##VIDEO ID:fSJpmFwZcws## [Music] good morning we're going to reconvene at 10:04 this morning and I'm going to ask that attorney Powers explain item 8.1 Central wellous bid as you recall Bard uh we were here recently um regarding the uh sale of central warehouse as well as a vacant lot property nearby um in those cases as to the property in the vacant lot I have included that property information with the agenda item for today specifically because um in conversations that we had on the record as well as conversations that I've had with attorney McGraw uh there was a need for that to have a specific execution date after he finalized the the contractual language and so I've provided for your viewing there the execution amendment that allows that to be a November 21st execution and allows us to proceed forward so on a separate note I would just like to indicate that with the board's permission given that you've already accepted as to the sale of the vacant property um that the uh that there will be an execution date of today if I can get consensus that you confirm that okay looks like we have consensus as to the second item item 8.1 this is as to the sale of the warehouse property um the board was presented with a number of bids uh those bids ranged uh the board reviewed that and also reviewed the appraisals and based on those the board DET determined that time that it would reject those bids the board would then proceed to seek highest and best offers from all biders attorney McGraw has done so and attorney McGraw will address you today regarding the results of that good morning good morning thank you for being with us this morning thank you for having us um as attorney Powers was stating we did reach out to all biders to see if there would be a highest and best or if anyone wanted to increase their offer uh um after multiple Communications with everyone uh the biders decided to stay where they were at and stated that they had each made their highest and best offers at this point so I don't see them coming up at all any any anymore and the board's option will be to accept what's on the table or to reject all the offers so at this point you do have the the the highest and best um offer which was the Palm Capital Partners at the $1.4 million um all cash no contingency with a 15-day inspection due diligence period so that is the what what appears to be the the best offer on the table and um I would defer to the board for your discussion to determine if that is something that you want to move forward with or if you wanted to pass on it so we could notify the parties that we were going to reject all offers and um and and move forward with a different structure or mechanism to sell the warehouse and to clarify uh we we had previously rejected offers but the question then was we would ask each to come back with the highest and best the highest and best is still that the 1.4 million for that property and that is uh after further inquiry there's been no change in that position so now at this point they've indicated they are still interested at the 1.4 level but are not willing to move forward so the board now has to make a determination whether to accept that as a highest and best or whether to continue to reject Pro all bids and in that case the opportunities that the board would have would be to relist go down a different path perhaps allow uh bring in realtor in have um have um specific walkthroughs available additional marketing a number of factors that the board could set up and determine and have Mr McGraw handle those to the degree the board ceas fit in order to make sure that we can maximize the sale and value of that property beyond that 1.4 million apart from that and now that of course the board will consider that that takes um time and it also does it will take additional funds and resources in order to achieve that we don't know exactly the unknown is we don't know how much more we'll spend or how much more time we'll spend in order to achieve an end result nor do we know what that end result will be if it will be better or or not so given those factors attorney McGraw who's been involved in these discussions negotiations and also uh is um you know aware of a lot of the details of the property we'll be able to advise you further if you have any further questions okay open up to the board Dr James um attorney mad did you come today with uh recommendations for realtor um I don't have specific recommendations today for a realtor um today was coming to discuss to see if the board had any interest at all in in uh Reviving the existing offers on the table specifically the 1.4 for the commercial warehouse building um okay I thought that was something we had discussed as a board because if we do reject then we will have to have another work session to discuss realators before we're able to list and so I I did think that was something we had discussed but um board my recommendation since this is under the appraised value is to um reject this bid best and final and take it to the market with a realer who will show the property um effectively and appropriately and with the end goal being that we get an offer at one point um higher than this higher than 1.4 um so that we walk away with the appropriate amount of money I agree I concur Yes sounds good right board member thrower okay it sounds like we are in agreeance so my my request then would be that um either a recommendation for a realator is emailed to all of the board members or something or are we giving discretion to Mr mcra to make that unanimous decision and move forward like I think the Board needs to have a level of discussion today about what our next steps are I personally am comfortable letting Mr McGraw um make that decision um with with my personal experience with Mr mcra and his work I have confidence that he can pick an appropriate um realer and we can move forward uh with like a I mean I would like a a short listing agreement and like the terms be incredibly short and we just put it out and do what we need to do but um with set Market terms that are appropriate in the industry that would be my recommendation board but certainly what everyone else has I'm in agreement okay I'm hearing from rever Cummings anyone else my only question to that is do we also come to terms with the commission agreed upon amount and those sorts of things because certainly trust your judgment on the individual not certain that we don't need to weigh in on at least some factors of what that looks like sure what we would be doing is creating a contract for the the realtor as well and Mr McGraw and I would work on doing that and we'd present that to the board essentially at that point um we would be giving you our recommendation for what the appropriate terms of retaining the realtor are um and I would prefer to be able to make those decisions you know rapidly so that we don't have to that contract would have to be on a board meeting depends on what the amount is for but generally yes so we have a December 10th board meeting they could button up what they need to button up in the next whatever I'll get back and advise the board and I'll set it as soon as possible as of right now I would not say that it's likely that we're going to be able to put that on a December 10th board meeting why because I've got I am reluctant to set things for a board meeting that I cannot discern exactly how long it's going to take Mr mcra do you have one two three realtors in mind that would be appropriate to list this property um I have some realtors in mind that I would reach out to um I think I would you know to the point as to what the commission would be um I think the cap on that commission would be a 6% commission um which would be pretty typical and what I think I would do is try to determine if he either these Realtors um would accept a lesser commission to move forward um and and so I would like to see some sort of a cap that you guys agree that 6% or less and then we go and negotiate with those Realtors to find out who can offer the best um bang for the book frankly have a suggestion yes and could we have a list of Realtors moving forward certainly I I I can have I feel comfortable if you making the decision but board member thr I was going to say that we could um put it as a placeholder for the December 10th meeting um and then that way we're not uh getting to the problem of of not having it timely advertised absolutely under discussion yes that's a great idea Mr MCG do you feel like uh in the next obviously I being aware that there is a holiday ahead of us do you feel like you were able to have discussions with realators who I know you have relationships with and you work with regularly and come to some kind of agreement by December 3rd um I believe we can make that happen um within that time frame I will immediately get on the phone with realtors that I have a that I know and have a relationship with that I think would would fit this job well and see if we could start getting something moving today and tomorrow so we can come back with a report for um attorney powers and we can start getting those and the contract would be a standard listing agreement that would be a standard agreement that would be used in commercial real estate that's correct yeah yeah and do understand you know the the process that we just went through was one where we had a highest and best auction essentially where we had the ability to accept or reject whatever we wanted to as a board um those potential buyers did not have the ability to walk the premises they didn't have any ability to do any type of physical look other than driving around on the public streets so I'm I'm I just want to clarify that when we do the listing agreement we have the authority to allow those the agent including myself if you'd like to walk through the properties with these potential purchasers because I think that's going to allow you to get more offers at a higher amount rather than having no one come to the property um that becomes a tougher sale so the listing agreement would include Provisions a standard listing agreement will include Provisions that say that you know the property will be accessible for the agent to walk through prospective purchasers I just want to make sure that there's no objection C to that shown like any typical property shown like any typical property yes ma'am okay so the advertisement for this uh for the December 10th um board clerk would need to be for in order to achieve a advertisement for that when are you advertising for the December 10th December 3rd December 3rd okay so the placeholder would need to be in place now I will point out that we can get a placeholder I'm in court all day tomorrow um next weekend get a placeholder on that agenda um however the latter portion of that week being Thanksgiving and then board and your attorney are all at conferences uh the following week so that's going to require that um independently um I'm going to need for you to work with that realtor or the Realtors and get together the contract information that we need so that I can drop it onto an agenda as an open item okay I we can make that happen and then my only other question board is the listing price so are we giving Mr mcra and the realter the discretion to set the listing price um I think that would be most appropriate but I do we want to put parameters in for the listing price that we're setting sorry Mr McGrath that's overstepping but I just didn't want I think the realtor may want to have input on that as I totally agree I agree too so I would like to offer discretion to the realator and Mr mcra to set the listing price certainly above 1.4 above 1.4 absolutely yes can we say within the appraisal range agreed at or above the appraisal range right okay enough that would be what I would like okay yes I think we're in agreeance I agree okay all right anything else that we need to discuss on this topic well I think we need to make a motion to approve and then vote on it right we need to make a motion to we have two separate motions because we also have to approve the contract for the other no on that one it's already been approved um I am just bringing it to the board's attention that uh it will have an exec that Amendment will have an execution date as of the 21st and I've gotten consensus based on your prior approval and so that we can ensure that that is an execution date of the 21st so all I was asking for consensus for is asked that Amendment which allows for the execution date to be the 21st because you've already voted to approve on the vacant property okay so do we have to vote or since we've already rejected all bids do we need to vote again on the same bid because the bid is the same I would vote to vote to uh reject highest and best the highest and best at 1.4 um that's on for today so that we have set that as our cycle that we're going to do that we would that we would consider highest and best and now based on what the board is indicating a motion to reject that as the highest and best I'm chair motion that we reject the highest and best uh offers that have been given to us today that we move forward with the process okay thank you do I have a second thank you um Dr Campbell is there any discussion all those in favor say I I I motion passes 5 Z okay and that is a motion passing for rejection so the item that is on there is rejected thank you all right do I need to ask for public comment on this topic is there any public comment no Madam no all right hearing and seeing none there is no further business may I have a motion to adjourn so move second all right motion by Reverend Cummins second by board member thrower all those in favor say I I I this meeting is adjourned at 10:19 thank [Music] you e --------- ##VIDEO ID:OibUlliXW3Y## good morning I now call the November 21st 2024 administrative brief and work session of the Maran County School Board order at 10:25 a.m. please silence your electronic devices to avoid disturbing others mirroring and modeling how our students begin each day I ask that you please pause with us for a moment of silence please join me thank you I'm now going to um share our commitment commitment statement we are the Marian County School District leadership team when we come together to work we are efficient effective and productive our three most important characteristics are dedicated transparent and individually responsible to work well together we must demonstrate respect confront reality and be accountable we will always put students first we will leave a legacy of success I'd like now like to ask the board attorney to explain the rules for this public Public Work session good morning attorney Powers good morning good morning and thank you this work session is a public meeting as defined in Florida's Sunshine Law the board is dedicated to full transparency and its meetings and its work in compliance with the Sunshine Law the board has adopted uniform meeting procedures including the right for St citizens to participate the board will allow public comment regarding any work session item listed on today's agenda at the appropriate time speakers must fill out a request form located in the lobby and hand it to the board clerk after the board and superintendent have completed their discussion on a particular agenda item the board clerk will call speakers names in the order received each speaker will have three minutes as required by the Sunshine Law the board must maintain orderly conduct and proper decorum throughout this meeting speakers May criticize subject matter and decisions in a respectful manner but not people finally speakers must be very careful not to violate the Privacy rights of others especially students and their family members by mentioning their names or other identifying information thank you for your attention to these important rules thank you attorney Powers Miss Gonzalez please provide the proof of publication for today's meeting the notice for the November 21st 2024 work session was published in The loal Gazette on November 8th 2024 proof of publication has been attached to bardocks under proof of publication thank you we will now begin the work session with the superintendent's administrative administrative briefing good morning Dr ballet good morning Madam chair members of the board great to see you this morning and I know the time is getting late I'll be very brief for my briefing just to provide some context to the agenda today board the first two items are um updates on our strategic plan and as you all are aware this is a a collaborative effort uh with the district and the school board that we um set the vision and tone for the board um for the work of the district rather and there's a board liaison um associated with each goal and really um these are opportunities for our public to see our updates on what we're doing understanding that the Strategic plan is flexible and adaptable to the needs of our students um and as we um strive to reach our outcomes for those students that we adapt so today you will see two strategic plan updates and then um after that you're going to have um an update on an owner direct purchase and discussion on an item um for discussion for your consideration for the new high school that we're building so um if I may Madame chair proceed okay so it's my pleasure at this point to introduce board the first item which is goal two and that is our creating a safe and positive learning and working environment we have a quite a team here today as you can tell Bard and Mr mcfaden is going to kick it off for us today thank you good morning morning Madam chair board members Dr gulet attorney p m Martinez today we are here to present to you strategic Plan update for goal number two uh your presenters today as listed here on this slide uh will be presented in order as is presented here uh we do have Miss D noell she will present as the third presenter and then come back after miss Connor to present a final uh portion of her presentation again achieve 2020 26 goals goal number two is to provide a safe and positive learning and working environment Mr mcfaden I'm sorry to interrupt you but as we go through because this is such a large presentation I believe we've got about 45 slides when you come to what might be a natural break in your topic um will you give us the opportunity to um ask questions as we go through yes okay thank you very much okay the primary goal of Maran County Public Schools is to ensure a s safe learning and working environment for students and staff this is achieved through adherence to legislative mandates policies procedures and districtwide best practices a significant amount of time and effort is dedicated to safety and mental Wellness with the the help of the entire mcps team we work to leave no stone unturned in safeguarding our schools today's focus is goal on goal two safe and positive learning working environment um within this goal we will highlight the outcome metrics including the remov removal of two metrics and the addition of another as you can see on your screen here today we've got our outcome metrics and we did remove two of them because they were completed and we'll get to them later into the presentation but we did also add another one due to the mandates that were presented to us by the state we felt it was necessary to add that as another metrics but you can see the numbers here our Baseline um numbers our Target numbers those that highlighted in blue are the numbers that we received in 22 23 and 24 and again with each presentation as we go through those numbers will be explained and talked to you in great detail again this is one of the key indicators completed uh 2b2 add home Aon to every campus and that again was accomplished and that will be talked about in Greater detail at the later slide okay so at this time I will present to you uh Dr henbrook for her part of the presentation good morning strategy 2A is to build capacity of schools and leaders to Implement strategies to provide a safe and positive and supportive learning in conditions the key strategy is to support the implementation of positive behavior methods through continuous professional learning opportunities monthly student service manager me trainings occur and during these meetings student service managers spend time together learning from various departments within Marion County Public Schools each month the schools use data to disaggregate behavior incidents and identify Trends and through this process and in small groups the student service managers brainstorm and share specific strategies and best practices that they have used and experienced calibration also occurs and give uh the student service managers time to review specific scenarios discuss how they would code that particular behavior and then suggest strategies to provide a safe positive learning environment over the summer discipline Matrix training was offered to student service managers and assistant principles of discipline and this content focused on the Progressive discipline which included a variety of strategies that school leaders can Implement before resorting to out of school suspension the second key activity to address strategy 2A a is to provide professional learning opportunities on effective classroom management practices aligned with a schoolwide discipline framework positive behavior interventions and support or otherwise known as PBIS is still the framework used in mcps schools professional learning is provided to schools so that they can learn the 10 10 critical elements of PBIS and develop a school-based tier one Behavior plan in July we offered 3 days of PBIS the first day was a refresher course for schools and their teams who had already been fully trained the summer prior and the next two days were new training days for schools and school teams who were seeking learning opportunities for PBIS in total there were 20 schools represented with 88 people in attendance we also offer a PBIS midyear checkin to provide support to schools as they continue to focus and develop a safe positive learning environment the data on this chart shows the number of incidents by location for the same time period from the 2324 school year and this school year the 2425 school year so as you can see the number of incidents for this school year has been reduced by a little over 350 incidents in the classroom and bus incidents have also been decreased this year by a little more than 3 I'm sorry 380 incidents the data shows that the tier one school-based Frameworks are supporting a decrease of incidents and it's also important to note that uh the number of reduction of bus incidents might also be attributed to the coaching cycle work that we did last year with student service managers and bus drivers the data on this chart is um comparing level one and level two referrals for the 23 24 school year and the 25 25 school year for the same time period again as you can see there's a reduction of level one and level two referrals the 23 24 school year saw 4,647 level one referrals compared to 3,975 referrals for this school year and the 2324 school year indicated 9,41 level two referrals uh reported comparing to this year which is 8,983 so again this shows that having schoolwide expectations throughout a campus through their tier one schoolwide Behavior framework is working to reduce level one and level two incidents so it's doing what it's intended to do the final key activity is to support uh to to support strategy 2A is to provide a professional learning and coaching opportunities to include proactive and responsive restorative practices in schoolwide discipline procedures restorative justice practices is used to help build relationships respond to conflict and support re-entry this year we are focused on restorative practices and by providing content support and best practices during each of the student service manager trainings each meeting has introduced and built upon a component of restorative practices we're working towards a transformative approach to student discipline that focuses on repairing relationships and teaching conflict resolution skills that can be applied and used by students and the data on this slide shows the average days of uh suspension for out of school we also call that OSS and also on this slide are the in school suspension days which we also refer to as ISS again this data is for the same time period for this school year the 24 25 school year compared to the 23 24 school year as you can see there's not much difference when comparing the two years um the incidence in 2425 for ISS was an average of 1.8 days and in 2324 the average was 1.9 and for the I OSS data for this school year the average was 2.7 days and for 2324 the average was 2.6 but as we build our knowledge and use of restorative practices we would expect to start to see differences in this data for OSS and ISS and now I will turn that over to miss um Del noal all right can we um Dr henbert can we pause there for just a moment and check in see how if we have any questions from the board board i' just like to open it up at this time um if you have any questions or thoughts you'd like to share with this portion of presentation I've seen Dr Campell bizily over here typing so we'll start with her thank you uh Dr HR I do have several questions so just bear with me as I as I move through them um so one of the conversations was about professional development uh of the student service managers are our assistant principles of discipline also included in those trainings they are invited yes okay so how often are apds also receiving similar trainings so they're invited to the student service manager training um that's monthly excuse me and then I believe they also have a assistant principal meeting separately uh another meeting per month on the curriculum side okay but APD specifically may not be receiving training and again I while I completely appreciate that our student service managers are getting together regularly they are not administrators and they don't have the level of authority of an administrator so ultimately I potentially it would be very helpful if those two teams we're meeting together understanding schedules are tight and when they're invited they may not attend I I'm curious to know um if we could potentially consider getting AP training on a curriculum side is very different than what we're seeing on an APD side and so um that that's one of my thoughts um I know that you mentioned that PBS PBIS is still the framework that we're using and that we did have training days in July and then also midyear checks who provides that PBIS training over the summer uh we worked with the um I forget that USF thank you um and they came and provided the training okay um and is the trainer that we used also not available to problem solve and be a essentially like a federally funded no cost to the district thought partner with us all throughout the year as well she she is involved we actually have data chats um we have we have monthly meetings and there's quarterly data chats that we we work with her with with USF okay but never actually in the PB PBIS training conversations Beyond just what we're I I just I wonder how much more we can utilize something that is a cost effective way that doesn't cost us anything uh to just engage even more positive behavior and intervention support um we let get to that you mentioned data so another question I have does our data dashboard include our discipline data yes okay and how well do our principles know their discipline data I I know we focus very heavily on the academic data and making sure that we are moving kids and that level one moves to level three and all of the things but how much are we also focusing on the discipline data for the principles so I I don't have specific uh meetings with principles regarding student discipline data but the training our student service managers go through that on a monthly basis and we we really work with them to pull their own data identify their own trends at their school level and I completely appreciate that so thank you but again they're not administrators and so I I think we do have a bit of a discrepancy on how well the administration side is aware really in a data analysis standpoint of the students that potentially are in are in significant challenges I know that one of your slides slide eight uh indicated our level one and level two referral reductions do you also have the same data for level three and level four and are those also going down I can pull that data I don't knowe off the top of my head but I can pull that and share that okay because that's if if I may um yes Madam chair to board member Campbell's Point um it is an expectation that disciplined data is part of the the data chats the review it's it's part of the comprehensive need how do we reach every child Absolut the answer is yes um that is the expectation and then in the recent principal meeting um K12 um the discipline was part of the context of understanding how do we reach all these students and how do we see their progression from elementary through to graduation discipline was a part of that okay all right great um I am curious to know if our level threes and level fours have gone up or if they