God, I thank you for each person in this room for the talents that you've given them, for the calling that you've placed on their lives. I pray that you continue to equip and empower each of them to do your good will. I pray the same, Lord, for all of our staff in our schools. And
um just ask, God, that you'd give us the strength and the energy and the encouragement needed to push through this final stretch to the finish line. I pray, God, that you'd be with our students as they're in testing season, that you'd give them peace, that you'd help them to recall all of those things that they have worked so hard to learn
this year. Um, thank you, Lord, that you are so good to us, that you blessed us with a county um that loves one another well, a tight-knit community. Lord, it's a rare thing and we thank you for it. Pray that you'd be in the middle of this meeting today, that you'd lead, guide, and direct. And it's in your name we
pray. Amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance 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.
At this time, I'm going to call to order the workshop for April 28, 2026. Welcome citizens of Klay County. I want to take the opportunity to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to attend today's school board workshop. This workshop is our opportunity as your elected representatives to collaborate
openly among ourselves and make decisions that will decide the future direction of the public schools and the education of our children here in Klay County. There will be an opportunity for public 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, please fill out a comment card with your question and hand that card to a deputy. Your participation is welcomed and appreciated. Um, I just want to start off quickly uh with us school board
members if you have any comments or want to discuss anything. Um, I know we have a packed schedule today, so we're going to try to stay on task and be direct and to the point. So, is there anything that the school board members would like to discuss or bring up openly?
>> Yeah, I was just wondering, I wanted to sincerely appreciate Miss Watt for the amount of effort it must have taken to write such a wonderful board brief for us. And I was wondering if you guys would be wanting to maybe with a group of students at the schoolboard meeting take
a picture with kids like to have that picture on the top of the schoolboard maybe with some kids versus us just standing you know in our little formation. What do you guys think about that for the top? >> It works. >> It works. I'm fine.
>> That's all I wanted to know. >> We can do that. >> Yeah. And everybody's good with the um the board brief. Sorry. >> Well, words fail me. >> Yeah. I think that you know that's
something that's not set in stone and we can change as we go. So, >> but we're good with what it looks like today. >> Sure. Absolutely. >> It was great. >> We will send that out. >> Okay. Thank you. Um anything else? Mr. Alvar, do you have
anything to add? couple options but yeah this skill awesome already uh first up presentation focus >> all right so so let me do this I think
this Dwayne this is your third focus third implementation so it people will tell you that doing a conversion is like giving birth so he's had three children >> already
Well, I can tell you the first time uh was here in Clay and that was that was definitely a birth that happened then cuz we went from terms to focus for the first time we joined the you know 21st century. So without further ado, there's timelines coming up. These two guys, two
of the smartest guys I know right here uh with focus implementation. Go ahead. So, this is my third conversion and it probably be my second spiritual conversion after it's over. These are kind of sort of big deals, but I did want to go ahead and take the opportunity to brief the board this morning and I appreciate the
opportunity. Um, we're going to give you an update. It might not be the last update we give you before we go live, but we wanted to let you know where the project is and a couple of the things you can expect in the next little bit. I think it's important for us to be proactive. And part of this being proactive is letting you know is you are kind of a direct connection to the
stakeholders because lots of parents, lots of possibly even students may be reaching out to you in the next little bit what you can expect so you don't feel like you're kind of the last to know, right? Like and so today we're going to go through this update. So what I'm going to do real fast is the presentation is there in front of you and I'm just going to kind of go through
the slides and then uh answer any questions that you might have. So just as a reminder to kind of level set for a second, a student information system very important application for school districts and I know everything is always important but one of the things that makes it important is that it
basically runs the mechanics of your school district. So attendance, grades, scheduling, transcripts, things that later on translate into scholarships like bright futures and things of that nature for students. All of that is handled within the student information
system. One of the things that I always let people know every chance I get, Florida is a very tough state for data reporting. It is probably the most complicated state, maybe behind California or so. And and that may be a tie at to some extent. But with that
said, that reporting is going to also drive our accountability and our funding. And in a time when funding is just so essential, one of the things that we tell everybody, and this includes some of the unsung heroes of the school district, things like record secretaries, which is actually where a lot of the funding kind of starts as far
as generating whenever a kid enrolls. That is one of the first processes, is that the state will only pay you, the state will only pay you if you invoice them. And what I mean by that is you have to report your services effectively to the state, which is where the state reporting comes from. You can do all the
good work in the world, but the truth of the matter is is that if you don't report it, you won't get the money. And that is a very very key thing. So with that said, it's going to basically again attendance, grades, schedules, fundings, state reporting, student services, things like ESC, uh, ELLL, MTSS, things
of that nature. So with that said, on the next slide real quick, what I'm going to do is talk about again just a quick reminder why we're going to focus in 2026. Right? So, as it's been mentioned, we did come the first conversion was from a very old system, right? It was called terms. It had been around for a long time. It kind of
looked like I was kind of kid. It looked like an Atari 2600. If you know what one of those is, you're as old as I am. But also, you also know how kind of sort of a primitive state, basically a flat collection of files that sort of served as a database. One of the things that we do know in our journey back to focus is
is that there are now 50 districts. Actually, when I say over 50, St. John's just recently signed and so now there's 51 districts and the reason why that's important is is that our neighbor districts are on focus and there is an advantage which we will talk about a little bit later but they are firmly
rooted in the Florida state reporting they're based in St. and they get it, right? And so we decided we were going to go back with the flock to make sure that we kind of could get covered in state reporting that people understood what the need was and we just felt like a system native to the state was a
little bit better because again we want the best tools for students, parents, and our staff. So with that said, I'm going to talk a little bit about this progress to date. So last time we talked about it, we were on the eve of purchasing it. Actually, this was the workshop. I think the last time I talked to you about focus was the workshop
before the procurement actually took place and then a couple a week later or so we all passed it and so we started the process. We'll tell you this is a very short throw conversion. The last conversion I did was about 16 months. The one I did before then was about 18 months and some of that was just because
it was so hard to get data out of terms honestly that we just and we worked it was the first one right like and so with that said this conversion as we purchased this in September is probably going to be close to more like a 10-month conversion right and you might
be going well why what what is the rush to some extent I think part of it goes back to us really watching that funding and not wanting to be an island of one district because we are the only district right now on the current student information system. And so honestly, we just feel a little
vulnerable because we don't have compatriots out there in Florida that we can kind of rely on. And more importantly, as the state will basically as legislation session closes, then there will be some updates that will be made to the DOE. The DOE will make those updates in July at a conference and then
we will have a whole bunch of changes we have to make to the system to accommodate it. We just feel like we're in a safer position, even though it may be a little, I don't want to say uncomfortable, but it is going to be a little bit more intense than it would be if it was like a 16-month conversion.
But with that said, we purchased it and then we started moving the data. It is crazy how much data gets stuffed in a student information system even though we were only on that student information system for 6 years. >> Pretty much anything that ever happened. Now, a couple other things too. Right
now, synergy is what we call the system of record. Being the system of record in the state of Florida means that if we were to have an FTE audit, right? Then we need to go back to the state, the system of record, which would be synergy, and we're actually kind of due for one. They usually come in about 3ear
cycles, and it's been about 3 years since our last one was initiated. Now, they may look at this as a conversion year and say, "We'll take a pass." That's not been my luck in the past, right? And so with that said, synergy will run at a very low level like a readonly level in case we have to go
back and get stuff because the conversion is a little condensed. And more importantly, if the auditor were to show up, we need to be able to point back to the system of record to be able to go through that. You won't want to see it kind of sort of put into this other system. That would be just kind of sort of weird. So it won't be turned off
completely, but it will be lowle. But all that data started to get migrated and it was a ton. when you think about like schedule records, course history, reason why course history is going to be very very important which we're going to talk about in a second is I will tell you something that is near and dear to
my heart as a former senior sponsor, as a former high school teacher who taught at the very end of somebody's career. That was a situation which you wanted to make sure that GPA is right. Listen, I don't know what the end of the world looks like, but it probably looks like a
conversation between who's really validatoran and saludatoran. in a high school that is an intense battle royale, right? Like and so I guess the thing is is that but every student's GPA needs to be right. And so when all that course history comes over,
it has to come over correctly. Some of that course history is actually entered by human beings too, right? And so it is very natural to have a little bit of a difference. Now I'm not saying across the system, but you will find instances where something should have been maybe entered a different way. They're usually
far and few between. But our goal, and we'll talk about this in the project plan, is to ensure that every student is able to very and every parent is able to very transparently see what their student's grade is and report any issues very quickly. So we can we want to have a very reflexive support system in that.
