do this. Oh,
let's do that and not be focused. These were the five things that we said we were going to do. We're going to stick to those five things and a whole goal. One of the five was family community engagement. That's why you see all that work being done there related to that.
And I I just caution board members because sometimes you get anecdotal uh information which is the one phone call or the one whatever. I think when you look at a presentation like that and you see the facts and the numbers and the data that support that, that doesn't
mean that every single person in Clay that's physically in Clay County is going to um be engaged in the school system. And so they might uh you know give you some thoughts on on this uh separately. Uh and of course, you know,
we're compassionate to everybody and empathy for everybody around, but at the end of the day, you know, the facts don't don't lie, you know, as to how we're doing. Can we improve? You'd say that about And also, do we update the strategic plan as we go as well? So,
like we do, but I mean like as we go. show on our website. We do we have a um so we have a page on our website the strategic plan and we also have where you can look at it in full and then each year we update it. So last year you can
see last year's update. It'll say year one update. We are super close to finishing our year 2 update. What we're really waiting on is a state to release um the full and complete state assessment data. We know student data is
going to be critically important and there are some other few indicators that we kind of don't get till like July 1 and 8. So as soon as that's ready, we're super hopeful that um within the next we'll have that ready to go in about 30 days to share with you at a workshop. Yeah. So, I think it's
really important that everyone in the educational community understands that we're driven by our strategic plan. And I actually think this board should be more involved in that when we develop strategic plans. It is our plan with the district. And the community needs to
know nothing's just willy-nilly. We just don't we don't do things. And where I think part sometimes part of our problem is is people say, "What have you ever done about that?" like maybe we need to do a better job on our focus which comes from the strategic plan letting people
know that we actually have that plan. It's number one in our planning and the goals are achieved or updated each year that we're always moving in a positive direction. I honestly think that's the biggest misnomer is that we're just not really just opening up an agenda book,
right? We're actually really working toward the board and the district strategic plan every single day with the ultimate the ultimate goal is academic excellence. And so maybe that just needs we need to figure out how to share that we actually have a plan and this is
where we are on this plan to build confidence in the fact that we're not lost ever, you know, which something that we can also put in our our board or whatever. But I I just want to say thank you guys. Um,
the volunteering and the parents back in our schools was a big push for me. Um, I grew up in the '9s, so I grew up where my mom made homemade candy apples and brought them into school and we've kind of moved away from that and I want to
uh holidays are really big for me as a mom and and all of those special moments. Um, so I want to thank you guys for giving parents that opportunity back because I know we lost it with CO and even prior to CO. So, um, getting them
back in the classroom, which also helps academics across the board. Um, we've already proven that. We already know that. But I just want to thank you guys, especially for the volunteering. You've given them the option. If they want to, they can. If they don't, then that's fine, too. But they have that option.
And, um, you guys have have taken our our requests and done wonders with it. So, thank you very much, and I I greatly appreciate it as a mom. So, thank you and we appreciate the board's support. I think we know what you're going to retire into.