are also consistently going down year-over-year um it certainly looks good that our level ones and level twos are decreasing that's still you know 10% of our you know 10 or 20% of our student population are still receiving at least infractions at this level so I I am interested in level three and level four um you also had a slide slide 10 that discussed the average number of days in suspension we don't see the average number of students per school that are being suspended so I'm I'm kind of curious on that as well because certainly this is average number of days do you in your opinion this is going to be an opinion question you can say that you know if you want to um divert to some report or something that I might be able to find but do we have an indication that suspension is actually changing behaviors I don't have that off right and that that's fine I just I'm I'm not disagreeing that suspension needs to be a part of our toolkit for sure uh and seeing that potentially average days of suspension but if we are just sending students with behavioral challenges home and that is actually potentially causing the behavior to get worse depending on the scenario we're placing them in I I'm not certain that that needs to be the tool that we always use I I know that we've had a lot of conversation today about discipline U but I I want to ensure that at least from this board seat that we're talking very very seriously about the positive behavior and intervention supports that we need to have it's very unsettling for me to see our goal when several of us created the achieve 2026 strategic plan that our goal was to reduce alternative placements and expulsions and they have doubled since our our Baseline I mean they've doubled since our Baseline and so every year our alt placements have gone up do I believe that student behaviors have potentially gotten more aggressive yes but what are we doing from a proactive stpoint I'm reading a book right now called Upstream what are we doing to get ahead of it what are we is it a community conversation for sure I'm sure that's what Miss D noell is going to get up and talk about some family engagement but are there additional Community Partners that we as board members need to start having communication about how we can get more positive proactive approaches to this we've done we already had our strategic plan goal one we are doing well in seeing some movement in our academic achievements certainly but based on that one chart on slide three I think it is I I am very disheartened in knowing that the goals that we have in place we still have those same goals but we are far from those targets and getting farther and farther away so whatever we as a board need to do to um help move this needle in the right direction I'm all for thank you chair yes James thank you yes Dr James my comments were very similar to Dr Campbell's so I won't elaborate at length but I the first question I had was why is there not level three and level four data included in this presentation so that data was speaking to the tier one framework so when we when we have a tier one the goal of a tier one framework is to reduce level one and level twos okay so this data was tied to PBIS correct okay so that's I wanted you to articulate why three and four data wasn't here um I think that I would guess based on the increase in all placements and explosions that the tier uh three and four data is higher um and is trending higher um that would be my that would be my educated guest there so I also as a board member would like to see the three and four data um especially since we're referencing in slide three the the amount my also my other question is 22 and 23 school year those numbers in those columns were the final numbers um on slide three um I imagine if you could confirm that and then the 24 column is when you published and when you worked on this which was probably a couple weeks ago now like when is this data from for the 2024 column the 2425 column would have been um that would have been a couple of weeks ago so we've had 811 Alterna no I'm sorry that's the data from last year so that's the data from the 23 24 school year school year but we're reporting it for the 25 year understood so going back to what Dr Campbell mentioned I think it was last week or two weeks ago when we were talking about graduation rate as a board member and if I'm struggling I imagine a Community member who reviews these kinds of things would also struggle I did not read that 24 as meaning what you just said um and now it makes sense to me because I was like my goodness 811 is a very significant number for October how I'm so I'm glad that I asked that clarifying question but what I would have loved to see is then a 25 row that indicates how many we've had to date this school year and where we were at this time and those those were other school years because it's theoretically helpful to you if the number is trending in a better Direction not you you but you us it's better for the organization towards reaching our goal if we're trending in a better Direction but I don't know that by looking at this and and I actually have that just in case um so I I'm trying to think of when I pulled this data so it was probably uh first first or first week of November possibly maybe the second week of November we have um at that time we had a total of 69 alternative placements and at that time 65 expulsions and 43 students in support of enforcement okay and so um that that number sounds like it's trending positively because to get to 811 we obviously know we have high seasons and low seasons in discipline um and so it gets it get gets hot in certain times but as a board member after this what I would love to know is where we were in that moment and then where we were in that moment in 22 23 and 24 so that I can be more informed as to what the trend is looking like and is it improving okay because to Dr Campbell's point we are very far off from our goal and so hopefully we're course correcting as best we can to get back on track so you want the same time period yeah I mean I would love I would love to know know if you pulled it the second week in November what the data was for expulsions and out placements and then back to these years so that we can understand because we know it gets certain periods of time are a little bit spaer than others yes thank you yes board member thrower you have any questions at this time um most of mine have been answered uh I to uh throughout the presentation I really like the year-to DAT like what we get with our transportation reports you know this time last year we were here and and this time this year we're here it just makes for uh more relevant um comparison I would I would say but I appreciate the presentation and uh I do love seeing that uh our incidents um by location I think that the words getting out there um especially on on the bus that we're just not going to tolerate it so and I hope that that continues to be the same Trend in the classroom as well you know we're we're here to learn we're here to support we're here to put all the positives in place but sometime there's a hammer and it's going to drop thank you all right Cummings yeah I I too thank thank you for that part of the report I did too want to see the levels three and four uh data to be in this presentation but I also wanted to drill down a little bit more because I would love to see the demographics um eras uh gender as well to be in those reports um I think those things are helpful because I know that there are some other reports that go up to Tallahasse so that we're in compliance that we're not overly doing certain things we're not underdoing certain things so um I think that's important to uh include in this report but thank you for what you put out yes thank you thank you all right Dr henbrook I just have a few things um on slide four I just wanted to um I think it was slide four we're talking about our campus Liaisons and so the last week or so visiting schools that were celebrating Improvement in attendance and visiting with staff there what how much that positively has impacted um the Improvement in attendance so I just wanted to um say thank you um for the work in that area because I do think it's make it tremendous different uh difference um it's hard work you know that that position is reaching out to the same families over and over again trying to get their kids to school so I just I wanted to acknowledge um that and then I just wanted to point out on slide eight I um kind of a Hot Topic here for everyone you know we look at we're looking at those numbers and combined for this year we're really looking at 13,000 referrals and so I I just want to knowledge um and mention what a heavy lift that is for our staff um really a quarter a quarter of our students are getting some sort of referral and the time and energy that takes away from our academics to fill out and complete those referrals depending on the level you know and and what it um entails um I just that's an astounding percentage of um students that are are getting uh into trouble so I just wanted to um acknowledge that that's just level one and two but that's not individual students that's that's individual referrals some referrals some students are receiving multiple referrals so I don't a quarter of our students are not receiving referrals that's not I don't believe an a appropriate percentage correct so this could be uh repeat offenders it could be several codes in one particular incident okay all right so that to me it might be more beneficial to be broken down a little further then because to me that was a little confusing when I see that number I'm thinking that's 13,000 referrals what is 13,000 referrals it's not 13,000 it's not 13,000 kids okay um so maybe just a comparison there that shows us how many referrals and how many students that that would yeah and you have to remember some of those might be um attendance or cell phone infraction and so some some of them will require more time I mean I I definitely hear your point that but still a cell phone infraction stops instructional yes um teaching so it's still A disruption and so that was just um it was an eye opener to me um and then the last thing on slide 10 that I wanted to um our suspension types is I would like to know or or receive an update for our in school suspensions and our past sites what are what are we sitting numbers how our numbers at each site um and what kind of our averages are at each site because that was a concern to me when we moved into um moving our students around um at the beginning of this school year and so I was worried about capacity and and what that looks like on each School sites and having our middle schoolers in with high schoolers and so I would just like some more information on that piece Madam chair yes um and just for clarity sake because I think something changed a while ago I'm 4 does say add homeschool leaon to every campus my understanding that that title changed to family engagement um whatever it is I think we need to be consistent with that as well we will make note of that thank you if I could provide some clarity um to that item Madam chair I think that was listed that way intentionally because that's how it was listed on the Strategic plan okay originally that was how it was labeled so it's removing that because we've accomplished that and now have made them family engagement Le thank you terrific thank you for the clarification um Dr hen Brook thank if there's no further comments or questions we'll move forward so thank you okay good morning we have reviewed several ways families in the community are involved in achievement and behavioral supports and now I'd like to speak on how we include these stakeholders in our efforts to address attendance attendance response committee meetings have expanded to include additional schools over the past year these meetings include community and District support staff the team analyzes School data to guide resource allocation and intervention planning we have seen an increase in schools intens intensifying their attendance teams to include District support and Community stakeholders in an effort to actively problem solve ongoing problems and barriers on their campus schools also continue to find creative ways to improve school-based intervention itions and incentive programs as we visit schools we have seen some great examples of tier one interventions and strategies to encourage students to attend school and be on time every day this work requires support from parents and families as such we want to make sure we keep families informed and reach out when students may be trending toward establishing a pattern of non-attendance letters are typically sent to parents following a pattern of three unexcused absences child study teams or CST meetings better known are also used to inform parents of the attendance process and offer an opportunity to discuss and problem solve uh barriers to attendance these meetings are typically requested after the student has aced at least five unexcused absences within a 30-day period or 10 unexcused absences within a 90-day period contact with the parent and monitoring of attendance continues following these CST meetings to ensure that the plan that's devised is effective however a second CST meeting is not required prior to requesting a case Staffing if absences continue despite implementing the intervention plan with Fidelity we have also worked on improving our case Staffing process following several meetings and strong collaboration with the arnet house which is our local children and family in need of Services Agency we have seen an improvement in the process of staffings held each month we've also agreed to commit to referring families to the arnet house much earlier in the process in order to maximize the opportunity for preventative Services that they provide here we can see some statistics comparing the 2223 school year and the 2324 school year we can see a slight reduction in the number of CST meetings and case staffings however we had a 62% increase in the number of truancy petitions that were submitted last year this increase can be attributed to having treny hearings that are scheduled on a monthly basis as as well as reviewing pending cases for eligibility for petition just as important as highlighting the fact that at least three petitions were dismissed based on Improvement of attendance last year was the first year tancy petitions also included a summer school requirement 24 students were ordered to attend summer school in an effort to make up lost instructional time and reestablish consistent attendance it took problem solving and multi-department collaboration to ensure the students were enrolled and appropriate supports and services were provided um on the previous slide we reviewed our chronic absenteeism Baseline and the progress we have made towards our Target goal that was I think slide two or slide three um over a period of three years as a reminder we Define chronic absenteeism as missing 10% of school days that includes all types of absences taking the whole year into consideration that would be approximately 8 18 days and approximately about 7 days to date for the time period we've been in school why do we focus on reducing chronic absenteeism you may ask research has shown that misinstruction of time especially in the early years of a student's School career has significant impacts on their learning and achievement when we drafted the Strategic plan 35.3% of students met criteria for chronic absenteeism in 22 and 23 we just in 22 and 2023 we decreased the rate to 33.6% and we reduced that again to 33% last year as seen on this graph our chronic absenteeism rate was 25.9 as of November 8th I can tell you that's maintained um over the past couple weeks which has remained stable since the last data was pulled our goal is to continue to support our attendance campaign messaging encourage Creative Solutions and interventions and celebrate accomplishments to keep the momentum going through the end of this semester and into the next this chart shows our chronic absenteeism rates over time a few patterns to note are as follows the overall endof year rates have shown a slight decrease since the 2122 school year additionally we can see absenteeism rates tend to slightly increase from semester 1 to semester 2 each year the good news is that we have seen lower numbers for semester 1 for this current year in comparison to previous years and the goal is to maintain that track a few more things to note is that our no absences issues data which you can see in the green line with the circles is trending in the right direction meaning it's increasing so we have less students that are um having absenteeism issues and the nearly chronic data that's marked by the Orange Line um and squares is also moving in the right direction and decreasing so we have less students moving towards chronic absenteeism we have continued or improved Upon Our established attendance plan since last year as well last year we campaigned on showing up together partnering with school and Community stakeholders to shine a spotlight on the importance of showing up for school every day and this year we encourage students to be present and be powerful this theme is designed to motivate everyone to focus on ensuring students come to school even when it isn't easy and to remind students that realizing their hopes and dreams begins with showing up every day the theme was designed to promote student well-being and achievement we continue to partner with Community stakeholders through our attendance Council meetings to support the campaign and to problem solve barriers that may be outside of the scope of what schools and the school district can do based on feedback collected last year we worked through the summer and the beginning of this year to update attendance document mentation and continue working on a comprehensive attendance manual our attendance Advocate has met with school teams to provide on-site support and coaching this is helping teams um access the information and improve processes to increase our consistency in practices lastly but definitely not least we ensured we took the time to recognize the hard work that students and school teams have shown in committing to improving attendance we presented several schools with recognitions for improving chronic absenteeism rates and our traveling attendance Banner challenge was also kicked off this year in an effort to spur on competition between schools for bragging rights to display a coveted Banner indicating that they not only improved compared to the district average but also in comparison to their own School average questions before I turn it over okay yes go ahead thank you thank you for the presentation um just looking at slide 12 I just wanted to confirm um for under truancy cases as well the others too uh 2022 and 2023 is that the whole school year or year to date the whole school year okay and then 2023 2024 is year to date obviously correct okay no that's last school year that's lastol last school year okay there's no year to date entire year there's no year to date on this one year to date on these so last year this year okay so we don't have a year to date then for this year not for the case stopping in the treny cases but I can get that information can we start including that because yeah that would be great yeah that um because I know there's a lot of B good work being done um I do my best to attend truy court often and there were actually some students that attended summer school um in the jdc because they certainly were then there every day and it's a shame when it gets to that um I'm really encouraged by um the graph on slide 14 um we invested in as a board an attendance Advocate truny liaison and it is important to me to know about that return on investment considering that improving attendance is our number one legislative priority as a school board so Dr gulet I would love to hear um directly at some point from our attendance Advocate on uh progress challenges what we can be doing as a board what we can be bringing forward um in our legislative committee meetings um to help ensure that this uh really encouraging Trend uh contines use and that's all I have for the moment thank you can I ask one clarifying question so on the slide that we wanted year to date for the treny cases so that would probably need to be broken down because we have treny cases that are ongoing like they come back and then we have brand new petitions so you want would want to see those two numbers broken down new petitions as opposed to continuing hearings that how you done it in the past I mean we or have they beened together we look at all the cases that are being heard that's why we put that number so that's all of the cases that were heard in 23 24 I would say I would say keep it the same yeah yes yeah but I I just and to what another board member said I want to UND Because by the time we hear a goal update we're almost halfway through the school year and so it's great to reflect back but if if we can to Dr Campbell's Point earlier if there if we're trending in a direction and we can Implement some proactive steps right now we don't have data for this year to understand and understanding that the way the legislative is right now we may not even have students ready for csts yet because we know how compris some the current legislation is but um having a year-to-date reflection in addition to just the basic data would certainly help on not just this presentation but on all goal updates on all charts that are are um sequential like this I would like that I just wanted to give one shout out to East Marian um I know that board member thrower kind of sat on those until I became a board member and about two years ago she passed the Baton to me and I was at and I wish I had the handout with me but I I it's not worth digging in my purse to find it right now but I was at the most recent meeting and at the end of October two years ago they had hundreds of students who were already um in the chronically absent category and I think they have like 10 now I mean the um if there if we as a district were to choose a model school for how to implement attendance strategies at an elementary level because it's not lost on me that the things they're doing are very Elementary esque and you can't necessarily duplicate for a secondary Sarah JS and her team at East Maran are the model I would argue for the state on how you turn around School attendance and if there is any principal or site-based staff in an elementary setting who is wondering what they should do they should go spend a day at East Maran because what they are doing out there is for attendance which is directly reflective in their academic data is transformational so I just wanted to say that um I know that we we talk about it often but it doesn't um always Hur to give a compliment where it's available and I think that she's doing a tremendous job so moving that needle is not easy no and so when we provided the recognitions at the board meeting for the schools that had made um improvements in their chronic absenteeism at the end of last year she was just shy of making it in there so she still got a certificate but she was still shy of making it in there but we had folks I mean moving eight% 7% an improvement in that area yes it is it's been this year specifically because it takes time to establish your work and so the parents now have a very they know what the expectation is um and those parents get their kids to school I actually had to personally bring a a a East Marian child to school recently it was an employee whose child they had a life event and he he was going to miss school if he they didn't help get him to school so I said I'll just take him I'll take Connor to school and the entire ride from downtown Okala to East Marian he was obsessed with the fact that he was going to be late for school and it was going to be a big deal and he was he didn't have his backpack and he was so worried because he it is embedded in the culture of those students that they have to be at school and so um they're doing wonderful work out there CH thank you yes I just have to say I 100% agree with um board member James and fun historical fact uh principal dobs cut her teeth at oakrest elementary school school years ago and it was critical we had two schools in turnaround um Evergreen and and oakrest and it was under principal lining boach and then it was continued with Kathy bis and then Chris Sandy you know um doing what needed to be done looking at the population and really getting it out there and and so to have that background and that Foundation of how everything comes from attendance we can have you know the best water in the world but if nobody's drinking it you know does it really matter um and so that's why I just again feel it's so important to hear from our attendance Advocate and truly try leaon because she was actually the guidance counselor there um on that dream team so we need to celebrate wherever we can we need to get the word out there so other schools are like hey what are they doing you know and and let's duplicate it so yes great stuff this is very very encouraging all right I promise that's all I have mam chair Mr thank you for this I can do have a quick quick question you can give it to me real quick um when we see a student trending chronic um give me that process real fast because it's at five days of abis that we start yes they start to look at is there are we starting to establish a pattern so if you see three unexcused absences within a very short amount of time like a 30-day period within a a month if you say you see two three unexcused absences that's already kind of clicking into do we need to contact this parent let's contact the parent let them know you're already starting to establish that pattern um they can also look at if there's five in a larger period so three in a shorter one that's 30 days but if you're looking at over a 90day period so about three months now you've gotten up to five those even though they seem like very small numbers start to add up so again when we go back to looking not specifically treny but when we're looking at Chronic absenteeism M meaning whether it's um excused unexcused doesn't matter you're not in the classroom receiving the instruction so that's why we concentrate on that concept um and so when we see you've already missed several days they start to reach out with a letter they'll reach out with an invite to the CST meeting and at those meetings what they try to do is say okay what what's the barrier what's going on is it something we can help with can we devise a plan and then we really start talking to that parent about why we're so ad about making sure that they're re-engaged in school and what the um consequences can be of them missing too many days even if sometimes they're a little spread out who does that initial Reach Out is it the the engagement Specialist or is it the teacher so we always recommend that the first Contact is the teacher um and so but that might be first day like the day you're first day you're absent many teachers will call and say hey I missed Sally at school today what's you know what's going on I'm you know encourag that they're coming back those initial contacts are typically the teachers um after that it really depends on the school and the school teams how they have it set up um many times there's some kind of a partnership whether it's the guidance clerk that's helping to reach out to families whether it's the family engagement liaison that's helping to reach out to families and then eventually when they're getting ready to have those CST meetings then our um attendance Specialists are involved and the reason I asked that we get I we get the report about uh absentee is and things so I just want to make sure that um we we don't wait till there right we start it quick and I always thought that it should be the teacher that initiates it and and then if they don't get the results they need they push the next level to keep doing well we encourage that immediate communication to be immediate like one absence two absence and and we do encourage it to be the teacher because that's the partnership and the teacher can really speak to what the student missed right um and what the impacts of that might be thank you Dr thank you so going back one slide to slide 13 I I think that it would be very educational for our community to be aware of what this slide says that we have less than 50% of our students that have no absence issues so while we've been talking very positively about the things that we're doing to address chronic absenteeism we have less than 50 % of our entire student population that aren't having any attendance struggles that's a startling statistic I mean we talk about less than 50% being proficient in Reading we have less than 50% who are actually coming to school on time so I I also wanted to address some of what has already been said a bit you just talked to Reverend Cummings about it about when we're actually addressing some of it I know you mentioned after five unexcused absence in a 30-day period and 10 unexcused