But we also started talking when I talk about like the moving of the data, we started meeting with almost every department. There have been probably close to 120 to 130 meetings with internal departments meaning it has been a very collaborative process and this
includes meetings with ESC people who are working on the MTSS process, people who are working on the ELLL process, people who are involved in the registration process. We can go on and on. So over the last little bit, I'm not going to lie, there's been in some weeks close to two to three meetings a day
with stakeholder groups in order for us to do it. So it is not just an IT project. Even though we are taking the lead, it is a project that is across the entire district. So if it doesn't work, it's everybody's fault. I'm kidding. But here's what I was going to say is is that all kidding aside, I think one of
the things that's good about that collaborative approach is that nobody gets surprised like the thing turns on in July, people are like, "What is this?" or anything like that. We are working on taking our processes as best we can and making them smarter in every
direction. And one of the things that I'll talk about in a second as we go through some of the other processes because we are very far along in scheduling for the 2627 school year is we think we've been able to speed up that process a lot. I will tell you in this time of budget constraint nobody
has more people. That's just generally true in school districts. And so anything that can take the burden or the load off of existing staff is going to be very very near and dear to our heart in an attempt to make this the most efficient process as possible. And we've
already started bringing people in and we're pretty close going to that refining processes. There are 39 groups or district teams that have been looking at those processes. Now, I will tell you this and I want to give one characteristic of this particular conversion that is a little different
because he said he mentioned three kids and if people had three kids or three dogs or whatever, right? Then one of the things that you might notice is very quickly is they're not all exactly the same unless it's weird, right? like and so with that said the characteristic of this conversion if I'm calling it from
here in May is going to be that we're going to go live in July and what we're going to see is we're going to see a lot of improvement even from July. My thing is that because it's a shorter conversion, I think we're going to be great. But I think we're going to get even better in the months after because
we have picked a flexible platform that can adapt. A lot of the stuff in Synergy, and this is just a difference in the way the systems work, was a little less flexible. We couldn't make as many changes to it. And now we can take feedback from people. And I will tell you, you will get feedback from
people when it gets in people's hands, right? And so to me the thing that is super important is our ability to respond and building a system of support that says okay we're hearing this over and over again how can we problem solve around that and work that way. So with
that said what we are starting is is that this enduser training which has already started taking place whether it's scheduling for secondary schools scheduling for elementary schools tomorrow on April 29th we have our first teacher training and I'll talk about
that in a second but we have had close to 364 hours of training already right and so some of that is led by focus people generally is the rule one of us is in the room and some of them have been led by us this includes things basic navigation like how do I even find
a kid or what are some of the easy reports that I can pull out and of course we have had to coat a lot of those groups that are going into it with basic navigation because you can't go learn how to register a kid if you don't know how to find one in the system right and so we're sort of frontloading this
tomorrow we're excited our first flyers which is the marketing tool we decided to use their loss and also we said fly away right like so April 29th we put this out there And we were like, hey, it would be really great if schools could send two people a piece. Like it wasn't
mandatory. And really for us, it's an opportunity for us to test the training and the messaging, which I'll talk about in a second because like it is something like it is very easy to get in kind of sort of a bubble and go, man, this is going to be awesome. And then you get it in front of teachers and they're like,
man, this is not very awesome. Right? So this is a chance for us to test the message, see what they like, see how we can bend it around. We thought we'd be lucky if we had 80 people. Right now, we're currently up to >> 114. Correct. So, I'm not saying that that's like a surge, but that is a good
chunk of people who are going to be trained early who there's some enthusiasm for it, which I'll talk about, which I think is good. The other part that we'll be looking at, and I will go ahead because I'm going to go ahead and call some of the risk a little bit or the challenges I guess I would say. >> Can I just ask real teachers who are
familiar with focus before are still in the system, it's an easier transition for them? >> We failed that. So that's a great point. So I think what has happened is people now there have been turnover, right? Like so there are some people that have it but a lot of times the people who have I think because the system is just
so all over the place as far as in every district even if somebody has been new to Klay County there's a good chance they came from a focused district. So that has helped right focus has changed over the last 6 years and I think it's gotten better. There are a couple of things that might throw you off, but
honestly, whenever we pull up the first screen, it's almost like there's like this exhale that goes on, like we're like, "Okay." And it's like, I think even as weirdly psychological as even though some things some screens might have changed, then they see it and it kind of looks the same as as opposed to
something brand new is soothing to them. >> I just remember it being e fairly easy to to navigate and figure out. >> It is. And I think one thing that really makes us feel very good about it is that I know this sounds crazy like and it sounds almost like you're being obsessive to some extent. But one of the
things we do whenever we're doing the process is how can you get rid of some clicks. Now to us that might be like well it's just a couple clicks. If you're doing that job a 100 times a day, it is a lot of clicks like right. And so for us, I think one of the things they have found, and I'm not saying anything
bad about the other systems, they're just different, is that compared to the the system that's in effect now, they just feel like there's less clicking and there's less digging down and drilling down and the data seems to be more presented in a way where I see one screen and I see the total picture. So I
can do that work on list from work on list like in the scheduling part and then when I fix a problem it disappears off the list. So it just feels a little bit more like it's uh less of that. One thing I will call though real fast is that one thing that will be very
important and something we're watching very carefully is the student information system does another thing too and this is something that is a challenge is that it feeds all of our integrations. What that means is is it feeds all our textbook software like it
feeds Google, it feeds almost everything right now. The trick on this is is that there's this kind of sort of cold war that goes on in the world which is kind of funny in a way. So we can turn the integrations on the last day of school for 26 27 like we could go ahead and do
it and kids would find out their schedules which is kind of like garlic to Dracula makes sense because schools still might be working on it and they don't want to be inundated with phone calls as pro schedules are in progress. So this delicate balance that goes on
with the integrations means we have to go later means there's less time to really these integrations don't have a good test environment like and so there's less way so if there's one part where you feel like you're flying a little bit without a net it's that day that you have to cut over probably as we
get a little bit closer to July we can hide some of the stuff but some of the textbook software is there and I will tell you one of the first messages you will see spread like wildfire to some extent is the second a kid finds their schedule a high school, junior high, or even elementary, it doesn't matter, is
the second that social media will light up and I will get a panic phone call from an administrator like make it stop, make it stop as fast as you possibly can because they may not be ready yet. So those integrations are going to go late and so we will have to watch that and that's just a point that I'm calling out
as we sit there now. All right, so with that said, we'll talk a little bit about what July and August look like as the system goes live. So on the next slide talk about a couple key milestones in the work right which is that in September is when we did purchase it. So
I will bring up like this is fast right. I do think that the fact that we've had the system before that it felt like we took a six-year hiatus off the system is a bonus. I do think also a challenge though honestly is that the truth of the matter is is that and I hate to say this
every student information system is so different. So when we pull data out, it is not necessarily in the focus format. And so it's still a challenge even though we've been on it. It's like can you just turn it back on? That missing 6 years is a big deal. And actually the
version of focus we are on is eons old at this point when we left 6 years ago. So it's not exactly like compatible compatible but we have seven dedicated IT staff working on it. Now you might be like that seems small. Well, actually of that team, it's about half. But one of
the tricks in this is that you have to keep the current student information system running at the same time. Survey 2, survey three still going on. We're going to have end of the year where we got to graduate a bunch of kids still going on. And so even though it might not sound like, well, could you pour
more? That is us basically pouring every resource we can while maintaining. We've been on two systems effectively and I would even say maybe 2.5 because like you're building one system which takes more effort and you're maintaining the other. One of the things that we're proud about is is that the scheduling
has gone unbelievably well. And I think this is I I think this like I'm not ready to call it yet, right? I think this bears well for the project and that we've had over 115,900 course requests entered. Just to give you an example of how this process is
improved for a second. The process used to be that they would put it on a piece of paper or in a Google form. Now on a Google form or a piece of paper, there are no things called edits. Meaning I might be a senior and I want to take English one again as a joke. And so I put English one course number down and
somebody whenever they got back to the counselor's office who's entering it, it's like this joker might have put in English one again and they don't need English one. There's no guard rails on those forms if you get what I'm saying. What we were able to do is we were able to bring people online in scheduling,
create guard rails where if you're senior, these are your options. If you're in the ACE program, these are your options. Established prerequisites and so students entered directly into focus. They logged into the board. So in a way, the students have already been in it for the first time if you were in the
junior high and high school. This sped up the process unbelievably. And one of the things that we are very excited about is there's a junior high. Now, here's the trick on this culturally. At first, when you bring them into the room, they're kind of like, oh, you can't do it this fast. Cuz we're like, you're push the button by the end of the
year. And they're like, you can't do it. Like, and they're like, you can't do it, right? Like, and we explain to them to work on it. But then you just need one person to make the egg. You just need one person to break the curve, right? And then all of a sudden, it's another boy battle royale, right? Like it's
another fight. And so what is funny is we have one junior high that is 93.4% of their students have a full schedule as of April. >> So what that means is is not only are we scheduling in a new system which might throw people off their balance, they are
way ahead of where they would be in a previous year. And now that we got one, we got two high schools duking it out. In case you're caring island, if you're watching Jillian, you're behind. So I guess I guess I was going to say is Ridge View and Floating
Island are sitting now these are high schools so they're much more complicated than junior high. They're sitting at about 80.4%. Right? And of course test scores will come in and they'll need to be changes. But the reason why that's so important is that gives us an accurate picture of where things are, where the allocations
lay in. Do we need to make adjustments and can we make adjustments sooner instead of waiting till the first week of school to make those adjustments. Now, I won't guarantee total nirvana, but I'm just saying that the process is working. The data is that we have migrated, we'll talk about this in a second, 43,432
parent accounts, right? And we'll talk about this because if there's a part of the project that should terrify us all a little bit, is that we have to migrate hundreds 100,000 plus users. And you're like, well, where'd that come from? The parents and the students and then all the staff.
