--------- [Music] So much fun. You going to sit there? [Music] Yeah. So, uh, so let's go ahead and get started. team. It's 9:00 and we want to respect everyone's time. Do we know if we have folks online yet? Yes, sir. We
do. Awesome. Or online. We'll welcome those of you who joined us online and welcome uh team Hendricks. We have one guest president. Why don't you introduce yourself? That would be easier. I'm Connie Martin of Girl Scouts of both coast. Awesome. And where are you at? What's your office? Um actually our
office is in Sarasota, but I do Henry Glaze County. Awesome. Great. We're glad you're here. And today what we hope to do is to introduce you to team Hendrick. Uh give you an overview of what we're doing and where we are and the direction we're going as a school district. Um in order to do that, what I would like to
do is introduce our team to you and to the folks online. So you can kind of see who we are and what we do. And then uh the agenda uh I think I you have an agenda and basically the agenda we're going to outline and highlight a few highlevel topic things that we have done and are doing in the district and then
give you the opportunity to ask us some questions or engage and talk about things you want to talk about that's important to you and then ask for your feedback on a few things that we think is important to us. Okay. So to go around the room real quick, we have board member Stephanie Musen um sitting in the front. Um we have somebody who is
somewhat related to her, Mr. Tony M, our director of of maintenance. Um Mr. Tresa Duncan is the director of elementary education. Roberto Sanchez is director of secondary education. Uh Mr. Curtis Clay, he's director of safety and transportation. Um and we'll I will
shake it up and start today. We'll shake start in the back of the room. Uh Mr. Francisco was the assistant director of IT. Miss Emily Gutri is the director of IT. Britney Watson is our executive assistant. Miss Jenny Goff is director of CTE and workforce development. Miss
Kim Jordan is a director of HR. Dr. Angela Staley is deputy superintendent. And Dr. Barbara Mundy is the director of federal programs and a whole bunch of other things. So, with team Henry, um uh the my reading this morning kind of led
me to believe uh something about our team and so I'll share that with you uh today. Um this team uh if nothing else over the last four years, I think that this team is known as champions of managed change. Um and today you're going to see some things that have happened in our district over the last
four years and the managed change that these champions have done have led to that through our leaders, through the students into the school system. And what we want to do is show you um some of the phenomenal things that has happened and then share with you um uh the the direction that we are going. To
give you just kind of a quick overview of who we are, you know, in Henry County, we have just a quick click over 40,000 residents. In Henry County school system, we have about 7,450 students to date. Um we have 1,000 employees. That's everything from
teachers, bus drivers, maintenance folks, custodians, um clerical, financial staff. Um, so we have the whole gamut that a that a typical school district would have. We're the second largest employer in Fender County. Um, US Sugar is the only one larger than us.
We have 11 school sites. The one we're sitting on is Early Learning Centers, a pre-K center. Outside of that, in each side of the county, we have one high school on each side of the county, one middle school on each side of the county, and three elementaryaries for a total of 10 school sites. And so, um,
that's kind of who we are and and and what what what we do. Um, we're very proud of the academic growth that we've had for years. Um, the Henry County schools um have been a C school district um up and down and fluctuated through
the C schools um for several several years. um over the last uh four four and a half years through through the champions of men of of change that we have done through the men change um academic growth has been at the forefront of our
adult process. Um that has evolved just a little bit and we've brought safety to the forefront as well. Without a safe school environment, without the the confidence that when parents drop their babies off with us that they are going to be safe, they're going to be loved, fed, taken care of, and sent back home.
and in that safe environment. Um that that has also, you know, been a huge huge piece of what we've done with the academic piece. Um we just kind of went back to basics. We focused on teaching and learning. We focused on good pedigogy, good practices that yield good
results in a classroom. And that's kind of been our our grassroot effort. um from the the bottom down, top up, side to side. Everybody has to own that, believe in that, and drive that as part of what we are walking here today.
You're going to see some results of that in just a few minutes and where that has led us. But before we get to that, um we're going to talk about our strategic plan real quick. Our strategic plan is our opportunity to align our beliefs as a school district. What do we believe?
What's important to us? And how does that relate to the actions that we carry out every single day? And a strategic plan is our guide. This is what we use. This is what we touch. This is what we refer back to as why we do what we do. And make sure that we have an alignment,
vertical alignment, and horizontal alignment with everything we do with the things that are important to us as leaders, as the business side of our school district, and the academic educational side of our school district, the safety side of our school district, the cultural side of our school district. And so to get us started, Dr.
Ang is going to come up and she's going to go through the strategic plan. Um off to your right is going to be the screen where you're going to see most of that. Those of you that are watching online, I think it's going to come up for you online as well. Correct. So they'll be able to see it online as well as hear
Dr. Sty as you speak. So without further ado, I'll let Dr. All right. I am just going to review like Mr. Swindle said our strategic plan. The first strategic plan started in 2021, the 2021 2022
school year. So you'll be able to see um what we have done to sort of uh make the changes to what is to come and what we feel are our goals for the next 3 years. So until
2028, as we move through, you will see that um we our planning stages. as well. There's your message from the superintendent. I will not read it all. I There's our illustrious board members and their beautiful pictures. And then
our mission and vision of course is stated throughout um the district and in every school. And then this is the about the schools that Mr. Swindle just spoke about. And you will notice on the top right corner and just about on every
page you'll see draft. It is a draft because we have um we still are getting feedback. These meetings right here start that feedback from our community. We started with the directors um redoing
what we thought would be a better plan from last year's and then we presented it to principles. The principles gave their feedback. The principles then took it out to the schools and presented it to their faculty and staff and they we
received their feedback through an online forum. So we have all of that feedback and then we took it to the board a couple of weeks ago and got the feedback from our board members. So once we get done with these community forums, we will take all of the feedback and analyze it and make the changes that we
see, deem or see necessary and make it a um living breathing draft. And so this is part of our planning process. So once we get all of this together, we will then represent and take the draft off and it will become our our future
strategic plan. So you'll notice our goals um at at the top in the past the goals were numbered and they were numbered according to maybe according to significance and what we have done is taken off the numbers because all of these things are important. We started
out with five in our first strategic plan and we are up to six because the one thing we have had to add is safety and security. It has become quite the um undertaking for you know securing and and making our school safe but we need
safe places for kids to work or kids to work and learn and teachers to work. So we added safety and security. So that is our first um goal on the plan. And you'll notice
on the left hand side are the priority strategies throughout for each section. And then the yellow or the middle are the goals. So our first two goals for safety and security are comprehensive qualitative data that include 100% of
the students um and staff feel safe and yes 100%. It is very hard to to get 100% but we feel that safety and security of all is where we need to go because like I said you have to feel safe to want to work and um go to school in the our
buildings. reduction in the number of incidents reported to school environmental safety incident reporting system that is our cessor and we want to reduce those by 10%. Those are the heavier higher lifting um referral
things like drugs, weapons, those kind of things that we have reduced a tremendous amount but we will always want to reduce those and keep all of that out of our schools. Our next is academic achievement and our academic
achievement goals in the school year 23 24 we had 44% um proficiency rate in our ELA fast ELA and we would like to improve that to
54% by 2728 and then in math it was 47% in 2324 and by 2728 we would like to increase that to 57%. And like I said before, this is a living breathing document, which means that we will change it. If we get higher than this or
we meet our goals or we get close to this, we will probably change this goal even for the next year. So as we move forward, we will continue to make it um viable and doable and logical. The school culture
and climate is the next thing and obviously we want a strong um unified district culture and a school culture and these are the metrics that we plan to achieve 75% or greater of course satisfaction rating and um of
involvement in decision- making by employees, students and parents. That was one of the things on our our previous um climate culture and climate survey that was lower and we would like to increase it 90% of or greater
satisfaction on the rating of school or workplace environment and of course a 50% or greater participation in the actual culture and climate surveys. We are changing one of our um one of our applications for how we do the surveys
and we are and our communication device. So it's it's a it's a new program and we hope that this makes the communicating with the parents much easier. teacher recruitment and retention. Of course, the best way for students to learn is to have a teacher, a certified
teacher in front of them and that is the goal. 100% fulfillment of uh you know the teacher uh vacancies would be wonderful. It is a very difficult thing to do. So our recruitment wants to reduce 58 um
reduceif the 58 number of filled positions with um non-credentialed staff. So we need to improve that and get credentialed. Uh family and community engagement. We have started um a few different things this year and we have
continued a few different things this year as far as our family and community engagement. We would like to increase our parent teacher conferences, community and district events. We just had a community event in um Label on April 12th that included um ESSE and
student services and brought all of the services together at one place and we had hundreds of families attend that in Leavell this year and it will continue. So next year um lookout Cleon here we come. Uh fiscal stewardship is
the next one on our list. And of course we need our you know reserve fund balance within 6% 6 to 8% of the total operating budget is our goal and we well exceed that right now. our financial
health and you know the grant funding and resource utilization. All of those things have to happen fiscally in a school district. And then of course our transparency and accountability which also starts with these types of meetings so that we can
get what we need to out to the community, out to our parents and u become an open book. And that I think is all for me. Any questions? Well, thank you Dr. Staley.