in a 90-day period we are asking for statute to change on that so I I know attorney Powers had to step out but I I would love for us to I guess we can't make policy more stringent than what statute is but whatever we can do in procedures to make that more stringent than what the statute is I am all for because I think five unexcused in 30 days is even too late for some of this and I know you addressed it a bit just a moment ago but again looking at this slide and saying that more than 50% of our students have attendance issues of some kind what are the primary factors that are causing those attendance issues and I know that that's getting a little bit into the weeds we don't have to address them right now but that's an upstream conversation I'm I listed a few is it illness is it the bus is late and so they just choose not to come is it that work the work is getting too hard for them and so they're struggling and just don't want to be in school the weather their family doesn't value the need to attend like all of those things I know are factors because I've been into those attendance meetings in schools before too I know all of those are factors but we are we tracking that data to see which ones are the strongest and then building communication plans to address each one of those challenges I know that's a little bit into the Weeds on this but this is a startling number and so I'm grateful we're doing we're doing a lot of good with the truancy numbers and the chronically absent but more than half of our students students have some kind of attendance Challenge and that's not okay yeah um and I can agree with some of that and I can tell you I do have year-to dat date on this one pulled yesterday um so for that green that is no absence issues we're at 52.9 so almost 53 so a little bit more than half um and then for our chronic absenteeism it actually went down a little bit and it was at 25.7 um but we are trying to track some of those reasons it's really difficult a lot of the times we look at it kind of BAS based on grade levels because we do see for some of the grades that have some higher absences and we're talking about kindergarten first grade many of the times it's having those conversations with parents and them understanding the importance of those early grades and really making sure even though the weather is a little cold outside bring them to school um because we really want to make sure that they don't miss some of that instructional time when we're looking at middle school and SEC and um higher secondary like um high school it's a little bit different there are some other challenges so our attendance specialist in those CST meetings that's what they're talking about they're saying what exactly is the barrier um and they've been tracking that so now what we have the information separated for each uh attendance specialist that has multiple schools that they see now we just have to put all that together and see if we see any Trends sometimes we see some slight Trends sometimes we just see so many differences based on the region the area that the school is in um sometimes it's based on the grade there's just so many factors that go into it um but for us a lot of it is messaging um because we spent a lot of time talking about unexcused absences and treny and that's very important but I I want people to understand the concept of The Chronic absenteeism because it's it doesn't matter what the excuse is you're missing time and so when we look at those absences if we looked at the data dashboard absent from class checkout so being checked out early from school um excessive um excused absences and parent notes are the ones that have the highest numbers so a lot of the absences we do have are excused they're either getting pulled out or they're going to um doctor's appointments or but they're still missing a lot of time and it's not only missing instructional time we provide mental health supports on campus if you're not there to get them you're missing out on services that you can receive right thank you and I was at the national Summit on education last week you guys know that and this is not foreign to every other state in the nation and uh some states are even addressing their local communities and talking to doctors about having Saturday appointments and like that so that's why I'm asking is is there something that we can actually get that granular on what are the challenges even those students that are checking out are they checking out all the time because I mean I doubt orthodontists in town are going to have Saturday appointments but I I mean we we need to we need to address this a little bit differently I I still continue to believe that transportation is a big issue too if there's only one mode of transportation and one child has an appointment and there's another child and you're picking everybody up different things like that there's just so much variability thank you AG great um I just have one really quick comment and um I just have had the privilege to be at East Maran a couple times not I know Dr James and um board member thrower have been there a lot but to me what stood out about their program is there were really was that relationship piece and that honest conversation about what can I do to help you and if the ask was we don't have any clean clothes the answer was not oh we can't help you with that they found a way to address the unique issues that faced their school culture um and so that's a huge challenge you know as we look at each School individually and what that looks like per school what the reasons are that you know there are many but which ones can we have a positive impact in and how can we how can the community support us um Meeting those needs and so this is a little bit in the weeds but when I when I was able to participate in that meeting and the number of people that showed up before school um for their East Maran attendance meeting I I would venture 20 or 20 or 22 people do you think were present for that meeting all all heads in the room and we're talking about all the struggles we've had that we are having with discipline I would love to see that kind of enthusiasm and energy be put into solving some of our other um issues that are keeping our because really it's the same thing their dis discipline is keeping them out of class it's keeping them from receiving instructions so um as we look um to schools and leaders that are doing it well how do we use that to create like programs to help move our schools forward and so just wanted to thank you um for all the information that you brought uh forward today and um board I did want to leave my goal was for us to break somewhere close to 11:30 because we've been at it since 7:30 this morning so as we move forward in this presentation um we'll hopefully get get to a natural break where we can take a recess for a few minutes but okay thank you very much thank you good morning again um slide 16 is the key indicator of safe schools hardening report this is the outcome metric that was removed due to the completion of the projects we say completion with the idea that this would always be an ongoing process however we have successfully placed fences cameras and door buzzers at every school in the district this was a collaborative effort between multiple departments such as facilities tech services Finance technology um our school uh individual uh schools and many other districts many others throughout the district it should be noted that referendum funding for this budget year this budget cycle has provided over $9.6 million to improve school safety which is a huge increase from the nearly $1.5 million that was allocated in 2021 that clearly shows that the safety has been made a priority to this District this collaboration goes outside of the district by having a working relationship with our community we receive communities feedback through our quarterly School Safety and Security committee meetings the quarterly independent citizens review oversight committee better known as ioc as well as other community and safe school department regular meetings to set security priorities as a district Access Control mandates as discussed earlier fences scammers and door buzzers they all been exall um however again as we go through this process we realize that there are going to be some unique situations that we have to go back because fences are going to need repairs cameras are beginning to fail uh the door buzzers are beginning to fail so as we start going through that process we're looking at um how we can better beat these mandates and as we all know the state comes down and they have now mandated that we be more focused on access control not the physical carts wiping access control but how we enter and how we have uh lour Gates and access um available so again we do random checks and gates and doors by school and District staff the sro's uh we install key cylinders on exterior Panic Gat so they'll have a key there so they don't prop open the gates to try to get back in in and on the campus cuz what we realize sometimes you can go outside of a gate and if there's not a key cylinder in that exterior gate to get back in they tend to prop those gates open so how do we re resolve that by putting a key cylinder on that gate so they can get back in with easy access um again we're beginning to um the 383 Keys we realized that 383 keys were so prevalent around the district that everybody had one seemed like we were finding them on the ground um just different people had them so we make the uh best practice to change all of those exterior 383 K Gates keys to individual keys that are unique to every school um so that key metric that we added involves the increasing the percentage of schools in compliance with the Florida Department of Education Office of safe schools so during the legis cycle of 2024 compliance checks became a focal point of the state compliance officers from the state will make unannounced and announced visits to random public and charter schools throughout the state to include Marian County when conducting these walkthroughs the expectation is that classroom doors exterior doors and Gates and other instructional spaces which we've learned now could mean media centers or libraries should be closed and locked at all times unless actively staff at all times uh these mandates also when they come and do these checks require that the documents be readily accessible to the compliance officer at the time of the visit any documents not readily accessible will be reported as a deficiency to the school so kind of explaining that when the compliance officer come to the to a school whether it's announced or unannounced they'll show up they usually give us a call when they're at the school ask uh one of my team members or whoever to come by they're here at school we try to rush there and get there and to assist the schools and going through this process but what they expect is to meet with the principal and what we've created and asked all principles to do in all schools is to create a three- ring binder and any documents that we know that they're going to ask for the certifications uh the the meeting notes from the um U threat assessment um meetings anything that we know the state is going to ask for they give us that we have a form that they going to that they come down and just do a check off we get that form prior to them coming in most cases and we have our own mock visits and these mock visits are conducted by our safe School staff and we um again we assist the principles in going through this and their school all the schools to make sure that they have all these documents because unfortunately if they get there and a document is not in there we are getting hit with a compliance or deficiency and again this is what the state is looking for when they come to these to these meetings there are they're looking for certifications Meeting those are they are trained we have the proper training and training certificates in this binder when they get there some other requirements include mandated drills that include active ass salent drills tabletop exercises and weather drills all drills must include School staff and the assigned school resource officer safe School staff will actively Monitor and attend these drills to ensure compliance safe schools officers also complete the annual Florida safe schools assessment tool better known as fsat This Confidential document is completed so that we as a district can can be ahead of any potential um areas of of needs Improvement again this document provides a a real detail Outlook of everything that's on the school property who's the power company uh the self the the telephone company anything you can name or think of is in this document and that's why it's protected and confidential complying with other F uh Florida Department of Education Office of State schools mandates include the use of this plan of the Fortified Florida information if you go around schools you may see these posters up on the wall uh we do have them throughout our schools in strategically placed areas so that the kids can see them uh you may be aware that this year there was a mandatory we just done a mandatory what they call training or education to parents where we had to send something out as a district to educate parents on the consequences of students using fortified Florida in a manner that's not appropriate or a false reporting and we sent that out on on November 15th working with our public relations office the this symbol of logo is actually on all of our district owned devices Again by State Statute uh if you go to our uh Facebook pages or whatever the district website you'll see this logo as mandated by the state um we work with technology again public relations to ensure that the app was displayed on all district owned devices the school web pages newsletters and strategic place around the county around the district to date 45 Florida has generated over 300 tips since 2019 with over a third of them occurring since August of 2024 because the state pushed out that mandate that we had to report um we had to report the consequences for using fortifi Florida and to continue to push that out we te we technically had to go to Every classroom uh we work again with the schools and professional leadership and learning to where we actually done a class every every at every school to show kids what fortified Florida was about and the um the way that it could be used the Mandate also requires again safe School officers at public and Charter Schools we beat these Band-Aids by Contracting with local law enforcement agencies to high school resource officers every school has at least one SRO and Westport has three due to its population another big important part of this whole process is um mental health and this is falls into the area of again Safety and Security but the new Florida threat management model uses a methodology that identifies students exhibiting threatening or other concerning behaviors team members gather information to assess the risk that a student may have to harm themselves or others and identifies appropriate interventions to prevent violence and promote successful outcomes this process applies a non-punitive assessment to distinguish between innocuous and serious situations the aim of the threat management process is to intervene at the earliest stage to Aid students and to alter or disrupt concerning behaviors for the benefit of the student and the school every school is required to have a what they call a school-based threat management team which we refers to sbmt and they must meet at least monthly or as needed whenever a student makes a the students make a threat they have to meet monthly when they make a threat they have to meet immediately within so many within that student making that threat they meet but they have to meet regardless whether there was any threats on their campuses or not on a monthly basis and sometimes they have to meet as needed if this situation is is very serious a school administration maintain maintains the documentation again this is important so that if the state comes they will see real live update documentation that the school is keeping on their team meetings dates and times of the meetings the members that's in attendance and cases discussed in the actions taken to help meet the threat management mandates the state has required that each district employs a district threat management coordinator this position is responsible for ensuring that all threats are properly assessed by the school based threat management teams and available for review by the office of safe schools it should be noted that between August 7th 20124 and November 14 of 2024 schools have submitted 450 the assessments to the district threat management coordinator he then reviews and every assessment and reviews them for a final submission again this review process is designed to intervene at the earliest stage to Aid students and to alter their disrupt uh disruptive concerning behavior for the benefit of the student and the school you have any questions chair I have a question yes um previously I know I mentioned that I had uh request to potentially add a position to the department that you work in and Lead Mr mcfaden to assist in that threat management um you just shared that number which is significant um for one individual to date just this year to handle and so um is there do you have an update on that availability has that has it there been a movement in that at all yes ma'am um there has been movement in that we have um done a job description for a program specialist to assist in this area and it is currently being worked out with our ESD they've been working you know great with us to get this here uh positioned into uh existence as we speak okay do we already okay okay December 10th is already approval for December 10th okay and so then once um if the board approves the job description we'll be able to post it and get it get it is it is it a job that we're going to be posting following an approval of a job description so the amendment is on the December 10th so you're going to be approving the the actual amendment to add the position to the Staffing plan oh okay I thought you meant the approval of the job descrip the job description is what they're working on so as soon as that job description is approved then you'll be able to post it that next day okay so we won't be approve we don't have a job description for the December you're approving the amendment to add the actual position so we won't be able to post the position before the new year there's no job description to post it into okay work um and they're they're working on it okay okay well and thank you for sharing that there's movement in the right direction I know that Mr Taylor is working tirelessly and um and oftentimes I know conversations I've had with you chief mcfaden he he doesn't receive packets that are perfect he's catching errors or things that need to be corrected or fixed to be appropriate to submit is that correct yeah and this he does and when I tell you this is a the schools I and I have to say they are working very hard to complete these packets um when I last talked to him we're having roughly six or seven of these a day yeah and so the schools are working diligently to get them completed but as one come through some kid says something that's concerning some other behavior and unfortunately a lot of the concerning behaviors may not occur on at the school it may occur in the community it may occur on Facebook social media this and the way this is set up is that it may not be a threat but the behavior is a concerning enough to where we have to do a threat assessment and even though it's in the community the schools have to take on that responsibility of doing this threat assessment and to that point when we we go back to the schools Dr Campbell talked about being proactive earlier those apds who are completing those packets can not be on campus implementing proactive um behavior management strategies if they are working all day on threat assessment packets and so this board member and I think other board members would like to figure out what that means we have to do on our school campuses to ensure that because it's all all of the stuff that we're talking about is wonderful implementing PBIS and implementing all of these proactive strategies for discipline are great um but if our tier three and tier 4 which are mostly the ones that are related to a threat assessment are where we are seeing a an increase in Behavior if our apds are spending the entire day completing threat assessment packets how are they out on campus implementing proactive measures to mitigate discipline and and that's not a question I'm posing to you as much as just a philosophical question and I if that means that we have to shift accountability for the completion of this packets Andor figure out how to change roles or um improve Staffing so that we can ensure that our we're able to put into place the proactive measures that we're we're talking about are working we need to figure that out because then they're doing their best job but also are trying to do their APD job they still have I mean on any given day a high school APD um and Dean they're I mean they're looking at tons of referrals right and so they still have to process all of those referrals they still have to get all of that work done and so they're trying their best to get this packet completed it gets sent over then Mr Taylor may find very well may find Corrections that are necessary and then it goes back to the APD to correct I assume yes ma'am yes and so then they're back they're trying to fix it and so it's this the system is not ideal and um I wish I wish we could fix it with a snap of our fingers but I would love to be able to problem solve a little bit on how we can support the schools so that they can do the job we're asking them to do and not spend all day doing threat assessments I I'll just add to the that Mr mcfaden because my comment fits um and right along with Dr James and so first I want to say thank you to you and your team because when I show up at a school um and they may be having a bad day and so they're doing maybe a little venting um they always say thank goodness thank goodness for you and your team um and so I just want to a that the job is difficult um it we have a lot of mandates that don't get funded and we're trying to figure it out figure out how to meet the needs um of our schools and our students and our staff and so I will reiterate with what Dr James said is I'm I'm hearing a lot of the same things that staff are really struggling um and my concern is it's really going to affect our retention of Staff members because they didn't sign up they didn't go into into education to fill out packets of paperwork on a threat assessment that wasn't a thing probably when they went to school it wasn't even wasn't even in listed in a class agenda so it's new um and their passion is for the students and helping the students and so there's a lot of frustration because as you well know these things take hours and hours and hours of time of trying to get a hold of parents and students and people to come in and return phone calls and so it really is um a challenge and so I too am interested in further conversation um you know getting people together to see how we can help this process along um which I think will also help your team too because I know you're running like crazy but again I just want to say thank you um to your team and I know that that the job is Big um and I know that our school staff are working tirelessly um but they're also not being it's keeping them from doing the work that they love and they signed up to do so I just wanted to share that thank you madam chair may I add yes if I may um I really appreciate the conversation and and and board I can't speak highly enough about our entire team Mr mcf's team and all of our school teams for the work that's being done couldn't agree more this this job is not what it used to be these requirements weren't even in existence last year so I just urge um you as elected officials where you can use your voice to help us with this I know from my organizations I'm part of it especially sitting on the board with the state superintendent group this is a this is I would venture to say top of our list um and always is we'll be talking about it again when we convene in Tampa for our joint meeting but um anything that our elect officials can do I would encourage and urge to say we need to help educate those making those decisions we understand I think we all agree with the need to have safe schools for everyone but unintended consequences which which is what I call them sometimes when mandates come for what it looks like in the day-to-day work thank you yes um we keep seeing every year since I've been on the board they the state keep adding something um whether it's a new um uh procedures some mandate or a position we've seen that happen over and over and over again um I I got a question with this school-based threat management team and the report that has to be done is the report a webbased report is it something that because if I'm my I'm thinking somewhere different I'm thinking that a person is writing this out first and then they're going back in into the office trying to put it in and and and then it goes to another Mr Taylor to look over and then have to approve it and that's where you find the errors then it goes back how is it how's it done so there's a document it's a it's a form that's completed online it's edible form one of the requirements that the state made is that it cannot be handwritten okay um so it can't be handwritten at all obviously for legibility purposes so it can't be handwritten so they have to go in pull up the form and fill out the form and it's it's pages and pages of this form that they have to fill out and depending on the comments that was made or the threat that was made it could take this form into a different direction if you've done this or said this then you go down this path if this didn't occur you go down this path so what Mr Taylor has done is got examples of every scenario per se and use that to create documents and forms that he's typed out he's printed he's he's uh made available to the staff and if this happened go this direction if this happens go this direction um but unfortunately when you have the kids making statements and then again you got to get in touch with all the witnesses you got to get in touch with the parents the SRO and everybody has to be involved it can get very convoluted per se and and now you're getting a lot of uh what if scenarios or the way I interpret it it didn't mean this or that so it's it's it's it's really a struggle and so on one of our meetings yesterday what the state said that they were going to increase the district threat management coordinator funding they were looking at uh increasing that to $100,000 as a minimum for each district as a considered to be a large District we got $75,000 that could be increased to 100,000 next year sometime however that doesn't help at the school level right that doesn't help at the school level the school level is where these minds are coming together and have to meet and getting four people to stop doing what they're doing to come together to meet it's important but it's a struggle to do that and and and then again decide what's the next steps it seems simple it seems easy but to get all the them together to agree on a and come to consistence on how this should be done uh which direction should go is timec consuming so um that's the challenge and I know it's frustrating for all involved whenever we get him and then he reviews them finds some errors and have to send them back and and and go through that process but what happens is those are watched by the state now currently we're using that form some other districts have purchase a a digital platform which the state is going to mandate us to have come August of 2025 the school year and what the statute says is that once the thread is made the school has so many hours to complete the threat assessment and upload it for Mr Taylor once he gets it and reviews it he has so many days to upload it to the state unless there's correction that he can send back to the school and so now they have two days to do that with this new platform that the state is going to require us to have there's not going to be any room for for not being in compliance I would say so if you're not within that 24hour window that two-day window whatever it is this new platform that they're going to require every District to have is going to automatically place you out of compliance so what our goal was is to get something in place now in the between now and August of next year so that we have the SE down to a very screamline process so we're not out of compliance when the state make us and require us to use this your new platform so and I asked that that way because I know we every year because I knew about this new platform that's supposed to be coming down the line so there has to be some training at the school level to get this done and then there has to be this new