That equals that, right? And so what we will need to watch is this part right here. And then there are 200 files potentially on a student. So one student has all this data. When I say a file, I'm not talking about one field. I'm talking about the whole file. All right.
So with that said, let's talk a little bit about our progress and I'll run through this. We already talked about scheduling. We've done pretty well. We feel like we're advanced on that. Scheduling for elementary. Elementary started a little bit later. Now, one of elementary scheduling's tendency could be potentially could be potentially to
wait till later. If you've ever been in an elementary school is sometimes, like I said, done in these mystical tarot cards or like these lists, if you get what I'm saying, and those lists get entered as we get closer to this, you know, maybe a couple days, weeks before. But here's the thing. In an elementary
school, you can post those list on a front wall or something like that and get parents in for orientation. You can actually start school without it. But we're on track and we feel like we're currently in an advanced state. It's a little behind secondary scheduling cuz we started later, but there was an
elementary scheduler that sped up their work. Registration is a process that's near and dear to my heart. It's on track. It'll be launching on July 9th. And I'll talk about this. Our goal should be to remove every barrier we can to registering for a Klay County school.
The reason for that is and I will tell you there are some processes that we are cutting out right like now we'll stay legal and all that kind of stuff but the truth matter is if you talk to any parent there's a lengthy lengthy lengthy re-registration process if I'm just
going from this school to that school we're going to cut that down considerably there's also philosophically a push in order for us to like not necessarily be a layer of I don't want to say interference but an extra layer as a district where it kind
of comes to us to go to the school when we think there's either some automations or some process changes that it can go directly to the school and speed the process up. I will tell you maybe it's true. I haven't seen it I've never seen a school I've never seen a parent bond with the district
whenever they're registering. I've seen them bond with schools when they're registering, but I've never seen no one's come back and talk to thank us, right, or anything like that. So, I guess the reason why I bring that up is it is important for us that first impression that a parent makes when they're registering for the school to be
cemented to that school because that school loyalty is what we think is best for students, best for our teachers, best for everybody. And I think that starts there. And so, I think this is a big deal, right? And we'll talk about this. Some of it is putting the I know this will sound weird real fast. It is
putting the it's actually putting the registration form. It the registration process is a little complicated to go through the minefield that is immunizations is difficult a little bit right but it is to put it in as much human terms as we possibly can. So it
doesn't just sound like name of birth like it's just it's like hey we're asking for this information because we want to get to know your student. I know it sounds like a little stuff, but it is actually a little bit of real estate in which we can do some of our first marketing. It will still be a registration process at the end of it. People won't be like, "Oh, this is the
best thing I ever did." But it does help to talk to people like they're people and not like we're just processing massive amounts of things, right? All right. So, on the next one, summer school. So, summer school. So, this is where it gets tricky. The summer
hard time in the student information system land. Everybody thinks we go away and summer's here and every day we got to process everybody out of school. We start summer school like a couple of days later. So summer school will be done in focus for the first time. That challenge will be a little bit of those
integrations cuz we have to feed Egeneuity and some of these other programs for some of the summer school. But we've got that we think that's pretty on point. But that training implementation will happen the first week and we will report. Here's the good news about the summer school reporting. It's reported in survey 4. We're going
to report survey 4 out of focus because we feel like we need to go ahead and cut the cord. Otherwise, the amendment window for survey 4 goes all the way to August and we don't want to be in the other system. We're trying to we're trying to eliminate people having to be in two systems as much as possible. And
that overlap actually is defined by the state. It's not defined by us. We don't have much we can do about that. But we feel like even if it's a little uncomfortable in survey 4 right now, we'd rather go ahead and do that than to do that. Same for survey 5, which is where your accountability stuff is actually where parts of your school
grade will come from. And survey 5 runs all the way to October, almost Halloween. And we're just like, we don't think we can be in two system. It's just going to get too confusing and too weird. So if I was just to identify an area where it's going to feel a little tighter, it's when we are moving fast into focus for the state reporting. But
we believe they have some great tools to help us. And because there's such experts in the state of Florida, we'd rather clean it up and focus than try to straddle two systems. Assessment is going to be launching. Assessment is going to be launching. And these are the local assessments that
we do. Not the PM1, PM2, PM3 that are defined by the state, but the local ones. We met with the team yesterday because that's one of those groups. And we're going to meet with them Friday. Yes. And so we are moving ahead. We are trying to go ahead and actually export
as much as we can out of synergy. Assessments don't really export super great out of any system, but we think we've got a path to try to save people work from having to put them all in again. But because those assessments were in synergy, they've got to move. And of course, that timeline isn't like
a July 1. Nobody's really taking a local assessment on July 1, if you get what I'm saying. That would be more of a beginning of the year. So there is a little bit of extra time and I'll tell you right now we'll take every week we can get right and so that is on track the state like I mentioned we're on
track for summer surveys we will be watching them like a hawk because if as like Miss Posie knows like the additional FTE or the bonus FTE will be funded through that. Obviously people in the room will be very concerned about making sure our school grades stays our grad rate which is at outstanding right
is outstanding because we do good work in schools but also because we report it vigorously if you get what I'm saying. It can't be one without the other and so survey 5 will be watched. So with that said the next one is the student portal and the parent portal. So this is where
we're going to get into where it may start to intersect more with your world. Now, if you want to come by and help us out with survey 4, we got some edit rules you can go through, but you probably don't. And I wouldn't blame you for that, right? Like sometimes like some days we don't want to. But this is where it's probably going to touch your world more, which is the student portal
and the parent portal are the next key areas. And I'm going to tell you like it is funny where you can get right and wrong, but this is the thing that will show up in the public the most between this and the teachers, right? And so we feel pretty good about the teachers. We
feel pretty good about the students and parents. However, when you try to get 43 thou and I don't have to tell you all this, right? Trying to get 43,000 parents to think something or do something, it even hit the space bar, it might come
out a little weird at times, right? Just simply because we know that people will get secondhand information and all that kind of stuff. where I talk about a communication plan, but there will be a focus community app just like there is it's basically the focus app as will replace the synergy app and I'll talk
about that timeline. They will be submitted to the Apple and Google stores pretty soon. We're trying to time it where they're in plenty of time, probably a little early, but not so early they're causing confusion right now, right? and then the parental accounts have been migrated and we think we've actually developed and we'll show
this maybe in a second an easier authentication method like but that's going to be a challenge and I'll talk through that in a minute. All right, so with that said I added a slide I know Mr. likes a good improv. So, I thought about this, you know, I love scrunch. I
know, right? But this was pretty tame, right? Like, and this one came to me and it was almost too important for me to like not put in here. And so, one of the things that I want to bring up because we're going to talk about some of the challenges for a second, but this is something that happens in every single
project, right? And and so, this is actually something tested by Gartner and it's called the hype cycle. And actually I found it interesting in my life because it talks about psychology. So whenever y'all pass focus, there's probably some people that came to you like, "Thank God." Right? And that's a
normal thing on a new project, right? And so in these projects, what they say is there's an innovation trigger. In this case, the innovation was kind of going back to 6 years ago, but nonetheless, we wanted some change, right? And what happens is is that people start talking about it and they're like, "Ooh, I like this and I
like this and I like this." And there becomes this thing called the peak of inflated expectations. And the idea behind this is is people if you do a good job marketing it, if you do a good job in the early trainings, they get more and more excited. But here's what
we know about pre-planning. Pre-planning is not a time of universal happiness because it is just a hard couple weeks. And I'm saying that as it's rewarding, but it is a hard couple of weeks. You're coming back from summer and bam, you're going right. And so one of the things
that I'm going to nickname my rock band 12 of disillusionment which is basically which is basically what can happen if you hype people up too much is nothing can live up to it. And if you think about whether it's a movie or a project
or whatever it is, the goal in a good project is to call the shots and try to shrink this to where people don't get wildly thinking this is going to be the next everything that it is going to be better but it's not going to necessarily solve every
problem in humanity and not being disappointed right and so part of what we are doing is is that I like skipping both of these parts and for us just to get to a better place than we were when we started and I think that's important to note because I think an important
piece of this is going to be on next slide is just kind of sort of talking through some of the potential challenges of this SIS conversion. So I'm going to walk you through these real fast. Now I think each of these has a mitigation. I think if we look at them now we can say these are the things we're going to try to do to get around this. There will be
one that we didn't see because that's life, right? Like this project has four million moving pieces and a bunch of people. We want one of the challenges could be that training. Now I will tell you I've watched student information system conversions. If staff are unable to use it when pre-planning starts, when
their first day comes, when scheduling is hot, they will panic, right? And that will not contribute to the project. So one of the things is that potential impact. We would be wrong in not saying how could that affect things. Well, operational delays. I will tell you it's
a lot like the first day of school. You ask any principal, they're like, "Did the kids get here? Did they eat? Did they go home? We had a good day." Right? And of course, you want other stuff to happen, but that is the thing that has to happen. In a student information system conversion, you must have kids in
seats, right? And you have to be able to take new kids. There's other stuff. And it can come on day 1.1, but day one has to look like that. So operational delays, data entry operate, data entry errors and in and this can impact your
DOE state reporting, right? And so one of the things is that we have nearly 200 plus training sessions and project meetings that will still continue to go on and mass interactive virtual training sessions to support the teachers which I want to talk about the teachers training pattern very specifically but we think
we've mitigated that because I think people are almost tired as you can tell probably from this presentation talking to us right because we definitely are out there and doing it the speed of conversion accelerated timelines necessary to be in this cohort of districts that are reporting in FL DOE.