Um, as you can see, uh, where we came from uh, in the in the previous to the current one, uh, we we've had some tremendous growth academically. And to outline that further, um, Miss Duncan and Mr. Sanchez, our director of elementary and secondary education
respectively to come up and talk to you about that and give you the data on what that looks like. And again, um uh you you will see I believe that the evidence is there numerically that uh because of the change that we are because of our willingness to take bold steps and
changes within the district. Uh the data shows some remarkable improvement and uh and I'll let Miss Dr. Mr. Sanchez explain that to you. All right. Well, uh, good morning everyone. Good morning. Uh, we're excited to be here this
morning and share with you the progress that we have made over the last three years as a school district thanks to the tremendous hard work of our teachers, our staff, our administrators, our students for sure. And uh, while the results are nowhere near where we would
like them to be, I think we're proud of the growth and the advancement and in the data over the last 36 months. So, we've spent a lot of time over the last few years really uh coming up with consistent process and procedures when it comes to implementing standardsbased
planning and what that looks like in the classroom to ensure that the rigorous instruction is occurring in our classrooms and then being able to monitor the teacher instruction and providing feedback to our teachers to help them enhance their education um providing to the students. And so our data shows that what we're doing is on a
positive trend and we keep pushing forward with that to develop our procedures and be more consistent and hopefully continue to grow the impact in a positive way. Yeah, a lot of the work the last few years has focused on embracing standardsbased instruction. Uh
the state is very transparent about what's going to be in the end of the year assessments that the students take that give us the resources and uh we have focused a lot in making sure that we upskill our teachers and our uh leaders in terms of what those standards
are uh so that there's clarity about what the instruction is going to look like in the classroom. and and working diligently to ensure that our students are getting the opportunity to do tasks and activities in the classroom that align with the rigor of the standard in which they're going to be tested on.
Okay. We've also developed systems to monitor that. Um so uh we adopted this practice of instructional rounds as as as a district where quarterly we'll go into schools and we'll walk classrooms. We also have the school leaders present
their data to us. And so because we're able to do that on a quarterly basis, right, it gives us the ability to make those modifications and adjustments as needed on the go. All right. And the other thing that we have really uh focused on and and things that we mentioned, this was something that we
specifically wrote out in our strategic plan back in 2021 was that we were going to make an effort to change the principles meetings. Uh historically a lot of those meetings have focused on managerial things. And so we we understand the concept that in order for
change to happen in a building, we have to uh have leaders that are instructionally focused, right? That understand these concepts of being data driven. And so the principal meetings uh have have really incorporated within
them professional learning opportunities for our principles. All right. so that we can as a district help support and coach them up and develop them in terms of uh their standards based knowledge and instructional leadership capacity. All right. So, uh with that being said,
a lot of that work has resulted in in the data that you see up there. And so, I just want to highlight that over the last 3 years, we have had a changing landscape and the way schools are evaluated. And so if you go back to
2122, we were based on the old FSA standards. All right. In 2223, this little baseline here, this was the first year that adopted, you know, the new revised more rigorous uh state standards. And then 2324 was year two of
that. All right. So the reason that we did not see uh learning being this year because it's the first year of the new assessment and so in 2122 um school district grades were compromised of 11 different categories.
Each one of those categories was 100 points leading to a total score that district could achieve of 1100. All right. And you can see that our results in 2122 what they were there. And what what's really neat about this is to see
the growth between 22 and then last year 24. As you can see, even with more rigorous standards, right, we may have been able to make quite significant progress in our overall ELA going from 40 to 44. ELA proficiency in third grade
alone was the first year the D metric was introduced in 22 23 24. previous to that that was not an element uh that constituted part of it that makes school the district's great straight and so we're really proud that that third grade
data came at 53 which is right about the average of the state so we're very comparable here uh to the state average both math and have learning gains so the state says each individual student gets a score in order for them to meet a year's worth of adequate learning gains
they have to achieve this next score in in their upcoming uh school here and the overall learning needs in ELA rose up significant especially when it comes to the lowest cortile because the state of Florida says each year you will identify the students in the bottom 25th
percentile in terms of your performance and you have to make sure that those kids make a year worth of learning and so we're really proud of that uh both in math and in ELA you know you have shown pretty significant strong progress in learning there overall our science
science data science and social studies for the same assessments throughout all three years but still pretty decent progress there from 41 48 465. Our middle school acceleration is based on the number of students in middle school that complete high school and course
exams and pass those successfully or take certifications. As you can see, we made pretty um pretty impressive growth there. 11 percentage points over two years. I'm sorry, 17 percentage points over 23. High school acceleration while we
took a dip um um from 22 to 23. We did rebound nicely and that's based on the number of high school seniors that graduate on time pass industry certification, earn a dual credit or pass an advanced placement which is university style course uh exam. And
then our overall graduation rate um is is a lagging indicator just like acceleration. So when you look at the the data from 22 it's really reflective of the school graduation rate of 2021. And if we know about co right there was some realization in terms of the state
graduation requirement. So was 87 21 graduation class 22 was 76 class 23 was 81. the class of 24 which is not up there which will be part of our district our district rate this upcoming school year it's it's fine to 85%. So we are
trained in the right direction they're doing a really good job with tracking that data and making sure that our seniors get the instructional support they need to pass the important scores exams and math. And so we look at it overall
um we were told 530 points and 22 this year school rate of of C. This year the the beginning number to become a B school district was 54%. So we're six points away there.
Then the baseline year because this was an off year. This is the first year that assessment were introduced. Our school our district rate was was compromised at 700 points because we took out four learning categories. We scored it was based on just rate proficiency. That
year we scored that 700 54%. And you're like well wait a minute you just told me 54% was a B rate right? Well, this year the state of Florida decided because they had so many district rates for they they rose the the baseline of each other
8%. If I was 58 y of 58% this school year 54% and then in 23 24 uh we scored 56%. But the the beginning number to a be school district was 57%. So we're
just one point away. Just one one small point. One small point away from from being a school district. So really proud of of the growth that we have seen in the data in terms of our student academic performance the last three years. We're just going to continue to push forward. We're going to continue to
double down on things that have worked um that we are doing and um and always continue to push forward. All right? Because our kids deserve high quality instruction every classroom. [Music]
Awesome. So, there's a couple of things to note that I'd like to highlight on here that's really important. Um, number one, um, in Henry County schools, um, and we're going to get to the number of students that we have in just a moment, but we have a high populace of migrant
population. Um, very high populist migrant population. We have a high ELELLL. We have a lot of folks that come to us that speak no English whatsoever. many have never been to a school. Um the the beauty is the state says we have to test them anyway and they're still accountable for educating them. And so rather than using that as excuse as
champions of manage change, Dr. Mundy and her great staff have basically learn to triage your students and how do you get them up to speed as quickly as possible so that they can still be an educated person and productive in our society and they're reflected in that.