She's going to be volunteering. I mean, six months in one day, but looking at the success of Orange Park Elementary, right, is prime example of parent involvement. But at the same time, I mean, I grew up where my mom couldn't
get involved because she worked and we have to be able to help those students as well. So, um, this slide in particular, I felt like was super insightful, showing that, you know, our enrollment is stable, right? We're not losing students, but the voucher program
is expanding. And I just was wondering if maybe through FSBA or through FADS, there could be some statewide data um as we're looking to next legislative session and talking about our financial needs as a district. Um I'm not opposed to the state offering the voucher, but I
I do feel like it's um really crippling school districts when we're funding students who the state has never funded through us before. Um, so I think just helping them to see in a pictorial graph, we're not losing students from public education to private, but we're
now funding students who we never received funding for. Um, I I think I think that uh 23 24 is the first year in which all of the caps are taken off. And as Karen eloquently pointed out, that
would mean a person theoretically a person that makes a million dollars can still receive a state voucher for their child to go to private school and that money would be coming from public funds. So I I think transparency in the process is needed. Most people don't know that
or know the impact of that and so they kind of look at it and they say, "Well, you should just do do more with less." I think Klay County is one of those districts that we just have good people that work. I mean, I hope none of the counties listening out there. We just work a little harder and we have uh a
little better folks, I think, uh in Clay County, which is why we're as successful as we are. When you look at our per capita income in our in our county, we're about the middle of of the 67 districts. In other words, uh income is
often used as a statistic related to student achievement. The higher the income of the area, the higher the student achievement. Many sociological reasons why that is. Uh parent engagement obviously is one of them. And
learning environment at home and all of those kinds of things, but yet Klay County ranks as one of the top districts. Well, that's because we we do the support things, the other things to make up that gap. That gap is just not made up on its own. It's through hard
work and initiative that the gap is made up to where we are. It's the difference between uh where our per capita income is as as a district and our performance. So, I think that uh get the nail on the
head. I see this as a as a thing moving forward and we started we saw the train coming about a year ago which is why we formed this group in order to do that and work on also let's let's also kind of
remember the one thing that I don't want to be remembered for this but the segment always has to do customer service and uh my dad was a businessman so he would always talk about customer service that kind of was ingrained you in mind. So providing good customer
service to folks is still the objective. And so analyzing our processes that may be an impediment to folks and providing better customer service is always the name of the game. I also want to point out customer
service um is a two-way street and sometimes it's difficult to always provide the service to their le to their level if they don't like the decision that's that's been made. So, but we appreciate Karen's a rockar with Miss Karen. Tori is going to do great work
and board, you know, I the foresight you have to make this uh one of the strategic goals. It's it's extremely important for our families to be engaged and support our school system. We generally have that in proud of that. Okay, we do have an executive session
after this. I'm going to go quickly through this uh and and move right through it. So the agenda, uh, remember this is the meeting that that everybody's on summer break. Remember you had a meeting at the beginning of this month. So there's not a lot of time
in between the last meeting and this meeting, right? Not as much as there would normally be. So the amount of items on the agenda is a little bit less just because there's less time in the month. But we do honor our retirees. We had 121 retirees. That's uh 2379 years
of service. Uh, congratulations to all those retirees. I wouldn't expect Karen to be there, but no. Then as you kind of go through the agenda, it's some of the very same items. So, I'll skip over those. The minutes that you know about uh the uh
association dues, the the ENA, Zo contract, ENA is our our interconnectivity to every school is by that contract. This is a simple change of name. It went from EMA to
make sure I say that Zo education was different different same service provided there. The personnel consent agenda, the complete salary uh schedules in there. We're required by law to do that
once all of our groups are are done with that. The next one is the um SER the comprehensive evidence-based reading plan. We've been fortunate statistically we we've had an increase in ninth and 10th grade of 8%.
Uh our overall gains since the inception of the of the uh of the SER were six 6% in learning gains a 16% increase in the lower quartile. overall we ranked above the state you know 7 to 10 points for that all of that
is good news it starts at the it starts at the serve which is the plan for that we send this off to the state every year uh if you have specific questions about particular strategy you can certainly go through that next we have dual a dual enrollment agreement St. John River
State College. It's pretty standard every year. Next, you might find interesting Rolling Hills Community Development uh Clay High practices to do their swimming practice there. That's what that contract is about to do our
swimming practice uh there. Then there's an agreement with Clay County Fire Rescue for their program at Orange Park High School. remember that firefighter school that firefighter actually teaches the class from Lake County Fire Rescue.
Then you have the uh K12 academic services out of state overnight travel. And then there's the uh AMI kits. Great program. Um I think there's 44 is their maximum capacity in that program. These are for male students uh that are having
challenges in the regular educational environment that that goes to AMI kids and you have dual enrollment with uh Florida State College Jacksonville. Mr. Rescue, I'm sorry. When we look at enrollment when we look at AMI and PACE,
are those students caught under the charter school number? Not not under that all of the data that you saw here today, that that data was strictly brick and mortar. Okay. 43 district managed schools not including uh charter. So like in here where we have numbers for
charter school students. Are they considered part of that? They would be considered part of that but a lot of times when you see the enrollment projection numbers uh it's usually tied to funding and so that money comes in and goes out right for
charter schools. Right. I just wasn't sure what those students are classified. They're but they're a DJJ program. They're part of Klay County District Schools. Oh, they are. So, they're not under the Okay. Uh preferred uh physical therapy contract. This is for trainers uh for
our athletic programs. Very important. And then we have the review of reconsideration of library uh materials as part of our normal process that put us up to date on all of those.