So, one thing is that the speed of conversion does have us watching any potential data errors. We want to make sure GPA, transcripts, state reporting all go right. Right. But we think we've built over the last year some systems to really hold that. One of the things that it has done that I'm very proud of this
year is that we've reached out to other departments. Rodney Ivy does an amazing job with the accountability and assessment piece and he's we're like with him every day. So if something starts to blink on the accountability piece, we're going to know early and we're going to work with focus and those
other with that experience of other 50 districts and solve whatever problem that is. GBA transcripts like I said are a big deal. And of course the mitigation is going to be we're going to have a phase roll out too. We're not going to just turn everything on, but we're going to be working with key stakeholder groups. And we do have earlier
scheduling timelines and that is important because if we wait till the last minute to push the button we may not find that we don't we have an error too late right the other ones real fast stakeholder communication obviously we know what this can do if people don't know this is coming if it is not
communicated and right here I'm going to get very specific about parents and the students to some extent in a minute there could be I mean I guess the worst case is widespread resentment lack of buy in they could go whatever the advantages we've been on. Now, we have two advantages. Anybody goes, "Why did
we go to focus?" Well, I think the good news is that most people realize we have been on it before. And also too, I will say the answer that 50 other out of the 67 districts are on it is a pretty good answer, right? Like it's not like we went off and did something wild. But I
do think one of the things is we need some extensive communication between key stakeholders, including ones that are not in the building. The other thing that I worry about is is that on the health desk, four people in the health desk. So four phone calls can lock up the entire support and then start
overflowing into oh my god, like I don't know what's going on. And so I think that is an important piece, right? And so we'll talk about that in a little bit. All right, with that said, I'm going to talk a little bit about what the transition looks like to parents. And I'm g get very kind of granular here
for a second and let you all go ask any questions and then get on to the next thing. One of the things is is that in May we're going to finish up in synergy, right? So graduation is going to take place in synergy. All the end of the year stuff, bright future, I go down a
long list of stuff. Third grade retention, all the stuff is going to take place in synergy, right? Parents are going to use synergy to check basically the 25 26 grades and then we will start to work on notifying parents
they need to check their email address in synergy. The reason why this is key is this will become part of their user ID. Okay. Now will everybody check it? maybe right like we hope we're going to work and just be as proactive as we can but the truth of the matter is is that
some people just might not be in the channel of communication and that's okay right that's a nice way of saying it the channel of communication right but I guess for us it will be important for us to have a drum beat where we tell them once tell them twice tell them three times
par I will say the process will be pretty straightforward which we'll look at in a minute but we just want to make sure that that's there parents will receive report cards cards in the end of the year in synergy, right? So, we're not pushing report cards into focus earlier or anything like that. All that
will take place and then on June the 26th, and this actually mirrors what you did when you went from focus to synergy, there will be a maintenance period in which it shut down. Strategy behind this maintenance period. One, it's kind of the week before the 4th of July. Pretty much, if you looked at the usage,
everybody's more or less checked out, right? Like, if you needed your report card, you've already gotten it. We will obviously work with Sabrina and her team to make sure check your report card before June 26th, right? It will shut down. Focus won't be quite up yet. But what will happen is is that we have to
make sure we don't confuse the parents to go there's two apps and I don't know what cuz that'll be one of the first chances for there to be a little bit of a trick, right? So with that said, we will start heavily messaging focus is coming. Here are the steps to go ahead and get the app and go ahead and get
ready during the dead week. Right now, I will tell you if you look at the app usage, even when we come back for the 4th, so nothing happens the week of 4th of July, understandably so. But if you look at the actual usage, even the week after the 4th of July, that's not when it's hot. I already got my report card.
I already saw my grades. You'll have a couple people who want the report card for a free trip to Chuck-E-Cheese or something like that. But for the most part, nobody really is like obsessed with it. Do you get what I mean? However, it will get hot when schedules go live.
>> Like if you run a minute in which everybody will be there, it will be there. Bonus will be a lot available on July 6th. It'll probably be available a little earlier, but that's when we will start that push. That gives us a window of 2 weeks before they really start running into the scheduling timeline
when the schedules are going to be released, which we'll talk about. So, the idea will be for that to be there in July. As soon as we get back, we're going to hit the ground running. Parents will be encouraged to basically download the oneplay app. And by the way, in each of these you see there will be a focused
website. So talk about the communication. When you see the Facebook, that means we're going to put a social media post out there. When you see the ape icon, that will be us working with Sabrina to try to get the information out that way. When you see the web page, that means that we will have a focus web page and we're pushing out the information there. So, not only
are we taking these steps, you can kind of see by the massive amount of icons, this is effectively a snapshot of the communication plan and how we're actually pushing this information out to people. And so, by the time it's over with, they're going to be like, "Please focus, come here, so you can go away." Right? Like, it's going to be like, "We
heard it. We get it." But I would much rather people have that scenario than be like, "I didn't know." There will still be some people who might not, but we'll work on it. parents will start logging in and we'll hopefully be able to make sure the account is working as expected and support will be provided through a form. We will give you we will provide
to you some frequently asked questions. Here's the thing. They will think you're the help desk. I'm just telling you past experiences. They'll go the skill housing. I can give you my account. Please help. And you'll be like huh? Now I can give you an account if you want. So we can show you
how to do it but you probably don't want to right. What you would rather have is there will be a very front-facing form. Now I have to do this because in four here's the other message and here's the proactive part. We have to think around. I'd love to make a bat line. Everybody like that feels right. A human the truth
of the matter is four out of 42,000 can lock out the bat line and then you get feedback on nobody's answering the calls. So, where we worked this before is we will have a team of people picking through the form, but there will be a Google form or something like that where they go, I'm having an issue. Leave your
contact information and we will work through that. In the past, I've had no problem making that transparent to people to be like, hey, we're working on it. You can see how fast we're working on it. We can report how many we resolve a day. But we will have people on our team to do that. But it almost has to be that way because anything else will feel
like if I call, I expect to get somebody. If I did get somebody, this is all broke. we're not going to do that. Right? And so now they go, it takes it took a couple hours. We might have to take that. Right? That is maybe the charge of the conversion. But I think that's an important piece. High school students in this case and their parents
are going to be given an unofficial transcript that they can download. It will be very important for them to just check and double check to make sure everything is square. Right? So there is no hiding anything. It is transparent to the parent. It will be made transparent
to the student. And then in the portal there will be a link and they can go report any issue that you have. So if you have two things if you have I can't get in when we give you the frequently asked questions we will give you the link that you can just cut paste and you're done right and say they will be with you as soon as they can. And then
more importantly hey I see something on my transcript. we have a question then you will be able to give kind of sort of a protocol for you to be able to help that way and then at the same time not accidentally become part of a support channel right like that's what we want to provide
>> is that going to be just for 9th through 12th grade cuz I know like sometimes seventh eighth graders are taking high school courses >> so generally as a rule the good news is that data usually is a little easier to check cuz they only have like one or two it's not quite as complicated so there's some screens I can do but we will they
It's a great question. I don't know if I make the transcript available to them. I probably will give them access to their screen if you get what I'm saying. They'll probably be able to click in and see their seventh and eighth grade and there might be an algebra 1 or biology in there or something like that. Good question. All right. So then on the
appointed hour, August 4th, this will decide by not us. And I'm not saying that to slo it off. I mean there was a lot of conversation with principles and everything else about what the time is. We're calling it right now on August 4th, junior high and high school schedules will go online and August 6th. Sometimes, the reason we're giving this
to you up front is some people will be like, "It seems later than last year. Is it focus this fall?" The answer is no. Don't say that. And so with that said, we are predetermining the time at this point. And we actually feel really good about this, but it's just important to know that's the hour. So if somebody goes to you, hey, I don't know when
schedules are coming out, that's when they're coming out. They'll call in. >> You You don't think that that's going to cause just a little bit of chaos? It's like with people. Well, I guess it would be like a window of chaos. I guess like >> you need to download the app, you need to do this, you need cuz elementary
school I'm just thinking of some individuals that I personally know how this is going to go. >> Uh they don't have high school or junior high kids, so they don't really care about checking schedules or doing any of that. They're really just who's my kid gonna have for sure next year, you know?