platform that there has to be training on correct and and then we got to stick to the timeline yes because every time we don't stick to those timelin we're going to get gigged by the state correct yes the the myself or the superintendent will be getting emails or something some type of response will be coming from the uh state to uh myself superintendent they be like making some type of recommendation for what we should do for being out of compliance correct what they do is give us so many uh we have to respond number one to the compliance within 24 hours the deficiency we have to respond acknowledge that we received it and once we acknowledge that we received it they say okay we you received this compliance now we have so many days to put something some corrective action in place um so I I'll say just based on conversations um no and it's sad to say but somehow there's going to be some out of compliance issues um because when the state comes down and duties with these officers they're inconsistent in how they view things unfortunately and we had that conversation yesterday you can go to one school a one district and a compliance officer may find everything okay and good but you go to the next District over a new compliance officer and that person could be find the same thing that you've done out of compliance so it's it's just a struggle but we'll have to we as a district try to get ahead of everything to make sure that we're doing it the right way and even with them coming down to for our last checks we had just again one missing document that was there at the school but it just happened to not be in the binder and because we didn't go 15 or 20 feet to a desk somewhere and pull out and put that documentation in the binder we was noted as being in deficient thank you any other comment is the possibility does the possibility exist for non site-based threats so we talked about things that threats that come in that didn't happen on a school campus is there a possibility for a district level team to address threats like that so that the load of those threats gets taken off of the site based staff um and maybe we you know depending on the number we hire a group of individuals whose sole job is to just address the district the district um the nons school based threats I don't know you know what I'm trying to say but so um the way the statute is written and how the teams are set up each team is comprised of four people and they have to be a school-based threat management team because even though the kid may say something in the community their home or their base school is the place where they would potentially for instance you have a kid posting on social media that they have an AR15 or some type of assault rifle whatever what weapon that student the concerning behavior is that you got a 15 or 16 year old in possession of a firearm is it possible that that 15 or 16 year old Who has possession of the firearm you see them in a picture can bring that firearm to the school yes so that school-based team is the one that has to do the threat assessment because they know the student better than anybody else they can do the threat assessment because that kid is going to come back to their school but the way it's set up there's no District based threat management team we have a district team put together to review overall threats but each school is unique the school-based team is unique for each school I understand I'm just I was I understand the threat will go to the school what I was trying to work out was is there a way to to support the schools by having District staff address the ones that are threats that come in that are off- campus and I'm assuming does the statute specify that a school-based Personnel is only um working at one school yes yeah now um say for instance we got um our Charter Schools per se they may not have a full team of people at their school to do this so in that case the law enforcement piece it has to be done by Sheriff's Office OPD or one of our team members would have to do that but we really what I'm saying is a counselor per say could a program specialist in your department be a site-based individual working at all seven high schools not the way the the statute reads the statute is and the rule is written no ma'am okay any other questions okay okay so we have no more questions I will now U ask Miss Melissa Conor to come forward good morning I will be brief and to the point of what we need to get through to share with you guys but um in accordance with these compliant mandates uh the safe schools team they meet with their counterparts across the state like Mr mcfaden said they're all the time trying to problem solve some of the same issues that we're all on um I'm working with other districts and implementing some of the new programs that we are implementing here Maring counties andix and some of our other um crisis programs and then safe schools is meeting every other week to gather all that information and make sure that we are all on the same page um for completing drills the school leadership teams were provided in uh July with a monthly calendar of drills so that they can have drills at various times various types of drills various locations uh safe schools Department I go out to to help in those drills to come up with ideas if there's any questions and we also have tabletop drills where School leadership teams and stakeholders specific to those situations are involved in the conversations um I go to provide a school leader perspective so we can talk through the wh ifs sometimes the wh ifs can take us down a rabbit hole but the wh ifs or conversations that have to be had so that we can have plans in place and we do this to help identify trends for potential professional learning opportunities and working with safe schools on making that happen the compliance observation forms like Mr mcfaden said the binders at each school um one of the uh thorns in our side at the beginning of the school year were our sister certifications and our these are our school environment safety incident reporting certificates where at least one person on each campus is trained to code the data that we use to report any incidents that are against the law or serious breach of our code of conduct and then of course the Alyssa's law Panic alert requirement we do still have Raptor for reunification and visitor management and we have moved to cix for our um mobile Panic alert system the main part about the CICS piece and and working with um with all the Departments together the safe schools department wants to collaborate with mental health and wellness professional leadership and learning to assist with the proper training so we've done this in a variety of ways through the reunification training that we had over the summer we had a um variety of stakeholders there local law enforcement School leaders the reunification team mental health and wellness played a huge role in just providing um some understanding to the sensitivity around locations of who we're staging where uh we also had a full day of school leaders for safety uh crisis and legal training over this summer we've worked really hard with mental health and wellness to uh provid scripts the scripts are provided whenever School leaders we don't really know what to say all the time we don't know all the sensitive things and so school school um leaders are working specifically with that Mental Health and Wellness Group and Mel no doll's group so that we can make sure everybody knows what's going on when there is a threat that happens in the school they all saw it on social media we know about it we've probably sent a sky alert home to let the parents know about it but we forget sometimes to let the kidss know about what's happening and they're curious so we've worked on these scripts to provide information that teachers can read aloud to their classes everybody read this out aloud to your second period class to make sure that everybody's on the same page because if we don't create the narrative we know that students will create the narrative for us um and I think if we oh I'm sorry the drills that we are having for our cic drills those are live two year two times a year we have live drills October and January where we work with local law enforcement response and the emergency communication centers around the city and the county to make sure that all of our um uh systems are working properly this again is a a huge lift with our technology department and our school teams and making sure that they are understanding these uh to date we've had over 1,200 staff alerts since the first day of school those are those three click alerts that I need help of some sort um and we have had a lot of lockdowns but those have been purposeful in drill in drills um we've had about 12 13 unexpected inadvertent or false alarms of actual lockdowns to this point so as we continue learning the system uh we will continue to decrease that number I'm sure and just as a reminder that school safety is really a shared responsibility we talk about the different stakeholders from safe schools law enforcement technology mental health and wellness the Communications and public relations groups professional leadership and learning school teams teachers custodians uh students and families and then our school communities and it's all because the government does provide legislature mandating those preventive and proactive measures but it's all of us working together that are going to get it done so if you have no questions for me I just have one comment oh Dr just one comment I um as as I visit schools I obviously I try to wear mine and then I as I notice other people wearing theirs I do ask them you know how's it going are you feeling better having this you know just asking questions and the common everyone seems satisfied but the common um shortcoming is a shortcoming We have dealt with forever um they if you don't have cell service then you don't get the alert as a principal or an administrator on your cell phone and so um if we could still figure out as a district how to problem solve that I don't know what that looks like but that is a shortfall so we're asking administrators to be have their phones on them so that they can hear the alerts and I've never I I remember it went off that one time we were actually getting trained I think but um other than that I've never really witnessed the alert go off but the principles have shared with me um at certain schools that it it wouldn't do any good to even have their phone on them because it doesn't doesn't go off um and so obviously that's then relying simply on the webbased platform and the people who are at a desk to be at the desk have we seen any delay in notification due to that well we understand the cell service issue um the deal with cic though is that it's actually a desktop application it's not purely web- based so what we ask is there are responders site responders at each school who get these notifications and it's a big basically a desktop takeover so we think about people who are at their desks a lot maybe our ipcs registrars secretaries receptionists people who are at their desks a lot we set them up as site responders so that a desktop takeover happens when that three-click happens it pops up on their screen it shows them the person the location and then they use the mechanism of radios like we would around our campus normally to alert Administration to get to the emergency so we're not totally dependent on self service but we are very aware of it instead we've used it as a desktop app that actually takes over our screen to tell us when there's an emergency and that's been effective we've had very quick responses with the desktop takeover that and we haven't seen any issues related to we did a lot of testing at the beginning of the year but whenever we did our live tests in October with law enforcement we were all on on point awesome thank you great anything else good okay moving forward I'm back I'm back to close this out okay so we continue to support the full implementation of all components of our district Mental Health Plan the plan provides a framework to identify and intervene on behalf of students that are demonstrating mental health or behavioral challenges multi-disciplinary teams analyze data determine needs Implement interventions and monitor progress to support students at a very levels and in a variety of ways we support the implementation of several programs and clubs to promote social skills and mental well-be for all students we also support the implementation of individualized Mental Health Services provided by school-based and community-based mental health providers on and off- campus at the beginning of last year we discussed um the need to develop a consistent method to assess the efficacy of our services and monitor our student progress we immediately set out to develop a committee to include representation from Mental Health Providers student services School counseling and administrators who collaborated to design a tool that would allow a consistent method to evaluate the efficacy of our programs and for teachers to actually provide feedback on student progress as well information about the measure and related procedures were shared via the learning line administrator meetings staff meetings professional learning opportunities and Via on-site coaching the mental health services division team also developed a canvas course that provided an overview of the MDT processes and procedures to support consistency across the district and additional courses are now in the development phase to provide information on the implementation of specific interventions our district crisis response team has seen an increase in the number of events over time last year the team responded to approximately 16 events at schools some of which required multiple days of response additionally our dcrt has responded to at least two crisis events to date and we have countless opportunities to guide and support administrators when they have questions and need resources each year our team uses feedback from our team members School staff and administration to determine any needs for updates or changes in procedures events resultant from threats to campuses were not typical in the past but unfortunately have been an issue recently our dcrt collaborated with district and school administrators to determine how to best support response during and after such events in partnership with Miss Connor and the safe schools Department we drafted messaging for administrators to share with students guidance for supporting staff following an event and resources to be shared with families this information was shared with administrators and is available on the mental health and wellness portal along with the crisis manual the mental health and wellness department and specifically the school counseling division continues to support tier one resiliency efforts across the district messaging via resiliency posters that we receive received from the state were shared with schools and are posted and visible across the district additionally we have continued our partnership with the public Education Foundation um and we're able to use resiliency funding to provide counseling resources for in school Mental Health Providers such as our social workers psychologists school counselors last year 47 School applications were received for $1,500 mini grants uh that were submitted for activities designed to promote and build resiliency on campuses and to support mental health initiatives the mental health and wellness team presented at the Leadership Summit over the summer to provide resources for administrators to help them expand these efforts to build resiliency among staff on on campuses as well and participants were provided with with their choice of books to encourage these ongoing efforts last year we also began a multifaceted ongoing plan with a focus on building capacity within the department and among schools specific to trauma informed strategies and practices the mental health aanas department partnered with Pearl Project which is a local agency a team of approximately 20 mental health professionals from our department completed a 20-hour trust-based relational intervention caregiver training program following the training our team has created a plan to offer support and resources to schools beginning with grade level appropriate presentations for teachers with practical classroom strategies these strategies are designed to support creating a positive environment and to Foster relationship building with and among the students our goal is to provide strategies that teachers can Implement immediately and our hope is that these initial steps will increase the interest and gener at additional demand for more resources additional trauma informed initiatives included supporting wyomina Park and their efforts to implement trauma inform formed strategies on their campus the mental health and wellness Department partnered with Community stakeholders such as Pearl Project and sedet and collaborated with school-based Administration to facilitate professional learning opportunities for teachers such as an introduction to TBR emotional regulation and calming Corners these efforts supported previously established practices and strategies that included restorative practices resiliency activities positive messaging across the campus and character development moreover two of our skilled social workers will be presenting at the student services meeting in January on restorative practices to support implementation across the district on this slide we have a summary of additional supports provided to school teams and students in an effort to support student and employee social emotional well-being as previously mentioned our Mental Health Services Program specialist has attended MDT meetings and or has provided on-site coaching for 52 schools across our district our mental health division team created and launched the districtwide MDT training course via canvas to support consistency and procedures and to serve as a source of reference for the school teams the course consists of multiple modules reviewing the various aspects of the MDT framework and its procedures this year we have increased the number of schools with Active safe promise clubs and so this shows there's 10 we've actually increased that to 14 year to date um these clubs advocate for safe environments on their school campuses we've also increased the 12 counselors to 14 at this time and we have 14 contracted Mental Health Counselors providing on-site services for students on 26 campuses um these Services were initially implemented in 201 22 and we have worked really hard to ensure that we have a plan for sustainability MDT counseling and interventions are also provided by our psychological and social work services and school counselors on campuses as part of the Strategic plan and to assess the percentage of students and employees that are feeling safe on campus the mental health and wellness Department collaborated with the student assessment and accountability Department to create and conduct student staff and Community surveys the initial student survey was conducted in May of 2023 student surveys are completed twice per year in the fall and spring while staff and family and Community surveys are conducted in the fall of each year in the following slides I will provide data from the surveys relative to student surveys that were conducted last spring um and this fall staff surveys that were conducted last fall and this fall and family and Community surveys that were conducted last fall and this fall we'll do those comparisons we also distributed 10 shine newsletters this newsletter is geared towards staff and is designed to support activities and strategies to improve the following areas self-help healthy mindset inspiring growth nutrition and exercise the shine scope and sequence is embedded in the resiliency tier one resource guide to make sure that we have a shared goal in expanding resiliency for students and for staff within the newsletter we also share shine activities that align with monthly themed activities and our resiliency skills additional statistics of one of our recent and most popular shine activities will follow as well this slide has information that was previously shared during our goal One update on November 4th but it's important to review these data once again within the scope of the key indicators and activities supporting goal 2 strategies the top chart shows our best results from the spring observation period the behavior and emotional screening system is still used as our primary Behavior observation tool teachers at the elementary level complete the best for all students in the fall and in the spring results are provided to school teams to help identify Trends and students in need of support at the secondary level students complete the tool based on a referral to the school-based multi-disciplinary team these results provide information on self-reported areas of concern or need schools have shown a commitment to using the tool and rely on the data to assist in determining needs and implementing programs and interventions the chart you see here shows our district results from spring from the spring observation period of the 2223 school year and the 2324 school year as you can see the results are consistent year-to-year and previous years also reflected similar results and these are expected what is consistent with the expected rates of students demonstrating moderate to significant needs across domains that are assessed the chart at the bottom half of the slide depicts the rates of referrals made to the multi-disciplinary team for interventions last year we saw an increase in the number of MDT referrals from the 2122 school year to the 2223 school year and we continue to see that trend from the 2223 school year to the 23 24 school year we we attribute this trend to familiarity and consistency with the framework and the MDT process as well as expanded criteria and the new threat management procedures which uh Chief mcfaden alluded to that now we have the concerning behaviors that are included additionally NDT coaching and support has helped schools improve systems helping them to identify student needs more quickly and accurately we had 2,218 referrals that were received last year 1,923 3 students received in school interventions and 324 students were referred to out of school community-based resources and services let us take a closer look at the climate survey results that were referenced in the earlier slide students were able to access these surveys via an icon that is on their student desktop in May of 2024 the surveys were designed for students in grades 3 through 12 and consist of 10 statements some of which are my teachers want me to do well students behave so teachers can teach and if there's an emergency at school I know what to do responses help schools assess key aspects and perceptions of students that contribute to their school climate the students rate each statement using a lyer scale which includes the following options always often sometimes or never in the spring of 2024 3,988 elementary students completed the survey and 4,089 secondary students responded these results indicate student responses to the statement I feel safe and comfortable at school which addresses our strategic plan outcome measure results show that approximately 70% of Elementary respondents indicated they always or often feel safe and comfortable at school and 51% of secondary students responded similarly the results of these surveys are provided to school teams by Mr White House once the surveys have been closed and the reports are generated in additionally our mental health and wellness division pulls the specific data and shares the information with the school MDT teams via their respective MDT School portal sites the fall of 2024 student survey was made available for students in late October and through the beginning of November the data reflected on this slide was pulled as of November 4th um so I think we had a date to close it out but we extended that to try to get more respondents by 11424 2,28 elementary students had completed the survey and 3,420 secondary students had completed the survey the results indicate that approximately 74% of Elementary respondents indicated feeling safe and comfortable at school and 57% of secondary respondents feeling similarly safe and comfortable at school these results show an increase of 4 percentage points among the elementary respondents and six percentage points among the secondary respondents it's important to note that the rate of response is relatively low and we continue to work collaboratively with the assessment and academic Services departments to generate ideas to increase participation additionally following discussion of the results from the previous surveys a follow-up question was created and included for the survey that was conducted this fall in order to obtain additional information about the reasons why students may have for responding to a statement the statement that we had I feel safe and comfortable at school but we didn't want to do anything that would majorly change or affect the original survey so here we can see the follow-up question that was added which reads if you answered sometimes or never to the previous question please select any options below that reflect why you feel that way giving them an opportunity to give us some feedback the provided choices including negative peer Behavior harassment or bullying physical safety such as fights and violence on Campus Community violence social media threats to students or School lack of communication during or after an emergency event or other data pulled as of November 4th indicated that 570 n Elementary respondents had selected they sometimes or never feel safe and comfortable at school however 1,123 respond respondents provided a response to this question meaning that we had about 444 students who indicated that they always or often feel safe at school but still responded to this question and provided feedback approximately 34% of Elementary respondents indicated that they feel harassment and bullying impacts their sense of safety on campus and 24% indicated negative peer Behavior impacts their sense of safety while less than 20% of respondents indicated concerns about the other specific areas 55% of the respondents indicated other as a reason relevant to their sense of safety on campus the same follow-up question was included on the secondary survey data pulled as of November 4th indicated that 1,462 secondary respondents selected sometimes or never as their response to question number four which was asking about feeling safe and comfortable at school however 2,184 respondents provided a response to question number five which means 722 students indicated that they always or often feel safe at school but also provided a response to this question on this chart you can see the top three responses bolded approximately 38% of secondary respondents indicated that they feel negative peer Behavior impacts their sense of safety on campus and 32% indicated social media threats to students or School impacts their sense of safety additionally similarly to the elementary results approximately about 56 of the respondents indicated other as the reason that was relevant to their sense of safety on campus this information is helpful to us at the district level when identifying areas of need and determining possible concerns to address and we hope the schools look at their individual data as well as as well to address student concerns and perceptions on campus in an effort to improve climate and increase the sense of Safety and Security among students mcps staff was also provided an opportunity to share their thoughts and perceptions as they relate to overall climate and school safety the staff survey was conducted in the fall of 2023 and again this fall a direct link to the survey was provided to school administrators to share with the staff in the fall of 2023 we had 2,90 respondents that completed the survey and 1,055 respondents completed the current survey as of November 1st comparative results shown here indicate that approximately 85% of Staff indicated feeling safe and comfortable at school last fall and 82% of Staff indicated similarly feeling that way in the recent survey again discussions are ongoing to devise a plan to increase participation in the survey this slide shows staff survey results as they related to an additional statement which reads at my institution we think everyone's safety we think of everyone's safety when making decisions responses to this statement provide an insight into perceptions regarding policies and procedures related to ensuring safety of students and staff again we had 290 responses last fall and 1,55 responses as of November 1st the results indicate that a consistent 90% of those staff members feel everyone's safety is considered when decisions are made in addition to students and staff it's imperative that we also consider feedback from families and community members the family and Community survey link is made available