Then there's the power school uh renewal contracts. This is for our HR program for posting positions as well as our ERP and our FTE state reporting. Uh proposed allocation changes for 2526.
You can see that there you'll in future board meetings you'll see many more related to that and some of the movement that's been that's been done. Then our monthly financial reports, our budget reports, the C18 is the item that you
saw uh jury uh gave to us a presentation on. Then you have the deletion of certain items report contract renewal for benefit focus. This is the web-based enrollment program that we use for employee benefits.
Then there's a placeholder for uh contracted services for site work and uh hopefully that's going to be finalized here in the near future before the board meeting. And there's a bit of renewal for digital services uh systems. These
are security uh digital surveillance systems and the contract for that transportation bus purchase agreement. Let's just say that uh um purchasing buses is a necessity. Uh
typically a bus will go about 200,000 is the lifespan on a bus. You can see the cost for the buses are um are significant. There's a rotation schedule that goes with that and the number of
buses that are there. It's also next is the interlocal agreement for uh Orange Park PD that's on this agenda and there's one um for a Green Cove Springs PD and then there's a placeholder and we
do have a meeting after this one regarding Clay County Sheriff's Office contract and then um how about this one last resolution to dispose of relocatable buildings. and uh hopefully you guys will bring a
smile to some folks face and then a pre-qualification uh contract. So like I said the end of June meeting less items on there because of the condensed time frame. We have two meetings physically in the same in the
same month pretty routine items. Uh did want to do a couple of district updates. One is uh this week is our one clay leadership academy. In fact, it's where headed right after this is um yesterday and today is all secondary
schools teachers from those secondary schools and those leaders uh go through a series of training as well as some team planning which I think is the most important part planning uh school improvement roles for next year and what strategies are going to be implemented at each one of those schools. So I think
that you hear me always talk about some of the data that uh the schools have achieved, but really there's all this work that happens behind the scenes to get that important to happen. Uh and that all starts with summer leadership that's going on. That's all this week,
tomorrow and Thursday is elementary teachers. Well, about 800 teachers by the time it's all done. And one of the things that um that kind of sets us apart is that we we want teachers to be teacher leaders, right? We want them to have influence over the other folks that
are in their profession, take ownership of their pos of their profession as well as members that are on their team. At the secondary level, that's usually done through um through the content area. they tend to focus that way on the work
and it's usually done grade levelwise at the at the elementary level. So all that's happening I also wanted Mr. U so second item now Mr. Boy there. So last um last board workshop
the board had some discussion want to make sure that we're all on the same page related to this item about uh piloting a program dealing with cell phones and cell phone use. So as a reminder the pilot would require us to change our board policy related to
um when students could have a cell phone at the high school level. We're in compliance and and have been in compliance with the new state law regarding elementary and middle school because they basically passed a law here our current policy related to that and the board indicated that they'd like to
see a change at the high school level and he brought forward a pilot program to you. Yeah. So, uh yesterday we officially had a state of Florida budget passed. So today we are uh hopeful that those are the governor signs that the government that's where I'm going. So
we're hopeful the governor signs it. There's no line item issues or anything along those lines. Um but once that happens um we should be uh we are hopefully you know one of the ones to to move forward. Um all I will need is I'm going to get with Miss Bonnie after this and put an agenda item together for you
all uh letting you guys know hey yeah this is what we want. We'll take an official vote on it and then we'll submit that to them. Um, and from there we should be we should be good to go. We'll have a very busy month of of July and in promoting and and pushing it out and supporting schools and everything
that they need for that sort of stuff. But I did want to give you that update. Um, we'll we'll submit the the company the under company our vendor packet so that they can go ahead and and work through how all that works. I'm not sure how that's going to work as far as whether or not the state's going to send us the money and we're going to pass it
to them or how that's going to work, but uh they did allocate I believe it was $356,000 in the state budget for the program. So, I just wanted to give you guys that update. Um and like I said, there will be an agenda item on the board meeting coming up. Can we put another zero behind that? I would love that. Yeah, that would be great. Thank
you. So, any any comments or or discussion on on this particular topic? Everybody wants to proceed forward with an agenda item and move forward on it. We we can make it contingent on it being fully funded by the state. Correct.