>> For sure. So I I I guess it's just a a small window then cuz we start school that next what the 10th 11th something like that. >> So you have a few days where I guess phones are going to blow up. Oh I was supposed to download an app or oh I was I guess that's all part of the
marketing. >> Yeah I think it's part of the marketing. I think the trick on that is is that's when schools feel ready. I will say that culturally as we move through maybe year two of the conversion and we get them used to the elementary scheduler. I think it is a conversation at some particular point Heather would be
involved with it, Miss Tito, and I'd have to defer to her, but like I think it is an interesting conversation to have about like the timing of the schedule releases. I do get what people are saying with it. I've been in a school where it's like when the schedule went out like a day early. It's like a all hands on deck like freak out for a
second and then they kind of get it taken care of. And I think some of it has to do honestly with that. I from the project standpoint though, which is where I think you're going, I do feel like the marketing is going to have to be like, hey, get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready. And we will push some
of that out to obviously the school level too to be like, by the time it's over with, you will know that first year when people are signing in the first time does tend to be the kind of >> Yeah, I don't think next year will be an issue cuz they'll already have the app. They'll already know what they're supposed to do. They can get that. But
I'm talking about like this year >> just knowing that school starts a couple days after that and in an elementary environment it's going to be >> I can just need to we just need to make sure that we are >> agree I will tell you the one thing in
just my experience and then I'll grab your question real fast. The one thing in my experience is you have nailed it as far as the intensity. >> It is the biggest thing ever for like 48 hours and then it completely disappears. It's like it is the weirdest thing. And I and I I agree with you. I think that
is going to be like a tight window the first year. It is funny how fast it evaporates and then and then 6 years later or 6 months later people are like, "Well, that never happened." And I'm like, "Yeah, it did." >> You're going to have that one parent that I know these people that are like super ticked off cuz they're like, "Another freaking app? I what am I
supposed to do? How do I get this? Like why do which app?" Which I just Anyways, so I guess that's part of the marketing. like we need to make sure we're sending text messages with the link and >> all of that stuff. And I think you've nailed it here, which is this kind of sort of like attack on every front here
to make sure that it's not just a Facebook message, that it is a direct push >> and things of that nature. Cuz one of the things I've learned in these projects is I can't make every person do it, right? Like what I can do is I can sit there. What I can do is prevent anybody saying, "Well, you didn't tell
people." Cuz if I point back to like 10 times we tried to reach out to you, or something like that, then we tried, right? I can't guarantee it was satisfactory for everybody, but you can't say that we didn't try and try and try. So, I agree with you. A lot of elbow grease into that. >> I just want to real quick too. So, so
sorry. We'll also have the other things that we always have in place like orientation day and things like that where there'll be other avenues available. So, if a parent did miss the like I need to download an app to get my kids schedule, they can still show up on orientation day. The school will have,
you know, paperbased things and tell them this is your teacher. go on down to their classroom. Um, I know lots of schools have like postcards or phone calls or things that the teachers do when they get their class list to kind of let kids know as well. So, all of those things that we've been doing in
the past, those are all going to continue to happen where that there's that kind of personal connection through in-person events like orientation and all of those kinds of things to help kind of alleviate some of the stress of like I have to download this app to get my kids schedule and I don't understand
the app and all of those kinds of things. So, we still have all of our in-person events as well that kind of helps move those kinds of things over during during this transition. >> But that's going to go live though too before all that. So they're not going to know like orientation they're going to I just know the few parents that are going
to be like I'm going to orientation I have no idea my kids >> whatever is what I'm saying >> usually at orientation I've seen several schools have like a like a registration help table at work >> yeah but that doesn't happen till >> I was just going to say what day of the
week is August 6th >> because everything is handled in orientation >> I know I mean literally orientation so August 6th is a Thursday >> so And then they're mostly come on Thursday and Friday. So like if it goes live around orientation Thursday, >> I think it's it'll be very smooth
because teachers will be on it >> and we start the 11th. >> We start. I'm just saying like all knowing that junior high, high school, and it doesn't matter as long as we're I I just want to make sure that we're pushing it like we did centered for um a
toy and stuff and the text messages and all that stuff because if junior high and high school's getting it, then you're going to have the >> word of mouth and then everybody's going to freak out. Well, I want my kids schedule. Oh, I got to do an app. Oh, I don't even know. And it could be before the Anyways,
>> well and and to bring up I think a a good point. So I think we're in total agreement on the drone beam communication just has to be really loud before we get there and especially this first year. I think the other thing too is the app is um not the only way to get into it. So you could potentially just click a link and one of the things that
we're working on and so this is kind of a moonshot of this is that we work with focus. And so people either have an Android phone or an Apple phone and that's where they're accessing this stuff. And so we do believe that we've got a pretty good path to if you've ever
used an app or anything else instead of fumbling around with the sign on and looking at that there is a chance that a good chunk of these people will be able to authenticate via Apple or Google. And so that could potentially speed this up a lot because part of the concern is the actual downloading of the app. People
are pretty quick to do that. They're used to that in their lives, right? But it's the okay now how do I get on right like and I think one of the things that we worked very hard on doing when we migrated the parent accounts we not only migrated the accounts we migrated the links and what I mean by that is is that
if you got three kids in the school and they go to they're in the district and they go to two different schools we migrated those links so the theory should be and this is the way it worked last time is when somebody logged in they did that the other way that they could get to it if the authentication
doesn't work is because the email address is hopefully right now. Some people have burner email accounts for whatever reason in their life. That's up to them. But I guess the thing I was going to say is is that if you have the email address that you used in Synergy, you'll be able to click the forgot my password link. It will send you a new
password. You set a password and you're in. So I think the path is not a full re-registration, which is good. And the goal will be to kind of streamline those steps as much as we possibly can. Right? there still will be some people that have challenges with it and sometimes
whenever you're doing something on a phone you have to trans you have to troubleshoot a Galaxy S3 or something like that from a while ago and that could be a little bit tricky but I think these multiple angles of attack will make this as bearable as possible. Well, and I want to just say thank you for that because I know with change, that's
one of the biggest complaints I hear now is there's so much change that we're implementing throughout the district that when you think about the small things like that, it's actually large to some people that they don't mind it as much because it was easier or it took out a couple of steps both with teachers
and parents. So, thank you for that. >> And I think the parent part is one of our most vocal groups, right? I can understand. All right. So going through this, the rest of this will be pretty quick because we'll talk about what it looks like for the students almost exactly the same as it does for the parents if they're of high school age. And so they will finish up to check
their grades. They'll receive report cards. There will be that one week maintenance period and then we will actually this will be a little bit faster of a thing. So you know students log into class link on a daily basis for the most part and can even access it probably over the summer. We will just
actually place the icon the focus icon at class link. they'll click on it. So the synergy one will come out. The focus one will go in. They could obviously use the app, but if they wanted to, they could log into class link, click one button, and they're back in to to focus. So I actually think the students is a little bit easier to manage cuz we're
providing that single sign on portal already. And so all that will take place. And of course, most if I was in high school, I don't know if I'd pay attention to it until schedules come out. And then when I see schedules come out, pay attention to it a lot. Strangely, not worry about the kids as much. feel like they find their way in
pretty fast, right? Like I feel like that built in, but you will see the same release schedule. Last part is the teachers and so first flyers will be trained tomorrow in preview. So tomorrow's a preview session, 3 hours should be interesting, right? Like we're
looking forward to testing the message and we have a good turnout there. And then fairly shortly an email will go out to all teachers notifying them of the upcoming focus changes. Listen, right now we're reaching assessment period. We don't want to like stress everybody out. We're trying to be strategic about the messaging, right? But as soon as we can
take the shot where we think it's kind of on the other side of the curve, we'll go ahead and let everybody know. Tell them months in advance. I do think everybody knows. I think seeing it'll be like, uhhuh, what? But there will be some people that it might not have reached and we want to make sure that everybody's included. Teachers will post grades in synergy for the end of the
year. And synergy will probably be turned off for teachers. Now, this is going to sound a little weird. As of July 2nd, which is like the last day of the contract, what will happen is any grade changes will need to go in through the front office through a record secretary. And at that point, we are