And so even with the high migrant populations, we still have great academic growth. And that is proof that we have great students. It doesn't matter where your zip code is, where you're from, if you're a migrant or or your your economic status. Our students can learn as good as any students
anywhere. We're still chasing that elusive B, but we we are confident that that production of our students and teachers and staff this year is going to get us there and put Hendrick County into a high performing school district. We're very very excited about that. The other thing that's uh very important on
this slide is the growth that we've had. There are 67 districts in the state of Florida. 40 of those 67 are hemorrhaging students massively. Um Broward County Schools this year is projecting they're going to lose 31,000 students to um
charter schools and private schools. To give you an idea of what's going on around the state, um they're going to be going through school, multiple school closures and consolidations, downsizing, Henry County is very fortunate to be a school district that's actually gaining
students um and not losing students. So, um we're very proud of that. Right now, we've got a very tumultuous time going on in Tallahassee with our state legislative bodies. We don't know where we're going to wind up economically and how they fund education, but the school districts that are losing students and
fighting and declining economic revenues from the state, that's going to be a massive hit to the public education system. So, at least we're very stable with our student body with regards to growth and we're not hemorrhaging students. So, we're very very pleased
and happy with that as well. So um in order and and and that's great but along with more students we have to accommodate more students and when you have to accommodate more students we have to figure out what's the best way to do that that meets our budgetary
needs and then what's the best way to teach students in order to do that um 3 years ago Mr. Houston um sat down and started looking at all our facilities and we have um a very aging fleet of schools in Hendrick County. Our newest
school is 26 years old this year and we have our oldest school was put into service 1967 in Lebl specifically. Four of the five schools are either at or over capacity with what the state says we should be putting in them in student
numbers. So, we know that little bell side is a little more crowded than the Koolen side and so we started to address that problem and how are we going to best address that and the answer to that is uh we're going to need a new school and so uh we've gone through that
process and in order to guide you through that process and where we are and what that looks like I'm going to let Mr. B our director of facilities and maintenance come forth and talk to you about the newell high school project. Morning. Thank you for coming. Um, yes, we did have an opportunity to
build a new high school in Lavll and it is uh we started the process around 3 and a half years ago and we applied for a special facilities use account from the state and that has helped us provide the funding to build our school because we as a rural school district we would
not be able to build a school of that size. Um, it's going to house about 1500 students. Uh we are in the we are in the probably the mid-stage of 40% plans right now. We're working on getting all the civil plans and all the architectural plans done and get them
vetted. Um we should be having machinery on campus at the new Helms Road and about probably at the end of July, hopefully mid July or early June, but we're probably thinking on July.
Um, next year at this time we'll probably see a lot of halls and a lot of a lot of movement. It should go pretty quick. We're hoping to open up school sometime in August of 2027 for the 27 28 school year, which has been very key for our students over
there. Um, and it'll it'll help the growth. We've seen the growth over at Lavel for the past three or four years now. And uh, they're moving the coast. They're moving. that's really going to benefit our students for decades to come. Uh what's another opportunity
we're going to have is to be a safe structure for hurricane shelter area. We have we want to move our garden in the area so we can have a state of the yard place for our people to be able to support our parents and their children also. Anything else? Thoughts, concerns?
All right. Thank you. Yeah. All right. It's very exciting to have a new facility. uh our students deserve uh a nice cool house to to be safe in and learn as much as any other student in this state. So with our team again with the with the champions to
manage change being able to do that and provide that that's going to leave a lasting legacy footprint from the leadership team in this school board for years to come. Um we're watching the side very closely. Um we're seeing some growth here but it's a lot more moderate than what we had seen in LL. However,
there are some planned things happening in Lewon that may drive the numbers up. And so, we're going to stay in front of that and then we're going to start looking at what's going to be the best option area. Is it at a wing at a set school? Perhaps it's a building school in the central part of the county um a K8 or whatever that may be. So, we'll
continue to watch that and try to stay in front of that so that we don't get behind the be at capacity again. So, we're very very excited about that. So, um I believe next on the agenda, oh, I've got it right here, but I want to make sure I don't get
calendar. That's right. And so, uh we've made again um the the champions to manage change in this district, have looked closely at at uh some very important things. Um the public school system is fighting a lot of battles on a lot of fronts
right now. So as we as we look at what makes our school district attractive to families, students, teachers, and employees, then what can we do to think outside the box and do something differently that would be uh uh different that would give people a new a breath of fresh air, a reason to be
here, a reason to stay here and be a part of of our high culture and productivity that we're experiencing now. And so as we look at calendar, we knew that there were some opportunities there and I believe that Miss Duncan is going to come forward. up in every city.
We are going to come back and uh they're going to talk to you about the calendar, the changes that we made, why we need them, and as well as the school starts. Yeah. So, you'll take a look at the calendar that was recently adopted. One of the things that we've been working on is the work life balance and making sure
that the the work being the education of our students and our students get are getting the most rigorous instruction as well and that the time they spend in the classrooms is giving them the highest quality education. Um, one of the things that we are working on implementing this year is kind of a little break, if you will, after about every nine weeks so
that the students as well as the staff get that little bit of rejuvenation so that when they're in school for those nine weeks, the rigor is back at the optimal capacity. And so you'll see the current schedule. biggest change you will notice is the addition of the October fall break in which will allow
our families the opportunity um to rejuvenate have a little vacation if they want to and then come back in and be ready for the next time we can hit academics very strong. Yeah, I think you know just going back to what Mr. mentioned earlier, right?
Um, as school districts, we've got to think of innovative ways to incentivize uh teachers to join the team because student academic performance really begins with having a quality teacher in the classroom, right? You can have all these great professional development um
structures and plans, but if you do not have a teacher in the classroom, it all battles from there very quickly. And so getting those teachers in the classroom, hopefully this becomes an incentive, you know, this pool will be off in October
for that to occur. Questions about that? Do you work on one? Sorry. Start. The other thing that we are tweaking just a little bit for next school year is the school start and stop times. Um,
there are more changes for the LEL, excuse me, the closen side than there are the LEL side. I know they're trying to pull it up, but you have a copy in front of you as well. And there's just some slight changes there to accommodate extending the day for our closing early learning center as well as staggering
the bus transportation so that um students are not waiting for as long bus um when school is out. So, just providing a little bit of staggering there to accommodate those couple of issues. One more question, please. Um, do you
have after school programs? Currently do not. Okay. Yeah, there are some local things like as far as daycarees and things like that provide that a majority of our families go to, but currently the school district does not provide that. We have had overtime that come and gone and come and gone.
[Music] So, one of the big reasons that we're holding these events is to make sure that we hear from you, that we hear from
our residents, and we got several folks online today. And we want to make sure that what we're doing as a school district is representative of what our community, our parents, our stakeholders find important. Also, we are in the trenches of education and sometimes we miss, you know, the things on the
outside. So, this is your opportunity to get engaged and to give your input on what's important to you as a district or as a parent. And uh Miss Dr. May, Dr. Mundy is going to come forward and share a very exciting opportunity for those of you that are here or if you're alive,
then you can still participate in that. And she's going to talk to you about that now. Yes. So if you think back to the strategic plan that we started off with, there was a whole goal on parent and community um engagement. And so this
is just one of those pieces where we are asking for input and um stakeholder, you know, guidance, information in the district. We have great leaders. We have great teachers. We have great students. And now we're
looking for our great community members and our great parents to help guide us in some of the decision making process. So we have lots of plans in the district like the ELLL plan, the migrant recruitment plan, the
um SP I can never I can call it that the student progression plan, the homeless uh strategies plan. We have a health plan that we have to turn into the state and also a best practices inclusion plan. And so what's uh previously
happened is each of our departments have little committees and what we want to do is combine all those little committees and make one district advisory committee or council. So I have a handy dandy sheet
of paper here and if you're willing to sign up for our district advisory council feel free to do that. And those of you online, we'll have um Emily will talk about the QR code that we have posted around and on the website and you
can also sign up that way. The meetings the meetings will be quarterly. Will be quarterly. And will people be able to participate online? Like if they physically can't make it to the meetings, will there be a a Zoom link or something that they can log in? Great
ideas and they can participate. Okay. Do they have to go to all of them? No, they do not. You do not have to go to all the meetings. Um, you can be a a council member and if you have to skip a night, one of the three or four nights, then so
be it. And we can catch up through the minutes. And this is really to collect their input, the community's input on all. [Music] There you go. No pressure. We're going to pass this around to the
more crowd. [Music] Oh, she lives in the area. So, she's in the area. You can do Zoom. You can also do Zoom if I'm not in the area. I'm here all the time. So Emily's going
to come on up and um and talk to us real quick about other ways that we would like for you to engage. So again, one of the big reasons that we're here um is to get your feedback, to get your input on the direction that we are going and to
help us kind of finalize, if you will, that strategic plan. And uh Miss Scott is a director of IT and she's going to lead you through some ways that you can give input on the strategic plan and some of the other things that we talked about today. So, we have the town hall feedback survey on these QR codes all
around the room. And for those of you that are joining us over the live stream, we have the Google form link within the description of the YouTube video as well as on our Facebook page. Um, so if you are here in person and you would like to use the QR code, you can
use it by either downloading a QR code app or you could use your camera app. It makes it really easy. So you just hover your phone over the QR code and then a link will pop up on your screen and you click on it and then it will bring you to the feedback survey. So the survey
has around 20 questions. Um we don't require that you answer all of them. Answer as many as you like. Um but it would be helpful if if we can get as much feedback as possible. Uh there is a section towards the end of the survey that asks for additional comments or
feedback. If you would like to sign up for the district advisory committee, please make sure that you post that in there and then also provide your contact information at the bottom. Thank you for joining us today online and in That's
right. Absolutely. Well, I agree. Thank you for being here. Um this is the time where really we have come to the end of our agenda. Are there specific questions you would like to ask or know anything about? The only thing I was curious of is um because I do a lot of fun in different areas. Um do y'all have very
active most schools active PTO groups um or are they not very active? So the two directors behind you engage in those daily. I'll let them kind tell you what they do from school. Elementaryries are pretty active. Um some you know have just like LE it's only their second year
actually having um a PTO and so you know the longer they've been in existence you know the more active that they are but yes most of our schools have them and some are more active than others too. And then um one thing that we did want
to collect your feedback on is the school start time concept because the state of Florida has said that in the school year 26 27 middle schools can start no earlier than 8:00 and high schools can start no earlier than 8:30.