via Sky alert and principles also disseminate the link through typical parent communication Avenues the survey is available in English and in Spanish we had 2,29 respondents complete the survey in the fall of 2023 and 1,522 respondents complete the survey as of November 4th 2023 results indicated 6 7% of the respondents said that they absolutely feel we think about children's safety when making decisions and we saw a significant increase this year with at least 80% of respondents indicating that they feel um we think about children's safety when making decisions this means the data is trending in the right direction and we look forward to pulling the most recent data for analysis and we encourage parents families and community members to participate in our next survey this slide provides an update of one of our shine activities while we have a limited number of District Le activities the shine newslet offers suggestions for school-based activities here we have results of the most popular activity each year and that's our fall gratitude challenge each October in keeping with the October resiliency skill we encourage staff members to engage in and Express gratitude in various ways that are relatively easy to do each day the mental health uh division created and published a calendar of daily activities and they offer daily drawings for prizes staff who take the challenge submit a short reflective survey that share their experiences and reactions to the daily activities we share daily winners with all of the mcps staff to encourage participation and to recognize those that are making the effort to shine we had 2025 submissions last October 2023 and gave $500 worth of prizes in may we held our second most popular activity which is our mental Wellness challenge it's a similar concept with a calendar of daily activities um and those activities are meant to support and Foster mental Wellness in keeping with discussing efforts that support well-being for students and staff alike here we have results of a related question on the staff survey respondents were asked to rate their feelings with regard to the following statement overall I feel I have knowledge and access to staff resources to support my well-being the fall 2023 results are based on a total of 2090 respondents which indicated that 79% feel that they had knowledge of available resources additionally 76% of the 1,55 respondents as of November 1st indicated they feel they have knowledge and access to staff resources supporting their well-being a similar statement was included in the family and Community survey respondents were asked to rate a statement indicating whether we care about and provide resources to address children's well-being 67% of the respondents for the fall 2023 survey indicated they absolutely feel we care about and provide resources for addressing student well-being results of our most recent survey indicated that 71% of respondents feel similarly these results are based on 1,5 122 responses collected as of November 4th of 2024 this concludes our go to updates I yield to superintendent D gullet for additional comments thank you thank you Miss Del doll if you could before you leave the podium slide 29 very briefly had a couple of acronyms I don't know that they were defined if you could please just Define those acronyms for the board of the public this one here yes please so TBR the TBR team that's our trust-based relational intervention so that's it's a really long title for um the training that we received from Pearl Project and sedet is a regional agency that provides um resources um for school districts for social emotional um and behavior kinds of components thank you and thanks to the team for the presentation CH thank you board yes Dr James one question um I remember the last time we received this update I think it was the last time it was either last fall or in the spring um I remember the board collectively sharing a desire that students who shared that they never felt safe in school we will be able to collect their names or information so that we could um proactively follow up with those students and figure out what's going on um where are we with that so we do offer that for the elementary ones because the elementary students have to put in their student number and again that it's if they put it in there correctly and sometimes we have a few numbers that are either just shy of a number or a couple too many numbers um but we pull those records we pull all of those student numbers and we send that report to the schools so they can follow up with those students for the secondary survey um it's still an anonymous survey as you can see we still have very limited responses um but the team really felt like if we had them provide their details their names and their student numbers we would have even less responses most of the time our secondary students um are a little bit more candid and provide better feedback when they know it's Anonymous however the data is provided to them in a graph that shows you know in this area or these grade levels you can see higher numbers and so that way they can address it at least that way okay I I would love to see I appreciate your thought on that but if we haven't if the responses aren't incredibly high right now and we haven't tried it the other way I just feel like if if we're doing a survey and the students are reporting that they never feel comfortable and safe at school and then we have no idea who that student is how are we able to proactively meet them where they are and support them and so I don't I'm not coming to you with the solution right now other than to make it not Anonymous um but uh I don't know what I don't know what kind of um demographical information is collected on on these if their grade Home Room teacher I mean if there was a way to at least delineate some more information so that maybe it's Anonymous but we know maybe what's who's your English teacher I don't know if we could just come up with some kind of way to whittle it down a little bit so that probably a guidance counselor when given those kinds of things would be able to figure out who the child was and provide appropriate supports so part of the reason why we added that follow-up question was kind of to address that as well U so the conversations we had was when you read that statement especially thinking as a student safe and comfortable at school well what might not make me comfortable it doesn't necessarily mean that it's you know I feel like there's going to be a major event on my campus but I do sense that maybe uh you know students misbehave in school or maybe there's some bullying we wanted them to give us a little bit more context because that felt so broad um so that was one of the things that we tried to do to get it to narrow down just a little bit more did the other have a text box well the majority of them said something that we don't even know what they're saying so the majority of them are indicating the majority of the respondents 623 are indicating other but we have no idea what other is and we have no idea who the students are so if other is not the things listed here then what is other um and we have no way to figure it out and so that is my hesitation as a board member because while this is more proactive than we've had previously it still leads a lot in my opinion to be desired because we we have the information in now we other than doing whole group activities to include um addressing these in a whole group we have no way to individually address this I appreciate the feedback surveys are tricky sure thank you so I have one question slash comment and then one other just general comment completely concur with what Dr James has said that'll be a really easy fix to just make that a fillable option if you say other and then actually give them the opportunity that potentially will also allow the student to self-identify since it's Anonymous and depending on what they say there that may actually lead us to more information about that student nevertheless I don't see in your data that we asked follow-up questions of staff and so I would ask we have nearly 20% of Staff who aren't always feeling safe and comfortable at school that's on slide 37 it's not quite 20% but it's nearly 20% who aren't always safe and comfortable at school and without the follow-up question for staff just like we ask for students we don't know how to additionally address staff right where they are and so I would ask that we potentially add that in the future survey because I think that will further get us there and even we could add that to the family and Community survey just ask the follow-up question because if you are ask if you are saying that you're not always or absolutely feeling safe then there's got to be a reason and so let's see if we can identify that and that would help us more proactively approach it um the other comment I wanted to make was on slide 36 so just one back uh which was similar to what Dr James was saying about the other category uh but the two that are identified there are social media threats to um students in school and negative peer Behavior based on the conference that I was just in and the conversations had with other state leaders around the nation I don't know if Florida will do this this year but there was a lot of conversation around no cell phones Bell to Bell so specifically for our secondary students I know that that isn't uh as tightly we've put in policy but it still gives the leeway for administrators and teachers to make decisions in their own classroom and give them that autonomy and in cafeterias Etc uh based on the data and the research of what just one cell phone distraction causes I believe that we will see legislation coming down since we have other adults that are in charge that aren't making the decisions already that we will have no cell phones buil to Bill and I would be in full support of that based on the incredibly detailed quantitative data that I now have seen about distractions how long it takes you to get back focused just with one minor distraction and how bullying rate go down I think it's 20% the second you get rid of cell phones so I I think that we're I mean we we've talked about it already we have policy as tight as we can make it based on State Statute but I would not be surprised if statute doesn't take it Bell to Bell and make it mandatory so okay anything else okay thank you very much and with that we are going to take a recess at 12:31 oh public comment see so many familiar faces I forgot to ask any public comment okay seeing none now we will take a rest recess at 12:32 we'll be back around 1 o'clock a good clock recessing for 30 minutes what recessing for 30 I just wasn't sure so team if you didn't hear um the board has recessed for 30 minutes so we Rec convene it at 1 o' e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e good afternoon and welcome back to our November 21st 24 work session Dr gullet will you um introduce our next presentation thank you madam chair happy to we are going to uh board this morning present some information regarding the owner direct purchase as the board has discussed previously and we have several components to this presentation we'll kick it off with Miss Boston Ellis our Chief Financial Officer this morning thank you good afternoon good afternoon so you know when I get up here it has as to have some kind of a money component to it uh but what I my job is this afternoon is to sort of take you down memory lane in terms of the funding uh what happened since uh May 19 2022 and there may be some dates that we left out but we went back through board dos uh the board County Commissioners and we were trying to piece the together uh the whole funding side of this discussion so we know we were told in the beginning there's limited uh funding it could be the 1.5 mil uh there could be a sales ctax there could be impact fees and uh of course there is an opportunity to borrow money as well so I'm going to go through the timeline and um I'm giving you the notes and if you need me to stop please please let me know so again um this journey in our mind started at um May 19th and there was a work session presentation uh by our executive director as well as uh Miss dobins um and they really began the conversation of the impact of growth in Maran um we move on to August 23rd 22 and that's when you as a board approved the consultant contract that they would look at uh impact fees and long range planning a planning study and that was Benes we moved on to October 18th and that is when Dr gullet created the growth and development task force committee um made up of community members that that were concerned about our school district and turned out to be a phenomenal committee because they were able to help us with some other things as well uh September 7th or December 7th there was a joint public Workshop presentation um the impact of growth again and this was at the board of County Commissioners uh meeting place on December 15th we had a work session and I'll change it a little bit uh this is when Stephen SS came up and spoke with you about localized resoning and that was for the 2324 year for the next uh six dates again uh Stephen brought back uh the stakeholder input for our localized uh resoning plan and then on February 28th you adopted the Southwest localized resoning plan um you also adopted the updated interlocal agreement um Miss Miss Dobbins and Mr Miss debbit came back to you on May 18th 2023 with an updated work session on the impact of growth and then on May 30th uh Banes came back with the long range plan and the long awaited impact fee study on May 31st the work session uh with the school and the district facilities recommendation the board gave consensus on that date to pursue the impact fees at 100% And to send it on to the board of County Commissioners feel the next uh five dates uh there was a work session um for planning and timing with impact fee ordinance and this was led by attorney Powers then we had two public workshops uh discussing the proposed impact fee rate increase um Benes long range presentation to the school board so there was two public workshops one on July 6 and one on July 13th and in that was a proposal uh for impact fee rates to increase uh July 20th 23 there was another work session uh uh where it was discussed the proposed impact fee recommendations and on August 9th a letter was sent to the County Commissioners rear the proposed School impact fee ordinance uh increasing School impact fees to and it was going to be discussed on August 11th at a joint public Workshop so they had a workshop the board of County Commissioners and they discussed the school board proposed impact feed recommendation on August 11th our school board you approved the proposed amended ordinance relating to impact fees on August 22nd in the meantime while we're working on impact fees the discussion started with uh the certificate of participation so on September 12th you approved a reimbursement agreement for fiscal year 2024 certificate of participation issue um and our bond Council provided that uh particular agreement and what that agreement said is we had not approved the certificate of participation but it gave us the right to move those expenses from wherever we charged them to the agreement once or to the cops once they happen so you approve that on September 12th then September 21 you received two contracts one from elementary W and one from elementary X um $1.6 million for both and these were for the contract managers on October 26 there was a work session discussing educational benefit districts so the district was broken up into uh five different districts and basically what that said is we could only use those dollars generated in the area so it this was the education benefit districts in November 14th the school board you withdrew the proposed amended ordinance relating to impact fees so then then we're going back to the cop that had not yet been approved by you yet and uh you approved an amendment to uh Elementary W for 13.7 million and this was for early procurement of equipment such as HVAC and electrician um on September 12th school board approved Amendment one for elementary x for6 million and it was for the same early procurement um on February 13th and that should say 2024 not 20123 you also approved Amendment two uh for elementary X 11.2 million and this was for site work and early procurement so keeping in mind that at this point in time we did not have an impact fee approved uh we did not have the cop either at that point we were going at a rapid speed because there there was um uh an attempt to make sure that these two elementary schools are going to be opened um August 2025 we don't typically put the cart before the horse but there was an urgency to get these schools open on 2025 and um there was a hold up in the impact fees um and the reason we were moving cautiously with the Cs because we were waiting to find out what was going to happen with the impact fees because because the um the idea was to we would use impact fees to help pay the debt uh associated with the cops and then if we didn't just have the cops and the impact fee going on but on February 13th you approved a resolution to submit the 1 half cent ctax to the county uh Board of board of County Commissioners so now we've got three different funding sources going on at that time um on February 13th the final impact uh fee rates uh were um sent to the board of County Commissioners um and I believe on February 20th the board of County Commissioners approved placing the referendum question for imposition of the half cent sales tax um for 10 years and this was pursuant to the resolution that was adopted by the school board for the general election ballot for November 5th the rules have changed for sales ctax so at that time uh once it was approved uh we had to pull together uh fairly quickly a performance audit and the these were all the things that were going on behind the scenes and it was a very involved uh audit and basically they were looking at our controls they looked at technology safe schools uh they looked at Financial questions so we had a really quick turnaround and also facilities so we had a really quick turnaround getting that because that is a requirement uh for the sales CeX as well so um after that which was left off the most important thing or one of the most important things you might want to write down on February 27 2024 the school board approved the resolution authorizing the issuance of the certificate of participation and also the bond anticipation note on March 5th there was a public hearing and the board of commiss board of County Commissioners and they approved the impact fee ordinance so then we began um the work with the certificate of participation we had to speak with rating ageny such as Fitch and Moody to make sure we were credit worthy and we got uh really positive feedback from them on that we receed their ratings again this is a criteria that is is is uh we have to provide that when we go out to borrow money we had a preliminary offering statement and in that statement uh we had to provide a lot of financial data on the school district then on 411 um there was a pricing meeting and then um on April 25th uh there was a closing of the certificate of participation Dr goard and I went up to New York to watch uh how this the whole process um was handled and we were very fortunate because the market was really good that week and they called us back and said the next week the market was not as good so we had really good timing on on going to Market on those bonds um so on May 6 the cops or the funding associated with that were available and my story ends on November 5th the sales ctax was approved by the voters of Marian County and the collection will begin on January 1 2025 thank you Miss Boston Ellis good afternoon board good afternoon I'm very excited to talk about direct purchases it has been since I um went to the facilities Department this summer as the interim director it was duar to my heart I heard the the complaints and um I saw that there can be Improvement so it was I was very excited to dig into it and uh I heard you it's very important to the board to save the sales tax so um I provided these slides they're very detailed um I wanted to really show you how we do it right now um how my staff is approaching it and I think we found a really nice solution of um improving on the timeline I think that will really help the process and take a lot of frustrations off um from the contractors as well um I will start with um the Florida statues um that exempts government entities of paying sales tax on equipment and materials directly purchased for construction um that is what we are going by and the facili facilities department is seeking to do direct purchase of materials on any projects uh that is our goal that is my personal goal especially in moving forward there of course are always situations where the process would interfere with the com um with completion of time of the project um we are always in a rush we always have project that are tied to a summer our summers are very short to go into schools to do renovation projects so we are always under time constraints um and and we don't want that process to interfere with that the students are coming back in August and that is our main goal to have the school back open or the hvc working or the turned on that the schools that the students can return to school um sometimes also there's long lead items especially since since covid happened um it really shook the uh the industries especially the construction industry and for example a um a chiller that was maybe six months um of ordering all of a sudden went to two years and that really um shook the industry um sometimes availability of funds as we just heard um sometimes the funds are not there yet but we're moving forward because like these elementary schools they were needed really urgently um sometimes also emergency purchases things happen in the field um and need to be addressed right away let's say we we hit an underground line and the power goes out and over the weekend and um the staff is working really hard to get that power back on by Monday um those purchases need to be made on the spot and uh addressed right away also the world National crisis as I mentioned covid um maybe you also remember there was a few years ago there was this Frost in Texas it destroyed all insulation material and at that time we were building the um the uh cafeteras at North Maran and we ordered that uh cooler freezer and all of a sudden they said every production has stopped there is no more cooler and freezer coming and we were scrambling to find another company we found one in California who had enough uh material in stock and we we found an alternative but things like this happen the owner direct purchase is also a part in the standard construction management agreement it's also in our continuing contract um it's a chapter in there and it's um if you want to look it up it's under 19.3 in both of those contracts um and in there it references that um if the contractor is not aware of the process they should look into the specification manual in section 0127 IT addresses how we we do our um Owner Direct purchase process and it also has some forms in there as a guideline how we would like you know items to be submitted the change order submitted it also has a list of items that are very important for us to be purchased through the owner direct purchase um process and I believe you have copies of the specifications um it was part of the uh submitt for the board item so I want to walk you through the process of first how we do it right now and as you see there's five steps so each project um might have several vendors depending on the project and each vendor has to go through all five steps um for us to purchase the material and I will go step by step so the first step is to get the vendor approved and that goes through the legal department um if they're not an approved V and established with uh with our purchasing department our legal department we cannot use them in the process so that's the first step the contractor will submit a list of vendors at that point they have uh submitted a GMP they know which vendors are they going to use they will send us that list we'll double check if the vendor is already approved then that's wonderful we we don't have to go that step it saves us time if the vendor is not approved they will have to fill out a vendor application they have to submit a W9 and now also a human trafficking FID David they will submit it to us we will re we will review it and uh double check that everything is filled out correctly send it to the legal department uh we are working very closely together right now to get all the necessary signatures that was our biggest takeup to get the right people to give us the signatures um and I think my staff is talking to uh Mr power's staff almost daily and they are bouncing back and forth like what can we do we still haven't received that signature so we have we have worked very greatly through that process once approved that once that vendor is approved then the ODP process can be initiated the good news is as soon as they approved there in our system now our list is growing daily we have daily new vendors that getting approved which will make it going forward much much easier and faster now the vendor is approved now we can move into the deductive change order part the contractor identifies all costs and associated with material they want to purchase through the ODP process um they fill out our change order request form it has to uh list the vendor it describes the material it shows the sale tax amount the total amount and uh we also required the backup quote from the vendor to double check the numbers and um those are the forms you see when they come through as informational items um through the board meetings um these change orders also need to be approved and signed by the architect and the contractor they get uh reviewed and approved by the construction coordinator in my office and then they're getting submitted to the superintendent for approval and signature because they're deductive change orders once they are approved and signed the that form will get submitted to the finance department they have to do a lot more review um they have to double check what funding was used and make sure thing is correct there when they reviewed it approved it they send it to the purchasing department and at that point the original purchase order for the contract for their GMP gets reduced by the amount of the deductive change order uh yes and at that point that money is freed up and we are we can use it to do the purchase ourselves now we need to issue the purchase order to the vendor the construction coordinator he will prepare a purchase order request form he has to itemize um every piece of material based on that quote from the vendor this requisition then is submitted through Skyward to the finance department they double check everything and as soon as it is approved by Finance it gets to the purchasing department and they are issuing the purch order directly to the vendor at that point the vendor can go ahead and order the material now let's say the the material was delivered everything is ready the vendor will want payment at that point uh they will submit the invoice to the contractor the contractor will verify that that equipment was received uh once in a while because on the purchase order it say Mar County Schools they send the bill directly to finance at that time we have to reroute it back to the contractor because we really have to make sure that piece of material was really received so the contractor will approve it and then send us the invoice to our department and we will verify that everything is correct on there uh Sometimes some corrections have to be made and then that invoice is sent to the finance department for for payment at the end of the project um we need to reconcile any discrepancies and uh sometimes it happens that let's say we do a deductive change order um for concrete $65,000 but uh concrete gets delivered in in smaller badges not all at once and I think it depends on the day when they order the conrete maybe on the weather if they had to put an extra mix in there for the temperature so the end bill for the concrete might be less so at that time we have to um give that money back to the contractor so the books are balanced um it's easier for example if youve just ordered a chiller the price will not change for a chiller so that's easier but those those um sit situations happen so it's very crucial that the contractor they really tabulate and track all the purchases our department really tracks those purchases and that's why these forms are very crucial that they follow our guidelines we all have the same forms and it's easily to um be compared uh one one for another now I want to talk a little bit about the challenges the challenge most current challenge we had in the summer was that we had some hiccup the vendor approval the state statute changed in July 1st and at that point it was required that all vendors had to submit