cutting the grade sync. So, grade changes would be made in focus and then we'll train the appropriate staff. But part of that is just to go ahead and not have this infinite period of when stuff could change and it's moving over. We're moving tons of data over on a nightly basis and at some point you just want to
cut and then start clean up and fix and so we will do that pretty great changes. Summer trainings will be available for the grade book. They will be face to face. They're voluntary for the most part, right? But a lot of times whenever we've done this in the past, a lot of people want to know like and one of the
things that we'll talk about is is that focus will be available on July 6th. these trainings will basically continue but there will be and I had great success with this now listen if it was a standard issue virtual training I'd be
like oh no right we have a very structured virtual training that we'll be offering during pre-planning we'll offer four sessions right so we will probably catch if the last project holds true if we had roughly the same number of teachers and given the velocity even
being greater than this first one during school. I could expect to train 4 to 500 people. That's probably a fourth to a fifth of our school or our teacher population. The virtual training are highly interactive. They almost look like a podcast. They have interactive
activities. We are pretty good at poking them to make sure they're still watching. They're usually watched in groups like so if I'm in a grade level or a department or something like that, there's activities in which they turn in kind of a little bit of a notebook and stuff like that, they obviously get inservice points. We had a great deal of
success because some of this is not only the chance to talk about like, hey, this is how you set up the gradebook and here's how you can find interesting reports. We can also talk a little bit about practices and things like that that just make sense, right? And so it gives us a chance to address everybody,
kind of control the message, make sure that somebody's not out in a school get a train the trainer type thing going on and handle it simultaneously. And we've had really, really good luck with that. And so I'm actually most excited about that. They're a lot of fun to give. It looks like a TV. It looks like a bad TV
show. I think they're entertain. I mean, we've actually heard a lot of stuff. Me and David will probably be doing it maybe more and maybe who knows who else. So I'm done. >> I have a few questions, so so bear with me. So
>> um you already answered my app text questions. I want to make sure that there's a link on our app so that it's a one-stop shop still cuz that everybody likes that >> for sure. Um, one the training is there um is there a way like once
they have their login as teachers um and I don't know if you guys are going to do this I just when we converted as nurses over to different systems like Epic and stuff we had our own login and we could sit at home and play >> um and chart and do all the things so
that we could practice ahead of time. Do you guys have that available for teachers? So if they can't don't come to the volunteer thing during the summer, they can pull it up at home and kind of like >> So one of the interesting tricks about that is it's somewhat possible. It takes some engineering and the reason why I
say that is that a grade book and a student information system relies on an active schedule and as of the last day of school, everybody goes inactive and so we do have a training site in which you can go in and play. The names are scrambled and all that kind of stuff. We might be able to pause an instance of
the training site and create like a second one. So like pause it as of a couple of days before school so they can see. I'll have to experiment with that a little bit. It's a good thing that it's a good thing to see. Um generally as a rule whenever they do we have to do that for the face to face trainings kind of
anyway. >> So let me see what I can do and we can make that available. I don't think that would be a problem. >> Okay. I just was curious because some people like especially if they're vacationing and stuff like that and I know you're going to do the pre-planning and all that stuff. >> Yeah. I think I think the only thing that we'll want to take care and I think
we can right which is we'll want to take care and make sure that people don't get in there and go oh I'm totally lost and get you know anxious about it without you know it's kind of like it's like me and IKEA furniture. I've never read the instructions and I've never had a piece of furniture that doesn't wobble. So like basically it's like I don't need
these and then all of a sudden I'm like why later on I read it and I'm like wish you would have known, right? It would have made me say some words. So I guess the thing is is I just wouldn't want to make sure but we can probably message that and say for experimental purposes I guess. >> Yeah. Like if you're overwhelmed just sex out of it and we'll deal with you.
>> Yeah. Uh, also, so I guess my question, um, this is what I've heard from some teachers, but I don't know how accurate it is, and if it is accurate, I I want it said out loud. Does this decrease some of their workload because they felt
like they worked more in synergy than this? Is this true? >> I do absolutely believe it. Like, I'm trying to be polite. I'm not trying to be nice, right? Like, yes, I think so. Like I think one of the things is the two things we've heard from teachers is it shouldn't take multiple steps like in
the grade posting process specifically and so I think this does reme. I think the other thing too is is just about making information available. We have some high goals that are more like semester 2 stuff but like it's just making information more available to teachers. There's an ad hoc report
writer for their kids so they can pull data easily for their students should they need to. I think honestly the screens like the seating chart and the attendance seem to be positively received. Honestly, uh tomorrow will be a very telling day because I'll get to see what people have been like in the
last 6 years as far as what the current state is. And it's always interesting because it's one of the things we take note especially from the math training. It's like when you when you see everybody smile or everybody go oo or whatever point at the screen or something like that then you make a note that that's an easier. So, I think we'll know more, but I do believe it will
relieve some of the some of the trickier pain points maybe in the current SIS, especially that grade posting process can be a little bit of a little bit of a chore. >> Okay. Cuz some some people have never used it. So, that was And then uh my last thing, which is not really a question. I just know that we had discussed it and I wanted to confirm it
with Mr. Broski, but this is actually going to save us a few dollars by switching over to this. Correct. >> Yeah, I think or we will eventually for sure. I think one of the tricks on this is is that like once we can kind of sort of cut the cord, I think you definitely will. It's cheaper from year to year. I
think the I think there's two ways of looking at it, right? Which is obviously what you pay up front, right? I think the thing that I want to ensure that is just so important to me is absolutely maximizing because to me the FTE stuff is kind of a game and again the state
will let you under report, right? And so my goal is to basically ring out every dollar we can legally from the data and make sure that we have every advantage and that we're claiming everything that really is truly ours. Right? And I'm not saying we haven't done that in the past,
but I think one of the things is is that the more we can make this information because it's just so complicated in the data, the more we can simplify it and send it to schools and be like, look at this, study this. And I will tell you this is that I think something that's super important to me is that's on the
back end after it's happened. But providing useful reports which could help acceleration and later on the additional funding like I want to know when I'm scheduling who doesn't have an acceleration point. I want to know where can I get some of this additional FT when I'm scheduling because if I you
just picked a class that isn't eligible for that and you were just picking something to fill time then maybe I could have steered you in a place and I'm not saying that's not going on by hand but that is a huge lift and if we can make it easier in our schools I think we'll get a better effect. So I think you got two pieces. What the system itself cost, but because it is
generating your funding, what we could potentially get out of it from the advantage of having a more Florida specific knows the rules system. >> Spending money is going to create. >> Yeah. No, I got you. >> And you've done a really good job. I want to tell you when we went from terms to focus, focus is very for the board,
you never used it. User friendly in in a couple of hours of me clicking around, I knew how to use it, right? And when we went to synergy 6 months later, I wasn't I still wasn't like clicking around like I wasn't focused. So I think just to make everyone feel better, honestly, if
I was a teacher and I went to school that first week and I opened up focus, I'm clicking around like it's not it's it's a very userfriendly program and the way you put it, it's very complicated from your end. I understand that. But I think it's it's not as complicated for
teachers and I think parents are really going to like it. So any questions before or Gilson? Sorry. >> No answer. >> No, thank you for I mean you make a great point. It's any product and
software. It's got to work for you and create the revenue. >> Yeah, for sure. >> Mr. Alber, >> thank you. >> Thank you very much. I appreciate the time. Thank you. >> Okay, just just one quick thing about uh
about that. I think Dwayne did a great job of of showing and demonstrating that there's a great plan in place for this, but also you heard him say that no matter how great the plan is, there'll be people who contact with questions and it's just a normal part of such an uh
process. So given all of the meetings that we have today, I've kind of taken the agenda and I've focused on one item for today and that is the uh student code of conduct is on there. There's a timeline involved. So public advertising
is on this board agenda. Then of course we have to wait for 28 days. So that means it'll be available for final public hearing on the June 25th. So I believe it's the date board meeting at the end. It's very important that we stay on track with that timeline because
then we have to do training over the summer to get ourselves prepared for it. We heard from the board about the code of conduct and wanting the code of conduct split into an elementary version and a secondary version. We put copies of it in front of you even though I sent