Okay. And so we have always had a schedule that you see up there that is that where middle school starts around 7:20, high school, you know, starts around 7:30, 7:40. And our schedule has historically worked well. All right. So the state of Florida has said that if
school districts want to remain with their schedules, okay, the way as well school starts before 8 and high school starts before 8:30, we have to collect community feedback from our community stakeholders, right? And so we wanted to
get your thoughts on um you know do you believe that we should stay within with a schedule that is similar to what we have or do you think that as a community as a district we should move towards having very late start times for high schools and very late start times for
middle schools. And the whole the whole just give you the whole context you'll understand. Um, the genesis is lawmakers that either have teenage kids or read research on teenage kids that stayed up late at night and didn't go to bed at a reasonable hour and so they need sleep
and so that start school later so they can sleep later was the true genesis behind that. Um, locally, what that would mean for us is is moving the start time to secondary later, which would mean secondary getting out later. And, uh, and not trying to convince you or sway anybody,
but what that would mean is now the elementary would have to get up and go to school earlier, get out earlier. Many times in our community, we have a lot of the older siblings that are in secondary that are the caretakers, if you will, until the parents get home from work. We have a lot of secondary students that do
athletics or have jobs and that would push their ending time of school so late that that would make that very difficult. Some of our athletic games are in Sarasota and so if we don't get out of school until 4, we don't leave until after 4. We're not even getting there until roughly 6:00, you know, and then that puts them getting back here
in. So anyway, it's just kind of that's kind of the timing of how that works. So we would love to hear feedback from community members. if you're online, if you can reply to that or if you're in if you have any thoughts, we'd love to hear it. As a as a parent, I really prefer
the earlier times. I know speaking to our Girl Scouts, I know our older girls, they like the ability to be able to sleep in if they want to, which is lovely if you have that ability. But as a parent, the logic of it to me is is
difficult for again those people with the after school. They've got a job after school. They're watching their siblings. They have sports. They have scouts. They have all these things going on. I think it is limiting them on what their potential extracurricular activities and their potential home
activities are. Um, personally, I say say stick with the earlier times um because the convenience and the comfort of being able to get that extra sleep in. Yes, it's wonderful. However, I think the impact of it, what it what it
those that will affect affect the challenges that creates. Yeah, I think it creates more problems than it fixes. Okay. Just my thoughts. And thank you for that. And again, if you're online, if you can reply either on the survey or in whatever format you can, that would be great. So, we can have that feedback
from us. We do have to provide that back to the state of what our local stakeholders thought about that as well. So, thank you. Any other questions? Awesome. Well, thank you. We appreciate you being here. We appreciate those of you online taking time. We appreciate uh the championship change from team Henry
here and uh sharing our information. So, thank you all very much. We'll do it again. We're here all day. Starting again at 6:00 tonight. So, thank you. Part: 2
We appreciate our guests who are here. Um, we should have some folks online. Is that right, Mr. Francisco? We got a couple online, a couple here. We appreciate everyone taking their time to be with us today and our effort to have some community engagement and outreach with our stakeholders, our parents, and
and people that just are interested in the work that we're doing as Henry County Schools. I'm Mike Swindle, superintendent of schools. We're glad that uh those you join us personally, maybe some more will come in. And those you are with us online today. Today we're going to talk about a handful of things that are really important in driving the
direction of the work that we do here in Henry County with regards to um taking care and teaching the babies and the students that we have and keeping them safe and uh and making sure that we secure a good future for them and a good future education as we move forward. We're going to ask for some of your
engagement that's here today and uh if you're online, you're going to be able to engage as well. We're going to make sure you understand how to do that. And then at the end of this, we hope that you benefit and understand a little more about our school district and where we are and and as a result that we have a better engagement system with our
community. So, thank you for being here. Um, I'll go around the room real quick and just kind of introduce team Hendry. Um, these are the people that have been working. Um, a lot of times, uh, as leaders, we work behind the scenes. We're not at the schools all the time. Most of the time we're in and out. We're visiting different schools helping doing
different things, but our work is at the district level. Um and this group really is what I you know as of today I read this morning the champions uh of managed change. We have a lot of changes that haven't happened in four years. We are constantly changing and this group are the champions of making sure that change
happens. That's in the best interest of students and that's again why we're here today. Dr. Barbundy is the director of federal programs. Dr. Angela Saley is deputy superintendent. Miss Jenny Goff is the director of CTE and workforce education. Mr. Francisco with the back
is the assistant director of IT. Mr. Tony Men is in director of maintenance and a whole bunch of other things. Uh, Miss Duncan is the director of elementary education. Mr. Sanchez, director of secondary education. Uh, Miss M is a board member and Mr. Clay is
the director of transportation. Um, and is that all you do? Okay. Well, we may do safety. So, um, we appreciate you guys being here and kind of get the idea of who we
are. Um, so we're going to talk today, uh, about, uh, Henry County Schools. And to kind of set the stage, I'll kind of give you kind of an overview of Henry County Schools. Um, in Hendrick County, we have just a a quick over about 40,000
residents. We have 4,600700 students. Uh, that fluctuates this time of year quite a bit. Uh, I'm sorry, 7,600 students. Not 4,000, 7,600 students. Um, it's kind of where we are numerically. Uh, we do that with 11
sites. We have one prek center here attached to the other side of this building. And outside of that, the district is split pretty equally with one high school, one middle school, and three elementaryaries on both sides. Um, and that's kind of who we are. We have a thousand employees. Out of that thousand
employees, we have teachers, we have bus drivers, mechanics, a lot of great leaders. um and and everybody that works together and loves children and love doing what we do every single day. Uh this year, uh the current budget year that we're in, we have $236 million
budget. That's a huge budget. Roughly 80% of our general fund or the main part of our budget, if you will, is salaries. So that gives you an idea of the of the what it costs to employ a,000 people. About 20% of our budget isn't
operational money. So we got to pay for the light field. We got to fix the roof as a leak. We need new buses and have to pay for diesel fuel and things like that. And so that kind of gives you an idea of of where we are. Um, every year this time of the year, we're beginning budget cycle. We're all holding our
breath right now, waiting for our leaders in Tallahassee um to to finalize the state budgetary process so that we will know where we're going next year. um and that drives what we're able to do for teacher raises and and other things
that that are really important to us. So, um just to kind of give you an idea of where we are and what we're doing with this kind of year, we're wrapping up the school year. Uh we've got what 32 3 days or something like that. Yeah. And u and so as we wrap the
school year up, uh we're very excited. Um and I'll kind of begin and end with the same comment. The academic gains that we've had have been phenomenal. You're going to learn more specifically about that um with Miss Dun and Mr. Sanchez. And we're looking forward to the end of the school year, this being the highest achieving year academically
we have ever had in your county school. And that's nothing short of amazing work from our employees and amazing engagement from our students. So, we're very pleased. We're very happy to have who we have and we're and we're just um very excited about what the academic change is going to be for this coming