a human trafficking affidavit at that point all our vendors became inactive not necessarily shown in Skyward as inactive but we knew that they had to provide that form for us to legally move forward to use them since then like I said legal the legal department my department we have worked very closely together we have trained together we have brainstormed together I think we we have turned that it's we're working well together we made it easier working together getting these signatures and like I said every day we have new vendors getting approved so the list is getting longer and then that step um is not needed for a lot of vendors now going forward another challenge we have seen that there is a lot of deductive change orders you will see probably in the next board agenda that we have for one contractor three or four change orders as soon as they come in we process them and then they they have to be routed through our department through the fa finance department through the purchasing department so every time a piece of material will be purchase they create a deductive change order it's a lot of steps for each of those departments so we we had lots of conversations with the legal department with Finance Department with the purchasing department what do they see maybe with other districts with their colleagues um what can we do better we also had meetings with industry professionals we analyzed different school districts how they are doing it what do other people see in other school districts what works well what doesn't work well what is the same and we also worked with JB Pro our consultant firm and uh we compiled all our findings and we were looking for a solution oh sorry and our the solution I would like to present to you today is to implement a single deductive change order right at the beginning of a project um the industry standard actually recommends that maybe 20 to 25% of a guaranteed maximum price um is allocated for Owner Direct purchase at for new construction at renovation it's a little bit less because renovation is not so much the material it's more the manow that is needed to finish that project so we get a GMP maybe 20 to 25% um is already allocated for ODP when we present you that GMP at the same time we will present to you that one deducted change order and when you approv that purchase order for that GMP is already deducting that deductive change order so that money is already not encumbered and is free for us to use and when you look at the the graphic so we become we we receive a project and then we have one deductive change order instead of five seven 10 change orders all trickling in throughout the process and then the contractor would do the same thing they would um identify the vendors they want to be using most of those vendors will now be approved already so we don't have that vendor application step either so that already takes time out of the process too and then that leaves only two steps um issuing the purchase order and then the direct payments to the vendors and then the close out at the end is just rectifying all of those purchase orders um with that one single deductive change order so we I believe if we if we look side by side instead of having five steps for each single vendor I think we can get it down to two steps if we do the one deductive change order right in the beginning and that is the end of my presentation thank you Mrs bombach um I'll open it up to comments and concerns from the board I I can start Dr James thank you um well first thank you Miss bomach for bringing a solution that I think is very much needed so I appreciate that um a question that have regarding the presentation on slide nine you talk about the a standard construction agreement and the obligation in that agreement for ODP to occur the piece to the puzzle that I think is missing is because it's the solution that's been presented is great um I do have a question about it but I'll get to that in a second however who is holding the contractor accountable for processing ODP that would be my department um so um I didn't phrase that correctly that was kind of like a theoretical question because if they're not being held accountable to some degree because there are there are active contracts that are still open right now that ODP has not been processed and the contractor actually most recently that I met with didn't even know what ODP standed for so clearly they were never asked to proc ODP because they didn't even know what it was so a piece to this plan that you've presented which I would say is like 98% perfect is who's going to keep the contractor accountable for processing ODP and that is still a missing component that it's a board member I would like to know because if no one is keeping the contractor accountable for submitting the changes then we can't implement the plan so that is a component that I would like to see hashed out um and figure out within the organization and your department who is going to be the point person to make sure that we're capturing it because this is a great plan um my only other question would be let's say that we're going to do 25% of the GMP and then it winds up needing to be greater than that for whatever reason will we then do additional change orders as necessary if we were to exceed the allocated budget for ODP that is correct yes okay and if we fell short and we wound up taking back too much money then in turn we would also do an additive change order at the end of the project to settle up because we would have essentially overallocated and we would need to pull back some of that to the contractor that is correct okay so as long as those two things are clear this seems like a much smoother process um my so then I only my only remaining question that I would want clarification on at some point is how are we going to ensure that the process is implemented and that's just the piece to the puzzle that I know is missing right now yes so since since I became the interim director that was my biggest Focus because I heard you loud and clear in all these board meetings that ODP is very important and we had very much turn over in our department I have a brand new staff in the construction department and they know this is our utmost priority they as soon as uh an vendor application comes in they jump on it right away if those um deductive change orders come in that that is our utmost priority right now and we started a new project my first question to them was how much can we buy ODP with they know going forward that this is the goal for our district for any project going forward to look right away what can be ODP and if we can do one deductive change order then that will be communicated to the um contractor right away as well um as soon as you submit your GMP we expect at the same moment a deductive change order you have to list out already what we can buy directly so going forward this this will be our main goal and my staff knows it I know it and okay yeah I just I just want to ensure there's a level of checks and balances because if the contractor I mean like like we've talked about it's it's been in the contract the expectation for ODP has been in the contract but contractors it's extra work and we have a contractor in the audience it's extra work for the contractor to do ODP so if no one was going to hold them accountable historically then why are they going to go out of their way to do extra work because it doesn't actually save them any money it just saves US money um so I just would like to ensure whatever that looks like going forward that there are proper checks and balances to ensure that staff is is effectively communicating with the contractor what those expectations are and then um I had one other thought but it it escaped me but it'll come back to me it'll come back to me okay board anyone else no I don't think so okay I just have two clarifying questions and it's just because I need some help with the process and it's just things that have come up in the past that I'd like you to help me um clarify so one if you could walk me through I know we had um hold on let me find I'm looking at think it's slide 11 okay the human trafficking affidavit so that was a holdup for us on approving several vendors correct correct and so that was the the new statute that came out last summer this past summer and so there's not a there wasn't a notification that went out um to vendors we just tried to work through going through as vendors came up for use like can you explain that a little bit to me why that was such a struggle for us because at that moment they had to fill out a complete new vendor application so we notified them that we need that we needed a new vendor application because that uh law changed and the human trafficking affidavit was required so that at that moment we reached out to the contractors um you're not act you're not to the vendor you're not active right now we need these forms completed quickly because we were already sometimes we already had a deductive change order and that was all right in the middle of it so then we reached out to the contractor and notified them because when I saw a sample of that it didn't look too complicated but was it was it complicated the complication was that not just anybody can sign that form not anybody can just sign the vendor application form um maybe Mr poers can talk more to it um so the human trafficking affidavit the Florida legislature P passed a requirement that an owner or a agent of the owner um specifically it's supposed to be an owner or corporate officer um has to sign an affidavit alleging that they are stating under oath that they do not engage in any human trafficking portions of their business it's not altogether clear whether if someone who would engage in human trafficking would also be content to lie about it on such a form but that's what the legislature gives us so um the compliance factor means that for any non-governmental entity to whom we're entering into a contract with we have to have that on file in order to be able to disperse things otherwise we're going to have audit findings we're going to be in violation of Florida law those sort of things so the vendor application typically audits recommend that we do a new vendor application or update those vendor applications once a year most of the data doesn't change the data that we formerly required for dat for vendor applications was really quite simple it's kind of like the bouncer at the door that says I need your ID so we need to have their corporate registration which is their ID corporate registration is on sunbiz in Florida in other states it's through their Department of Corporations and ours it's called sunbiz so we need to have that information and a W9 and in those cases we're pretty free to if there's a salesperson or a mid mid-range person or someone who is authorized by their own company to sign those sorts of things we typically can allow that provided they show us some document chain that connects them back to someone now because human trafficking violation sorry human trafficking affid requires an officer or registered agent um or authorized person the authorized person needs to be somebody who's listed or someone who's listed has authorized that person to sign on their behalf so that was what we were dealing with all of a sudden out of the blue we now need to get either somebody listed on sunbiz which may be one person or six people or somebody that that one or six people designates to sign that human trafficking affidavit now if they designate that person we just have to have something that links them together to say that they are their right designated which if they can have someone sign that designation they can also pretty equally have just signed the affidavit on their own the problem is that in many cases the people who are listed as the owner or corporate agent or one of those one to six people listed on the actual corporate talk doents they largely are not available for day-to-day operations so the people that are dealing with everything on day-to-day operations and have the authority to you know make deals that might be fine for a business perspective it's not fine necessarily for the purposes of a human trafficking affidavit because we have to put someone on the hook essentially so in those cases what we do is we said it can be anybody that you designate so long as we can connect them back to the company so that it's not just someone who's a assistant secretary to the third director it has to be someone who actually has the authority to swear that their firm doesn't use this so that took a little bit of getting used to just because in most cases it's the it's clear to us what we need but in many cases this is folks who have been doing look I'm the sales rep and this is a very large company and you've never we've been able to do business like this before you're you know we don't have our top guys sign those things the top guys I don't even know them I don't even know their names you know I'm the sales intermediary and so therefore you know that that's that's the the attitude or take that we were getting from some of the people who were on a more local level so we had to explain to them that look that's fine if you want to sign it I need for however for you to be able to say and provide me some documentation that one of the people who actually runs the company has authorized you to do so um so there was some resistance upfront just with why why should we have to do this well look I I might have the same questions because the fact is in many cases I don't really see this law as being particularly effective I'll just put my personal opinion as a lawyer on it I don't see it as being effective at stopping human trafficking but that's not my business it's not my area my area is to make sure that they have compliance so in order to make sure that we have compliance we have to make sure that somebody with the appropriate credentials is signing which means for the first time ever some of these people are being asked to provide some link back to the people who are listed on sunbiz that is also in keeping with our policy on board policy 6320 and it's generally a good idea but we also recognize that there might be in at times a little bit of wiggle room for us to be able to accept a signature from someone someone who is you know has a parent Authority someone who is a vice president of operations even if they're not listed on sun Biz they have company letter head their title is significant even though they're not listed on the company documents with the human trafficking affidavit there's a lot of concern that if we just allowed almost anyone to sign without that documentation link we could be the ones who catch the heat for that now I think that that's large that's been resolved in most of these situations what we found is in in for the most part when we track down it takes a little bit of research time we got to track down who are the people who are those folks who are the agency authorized representatives the the the the one to six people who are listed on sunbiz WE track them down we blast email them all we say hey look we've got this it's a hot button thing we got to get it signed we got to get it signed fast you can sign it or you can give me an authorized letter head that says that someone that you are signing that someone can sign for you in your stad and that's sufficient but it it's an extra step that extra step takes time at times when their staff has already attempted to do this then it gets referred over and we look at it and we tell them what they who they need to sign then maybe a week has gone by and just trying to get that and this could be something we need in a twoe time frame so those are items then that we need to send emails to people and say can somebody sign we might not hear back for three or four days or it might have been a Friday that I requested it it might not hear back until Wednesday those every day causes a bit of delay in that if we know that we need these things in order to stay on a time frame by a date that is 3 days from now we know we're going to be rushing around and trying to force people to to move quickly and we can control how quickly our staff runs we can't always control how quickly other staff runs particularly if they're not familiar with this because no one is until this year many of these people are saying I I've gotten this quite a bit no other district is required us to do that right no other district has ever required anyone to do that until this year and I will point out that there are still some districts right now that are not doing it and they are in violation is that's the case so um yes this is not business as it used to be 5 years ago or two years ago it's there's an extra requirement and so we're having to introduce that requirement and it introduced another factor into the mix so I think that we're mostly there and uh once we've gotten through some of the clogs and the ones that that were you know we we realize that these are problems we've now gotten I think a smooth effort between facilities and legal to try to identify those and start the start the process really quickly we know that we have to anticipate a week or more delay therefore we know they know that when something like that happens they're not going to sit on it for a day or two and I'm not going to sit it for a day or two they're going to send it to us they're going to try as soon as they get any kind of email that well no I I should be able to sign this they're just they're taking action then it gets to us we can take action then we can get it sorted out because in every case once we get a hold of someone who's on that high Lev chain we get a response rapidly so that's fine so that's just some background all right thank you both I think Dr James do you have a comment well I just wanted to add I actually spoke with the construction attorney that represents I think every contractor that's building schools for us right now um because I wanted to like understand is you know is is attorney Powers being like crazy strict about this or is there like is this and so I was referred to this um firm and this attorney who represents I believe Wharton Smith and osley for sure but I also believe ad Morgan and the attorney shared all of the things that attorney Powers just said which is that this is what we have to do and you're playing by the book and other districts just aren't playing by the book yet um and so the hesitation we've received from vendors is because other districts aren't requiring it but that doesn't mean it's not a requirement so um I think overall though we've probably gotten to the other side of the hump because the majority of the vendors people use this train does AC like that's you know so it's we've hopefully gotten kind of over the hump but it was a long hot summer with regard to vendor applications I would agree with that big learning curve I did remember my other question right ahead PR uh in a previous meeting the board had set a 50,000 threshold for not doing ODP um I didn't see that included in this presentation so I wanted to touch base as to the relevancy of that continued desire is that going to be a because it wasn't included in this is that still going to be a part of the process that going forward if for whatever reason we choose not to do ODP um anything over the PO of 50,000 is brought to the board yes so if you look at the specifications that that I have attached already changed the wording in there to reflect the 50,000 um I was waiting to send that out to the contractor depending on today um I will now rewrite it and reflect that we are seeking the one deductive change order right in the beginning and incorporate it in those specifications and then I can send that out with a memo to all contractors and make them aware as well okay great wonderful any other comments have a question just a couple yes absolutely thank you and thank you for bringing some much needed Clarity to this process um I feel like I understand it a lot better now um I'm looking at slide well I'll start with slide eight actually um you know it thank you for saying that it's a priority um and also that there's been probably situ ations in the recent past and maybe recently to the present where ODP was not sought I'm thinking about during covid the long lead times but I'm also thinking about the timelines that this very ambitious and passionate board um have put forth publicly you know we want to open two elementary schools in the fall of 2025 and how that may have may or may not have impacted but my um ask moving forward would be that if whatever the situation is where it looks like ODP is just not shouldn't be you wouldn't recommend that it be pursued that you give us a a heads up you know somehow um so that so that we're aware because I also understand um that it is to our benefit not not to the to the the workers benefit so to speak you know um so why would they pursue something that had I don't know I think I lost counted about 17 steps so now we've got a much more streamlined process but it's always been and please correct me if I'm wrong on slide nine that Owner Direct purchase has always been part of the standard construction management agreement correct correct so say you didn't know I don't know that sounds a little like the dog ate my homework really uh but that's again I'm learning this process myself but that was something that kind of jumped out of me um the next thing is and this is in line with the the accountability pieces and I'm on slide 11 now uh bullet two contractor to submit a list of vendors anticipated for the ODP process of a project to fa facilities department is there going to be a deadline for them to submit that list because again we are moving very quickly as I'm looking at Teresa Boston Ellis now who really gave us that timeline which drove it home to me you know how much this board asked of back office to bring forward the things that we knew our community needed which was more more schools and impact fees and sales tax and and a way to pay for it all you know so I'll just stop briefly and say I worship you for for for bringing this to to fruition but that sounds like it didn't come without some pretty big costs you know behind the scenes of of trying to make all this work and make these deadlines work so that we can accomplish our our stated board goals right so again this this second Bull that's bothering me a little bit because if the contractor doesn't submit a list timely of vendors anticipated for the process then that holds us up right and so they not only need to be aware that they need to do it it also can't take them five different attempts you know before we get what we need so this really is a partnership and and I understand that doing business with any government entity is a big pain in many many ways because of the regulation that's probably why there's not more companies that will work with us but I also uh Follow That by saying I don't think our checks have ever bounced so that's a good thing um but but again I I thank you for taking a forward this far and coming up with a solution that it sounds like we can all get behind and then just keeping a really good handle on on the deadlines of things if if we want it if the board is saying that we want this done then that's what you're operating under so then there's a lot of responsibility that needs to be taken by everybody to make our state of board goals happen so that's that's where I am with this and and again thank you so much for anyone that's willing to partner with us and all this regulation and also to the facilities department for the tremendous job that you continue to do JB Pro uh you know you've already proven to me that you're worth your weight and much more than you weigh and um I think we're on a good strong track so I appreciate the presentation very much thank you I couldn't have said it better myself okay perfect didto everything she just said thank you good all right thank you Miss bomach and please thank your team we appreciate the the time and effort that went into all of the work that you presented to us today so thank you thank you any public comment it's always hard I know it's hard okay seeing done Dr gallet would you like to introduce our next presenter yes thank you madam chair and and it's our last presentation for today board I know it's been a long day already and actually uh Miss Bach's going to kick us off on this topic as well so she did not go very far uh and she is going to provide some information regarding um the new high school I reference that we've talked about um the budget for that that project thank you good afternoon again um I you all should have the hand out I prepared um and I will submit it also to be uploaded um it took me a while to put it together I just wanted to to let you know where we are in the high school um budget wise um so so you know how we could move forward and hopefully we have some options uh laid out that you feel comfortable with um we start with the original budget that was part of the certificate of participation and and we started at $133 million we added also in The Five-Year Plan under Capital Money some partial funding for FFN and that stands for furniture fixtures and equipment items that we buy for the classrooms so we have a total amount of funds available of $35 million as of November 17th when I pulled all the POS that were already issued um we encumbered a total of $73 million um most of it is for GMP number one that you just recently approved but there there's included the surveys the soil borings um as you have heard we have uh gopher turtles on site as well so we had it had a survey deducted uh conducted and those turtles will be be removed in right after Thanksgiving when the weather gets a little warmer um it also includes the uh offsite improvements we need to tie into water sewer we had a driveway design because that road is not there yet um and also we had to go through the Maring County plan review process um which um takes quite some time we had to create extra drawings to fulfill their requirements and what they wanted to see um we we're getting really close in getting the approval there as well the design was a big chunk in there as well and also the preconstruction services that you approved when you approved warten Smith as the contractor now looking forward what cost are we still anticipating um we do need commissioning by law um because it's a large um HVAC equipment um test and balance we need material testing we also need threshold inspections because of the amount of uh people that will occupy um those buildings and I rough estimated around $600,000 for those costs um FFN the furniture the fixtures the equipment I estimated maybe $3 million the GMP number two we have a very good idea because Warden Smith um could break it out and compared to their previous um construction we we're looking at at $84 million that is still needed to finish the project we also have included an escalation um percentage in there because we don't know what uh material costs will do and uh usually in January um prices get raised um for materials so we just put an amount in there just to be safe that we are not short again so I I anticipate that we still need $91 million to finish the project as it is designed today that means we are right now $29 million short that's not just um so I I gave you a summary of what the construction cost for the high or what the total amount after we finished the high school with all the furniture with all the designs with all the soil borings the total package when we open the school will be around $164 million comparing that to other construction of high schools that are occurring right now I think we are right right there in the middle the construction cost alone will probably end up around $153 million um as you know we uh negotiated the contractors's fee um when you approved the their contract um we negotiated it on $130 million at5 5.2 million for their fee even if construction cost increases that fee does not increase um that will stay how how did we get to this increase that original budget was based on a smaller school we were probably anticipating 275,000 square foot for that high school it was also a year and a half ago maybe even longer not really sure um right now the school is designed for 310,000 square foot so we increase the square footage of the school by 35,000 square foot then we also need to look at material cost escalation and looking you know through the covid years we have seen huge increases even just going to the course store so a typical national average of increase each year was around 3.7% the national average in 2024 was at 5% but you know Florida is one hot growing area and we we see it even in Okala so costs here are escalating much faster than in the national average and uh we're looking probably at 7.5% um I think it's slowing down a bit so hopefully we see a a little bit decrease in there and I gave it some numbers in there if we look at those percentages that was based on the $133 million that was our original budget and as I already mentioned there is a cost increase usually expected every January that firms already sending out