it to you by email to kind of show you that. uh we wanted language that was uh easier to understand and some graphs on some common items so that if you weren't going to read the uh the size book that it is, you can see our most common uh
things which would be things like prohibited items, school bus safety, what uh we we did a whole presentation previously on what bullying is and isn't, right? Common misconception is that if somebody says something rude to you, that's bullying where it's not
really bullying. Like there's a formal definition to make it a cessor code and formalize the process. Some dress code guidelines as well as a reorganization of the book itself. There's a two-page summary of changes. The first part is
secondary. The second part is elementary. Uh is uh Tabby and Aaron. you guys over there. Come on. Come on over here. >> I want to introduce the all stars on this, right? I can't can't help but brag. A lot of people behind the scenes
do a lot of work. These are the two ladies that did the work. Fantastic. The turnaround on this, why there's a committee of of administrators, district leaders, and parents that are involved in the overall process. uh we think we kind of we tried
to capture what the board envisioned related to the code of conduct and it's so important and again that we stick forward on that. So >> any visuals they love the grass >> they work very hard on the visuals and
they spoke with I don't even know how many hours they spent talking to the people who oversee the work to make sure there's any alignment. They took a a lot of care to even listen to like to go through and hear what the board had to say and what they wanted to see and to align the vision. So there
the work they put into it cannot be understated. >> So there was one item that Miss uh Skipper brought to my attention and so important that if there is some sort of change that has to be on the timeline once you approve the advertisement at the May board meeting. If you were to
try to change it, you have to redo the 28 day timeline. if you catch what I'm saying. So, uh, Miss Cipper, you want to >> The only thing I I would suggest, um, because this all looks amazing, is we always have problems, um, in
disciplinary hearings. I feel like people are shocked that if you bring a weapon to school, there is a state statute of minimum requirement. I just, and if you guys think differently, let me know. Like, and like parentheses underneath it in red or something. um
like where weapons, knives, chains, slingshots, like all of that things. You put um the state statute or or some kind of verbiage, however you want to short, sweet to the point like, hey, there's a minimum requirement that you will have
to leave your home school for a year or >> zero to zero to all of the um everything that's included in the graphics is also within the text. We just wanted to try to pull it out to make it a little bit easier to read and understand and just quick. But yes, we do
>> cuz a lot of people will be like, "Okay, I'm not going to go waste my I know this sounds crazy, but >> I'm I am like this sometimes unless I actually need to read something to really prove a point. I'm not going to read all this garb like not garbage, but
like um >> excessive verbage, right?" Okay. So, I'm going to actually look more at a graphic because you're to the point. I'm too busy to go and look at all this stuff. So, that's the only reason I suggest that cuz if they're going to look at this, then they're going to be like, "Oh, is there zero tolerance? Hold on.
Let me go read this." You know what I mean? >> That's just my cuz a lot of people don't understand that or know that. You would think that they would, but we we come across that a lot. So, >> absolutely. >> I just wanted you to meet the allstars. I mean, I see a lot of time great work
done. you don't get to meet the people that actually do the great work. I even know to present it. So, thank you so much. >> I wanted to just >> so much >> thank you for from a a teacher point. We have lots of new teachers, right? So, if you think of teachers with less than three years experience, I really
appreciate the classroom behavior support strategies. So, when types of classroom disruption, someone could look and see, oh, my child was breaking a rule. But what's what I really appreciate is the links to the
the behavior support strategies for teachers because classroom management as we know back in the day was the number one way to get to lose your job, right? You have no control of your kids and with so much distraction. I feel like that was a really important thing for
you to do and I appreciate that. Like using signals, if you're a new teacher, you have no idea what that even means, right? or follow-up strategy, same side check chat, they don't it's so much terminology and you've done such a good job putting it all together. So I wanted to thank you for that
>> and there's training behind all of those strategies that have now been put in there. So that's the important part. >> It's very dear to our heart. >> Yes, sir. One question. Um, is any way that we can put maybe in the count of conduct or anywhere else example to for
the students to do a vehicle checkup or check your back and forth to arrive to school? Because we have several incidents where students forgot something because they were moving or they were transporting something from one side to another. I think one of the graphics
>> one of the graphic encourages parents check your backpack for these items. >> Yeah. >> And kind of shows that they back parents do that. >> Yeah. So that there's no no doubt that they already let know. >> So there there'll also be an
accountability piece of this where the parent signs off that they that they've read that. Of course you can't physically see if they're reading it or the desk or anything like that. So, is that the I talked to you about that yesterday about I remember when we uploaded documents like the health cards and the library form having a document
where parents could see the main things at a glance and either check them off or sign that they >> sign that they receive and read them. Yeah. >> We still wind up with folks that say they didn't know the rules >> regardless of what it is we tell them.
>> Okay. But good. Thank you. So, thank you so much. question. >> Um, so on your graphic here where you had said non-prescription medication on the secondary one, I noticed it's listed also on the Isn't there a Wasn't there a state law passed recently about
non-prescription medication being having to be allowed for the children to carry it? That was recent. And I I feel like maybe that might >> I call it the Tylenol rule. Absolutely. We'll >> definitely And it goes all the way down to like there's no it's prek like it's insane,
>> but it was a state law. So, we might want to look at that and maybe clean that up a little bit. >> Yep. >> Yeah. And it sounds like I I like your suggestion too on the secondary one. We took the little backpack graphic off, tried to make it a little more um mature, but I do like referencing like your backpack and your vehicle. Um so
when we add the zero tolerance, I'll also add some graphics to that and then clean up the non-prescription as well. So like looks like everything can be addressed on one page. So we should be able to do that quickly. Add a few additions. >> It looks beautiful by the way. >> Thank you. Great. Thank you. That sounds good.
>> Awesome. One last thing, Miss Bassie, if you go ahead and put the uh the graph that one up. Just a quick uh couple of items. So hopefully I can figure this one out. >> Hi. Hey. Just wanted to uh celebrate bus drivers. Miss Skipper was out there this
morning early, weren't you? Was that this morning? >> No. Uh uh Mr. Mitchell actually was. Can I just give him a shout out? He um >> we were trying to find a way to to help support our bus drivers for um their
appreciation week. And he answered the call and I'm very proud of him. He has received over $5,000 in donations to support um our bus drivers for this week. They have more goodies coming later this week, but I will be out there. >> I know it's hard to see it up there, but
you see uh you see pizza yesterday, grab and go, breakfast, all kinds of things. Those little treats mean a lot to folks to know that they're appreciated. I know that we spent uh extra special uh time and attention to the bus driver situation. We all know
the secret to some of the pains related to late buses, double backs, double ups, and all of the the world that we live in is simply having more bus drivers, right? And so very important uh that we do that. There's some some pictures
involved here. You can see that actually that uh that uh which one was it? The little what is that called? Card me. We may put the card in your yard. >> Card my yard. >> Guard my yard thing. I I know something like that. That's actually in front of
Green Co. Don't forget we got the Green Co uh compound as well as the Middberg uh compound related to transportation. For that, you can see it's u uh school bus driver appreciation day. You can see some of our bus drivers there. Everybody
doing great work out there. Just wanted to celebrate that for a second. Uh, we love our bus drivers. All right. So, let's go back one. I think I'd be remiss as superintendent if I didn't give you at least a 3minut
about the budget each and every time that you see me. So, while I didn't sign up for for this part of the job where I I feel like I'm part of business affairs each and every day, >> Don and I have met more times than probably twice as many times as Susan Legato in 11 years, right? because our
situation dictates that. This is u a situation where the board should be very cognizant of where we are financially related to the district. We said there's really only it's I wanted to use this example and Sue said don't use this
example which only prompted me to use the example more because I'm an act kind of kid which is which is you know sometimes things aren't like glorious like and I use the example of of losing weight. There's only two ways to do it
really which is eat less and exercise more. Don't go into the GLP stuff. up in a way, but eat less, exercise more. There's only two ways out of the financial situation. Spend less money, make more money. It's it's not glorious.
It's not sexy or any of that, but it's a lot of work to kind of just just like the other. It's a lot of work. So, some of the things we've done to decrease expenses, we reduced allocations. You've seen us restructure allocation wise two years in a row. Related to that, let's
put it this way. When I see a news headline, St. John's County looking for $23 million, that gets my that gets my attention, right? And so, as board members, you would see the world around you and say, "Oh my, this is some
serious stuff that's happening. We've done a 20% reduction of our of our bud overall budget at the school level and the district level. We r restructured contracts or eliminated contracts. probably the two most famous are Iran and and uh Penda at the school level.