school uh school year. As we as as leaders of the school district, as teachers, and as a community, we want to make sure that our belief systems and what we believe in in education is aligned with what we do
every day. We do that through what we call our strategic plan. Our strategic plan is an outline, if you will, that aligns our beliefs along with our actions that we do every single day. Is what we're doing today? Is what we're
doing aligned with a strategic plan? How does it drive achievement on the strategic plan? And that is very important to us. We're going through a strategic plan update and renewal this year. And that's really the main thrust of why we want, you know, the community to engage in person and online. So you
can see the strategic plan. We want you to see it, hear it, and we want you to engage in it. So, if you see things in there that you like, don't understand, or that should be added, that's why you're here. If you want to ask questions or clarifications as we go, please do that. At the end, we will have
time for you to ask questions at or anything off topic or anything to do with schools or employment or whatever you want to ask about, but please don't hesitate to ask anything clarifying as we go through. Now, to start us off, Dr. is going to come up and she's going to go through the strategic plan and um
make sure that you see it. So, we're going to have a little power over over on that side and uh hopefully I do this you'll you will know the strategic plan inside out. [Music] Hi, thank you for coming. I want to uh
talk to you a little bit about the strategic plan. As Mr. Swindle said, it is a work in progress. We are we are taking feedback. You will notice on every page we need to make clear that it is still in draft form. It is in draft form because we have taken it as a
district leadership team sort of created it from the 202 2021 to the 2024 uh strategic plan that we first created and now we are creating 25 to 28. The district leadership team took it made um
some changes and looked at what sort of we have learned from the first one and made the changes into this one. Once we did that, we presented it to the principles. The principles then went back and presented it to district um
teachers, staff, everybody in the schools and we got feedback from them. each uh school was able to provide feedback on a on a a Google form. So we have all of that feedback. Once we got
that feedback, we then presented to the school board and the school board then has provided us feedback. The last step in this effort is the feedback of the community and the other stakeholders, the parents. And this was our effort in
order to do that. And um Mr. Munes will talk about the ways to do that for those of you online and the way to continue to do that throughout. So, I will get started and work through the plan.
Um, we won't read every slide to you. There's your message from our beloved superintendent. And here's our amazing schoolboard members and their beautiful pictures. And then we have, it's the last presentation. I have to make it sound good. Then we have um our mission
and vision of course about our Hendrick County schools and Mr. Swindle said quite a bit of that. And then this is what I just talked about in our strategic planning process. You will notice on our goals
that they are not numbered in this one. They were numbered in the past and we had looked at that and didn't think that any of these should be numbered as a first priority, second priority because these are all our top priorities. Uh you
start, you know, we we can talk about academic achievement and safety and security and fiscal stewardship. They all tie together. There is not one that is more important over the other. even though of course the academic achievement of students um is is very
high up there but if we don't have the money to teach them if we don't if they don't feel safe all of those things. So they are not numbered on here however we do discuss each of them individually. So our priority strategies are on the left
in the blue and then in the center of all of the pages you will find the goals. So, our comprehensive qualitative data that indicate 100% of students feel safe at school. Um, students and staff,
this is of utmost importance and we talk about 100% because it needs to be 100%. If you don't feel safe at school, you don't learn and you don't want to work. So, we we use utilize that as one of our biggest priorities and goals. reduction
in the number of incidents reported to school environmental safety incident reporting system by 10%. This is called sector. This is the um the reporting that goes to the state that is the higher level offenses the weapons the
fighting all of that that we have drastically reduced in the past four years since we started the strategic plan and we would like to continue to reduce that by 10%. Ideally, we should have zero. Um, but 10% a year, you know,
kids will be kids. Um, academic and achievement goals is next on the agenda and we, if you look at 2324, we had a 44% proficiency rate in our fast ELA and we would like
to increase that to a 54% proficiency rate. And then on our fast math of 47% to a 57%. And I like to talk about this this document as a living breathing document. So if we
successfully increase all of this this year or we make massive increases this year like our hopes and dreams and plans are, we would then change this for next year. So it it does not stay here. If
things change and we need to update the percentages, we do that throughout. Our school culture and climate is also one of our top priorities. We would like to have um 75%
or greater satis satisfaction rating in the involvement um in decision makings by our by our employees, students and parents. And we looked at our culture and climate survey from this past year in January and took that data and
figured that figured out the top priorities from that data. Those were some of our lowest was the feeling of the decision making being um cumulative instead of from top down. So this is one of our our asks and one of our pushes
and look for is to have that satisfaction rating go and this is where we start these town hall meetings and all of the group effort. 90% satisfaction rating of school or workplace environment and 50% greater participation in the culture and climate
surveys for employees, students and parents. And you will notice that we have all three of those listed because we are um we have adopted a new system that we use remind right now and for next year our new system of
communication will change and we'll we will be able to do those surveys by phone. Um and all of the things that the communication pieces the principles will have communication out to their parents and staff. Um so that those things will
change a little bit and we hope that to get those outcome metrics as well. Teacher recruitment and retention obviously is important. The number one reason that students learn is a a teacher in front of them. Um you
have to have teachers in the classroom and in order to have those teachers in the classroom we have to recruit them and we need to retain them. We know that Henry County is one of the best places to work for us. Um, but we need everybody else to know that as
well. So, we're doing a lot of things to make that happen. Family and community engagement. Same. I think we have made leaps and bounds on our improvement of getting people to attend our family and community engagement activities. Um the
our um our ESSE and student services department in April had a family and community engagement event in Label for one Saturday and hundreds of families
were there getting resources and and doing all of the things that we um would like for them to know and and of course games and and prizes and dances and all of those things that will continue because it was such a success. So we are
going to flip side. So next year Glucon will be the recipient of that and um it was just a fantastic time for all. So 10% greater attendance increase each year uh by parent for parent teacher
conferences, community and district events and overall communication engagement. And again, some of that starts with doing these these sort of town hall meetings will continue over next year. And then fiscal stewardship. This
is providing basically an open book to how we are doing pis fiscally for our finances in these years. We have to optimize our grant funding. We need to keep our targeted fund balance exactly
where the board requires us to do so and then some. a healthy savings account is always for the best especially in these uncertain times. And then that of course the transparency and accountability for our finances and I think that's it. Do you
have any questions, concerns, anything over? Yes, sir. Do we know what you mind this changing to for next year? What? It's called Aptigy. Aptagy. Yes.