um letters to contractors that they are anticipating um pricing to go up we also had a little bit delay of uh the CM election um I think it was around five months now with the Ila we had to bring it back before the board of County Commissioners um it was approved on Tuesday um we couldn't start breaking ground that delayed us another month um if we look at that it's probably almost $5 million that because because of the cost escalation um I did that percentage based on that cost escalation fee of 7.5% for six months that's the number um that came up we also want the school open very quickly which was a very aggressive schedule um for this aggressive schedule we are praying a little premium so I looked at what normal cost per square footage would be and and looked at a Premium cost and the difference uh I came up with $9.3 million a rough estimate we also building two buildings as shelters um looking at the cost increase there about $2 million and looking forward into the future we know we are growing in in this particular area very heavily so we were already looking at we probably need an addition very soon how could we do that most cost effective so we decided to keep the third floor on those uh classroom buildings but not finish them out it's it's the most economic way of preparing for an addition um because we're already in construction then not doing it and doing it completely new one or two or three years later so we we incorporated it and they looking ahead because I think we anticipate that school to be full by the time we open it or pretty close to be full already so then that third floor is already there it's not finished on the inside but if if you tell us we need it in a year then we go in and finish it fairly quickly that was the most economic and fast way to prepare for the future we also changed some design we uh met with all the different departments we wanted that prototype that we chose to fit Mar and counties um programs that they want to offer at a school um for example Davenport High School had a huge culinary program this school will not have a culinary program they wanted to go more into Aviation avionics AI um so we changed that around so there was some changes in the design and the interior buildout that we incorporating then of course the go for tures uh do cost us quite some money to move them and also the drive a design um that road that is supposed to go there that new fly over the count is talking about to go over the interstate it's not there yet um they are a little delayed also in in their funding so we had to provide a road for our students to come in and get to the parking um that will cost us also some money um otherwise we would have just tied into an existing road but there is no road right now it's a dirt road so what options do we have we can look at cutting back on the scope for building the high school let's say we don't want to build a third floor right now because we don't have the money and we probably would save 12 to4 million this would I would not rec recommend that in my personal opinion because we designed it already that way we already under construction we have already submitt packages out for the structure of the buildings this would create a redesign and it would delay our schedule another option would be not to build the auditorium it is designed all the infrastructure would be there but we would just build that one section with all the CTE labs and there's a good break in the building that we could stop we can prepare the pad and leave it for now and that would save us around $13 million but it would be an easy addition later on because all the infrastructure is there we already have the power the hvc um capacity so we would be an easy addition later we also could be cutting back on Athletics um looking at artificial turf rubber track maybe a million dollars we covered the um play Court um for right now the basketball play court but we know it's used for RC or the band or it's not just for PE or the basketball people who use it um but that's an option um we have several locker room buildings um each one is a little bit bigger or smaller so we have a Norse Locker building a visitor Locker building we have uh a press box that sits between the uh softball baseball um fields that is twostory has a concession on the bottom and then the Press Box is on top and we have a sou Locker building another option would be to allocate some of the other projects that are funded through the the loan I call it um there's Horizon Academy there's hammed Bone Elementary Edition and the Marion Oaks Elementary Edition um since the sales tax passed we probably have a good way forward um funding those as a priority but at this moment freeing up that money to fund the rest of the high school which by probably February when I receive that second GMP I will need a funding in place to write a PO for the GMP we will also have money savings returned on the ongoing construction um we probably see a good amount of money coming back from elementary school X and W the Liberty Middle School Wing Edition is uh in construction right now and I think we will soon start on the Middle School DD as well but we will not see those funds return to us until the end of the project so I don't I will not have that money available by February so those are several options I laid out and I'm looking to you for guidance how to move forward okay I'll open up conversation to the board um Dr James well my first question is um I am a bit frustrated that the first time I'm seeing this information is this morning when we arrived because this is a significant decision to make and I imagine there's um immediate need to make this decision but as a board member I don't feel incredibly comfortable reviewing this today and making like I'm going back right now and I went and pulled up the rezoning PowerPoint from um in board if you're interested it's the Mr SS presented the rezoning on October 17th but I went back to October 17th because I wanted to look at what would the capacity be with the elementary w rezoning at Horizon at hamt Bowen and mo because that is that plays into the necessity for the wing um and Bard just for your information it states um on slide uh 12 of that presentation that hamt Bowen would be at 109% capacity next school year and Moe will be at 98% capacity um and Horizon today is at 108 capacity so just for you to have that information but but I would have enjoyed having had this to prepare and ask questions ahead of time um so and I don't I don't think I need an answer today that's why I'm bringing it to you to think through it and maybe we need to schedule another board meeting or you can give me your decision later we don't have to make a decision today um but I will need a decision soon okay Miss boss and Alis is presenting about the the loan funding in our work session in in December so maybe would that be A fitting timeline for us to come back and revisit this because coupled with that conversation on the sales tax we would know about sales tax funding availability to be able to fund these other projects theoretically I think in a timeline that will still work well okay so that that makes me feel more comfortable certainly um because I was feeling like I that we were supposed to be making a decision today and I was feeling very uncomfortable about that that so this board member personally um is not comfortable with doing anything with the Athletics at this facility um I am not comfortable not having an auditorium I am not comfortable not doing a third floor um so basically the only thing I'm comfortable with is reassessing our funding allocation for the wings which the wings um based on Mr A's presentation were not going to open until the 28 29 school year so from a sales tax funding perspective we don't even necessarily need to have that discussion right now for those wings because those wings were not for at least hamt Bowen and Moe's on the plan for three more years um so that to me is the solution that I would want to move forward with based on what I've received today because we see every day the implications for building schools high schools specifically that were not done to the stand that we wanted initially and we the principles on those sites deal with the implications for that that that lack of completion Belleview doesn't have an auditorium there's a bunch of trees in the middle of a um an a land area between the middle and the high school that that is supposed to be an auditorium at bellw and that never came to fruition um North Maran High School never had an auditorium and now they have this multi-purpose room that has a stage in it right um so we see the the absence of auditoriums and what it does on our high school campuses um so I'm not comfortable with doing that and it is absolutely the best financial decision to build out the third floor that we I it would be disheartening for me if this board didn't build it out because what we what we have addressed over years now is trying to close the gap of necessarily not the best decisions previously and I don't want to set future boards up for that that decision on our part um and in athletics is a non-starter for me personally so that's where I am Bor um I'll just jump in I feel almost identically the same way I um I I don't want history to keep repeating itself and in Maran County it we just seem to be um we have these same mistakes that we're making at our high schools and what happens is if it's not funded and you know principles are promised we're going to come back it doesn't happen between bellw North Maran all of them it's it's been left unfunded so I feel the exact same way we need the third floor um we need an auditorium you know we just spent a lot of time talking about Athletics and how as a district we're way behind in athletics on every campus and so my hope my dream was that we were going to at least have one campus um you know that had had what it needed um to benefit the students of Maran County so um I too need some time to think about it um just struggling with planning and getting and I you know I understand all of these things have happened I just wish we were closer to our Mark yes Dr Campbell sure uh thank you for bringing this to us while Dr James has been looking for the rezoning information and thank you for pulling that I've been pulling the Bish study from before and when these School additions were actually recommended when we started talking about this 18 months ago we were averaging about 90 million for a high school so the fact that 18 months later we're talking 160 plus million shows that delaying this process is never going to be in our favor so I'm just going to make that a blanket statement so that potentially is setting us up for what Miss Boston Ellis is going to tell us in December to say do we need to go ahead and bond for the potential sales tax anyway that's that's part of that conversation completely concur with what has already been stated removing an auditorium and athletic facilities non-starters for me as well but what I would also like to request Dr goet of the district we need to have a placeholder somewhere on our web website with the layouts of our new elementary schools and our new high school because I've been sitting here going okay if we're talking about removing a single had no idea how the board was feeling if we're talking about removing a single one of these locker rooms I need to know where they are on the layout I cannot find that anywhere I can't find an email I know I've gotten it I've seen it one time but I can't remember if it was in a work session or if it was an email I can't find it but if it was on the website and anybody could go and say Here's the layout of what high school CCC is prospected you know projected to look like then I would be able to say oh there's the north locker room oh there's where the baseball softball Press Box is going to be and conjunction to every we don't have that and so I think the more we get transparent about all of those things for our community to see including the layouts of our elementary schools they can certainly see the model out there but how many people come here to see it so uh I I've been doing my own searching so but the Bish study just for your information board recommended The Horizon Edition in 2627 and recommended the hamt Bowen and Maran Oaks editions in 2829 and so that uh coincides with what Dr James was saying that's what I would recommend as well that we allocate those loan project monies for whatever it's going to take here we know that even since we did the loan that the oal gym has also in like a lot of the things that we thought were going to be the prices and potentially we're going to have the same thing when we talk like we're Middle School like we don't I I think that's probably another top priority of this board because we know how long it's going to take to build a middle school so when we get that conversation going uh I mean I'm I'm just I'm excited that we as this board are trying to course correct the things that previous boards have not had the luxury to do and so I know that other boards may not have had the funding now that our community has said yes you can have we now have impact fees reinstated we now have a sales tax we have the ability to make this right and to say that we would consider cutting anything or changing anything is not going to sit well with this board member m chair yes um for me um what I on this is that if we kick this can down the road it's going to cost us even more um we've saw where and your thank you and thank you Miss M for your presentation um we saw where delays have cost us already U because the um price of material went up and and all the things this this is one of this is a high school that's going to be in in my district and the constituents don't want a uh a half a school they want a whole school they want everything that's supposed to go with that school because if it's going to be a school that we're saying that's going to offset um uh the growth in that area that's going to help all those things then they deserve to get that school um in a completed form so I I too am in agreement that we need to finish the school um I I do think um based on the beness stus study and and the time frame that Mr sis gave us for Horizon and H and Maran Oaks that we have time this the ctax would help with that um those projects I think we need to do what we need to do uh and continue to go forward and get this this done as soon as possible so but I'm I'm not in agreement with um not doing a complete school yes board member thrower well the Buzzard has certainly come home to roost because as I sit here and I look over this list obviously we can't do much about go for tortoise relocation that is ethical um unique changes to the design adjustments because of our program needs well that's to meet the needs of our students third floor shell buildout um um you know we want to have room to expand shelter construction until the Law changes you know um we continue to adopt that responsibility what I see as being incredibly unfortunate is that I am looking at almost $15 million caused by a completely unnecessary and painful delay we should have broken ground on this school back in July and I would add to that total number $ 23,5 40 of which 8,540 was the gray Robinson investigation on the procurement contract proc urement committee and then also $115,000 on the procurement Consulting service both of those reports came back said there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the process while there was obviously an always going to be room for improvement the outcome has been a fiscal disaster and something that the school board should be ashamed of themselves for it is just unconscionable that not only did that occur but that it extended to I think every school board member sitting up here feeling under tremendous pressure that the half penny could be jeopardized and the direct threats that were made but I'll bet you that there's a strong chance the same folks that were making those threats are now going to want a piece of this sales tax pie so I know that we can do what we need to do as a board to provide a high school to be proud of that meets the needs of our students but what I just shared has made it exponentially and unnecessarily more expensive in every way that you can Define expense so I'm glad that we don't have to make a decision on this today and I'll look forward to mulling over over you know some pass forward and trying to be part of the solution that will open a school for us and be what it needs to be for kids that's where I am anyone else all right thank you Miss bombach and your team um I we're going to walk walk away with each of us reviewing um what you've brought us today thank you very much much thank you is there any public comment okay seeing none uh we're going to move on to board committee reports uh concerns and meeting reminders there is a school board meeting scheduled for December 10th 2024 at 5:30 p.m. the next administrative briefing and work session is scheduled for December 12th 2024 at 9 a.m. um board comments Dr gullet thank you madam chair members of the board I'll be really brief just two quick items first one uh heard the last conversation board you just had about construction other items I was just looking at our website again we have updated um thank the voters for sales tax but um vas the team to put together a section as we track and monitor how impact fees are impacting our schools likewise with sales tax and those others so that we'll provide those items in in a format so that that way the community can track and see what we're what we're doing with our spending I think that might be helpful um and I just want to wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving thank you for your um input feedback today thank you Dr Galler Miss Martinez no Madam chair thank you thank you attorney Powers just want to say we've had a lot of legal considerations during our meetings both for a special Schoolboard meeting and then also for the work session today and as always I appreciate the board's careful attention to those so thank you very much and I have nothing further today thank you all right Dr Campbell thank you um so I think we've heard that the team is coming on December 12th to talk to us about prioritization of our wish list but maybe that's not a part of what Miss Boston Ellis's presentation will be December 12th um I was just curious I know we as a board have asked for that I know she can come and share with us how we might have additional bonding opportunities for that but is that and this is kind of a guess question for Dr go is the prioritization of that wish list that we've put out also a part of that December 12th conversation or not I think the piece that we're talking about that Miss best dellis referenced is is the um the financial piece Miss dobins do you want to add something I see are getting up but um that's what she's referencing because our advisors are are um planning to come yes ma'am thank you good afternoon everyone so uh Dr Campbell I think that it is going to mesh into that prioritization because as the board considers what option they want to take with funding the high school it could potentially impact your prioritization um so that may come into play but that would be more of a board discussion versus a staff presentation so my question thank you for that miss dobins my question is the board had a public document that spelled out how we intended to spend 326 million over 10 years but it did not say these are the things we're starting with and so that's what I was wondering if that conversation will also begin December 12th and I understand that's a board conversation but my Hope was that some of it would come from recommendation from facilities to say the most feasible way for us to start this is buy $30 million off at a time or something like that that can help guide because right now it's like an alphabetical order it's not even in any kind of order I don't I don't really know how this I thought it was alphabetical and then I started looking it's actually not so absolutely we can prepare a recommendation that can guide you in what you ultimately decide okay that's what I would recommend if possible on December 12th so that that will further enhance that conversation so we're not just talking about a blanket big dollar amount but we actually have a concept of what's coming next I I think we have I know I earlier I think we have expressed for sure lakee Middle School is really a big priority we need to get kicking on that one um and we have other wings that are import you know all of that but lakee middle school replacement is part of the cop the loan and I understand that that one's going no I I I understand that but I mean we haven't seen any contracts on that yet so just just speaking about our timeline and knowing from a construction timeline of all the things facility is going to be managing from a new construction standpoint I know we didn't have a new data data center included in so there there's a lot of conversations that we need to continue to have Madam chair is that the request of the board then the whole board wants to see a prioritization list with the financial piece that Miss Boston Ellis referenced I'm seeing everybody not there for me specifically Miss Boston Miss what what I my private conversation with Miss Boston Ellis has said is that we can only bond for a certain capacity of the sales tax projection So based on what we're going to be able to bond for and the information that Teresa will have in that meeting what then is the facili direction as to how we should proceed based on our based on the priorities we've set forth and then the discussion about the high school and the needs from the Benes study how how would facilities recommend we use that first bonding capacity amount is is what I would was hoping to receive yes and and that's fine I I just was hoping that we would get it all at the same time and so that was the reason for my question and I believe we had consensus to move forward with that perfect um I did want to add this is not for you miss doin so thank you um my other question was I know we've had a little bit of conversation I think that may also be coming to us December 12th but just again not being able to see what the work session is on December 12th are we also going to be talking about hurricane pay on December 12th or is there something else we supposed to talk about that today we supposed to talk about that today okay I I I didn't know if that was today or if it's December 12th well when I brought it up I thought we had said it was going to be in this work session we were going to discuss it and so we can talk about it in comments but it's something that's on my list as well because I know that we're not paying Milton pay until the board addresses it right and so that was going to be my question where were we with that and so if you're going to talk about it then that's fine we can address it during board comments I know Miss Mor is not present in the room right now so she might need to be um so I'll move on to my very last Point board we got on FS ba know before you go email today make sure you check that because each day is going to have a different dress code recommendation so that's not something we typically have so anyway that's all I'm gonna have for right now and Happy Thanksgiving everyone all right thank you um Dr James thank you um so we hurricane pay was brought up Miss Morant sent us an email I think that was all last Tuesday um and I did not have time or make time I guess I should say I did not prioritize time to go back and watch the board meeting or work session that she had referenced but I will say that um if however that went I feel differently now and um regarding hurricane pay and the policy that we have adopted and how I interpret the policy that we have adopted so this board member and I think um in speaking with Miss Mor in our lunch break today Miss Morant shared with me that she just staff staff proceeded forward in the manner in which they thought they were supposed to proceed forward with payment and if the board would like to do it differently based on how we are now interpreting the policy they're more than happy to do that so the way I thought the policy was determined is that it's time and a half pay for all hours worked regardless of base pay that it's above base pay and so as of right now for Hurricane Helen the staff that have been reimbursed have been reimbursed for halftime and so changing that reimbursement to time and a half and then for Milton it being time and a half um and so the Board needs to come to a decision if not today at some point in the future because my understanding is staff is not going to pay Milton until the board makes a decision so I would open it to the board they're looking for us to come to consensus as to how we want to proceed on this policy is my understanding Dr gz leaning forward yes you you know my cues thank you madam chair yes I I agree with uh board member James um and I was waiting for you finish comments since it came back up again with another board member I just want to say yes if if there's something that the board wants us to do differently based on what you heard from Staff last time we just need direction as to what to do right now nothing is changing unless the board gives us that direction the interpretation of the policy the board created was based on what we discussed last time thank you so my recommendation would be that we well either the policy is going to need to change at some point because I think the policy reads and I'm not sure what headp space I was in previously but I read the policy as it is one and a half times above base allocate pay and so I would like people who work shelter duty to be reimbursed at time and a half um and that's this board member's position so I ask the rest of the board is that the position of if of the rest of the board how in um you know any time that I've worked in a job where I was positioned to earn overtime it was time and a half not time and a half above my time I think that the reason this is different in my opinion is that we created in and it was in the I clarified with Miss Mar today we created administrative weather days in the same work session so we created a policy which had never been in place before in Maring County that if we have to close no one has to make up the day if students don't have to make up the day so everyone gets to stay home no one is working that stays home unless they're choosing to do so on their own time everyone is staying home and getting paid no matter what so the people who are coming in to work should should not be and I this was the thought process I had I thought was they shouldn't be getting paid just the halftime for overtime they should be getting paid time and a half because everyone else is sitting at home doing nothing and and the people who came in to do shelter Duty are doing a tremendous amount of work and it's all reimbursable by FEMA years 100% yes nine years from now sure than yeah like FEMA is reim it is reimbursable by FEMA I guess but it is like three years away so it's it's not something like long as eight in re I'm not saying it is long but it is reimbursable so so I am not under the same impression that you were when we made this decision and the reason that I feel differently about that is completely understand that we have created essentially weather days that all employees get paid if the district shuts down a hurricane but in the event that the district had to shut down for four or five more days there are only a certain finite number of weather makeup days and so there's only a certain number of days that all employees are getting paid anybody who works on those days I believe gets half additional half of what their salary should be because they are working and required to come in and then if we have additional days that we have to close the district and no one is getting paid then those employees who are continuing to work in those shelters or just for the first time working in a shelter then they are getting paid time and a half because that is something above and beyond what all the other district is doing I do not believe I think it is a very dangerous precedent for us to say that any employee ever gets paid two and a half times their salary on any circumstance for any reason I I can't imagine that being fiscally responsible I appreciate that anytime anyone's ever worked overtime it's always time and a half that is inclusive of whether someone is sitting at home on vacation time getting paid think about that we pay people vacation time or sick time and they're also just sitting at home but they've they're that one day they're getting paid that one day so then the folks that are working additionally would get time and a half and I am not in favor of moving forward with that looking like a two and a half times of of um salary that's my opinion okay board member thrower um I I agree with board member Campbell um I think that it is wonderful that we have move to trying to you know pay people to whether they if the kids aren't at school then