Good. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's important. And I think fully funded for all high schools, too. Um because I think that that's not something that we would want to engage in if it wasn't all of our high schools across the board. So everybody has a consistent policy. I do think that uh this is a change, major
change, and I think you guys know that. I think you guys have expressed um the desire to do this and the influence of of phones on young people's um and how it might impact the state's interested in this because they believe it's going
to have a positive impact on student achievement positive impact on school discipline. So part of the requirement of the pilot is that we have to do um certain deliverables to keep track of that data to show the state so that the state uh would know how that all worked
out and we're filing. I do think that I would be remiss if I didn't point out to you superintendent that you do have people who perhaps are on the other side of this issue or might not agree with with that particular stance. And the
reason why I bring it publicly to you is so that you can uh at least recognize that I told you there will be some people that natural just like every decision you made. Some people like it, right? Same would be true with this one. It'd be irrational to think that there would be some people that wouldn't like
this idea. I just I just want to add that it may be true. There's always people that disagree with you, but Miss Skipper and I had a forum with parents almost two years ago, and I thought it was going to be a terrible thing. Parents complaining about what we
were doing, and it ended up, and Miss Skipper went over the the negative effects of what has happened to our children. We were light years ahead because whole states are doing this now. But parents said, "We know our kids have
problems." The biggest shock to me was parents saying, "We know our kids have problems with cell phones, that they are negatively affected by cell phones." So, I'm proud that we're leading the way in this. I'm proud that we understand the data that it's the best thing for our
students and absolutely the best thing for academic achievement, never mind behaviors. Um, so I'm proud of us for doing that even ahead of other people understanding not everybody will be 100% on board. So I mean that was the same
thing with the volunteer program and that system and all that. We thought it was well not all of us but some of us thought that that was going to be a nightmare and um we've gotten positive feedback from parents and wanting it. So, I think that um I mean that's all
part of leadership is is taking and weeding and and and realizing the issues and trying to fix them. Are we going to be perfect every time? No, I don't I don't think so. Is it a pilot program that we can try for a year and if it's bad, you know, then then we know, okay, won't we won't go
down that route again, right? Or hey, you know what? It did it did prove itself. Um we know medically and um statistically now that more and more people are starting to do studies on this uh which is the push for
legislation. I don't know if many of you know this, but those that don't, the legislators actually were present with um a lot of medical data showing how harmful this was. Um and realizing that what we're doing to our kids is
something that we're going to look back on. Like giving kids cigarettes, it's another thing that um we're going to look back on and be like, what were we thinking? Um and and what it's doing to the brain matter. So, I think that um this is going to help teachers, this is
going to help our students whether they like it or not. Um but just the being able to uphold the law as well. So, I think that us leading and taking the um this direction is going to be a positive. Well, I I would just throw in
I mean, we've been listening to principles for some time and they've all said they hate it, you know, because they they're on the front line and if we're going to listen, we have to listen to what they have to deal with with these cell phones. And it's the number
one thing we talk about in teacher chats. Number one. I mean, it doesn't within two minutes cell phones come up. So, I think I think I'm just proud of us for leading the way and having our data and knowing what's right for our kids.