Yes. It is a it is a great um program and our IT department is working hard on that. When we roll our training out for that it'll be rolled out slowly. What is training for our educators going to be because he's in Yes sir. So right now what we're we're doing with is we're
configuring all the backend stuff. Um pretty much the developer side of the application um the communication between the data sync we're regarding our teachers and students. After we have that, we start to kick off and looking to train our staff members and our teachers. What APOG is looking to do is
I like how one of the biggest, you know, metrics with G is that they're also willing to get in front of our staff members, in front of our teachers, in front of our principal. So, we're looking to deploy this by a couple phases by having our school admins first. Um, and then our district admin kind of seeing, you know, fine-tuning
everything and then kind of having our teacher training. But our teachers you think may be the first in the school years and they'll be training. Our goal is to have it before the first school year. That way we can interrupt it when school comes back. That time back that is our goal. It'll be a great thing. And it sort of um that adding
piece brings the dojo sort of piece into it as well. So they have that classroom sort of base to it. So it kind of combines everything and it worked like perfectly for at least what we found perfectly for what everything we needed. Awesome. Thank you, Dr. Sh. As you can
see, the strategic plan is a comprehensive way of aligning what's important to us. When I say us, our parents, our employees, our students, our teachers, and everyone that's involved with the public education system to make sure that what we're doing is aligned every single
day. One of the things that's new, well, really the only thing that's new on the strategic plan is the safety piece. Um, when we did this four years ago, um, it wasn't even on there. They not only is on there, but we believe it to be very, very important. We all know that our
students, our parents, our our employees must feel safe. Our parents need to know that when they send their babies and brought their babies out, they're going to be safe, loved, fed, educated, and home safe. So, that's incredibly important. So, we have put a lot of energy, manpower, funding, and resources
through our safety department, Mr. Clay, our safety director, into making sure that happens. But we cannot lose sight of the fact that we are a school. Our primary role in this is to educate students. Educating students is is what we what we do, right? And so the
achievement of those students are very very important to us. As the school district, we want to always be driving forward. Strive for higher gain, strive for higher academics for our students, strive to fulfill every student's educational potential. And so that's
really important to us as a district. where we've been uh as a district is we've kind of maintained a C average and we've been kind of fluctuating through the C's. But it's not a very easy way to understand how schools are graded or how the district is graded. It's actually a
very long algorithmic equation that's very difficult to understand. But nonetheless, that's how we're held accountable by the state, by our board, and by the community. And so we want to do everything we can to drive achievement up. And so we started looking very closely at the data and the
numbers and what makes that happen four years ago. And today we're not perfect by no means, but we have gotten pretty darn good at understanding the data and how do we get better at our data. And at the end of the day, what that means is is how do we teach our kids better? It's not just a matter of how do we get
better scores. It's how do we teach better and how do our students achieve more. So here to help us understand more of that, Miss Duncan from the elementary side and Mr. Chester secondary side is going to come up and talk to us about our school battle.
Well, good afternoon everyone. Hello. Thank you for coming. Yes. Yes. We're excited to share the progress that we have made in terms of student academic performance over the last three years. I'm sorry I'm sidetracked. Um yes, looking at all of our data before we get
into the numbers, the last couple of years we've really taken a hard look at training for teachers and looking at the new standards that have been rolled out over the last handful of years and really doing strategic um standards based planning with our teachers as to become better prepared when we walk into
the classroom and we instruct our students and really making that rigor of learning and that rigor of teaching to the epitome of what is expected for our students. And so we do contribute a lot of the professional learning work that we've been doing not only with um our teachers but with our school leaders um
and digging into the data as a contributing factor to our continuing growth and yeah performance. And so what you see on the projector is really outcomes but what we want to talk about before we see outcomes and what Miss Duncan is talking about is the inputs,
right? like what has gone into producing the outcomes and and and most certainly has been about the work that we've done with our teachers with our principles around standardsbased uh cleaning and instruction. Um a couple years ago the district made the decision to
incorporate math day professional learning days into school calendar and that really was a true game changer for us. It really provided our our leaders at building level and our teachers with the time and space on a monthly basis to look at their curriculum, look at their
data, right, and make those necessary modifications monthto month. All right. The other thing that we have really uh modified and changed was our approach to um uh principal training and principal meetings. for for a very long time, a
lot of our principal meetings were really focused on procedural managerial type of things, right? Just the the operations of of the building. Um, you know, we made the decision when we looked at the data, when we looked at what does it take to continuously improve student achievement is we got to
really continue to develop and build capacity, build that instructional leadership element within our within our school principles, right? And so every principal meeting now incorporates a professional learning series of of things that are designed and targeted,
right, to continue to increase their knowledge of the standards, their knowledge of assessments, their knowledge of how we improve student academic growth. All right. And then the other thing you want to talk about the the quarterly data convers. Yes. So we've been spending a lot of time, as he said,
growing our instructional leaders. And another way that we do that is by having not only our leadership team but our principles join other schools in doing what we call instructional walk through instructional rounds. And so we go in and we look at classrooms and we watch teachers teach and we watch students learn. I mean we really think about the
lesson plans and what was written is what being um implemented in the classroom um evidenced by what was listed in in the lesson plan. and then being able to provide quality feedback to those teachers on the instruction that they're providing. Um, and giving our principles opportunity to
collaborate and really have conversations around what we're seeing in classrooms in a variety of classrooms as to help each other, right? It's another opportunity for them to grow because they're getting outside of their school and seeing students learn in a different environment. I think those conversations that happen during that
process of those instructional walks is really powerful because it's that conversation, it's that discourse, it's that communication between teachers and administrators, between administrators and district staff, right, that really helps us continue to move the needle in the right direction. All right. And so,
um, when we look at our outcomes, right, we are nowhere near where we want to be, but we're very proud of the fact that we have made strong growth of the last few years. And so, when you look at these three school years worth of data, it's
important to note that it's hard to compare oranges to oranges because the the standards that students are assessed on changed during this time period. So in 2122 students were assessed on the
the FSA standards. All right. In 2223 and 23 24 the state of Florida switched to the new best standards. Right? These were more rigorous standards. Right? Designed to challenge students more academically. And so while the standards
got more difficult and more complex, our data continue to trend and improve in the right direction which is very very impressive. And so when you look at our overall ELA third grade proficiency, that was not a metric that the state uh
evaluated until 2324, which we came in at 53% which is right at about the state average. So we're very competitive there with state average and turned over third grade reading proficiency. rea which measures the literacy performance of our
students in grades 3 through 10 went up four percentage points during that time period. Uh learning gains is is a metric that the state of Florida uses to determine uh how much a student should grow in their performance year to year
on the same test. All right. So, if they took the fourth grade test in literacy, uh by the time they're in fifth grade, they should have received this particular score in order to make a year's worth of adequate uh progress. And so, you can see there that overall
our students um gain nine points in that metric. And then what we have is in the lowest 25th percentile, the state of Florida says that a district and school has to focus on improving the performance of the lowest 25th percentile of their students based on
assessments. And you can see we've made tremendous progress there. You know, basically a 20 point gain over this course because uh that has been a direct result of our more intense focus on being a datadriven school district,
right? When we look at the individual uh students granular level, right? And our teachers are having conversation about the the specific scores and they're getting students to own the data. there being students to talk about this is this is what I need in order to meet my
goal for this school year. All right, we're challenging students to make that progress, right? Um overall in math proficiency, we went up from 35 to 47%. So tremendous 12point gain there. And same thing with math. Um in terms of the
the learning gains, you see the same trend there of positive growth. Um, math, I mean, science is based on fifth grade science, eighth grade science, and also high school biology assessment, but you see a seven point gain there. Social studies is based on the middle school
civics and the high school biology. We saw an 11 point gain there. Uh, those those both assessments did not change like the math and the delay. Okay. Middle school acceleration is a component that takes into account the
percentage of middle school students that take a high school course and pass the corresponding course exam or uh earn an industry certification. All right, you can see there that again we continue to uh track in the in the right
direction and going from 42 to 59%. High school acceleration. It's about the number of high school graduates that graduate on time that have either an AP exam, which is a university level course exam passed, a dual enrollment credit
earned, or they earn an industry certification. And you can see that we typically took a slight slight dip in 23, but then we rebounded in 24 uh to to a solid 63%. our graduation rate in uh in 22
graduation rates are always lacking indicators. So the graduation rate that you see for the the school district rate in 2122 is actually reflective of the graduation rate of our high schools in late year 21. All right. And so you can see that in in the year 2020 year 2021