We've increased uh monitoring of Kelly subs which is a huge contract uh and expense within our district. The white fleet overhaul that that that is is simply great business sense. You know, using a car until it's totally worn out
financially doesn't make sense. That's why rental cars will take a car, they'll use it for a certain period of time and usually you're using a newer car when you're renting a rental car. Then at a certain point when they figured out now is the time to get the maximum equity out of the car and reapply that you
would see that I know people like to write about that topic payroll incumbrances. Okay, a monitoring of that for the first time we have a way to monitor and see where we are year-wise. People are the number one expense. 82% of our budget is people, right? You
can't affect the budget without changing the people quotient, as painful as that is. District and school budget reviews. I'll give uh Don shout out. Met with every single department line by line, meeting with each school, starting with high schools line by line to kind of get
their a great deal of transparency. almost every principal meeting, AP meeting, and every meeting they get a steady dose of me. Uh, and this graphic, you know, our leaders are well aware of where our district is and where our district stands. The second part of that
is increasing revenue. The 1 mil is part of that. So, I think the board of county commissioners vote votes on their pass through. It's not a uh, you know, the law says shall place it on the agenda. It's not a um there's there's great case law related
to this particular topic. So, we're not anticipating any problems there. FTE maximization, I'll give Dwayne a shout out and his crew over there. A lot of priority on that. FT is actually up from the previous year, slightly from the previous year. And I think part of that
is the intense focus and maximization of it. He's right. They're not going to tell us, hey, we owe you some money. Here you go. like you have to find it, you have to earn it, you have to bring it forward. That's that's very important. Enhance business practices. See the third pillar is enrollment. We
have to make school the kind of place where kids want to be, parents feel welcome, and teachers want to teach. That's partly marketing. That's also partly telling your story, right? Cuz if you don't tell your story, guess what? Other people tell your story for you.
You might not like the story they tell. That's just the way the world works today. So there's a plan uh in place for that. We also talked about capturing the entry point. Kindergarten, 7th grade, and 9th grade are critical
times. Once they enroll in school and establish the routines of school, they usually stay within our school structure. We do have people now that are not enrolling their kids in school at all. Starting with kindergarten, right? You have a decreased birth rate.
You have several other factors which lead to lower student population. If you were to look at a graph at our district's enrollment, it would look like a straight line going straight across over the last 5 years. So, we have not had to have the pain that they've seen in other districts, whether
it's Orange, Hillsboro, or others, where you see closing of schools and you see all those types of uh I'm going to call them more drastic steps being taken. But make no mistake, the steady dedication that it takes to uh to maintain our
current weight is is there uh and everyone feels it. So I appreciate the support. And then the family experience. You heard Dwayne talk about, hey, let's make it easier for people to like why we make it so tough for people to to come in and they're looking at all of those
processes. So I think all of this is happening uh in the world that we have now. I I'll give kudos to the board. We've been proactive, which is why when you see the I'm going to call them radical headlines across the state, I
try to avoid the radical headline with Klay County attached to it because we've taken the steps. Uh while it ain't sexy to talk about doing these things step by step by step, sure does work, right? So, I I appreciate the support as we
continue to do that. I don't see an ending to this, by the way. like you're saying, "Hey, where's where's the light at the end of the tunnel?" I mean, I just I'm from New York. I'm honest and straightforward and I just say it. I don't see any light at the end
of the tunnel, quite honestly, just because of where we are with funding with the state and whatnot. I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think that this will be a a battle rhythm each and every year of looking at what staff we have, what staff we can afford, and moving forward. The good
news is as of right now it has not affected negatively the student in the classroom which is in fact the bottom line. I would have to theorize and send a warning out there. Uh would which would be eventually if um that keeps
going then that would be a concern I would have in the future in all honesty. So it's kind of that's kind of where we're at. So I I think Don might regret taking this job. I don't I don't I don't know, but it's it's been a it's been a battle. >> It's been a battle to get us to the
point. So, I just wanted to kind of keep you updated so you can see that. >> I feel good about Lur. Don Don will say differently just because, you know, she's the she's the CFO and that's her job is to say no to everything, >> right? And and so, but uh I think we're
only as strong as the people that we have. I think our leaders at the schools are amazing because they rode high in the saddle at times where it's not easy to be a leader. It's always easy to be a leader when things are going good. It's never easy to be the leader when it's not going good. And what do you do?
Well, >> in this this issue, this particular issue, there's a plan in place to deal with it, which is why we've avoided the headlines that you've seen around. But that's that's not always I just want to point out like that's not easy like it
just didn't happen is what I was trying to point out. So I thank you for the support and uh with that that's that's it. >> Can you repeat what other count is missing or is looking for $23 million? Can you say that? >> Yeah. Other other counties like our neighbor to the uh to the east uh is
looking for $23 million. You might have seen some headlines uh related to uh to talking about that out loud. I I think that superintendent's become more brazen because we see that we see the
frustration of it. We see the unfairness of it and uh we don't mind speaking out and I think it's easier to to run run away from a fire than run towards it. And quite frankly, I think we're sick of running away from the fire and you're going to see more people running towards
the fire. I just wanted that I know we're compared to so many surrounding districts and I know people want to run to our surrounding districts, but I think it's important to know that we're all in this. Uh it's a statewide issue
and that um another thing that and I think Mr. Rosski is being kind of modest by saying this um that I don't think that we as Klay County are feeling the effect so much
either because of leadership and because we have uh Don who is strategically doing what she's doing. Um, and I think that I think people need to understand that too, that that there is a lot of work
that's being done behind the scenes that teachers and and parents and students don't always get to see. But to know that the district, this board, everyone's doing everything that they can so that the student doesn't suffer to try to help um teachers
um not have so much of a workload or or carry those stressors um no matter what messaging is being put out from from other parties, knowing that this board is actually working um to do all of those things. And and again, I think
that because of all of the stuff that's happening behind the scenes um that that we are not feeling the effects of it. So, I think that the leadership is is doing a good job and the the um district as well. So, thank you all.
Makes things I know everybody's stressed out and and and up for a challenge, but thank you guys. Um, all right. Before we go into our uh closed session, board comment or uh attorney comments.
Nothing from the attorney's office. It's a pleasure to be here as always and I'm sure you'll all have met uh Dr. Joe Sabak who's here today. Um but uh thank you for giving us some time to speak. And hold on, >> Miss G. Miss Clark. >> Yeah, I've got a couple things real
quick. Uh I think the last two years we have missed out on celebrate play awards to thrash your horn. >> They they always have it. >> But I think what we did two years prior we delayed the workshop an hour cuz like
this morning it goes from 8:15 to 9:30. We could have been here by 10:00. >> So is it always the April? >> I think so. Yeah. And it's just so important that we >> kind of be there and be part of it. So maybe next year we can
time to where we can advertise. So, >> um I want to bring up again I think that we need to ask Miola to look at what the other counties have done as far as AI because we've got 47 counties that have
already addressed AI and we have not from what I'm not seeing anyway. So, if we could just get Niola to look at that, I think FSBA has made it real simple to where we can review everything that's out there. But I think Eiola can
certainly guide us initially as to what we need to do to protect both our teachers and students. >> So, I think Miss Clark, I had concern about this when we were doing the policies. Mhm. >> The district had kind of cut it down to a shorter version and we did end up
voting in Ayola's complete policy >> in case in the future we were covered. So, I'm pretty sure the updated policy is the one we have, but we could check on it. Okay. >> We're not utilizing it cuz we haven't delved into that world as a district yet, right?
>> But I think it's there for our protection. There was a law that passed that I think the attorney's office brought forward. So, I think that's been approved. Yeah. >> Anyway, I think that's about it. >> I forgot I did want to congratulate our
um Granco Springs Junior High Cougar baseball team. They won the district championship this weekend. >> Um Mr. Alder, >> I was going to mention about the AI policies the same. I agree. We have to kind of be up to date on that. It's very
important. which I think we are the softball team that I know to be added to the sports team. Um, what's the answer? >> Four more Fridays.
>> Four more Fridays for teachers. >> I think we're down to four. >> It's very exciting because they work super hard. How many hours of testing left for our kiddos? >> Not many. >> It's pretty fast these days compared to the old days where you have to take a whole week off of school, right?
>> So, but I just wanted to congratulate the teachers. I know this time of year. >> Yes. >> I was counting those days and doing that little thing on the board where a kid would come and put down to 26. Dwayne is shaking his head. Yes. So, it's pretty exciting up to the time of
graduation. So, hang in there. U I just wanted to add because when I we were talking about the school bus drivers, our community partners too. I want to thank all of them. Um because I don't want to say we're relying heavily on them, but they are to be um part of
our community and our schools. Uh it's very important. So, I want to thank them whether it's NEFA or um McDonald's or who whoever just um thank you for that and supporting our bus drivers, our teachers. I know teacher appreciation
week's coming up. Um so, I want to thank all of them and with that um this meeting is a journal. Yes. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.