Okay. Awesome. Yes. We'll go ahead and we'll proceed forward. Just want to make sure we're all on the same page moving forward. And I do weren't sure about putting the agenda item on there, budget action pass. It didn't seem like they're just going to sign it at some point here. So, we feel
like it's going to happen. sort of know about it and go and go from there. I'd be remiss the last thing uh budget um information as you know we we've taken some action related to the budget like many districts in the state of Florida just believe
Marian County with a huge number in other counties that are out there and so um we had two primary goals and what we did related to personnel one prioritize students in the classroom that is that is the primary focus of what we do in
the school system and second as we prioritized our employee. So, I'm happy to report that every every employee that was affected or impacted was given another opportunity within within the district. I commend the HR department
for um the outstanding uh customer service and our principles who um who did an awesome job um who are linked to this. Nobody wants to do that. if you know me. I mean, it literally, you know,
upset me quite a bit um related to the heart of what happens in Klay County schools, but you also have a, you know, a business side of things. And if you if you are spending more money than you're making, that's a that's a you can't do
that, right? So, we made that that turn. We'll have to be more conscientious when the 10day count comes out. um at the beginning of the school year, see where we are in relation to that. Uh there's also many other things behind the scenes that we're doing pointing
towards, okay, related to this, including uh not renewing some vendor contracts as well as several other steps to put us in the best possible strategic um advantage. Now that we have a a proposed budget,
it's not official, but the governor signs it. Now we can go through developing budget um and uh making any other necessary changes that we need to make. I'm asking the board for their consideration in uh meeting uh what I've
done with with Miss Posey prior to the first um budget workshop I believe 22nd. And so looking at the week where we'll contact you looking at the week after fourth of July week I guess call the
week after u and just spend an hour kind of go through the process make sure that we all had the same page. I think anytime you have a change in leadership um Dr. was here for 11 years uh so we all kind of got used to the way it was now there's there's you know a different
vision for the work and how that is. I just want to make sure that everybody understands that. So I think you can share one one one example. Right. So one of the things that we always did in the budget process, the trim process was at that first meeting, Doc would go over um
not only the millillage types of uh the required local effort and all of those types of things, but then in essence we give a budget presentation at the same time. And typically we've seen it in other districts as I went back and studied this issue. Most districts don't
do it that way by the way. They do the general a this is what's happening at the mill first meeting and then the second meeting uh is is going into some of the details of your number. And so we didn't want you to go to that meeting say wait a minute like where's the
2-hour presentation and like get used that's really not a requirement. Uh, also the way that we would formally vote on each part of that is not a requirement if the resolution's there. So, there's those differences in uh
presentation that that we want to make sure that you are aware of prior to the trim meeting. So, we're looking at that week after. We'll send you an email asking you for times and that kind of stuff. in and sit one on one and talk about the budget
especially in coming up next year. So it's all that I have see questions from the uh school board attorney. Yes. So as a as a legislator completes the budget and everything goes in front of the governor. We'll have some updates as far as some of the
legislative changes as far as school districts. We'll provide that to school board members and maybe do a presentation in one of the workshops. So I'll get with superintendent you and make sure that you know however y'all want to receive that. So and um we'll start in any school board.
M uh I'll just say real quick I went to the best AMI graduation of all. been four students graduate, but it was the most heartfelt from the parents and comments just and they have the advantage
that other kids may not have because I know everybody's there to help them. So, just that's it. Mr. I just wanted to say that I am very impressed with the work the department for family and community engagement have
done and uh I'm happy they have my full support and whatever they need to continue their their work. Very impressed and that's that's what we wanted to see. Mhm. For sure that's going to keep helping us bringing back our children this school. Thank you. You
you guys did the majority of this in a year, year and a half, something like that. The department has been in place for one year, but we're building on work that Terry has been doing for many years as well. And thank you for the allocations.
Like Sabrina and I trying to run different things and we were like, we need a platform for this. Thank you, Mr. Prosecu. [Music] and our our our parents and community are seeing the difference in this. I can tell you that from the feedback and and
excitement. So, I appreciated that very I appreciate that. Are you done? Sorry. I can't I went to the summer FSBA conference. It was a riot. I was kind of hoping maybe one of you
guys would go with me in December cuz it's a lot more fun sitting with someone. Although I could have sat with Mr. Broski, I just thought he was doing the Sue thing and so we missed the opportunity. We missed the opportunity to sit by each other the long time that
we could have. But sitting alone, I don't have Sue with sitting the one time um sitting alone. It would be much um I think more fun if one of you or more of you could join December. It was actually some pretty good training. I'm going to be um
talking to the district about our numbers, whether they include PBK and PBK and some of the statistics involved around um lowincome students and the number of hours they spend in PBK raises
in a period of Penllis County 3 years 23% in reading in those kids. Um on the positive side, their reading goes up. So, I will be having some conversation over the next probably month or so about some stuff I learned about um the data
and sharing that and possibly maybe having a guest speaker about the importance of that. Um and she's from Klay County. So, that's it. Awesome. If nothing enjoy their summer,
get some vitamin D. Your immune system needs a drink. We have an executive session. Okay. Mr.