the state of Florida lacked some of the graduation assessment requirements because of the co pandemic. It was at 87%. uh we went to 76% in 23 rebounded to 81 where the graduating class of 2023 is 81
the graduating class of 2024 is now up to 85%. So again, we continue to make progress in the right direction and that's a testament to a lot of hard work that goes on not just at the high school level, but really the K12 continuum, right? Because high school graduation
doesn't start when a kid gets to high school. It really starts when they're in preK. They're learning how to read and they're learning their basic math, right? So everybody in the whole entire district plays a part in producing their graduation rate, which in a lot of ways is the most important metric um for for
our school district. And so when you t when you combine all these points in 2122 a school district was graded on,00 points because each one of these categories has a maximum value of 100 points. We earn 530 points which is the
48% of all eligible points. In order for you to be a B school district in that school year, you had to achieve 54% of all eligible points. We were six points away from a C or a B. All right. And this year, notice that there's no learning needs because this
was the first year the new test was introduced. That's called what state calls the baseline unit. So there's no uh components for learning needs. And so instead of,00 points, it was only based on 700 points because we achieved 380 which put us at 84%. Well, last year
because of the baseline grades, there was some inflation around the state. And so the state decided, you know, they waved the magic wand and they said in order for you to be a B school district that year, you had to achieve 58% of the points, right? But they would have kept
it that 54 like the previous would have been a Baker. All right? And so the story only gets better in 23 24 because we got to the 56% because now they went back to incorporated learning. So there was a big mystery about what the the B
uh cut off mark was. Was it going to go back to being 54 like it was the previous year? Were they going to stay at 58 like they had that year? Well, they waved their magic wand and they made the the grade of being that year at 57%. And we were just one point shy away from
being a historic school district, which we have done a lot of work. And our teachers and our students, our administrators are continuing, you know, uh, day in day out uh, to do the hard work that it takes to hopefully this year um, get past that that B mark and
be a a B school district because every every single one of our students deserves a high quality education. All right. Awesome. Thank you for sh It is very important to us that we
are a high achieving school. We want to drive there. We want to continue working there. We will never take our foot off the problem and that's why we do everything else, you know, with regard to keeping kids safe, making sure the buses are running. We want to make sure, you know, that we are always driving for better spots. Uh with regard to the
grade, this is another matrix we're going to show you guys real quick to make sure you understood where we were as a district with regard to size. There are 67 school districts in the state of Florida. 40 of those 67 today are hemorrhaging students very very badly. Broward County this year are scheduled
and expecting to lose 31,000 students between now and August. They and that's happening in most of the larger districts, some of the small rural districts, but mainly it's happening in the larger districts. And they're going to large charter schools, private schools, and a lot of home schools. We have some doing that, but just not the
magnitude that they're doing it in the other districts. In fact, not only are we not losing students that range, you'll see we're actually gaining students. And so, if you look at 21 to 20 uh one to all the way to 25, we actually are up about a little over 200
students. And that's pretty important and pretty impressive for a rural district to be gaining. We're one of the only we're one of the few rural districts in the state that actually is gaining. And so, we're proud of that. our location where we are um with regard to the the south part of the peninsula of Florida being able you know to to
move away from the coast come inland the great things that we offer and we feel like we've got a great school district it's very safe and if you'll notice we don't talk about discipline much matter of fact you're not going to hear anything about discipline the only thing I will tell you is that because the of the of the formative changes things that
we have done and the forward thinking our discipline level of new county public schools has dropped tremendously our number of incidents with fights, drugs, weapons, and things is it's very very low for the entire state. And we're proud of that. That's because of what we do. And we think that that's part of
what's driving. People know that they come. We don't we don't we don't have any instance. When we do, we we get on it hard. We don't allow things in our schools. That's acceptable in most other schools. So, this is really huge. Growing students is very important. That's also how we're funded.
And so as we look at the funding mechanisms in the state we and the student and the schools that are losing students, they're are also losing funding. So at least holding our own pretty much and growing a little bit that will help us with regard to the funding as a school district. Well, one
of the problems that it does create, it's a good problem to have is where do you put all these students? And so we have to continue to look at our footprint of our schools and how do we accommodate classroom spaces and seats for students. We have a wide range of schools. Our newest school is 26 years
old this year. That's old, right? Our oldest school was put into service in 1967. So that's a little over 50 years old. And so we have a wide gamut of where we are with regard to our facilities. In order to accommodate students in Hendrick County schools, we're in the process of building a new
high school in Lavel. And then that's going to cause metriculation there. And Mr. the new director of of uh facilities maintenance and now new construction. He's going to kind of give you an update on where we are and he'll point out to you that back there on the back wall there's an actual rendition of it that
you can check out as we're sitting or maybe when when we're finished. Mr. About 4 years ago, we uh met with the state of Florida for the Florida um school houses, inventory of school houses, and the director there said, "Do
you have a opportunity to uh apply for special facilities use construction?" Um we heard that our ears popped up and well, we can build a new school. So, we went through that process and we went through the process and we went to Tallahassee. We got approved. We got
ranked number one. So, we got the okay to go through and build a new high school. Our new LEL high school will be on new new Helms Road over in Lavel and it'll accommodate around 1500 students. Um, we are working through the permitting right now with civil engineering, the architectural or
construction manager side. Um, it's moving. I was we were moving a little bit faster, but we're right on schedule for our timeline to be having students there on the school year 2027. And we will have walls coming up
probably next year at this time. [Music] Um, and we are very excited about that to have this facility in our new school or in our community. We're going to have it's going to be built as a hurricane shelter also. that were hardly part of
the school so we can culminate and help out the community for during the hurricanes or event weather and also we are this is a school as you know we've used one school for over 50 years so this is going to be a school that is going to help out our community for the
next five decades so it's going to be an awesome thing about new high [Music] school what we're terming the new high school because it's going to be such such a a large beautiful place and we
want to use it as a community place. This is a place where the community comes for events and things to happen. And so we've kind of termed it as going to be the front porch of Lavell. This is a spot where a lot of things going to happen over the next 50 years. And so we want people to build a community of Lel
High School. And again, um when we're finished, if you want to take a peek at that and uh that's changed just a little bit, but it's still pretty much what you see up there. uh we can help walk you through and explain that uh as we get there. Um one of the one of the things that we
try to do is we try to be forward thinking and proactive with regard to how do we operate our schools? What does that school calendar look like? What do the start times look like? How do we accommodate the needs of our students, our parents, our families, our teachers? And so that's really important to us and
it's really important to you as well. Um Miss Duncan and Mr. percent. I think both of you right both of them are going to come back up and talk to us about the calendar a little bit different this year. We're really excited about different calendar and the school starts.
All right. So, um the new calendar is on the screen you can see. Ultimately, we modified the calendar recently to think about work life balance for our students but also for our staff and our our families. As you know, being a student
in education with very rigorous standards can be exhausting. There's a lot of things that we have to accomplish and get done. Um, and students are really working bell to bell from the time they arrive to campus to the time that they came to campus. And so, there is that opportunity for students as well as our staff to get a little tired or
restless um over a long period of time. So, what we built into the calendar is the opportunity approximately every nine weeks to have several days off. You'll note that with the addition of the October fall break so that our students as well as our staff and our families can have an opportunity to rejuvenate,
take a little vacation if they need to. Um, take an extra day off in their pajamas, whatever works for them to just rejuvenate and be ready to go when it's time to be back on campus and really get back into the intensive learning um that our students are doing. Yeah. As Dr.
Stay said earlier um this evening the the number one way to to ensure um student learning is to put in front of them quality teaching. All right. And so before we can talk about
you know uh strategic plans, improvement plans, professional learning, right? You got to ensure that the teachers are in the classrooms, right? And the the situation is very challenging for for for the 15,000 school districts across
this country in terms of recruiting teachers. And because the situation is challenging, right, we have to think of innovative out of the box ways to try to incentivize educators to join the team Henry County because we believe that
we're a great school district to work for, you know. But what is that it factor? What's that factor that separates us from other school districts, right? Well, we have a fall break in October. You know, that's one of the many other things that that
separate us. But, you know, we have to frame it in that context that, you know, if if we are going to sustain the academic growth that we have seen over the last four years, we have to continue to still work on the recruitment side and make sure
the teachers ready. And I would just add on to that, you'll see the first few days of um late July, early August, we did build in ample opportunities for our teachers to not only have professional learning days, but paid opportunities to work in our classrooms and prepare their classrooms for our students and that is
working. So how likely is this calendar to stay this way? I think if if it's a popular occurrence and we see that the data trends positively with it, then we're pretty confident.
Well, what I would say to that is we have to always keep our head on the swivel. We really can change to meet the needs of our students, parents, and community. Right? If this is it, this makes everyone happy and we're good to go, then we're happy to stay. We don't know what's going to change next year, right? And there's a lot of stuff being
floated after 4 to 8 weeks. You know, we don't know. And so, but uh we're going to we believe that and we know that this incredible favor with a calendar committee which is made up of administrators, teachers, um ACA, our union, and everybody worked together on
this and they're incredibly happy with this calendar. And when we push it back out and revote it then it was an unbelievable support vote on it. I'm just curious. I'm not playing on the parents um taken into account also. So
we we obviously take the parents into account and and um that's one of the biggest reasons we didn't really lean toward a 4 day week uh um you know then one of the reasons or multiple reasons why we did not. But if you got a child that you got to take care of and you got a job that's a conundrum that you put a
parent in, right? And so that was one of the reasons we back out of that. We're looking at what we call the balance calendar model as well, which is where we took a month out of summer and then put two weeks break rather than one. Well, again, well, that's right. So, we it it it
actually printed positivity, but not enough we felt like make that how that'll change. So, um we do take into account the fact that, you know, we got parents and have jobs. We're in the community where most people work, right? And so, we get that. And so we believe
that this sort of satisfies, you know, all of of the of the uh needs of our teachers, our students, our parents, um and and it gives kind of a new model, if you will, for us to look forward to, you know, in our in our profession. So we hope that this drives some happiness
with our employees that they can say, you know, matter of fact, maybe it looks good, but I was just wondering how the system works and like your parents were surveyed when that took place. Is there was there a parent survey? So on the committee, the committee is made up of
district folks, teachers, uh union, and then they bring in and then we took it to this and then all of the in the the entire um employment gets to vote. So parents, most of them are parents, right? They are parents, but we didn't
push that's well no well they come up with the plan and then and then all 10,000 employees get a chance to vote on They all voted and then what? They vote. So we give them options and this allies of our employees.
And so this was employee driven. [Music] All right. School start time. So the other minor change for this next school year, primarily on the side, is there are some changes to our schools
are in stock times. part of the purpose of Brown that was um to allow our post early learning center to extend the day and then to support our transportation system in terms of being able to drop students off to various schools that staggering the time frame. So what was
happening this current school year is, you know, like all elementary schools started at the same time, but the same bus went to all three schools. And so we're looking to stagger the school times a little bit so that the kids riding a bus aren't being dropped off the same and having to wait as long for
the buses. Um, so this is our current plan for next school year to address those needs and hopefully we're putting it out to our parents early enough that they can make accommodations for that as well. Um the LEL side does look a little bit different. Um but overall Lavel did
not have as many changes as the design. Questions about that? And one of the things one of the things that's really important for us to discuss when it comes to school start times is um is this in the school year 2627 the the Florida uh government has
passed a bill that basically requires requires that middle schools start no earlier than 8:00 and that high schools start no earlier than 8:30. All right. So that was a law that was passed, right, that
affects 2627 in the school district, which would basically mean our elementary is going to have to switch and start around at 7:15 time. Yeah. And and that would put us starting high school after 8:30 and put us starting middle school after 8:00, right? Which
creates some serious challenges for a lot of our extracurricular programs that we have at the high school level in terms of sports and clubs, right? in terms of students that are high school seniors or juniors that are working, right? and you need to get to work, you know, by 2:00 or need to get to work by
3:00 p.m. And so, uh, what the state of Florida has asked districts to do is is if they want to remain on their current schedule where middle school would start before 8:00, where high schools would start before 8:30, they must engage with
the community and get feedback from the community in terms of what is the community does the community support the current start the current start times or would the community prefer to move to the much later start times. All right. And so we would like to hear from
you as community members what your thoughts were on the topic. Mr. Will it be? I'm not sure exactly how likely it is. I think we did a legislation to just pass the bill to repeal that bill today.
But in the repeal um you have to basically the repeal gives us the option. you still have to do it unless unless you can you can prove that you've talked to the community or you've got a reason why you want to leave the same and so that's one of the reasons we're asking that what is your opinion then on
high school you work at the high school right what's your opinion then on the high school start at 8:30 rather than 7 um my viewpoint on it is students staying now at this 7:30
person more than likely he's going to stay up even later. It's going to be the same situation we're in now. Okay, that's great. Appreciate that. Any other feedback? Do you have any comments that you would like to add on the start
times? Yes, ma'am. [Music] Yeah. I probably better keep it. Um I have two daughters and one's in elementary and one starting high school. So it's a
challenge, right? Okay. Yep. And we we're just asking for opinions right now. So that's why you know the state says we need to engage our stakeholders. That's what we're doing. So if you if you have other docs, please don't hesitate to call, text,
come by, email, whatever. So, we make sure we hear you. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions about school services start? Awesome. Thank you, Miss Mr. Sanchez. And one of the things we like about that is the fact that we get to
engage. We want to hear from you. Again, we want to be, you know, community school where you have a voice, we hear you, and we're making sure that we're tearing out your your thoughts and wishes for what our school system needs to be. Dr. Monday is going to come up and she's going to talk to you about a incredible opportunity that you have to
have your voice heard even more as we go forward. Um, and how we can use you and you can leverage your voice, especially parents that have children and employees so that our school system represents you and your thoughts and desires. So, so within the district, we have um several
plans or um several items that we should be engaging our stakeholders and our parents and our community members on. And so, one of them is the strategic plan that we just talked about. And if you think about the one goal that was
parent and community engagement, um that those ideas of having stakeholder input into the plan is not only mandated by the state, but also it helps us be better. We have great
leaders, we have great teachers, we have great students, and now we're looking for our great parents and community members to also add their input. So we have devised a district advisory council
and they will meet four times a year maybe three three or four depending quarterly sometimes you get busy and within those meetings you will have you know ideas that the district is working
on and we'll be asking for your input sort of like with this the start times. So, um, if you're wanting to sign up, I have the form here. No pressure at this point. Um, you
can also do it via the QR code that's on the wall. That is a, um, survey. Francisco, do you want to talk any more about the survey or Yes, ma'am. So, um, what I I want to start off saying is that sometimes a question may come up. It's like, oh man, I forgot it. I should
have asked them off there. So what we did is we created a survey and you guys are able to scan this QR code and it redirect you to a link. That link is our survey for town hall 2025 that you guys can put in a series of the questions that are answers to questions that are
asked and you're able to share that survey at the very bottom too. You can share it with any individual who may not be here. And for those of you online, we haven't forgotten about you. The survey the link is on Facebook and YouTube. So they're also able to click on that um survey and then get asked a series of
questions. Those questions are both English and Spanish before uh for any of our Spanish speakers that want to participate and want to be part of the um advisory council. You are also able to express your interest in that survey. So at the very bottom you're able to go
and put in your information and say, "Hey, I wasn't able to sign up or I wasn't there in person, but I would like to participate. Um here's my information." And that snap survey gives you guys an opportunity and a voice to talk about the topics that we on here
about the calendar about our strategic plan about anything that you know concerns with you guys. There is a little column at the very end that just gives you guys a voice and a platform to talk about what we're doing. Awesome. Anybody want to name I have
some nods. That's what I'm here for. I love it. I love it. Well, we have come to a point in time where we are through with our scheduled agenda items that we have. Is there anything that y'all would like to ask um of us as a district of
the schools? So, open question time. Is there anything? Yes, ma'am. On the start times, is this like a trial type thing? So, the start times um uh I don't know if you call it a trial as much as a moving target, right? And so, and by the
way, I want to say this, Mr. play um is in charge of our transportation department and I know you're all at work but if anyone's listening you know or on social media watching us right now we always need drivers and so that really is a lot of the big driving factor that
we have behind that is making sure we have enough people to go pick the bus to take the bus go get students bring them back get them home and we struggle with that so we have to make sure and it is a very dynamic juggling act to make sure that you you got one school, we know how many minutes it is to the next school.
And so it is uh it it could change a little bit every year, but we try to keep it as close as possible so that we know that work times and schedules are big. Now, one of the things that we do here, you said you had a child born in elementary, right? In elementary. In
elementary. And so on the elementary drop off, a lot of our parents have to go to work when they drop the child off. And so we do have um uh for the parent drop off line um that that will open a little sooner because we know that these start times kind of infringe a little
bit on when most people have to be at work. And so they will open several minutes earlier to allow you to drop your child off and then they will be have personnel there to to take parent drop offs only and then and then you can go on board a little earlier. So, we're trying our best to be community, find it
for you and and understand the needs of parent. Anything else? We cannot tell you how much we appreciate y'all coming. We can't tell you how much we appreciate those of you joining us. Um, if you're online, if there are further questions or or anything you would like to know, all of
our staff uh is available and we have kind of open door policy and and so please don't hesitate to reach out at any time. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Appreciate