and their home then I mean that's that's a wonderful benefit um but there is a limit and I think to be a fiscally responsible board we need to continue to be cognizant of that what's really too bad is that in other counties had even worse than we did and I think we were all hoping that uh we the Department of Education would forgive a day or two at least and that didn't happen which is what got us into the Thanksgiving trap you know we didn't want to even have to put that day on the instructional calendar but there's only so many minutes that got built in and it was four not five so I've already proposed if we could figure out to squeeze out one more day because all of this every time it happens it just is so disruptive it seems like there's never a great solution and we'll never get 100% approval we know that as elected officials um but but we try to do the best we can and I think that we've been very uh sensitive um to our employees and I think you were actually the one that proposed that board member James you know if the kids are out and then the staff has to be out you know let's let's try to pay him um but so I think this is a good compromise that's where I am Reverend Cummings and it was kind of how I read it too okay now Reverend Cummings sorry I'm G tell you I was under impression because every job that I've worked if you went over you got time and a half so I was under impression that we were doing the time and a half um I do understand that it could be uh precedent and how we're doing it but I think those folk that sacrificed their time to be away from their families in the midst of a storm they deserve to be compensated um they could have said they weren't coming in and the fact of the matter we still need people to work those shelters we need do right by those people and I think this is the right thing to do um to to compensate them um I don't know what the amount would be um his Boston ow may have an amount I think I heard one time it was like almost $400,000 or something I think I'm not sure but whatever it is we know that we will get eventually we will get reimbursed through FEMA that is a fact um and why penalize our people because we may have had a misunderstanding of what was being said so that's where I'm at and I I just want to add too historically in this District shelter Duty was this thing that like you didn't get to say no to and there's been this transition from speaking with people who led shelter that basically people got to opt out this year which is great if if they have family situations that that afford them the necessity to do that however if the compensation I I've had principles tell me Well if if it's not time and a half and it's only half and the option to opt out exists why am I going to not opt out if I could sit at home with my family why am I going to come serve a shelter for just to make a half timee more chair yes well I I would offer um that this board without getting any extra compensation at all um and this never used to be the case where board members were so active and present at the Emergency Operations Center going around to visit shelters board member Cummings you know you've been really great on those early mornings you know after the storm to check on people so there are still people left in this world that have other motivations besides money um thank God and it's not like we're not saying that we're not going to pay them at all I also think that since we seem to be confused about the policy that to me there's no other option but to probably do it this time to make it right but then make it clear and Dr gullet maybe you can weigh in and and let us know if if you feel like that's viable um but I would like I think that we've got plenty of staff that just does the right thing because it's needed and helpful and you're getting a little extra anyway and for the team Dr um thank you madam chair um what I would weigh in on is since I've been here I've been really clear to tell my team that I don't want anyone to do shelter if it's any inconvenience and a hardship it's an inconvenience I should say that a hardship for them personally that's really important to me um so if that didn't occur before this year it should have um because I felt very strongly I knew very um specific cases with staff members that did shelters in the past and it was I made sure that they were offered the opportunity to participate or not so I want to say that I I think this is a board decision I mean this is your policy so I don't want to weigh in on your policy um we we met as a team in the um interpretation I think and I believe and I want to speak for attorney powers and attorney Blackman but I know certainly from our side um that was the interpretation of what it was so whatever the board decides is fine is there a financial piece yes did we submit for uh Federal reimbursement yes so when we get that I don't know Miss Boston Nella said it's usually taken about 10 years but um we expect it to come so you know I I just a lot of people a lot of people did work there were I mean we had hundreds of people I know in writing thank you notes it was over 300 I believe in total that worked during that time so I couldn't in good conscious want to walk that back you know if that was the understanding and and I will say that the the the policy update that we did was in response to something that everyone understood and was the the us moving forward with time and a half as we had before and we had literally one person who complained and believed that they had an alternate interpretation and there was then a uh there was then a a a complaint that came about as a result of that then we sought specifically to clarify sat down and did everything possible to clarify so that we were as clear as we could be that this was intended to be if you're working shelter D there may be different differences for why you different reasons for why you would um other staff may or may not be getting an administrative day however independent of that fact if you were working a shelter regardless of whether administrative day was given to other staff or not you would be paid at time and a half rate so we sought to clarify that and with that clarification our best attempts that are clarification LED again to you know certain people but just deciding that well actually it needed to be two two and a half times or something more and so um when it comes to the policy I mean I'm afraid we may have to instead of seeking to try to be careful in our language may we may have to be as blunt as possible and go back to saying extremely flat Frank words that are this is exactly what we mean it's laid out like a dissected frog as opposed to language that we would use in a in a context of trying to be explanatory apparently our best efforts is be explanatory in this policy were you know with with five or six people who are all quite good at doing this stuff trying to lay it out there led to Alternative interpretations so I would encourage that if the policy is going to be revamped the policy be so incredibly direct that there is no question whatsoever that means we don't get to Hash around and add bits and phrases and what what about this eventuality there needs to be Clarity I think I think if the last sentence of that section that I emailed was eliminated it would solve the issue because the last sentence and I I have it I have to find the paragraph but the last sentence under compensation and Reporting which is the second page of the policy says um in any case the pay received shall be considered extra compensation and shall not be part of the employees based salary perspectively that is a very confusing statement well and the the reason for that statement is that is a term of art because it means specifically if you got time and a half now that time and a half isn't added to your base salary for future for future results that's what it's intended to convey and that is what if someone reading that in layman's term conate it differently we know that that's not what it means now if you ask a hundred people who have different levels of understanding of what that means 100 people might have different answers but within the context of what we have here it this look and this is not just with us this is with every even with our code of student conduct code of student conduct conduct we have a dueling obligation that's put there on us by Florida statute that says that we have to be as specific as we can which sometimes means we have to be extremely Direct in how we are explaining it and getting a lot of detail in there but it also has to be written so that it's understandable at a student and you know more average um reading level so you know I think the legislature probably the first to tell you that that those are two competing goals that are often very difficult to accomplish so I certainly respect that there's both an an ability for and an opportunity for misinterpretation and also an opportunity to make sure we're is clear as we can be so okay go ahead sorry I was just gonna try and bring us home but well and that's what I was about to do too so there there's there's two specific things that I would say here number one is the board adopted this policy separate and apart from having whether makeup days in a calendar so this policy was adopted honestly without knowing we were going to have weather makeup days so this year is unique because we did incorporate that into our calendar but the policy as a standalone would mean that if everybody was staying home and nobody got paid then the people working in the shelter would get paid at time and a half and so that's how the policy was written I don't believe the policy actually needs to be adjusted much procedure probably does but the the thing we need to decide today is if in fact we want our hurricane Milton shelter workers and Helen's already been paid that's that was the issue I'm about to address they've already taken care of Helen at the idea that they thought at the one and a half times I'm aware of what they did but that doesn't mean it can't be adjusted okay well that's my that's my concern is that we would be then retroactively saying that go back and adjust all the people that worked in Helen in addition to all the things that we're trying to do for the hurricane Milton folks that's a lot of people it's a lot of work I still stand by the comments I made earlier because again this policy was created separate in apart from a calendar and the policy means if you work in a shelter you get paid time and a half a calendar means that everybody got paid so then that now means that the people in shelter just get half extra because they worked in the shelter is how I interpret this policy that was created separate and apart from calendar I and I I think that the issue and I think that the issue for me lies in if we all stayed home during the day and we all got paid and then I report to shelter duty at 6 pm and I work all night or better yet for Milton I was a principal who worked all day Tuesday and then I showed up to work the shelter at that evening on Tuesday night and then I worked all night that principal is only being paid that all of those people who were at those shelters who opened Tuesday night of Milton are only being paid half time for that time that is outside of their work hours and that is not no to be clear if they are not no to be clear if their base pay let's say someone's base pay just make up a number base pay is $20 and then they work from 8:00 to 5:00 that's their normal day they're now getting $30 if they were working at a shelter if then at 5:00 they begin working at I mean they're still there at the shelter and they stay overnight they sleep they help they do whatever they're doing but they're at the shelter physically at the shelter every hour that they are there they're getting paid $30 there's no time at which they're only getting paid $10 but that is not what happen in Helen so what you just described is not accurate so I'm telling you in practical application that did not occur in practical application what occurred is Mr John gets paid a base pay of $20 an hour Mr John worked 8 hours in a shelter he got 10 time8 an $80 check for the eight hours he worked in a shelter it doesn't matter whether Mr John worked those at night during the day when the sun's up when the sun's down and so my point is the reason this policy is being interpreted in the way in which I and many other people are interpreting it is Miss Dobbins is a prime example Miss Dobbins worked all day Tuesday she was at we were at the ELC we were there we were doing all the things and then Dr Curley and all of them at Madison Street I left the EOC at 6: p.m. on Tuesday night and went by Madison Street and Miss dos and Dr Curley and all of those principles are sitting at that shelter and they are there all night and what they're going to get paid is half their hourly rate for that entire night they worked that's what I and that is what I'm fundamentally in disagreement with and that is not Equitable right and and my well but that's what I'm but that's what I'm trying to say is it and but you're but the answer is they would be getting paid essentially time and a half for all 1.5 for all those hours work that's correct but that is not what's happening what is happening in payroll is they're getting paid. five I don't believe that's correct I can tell you with absolute certainty it is correct Madam chair from what I was told is exactly that that when they went into that status or the time frame of where it would be overtime their pay reduced instead of going am I saying that right they went from if they were getting $20 an hour they went from 20 to 10 for all those hours that they work throughout the hurricane that's not fair okay so could someone confirm that I need I need to know the accuracy the accurate check I mean the staff well who can confirm it who can confirm it Mr mcfaden can you come forward and and talk about the this could be a much very short Madam chair I'm if I may other thing um this is other thing i' I've seen other Counties have done the right thing some counties are paying way more than time and a Happ they're paying two times the salary our folk are just asking for time and a half that's the right thing to do if you work over time Dr gullet thank you I appreciate the conversation board I'm hearing from a number of people that were involved in the conversation I know with um attorney powers and they're looking into miss morance talking with Finance as we speak and so B what I would ask is you just tell us what you want and we'll make sure it happens if it didn't happen according ording to what your desire is we'll fix it might not happen overnight just tell us what you want this board member if they worked a shelter regardless of the time of day they work the shelter that they are compensated time and a half for every hour they worked while working the shelter whether that's during the day when they would have been at work anyways or whether that's in the night because ultimately everyone else was not working and so they should be they should be paid time and a half and and I believe number one I believe that that is what we've been saying needed to be the case but what did not need to be the case is if they were getting if their base salary was for example $20 per hour there was not a time at which they would then be paid $20 plus $30 $30 no correct right so the way that the intention of this when written was that every hour someone works at the shelter regardless of whether it is how many hours those are every hour that someone works at the shelter or in support of shelter operations which could include generator M generator maintenance and things like that supportive shelter operations every hour that they work regardless of whether it's in the middle of the night or during the regular shift should be compensated at 1.45 times their regular rate rate of pay that was the intention what was written that was what I believe actually happened and if it didn't then I I I don't know I I'm not in payroll that was the intention of what we were what was supposed to happen that was the intention of all of us and I can say because I was one of the framers and writers of that that was the intention of where that was supposed to be if that's not happening that's what we do the thing that I need to convey is that the only objection I believe believe would not would clearly not reflect well two different things would not reflect Our intention or the board's intention As I understood it would be to ever pay someone only half their pay you know pay a $20 employee $10 for working shelters for an hour or the opposite direction to pay the $20 an hour employee $50 the $20 an hour employee for every every single hour they work in support of shelter operations should be paid $30 that was the intention I'm looking for confirmation Mr Blackman that was his intention when we wrote it so that's what we believe should be the case and if that's what the board wish to reflect to them that's what we will do so let me something for the people that worked in the cafeteria doing shelter Duty okay let's say they they they get paid $18 an hour at the time that they were working at that shelter Duty throughout the hurricane their pay dropped from their $18 an hour to n because we that's how we were paid uh I believe I may see a problem one of the problems may be that those were cut into Separate Checks is my understanding and so employee so they may employees got a regular check for their regular pay and then they got an additional check that covered the additional .5 but that might be responsible and you are correct it was two checks I maintain though that if they worked at night when no one else was working that should have been paid at time and a half not at 0 five and that is the difference so all of those people who worked at night should have been compensated at time and a half their hourly rate the entire time not 0 five and my example from I'm sorry no that's okay go ahead my example from earlier was from my days you know working for a hospital and if you worked on Thanksgiving you got time and a half it or well didn't but um but it it didn't matter what anybody else was doing in my mind you know you were coming in for a special Duty where you were greatly needed and you got paid time and a half there you go so sorry this got so convoluted and confusing let's just fix it if we can all get an agreement with that that's fine but the the delineation here still for me is the people who worked in their off hours their non-duty hours should be paid the full one and a half so like if that employee got their 40 hours like that cafeteria where worker who's an hourly employee or that principal who's a salaried employee if they worked outside of their salaried hours they should have been paid time and a half for all of those hours not 0 five yeah why are you continuing to blame her that I'm trying to make sure we're all on the same page we are if I can read something I just was got response from director of payroll supervisor payroll um in response to um Miss Morant and Miss um Drake have been watching this long and employees were paid halftime for any regular hours that they were already being paid for any other hours were paid at time and a half the regular pay was a separate check so for an ex so that would mean that if you were already paid so for example you would have been paid for administrative just it was administrative so you worked at the shelter I didn't if that was the case you would be paid we would both have be paid our admin to pay then you would get an additional check for 0.5 more I understand that what I'm saying and this is why it was brought up and I what what my Hope was was staff and I think this was Dr Campbell's hope as well that's not how our employees receive the information and there are employees I think air companies also feels this way our employees are unaware so no memo has gone out about how the pay was distributed none of those things have occurred so if that is in fact what has happened which is I think what we're all in agreement with our employees are very unclear about how they have received their money can we hear from Mr mcf absolutely Mr mcfaden if you don't mind chearing yes um I think um the intent as Mr attorney power said working with Miss morand and and that whole team I think they they they've shared what their intent was so as we started to go into this here I did make phone calls to other districts and based on information that I'm receiving from them receiving from FEMA Hillsboro County for instance the way they pay their employees is their regular salaries in addition to their regular salaries for every hour they work in the hurricane they pay them Hillsboro County is different two times Lake County I call Lake County Lake County pays their base salary their regular salary every hour they work in a hurricane is time and a half so that is sort of the standard across the state Pasco County now one thing pasco's County said was that they pay their exempt employees only um I want to say this right their salaried employees get regular pay and one times the salary um hourly Sal hourly employees get their regular play and one and a half times their salary because they you know with the high hourly hourly pay of a salaried employee the compensation was one times my thing is I think as I'm working with FEMA and a lot of this is working putting on me um we just need to be consistent whatever it is make a decision and let's move on cuz whatever is submitted to me as documentation and how we're being paid that's what I'm going submit to FEMA for reimbursement for reimbursement now one thing we talked about and and Dr Gul is familiar with frro the Florida Recovery and she knows the name better than me um but basically what that system does it requires us to do an assessment at every year so once we got that assessment completed they're telling us that we get funding on a at a fast rate roughly 85% of our reimbursement to I say that to say this hurricane Adalia remember hurricane Adalia correct we have already received over $40,000 for Hurricane Adalia that's not something that in in years past that would have been 6 Seven 8 nine 10 years down the road we have already received that funding from Hurricane Adalia because of the new fck procedures that they put in place at the FEMA so we've already received that funding and there's about 15% that we're working to recover from that but um the wisdom of this new F Rock system is not that you're going to wait six seven8 nine 10 years for your reimbursement um I got a called into femal just this week I'm working Monday and Tuesday of the Thanksgiving holiday and I purposely done that because that was going to be my hurricane um procedure for two days all I was going to do was hurricane stuff so I got a call from the state they're going to call me from FEMA they're going to meet with me on Monday I'm sorry correction Tuesday of next week and they're going to walk me through step by step of how to get this reimbursement at that point after we have this initial uh call by phone they're going to come down about every two weeks in person and I remember now Heidi was meeting with somebody from FEMA every two weeks on a Tuesday in my office back here to walk her through this hurricane reimbursement process we have a dedicated person since um really my question to them was listen I'm new at this I have no experience with it I need an experienced person to help me so FEMA has done that and they're going to give us this dedicated person to walk us through this process so that we don't take 6 S 8 nine 10 years to get reimbursement so anything that they tell us that's reimbursable we'll be able to get that back through this process so again whatever the board decides half pay time and half pay whatever it is um we'll work through that process to get it submitted Fe Madam chair Mr Blackman was like he was going to say something earlier attorney Blackman nothing really to add that hasn't already been added since I was going to say something I just confirm that what attorney Powers said is our understanding as well about what the pay was going to be it's time and a half for every single hour worked regardless if it was during the day or in night time or whenever it was it was going to be time and a half and that was our understanding and we reviewed the school board uh Workshop or I did at least to confirm that's what the school board um said was uh what they wanted and that was our understanding and we even checked with um Miss Drake as well to confirm that um couple a week or so ago uh and that's our understanding of okay and think there may be just a little bit of confusion about the fact that in order to accomplish that everyone got their regular paycheck anyway but then in the additional check they got they would have gotten uh two two line items one it line item would show you additional hours worked that were at half your rate of pay because those were hours that you were already being paid your full rate of pay for plus you got an additional half the others were ones you would not otherwise be paid for and that's also now to make it a 1.5 Factor now it shows you know 1.5 times your pay so maybe a matter when people see the check they see two different rates one rate is 0.5 and one rate is 1.5 the 0.5 is to settle the difference between what you were already paid and the 1.5 is you weren't really going to be working those hours anyway but you did during a time which you didn't have to so regardless that's what the intention was and of of course I'm sure that staff will look into this and make sure that that's been met and that what I'm reflecting should be the intent what Mr Blackman's reflecting should be in the intent that that actually occurred otherwise it may just be a matter of making proper explanation so the staff understands what they're getting in their paycheck and make sure that when they see something on a line line item I I know up in enrollment looking at exactly what I'm paying out during you know I I I don't I don't read those line items well myself I know what where they're coming from or what they are I just assume somebody's knowing what knows what they're doing so um that's that's it may be a matter of making sure that perhaps we inform staff of what that expectation is madam chair may may I get may I get clarification confirmation from the board though that one and a half times for every hour worked and if that's the case for both I know they didn't do the second they were waiting to make sure we have Clarity uh we'll put some communication and I'll ask for that information to be sent out so that they know what that looks like yes sure so so yes yes but I mean I think that the clarification again is here's my example you work 24 hours your typical work day is 800 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. you got paid for that so you're getting half time for the time you work from 8: to 5:00 p.m. then from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. again if you've worked 24 hours then that 15 hours you're getting time and a half is that what we're agreeing to yes yes okay then that yes yes I mean I just I wanted to make sure that we've said it as many different ways as possible so you've already gotten your paycheck like you always get it yeah one what I what I've said mathematically is 1.5 Time 1 is still 1.5 I mean that's just if you think about it mathematically right it's and I just think going forward a memo preemptively to the staff to EXP explain what they were getting and how they were getting it may have avoided all of this but I I certainly heard from many different employees frustration and confusion about what this was like um and I and I I personally was also confused when I received the initial communication from Miss Morant so and now all of our employees that worked hurricane Milton have had this pay held up even as today I got a text asking me can I ask you a question about hurricane pay so now that the board has weighed in on this conversation effective 3:20 p.m. November 21st can we make sure that our employees that payroll starts processing payments for those employees that work shelters we all have consensus that we would like for that to move forward going forward if a if a hurricane whatever comes that the hours after their regular work hours are going to be paid at time and a half yes that's that's that's what we're saying not going forward but going back to that's well but I mean definitely now definitely backwards but definitely going forward yes def we settled the backwards all right and the forward okay let's just not go sideways all right I I still have other things to ask okay go ahead Dr James so Bard we received in our email this morning from Miss Dobbins the finalized procurement procedures so maybe two weeks ago or more Dr gullet emailed it to all of us and then I brought up in the board meeting I think I can't remember but I think in the meeting I asked us to change the threshold from 15 to 10: or 21 to 10 maybe whatever it was and we agreed to 10 um it's going to be in the information only for the December board meeting but I wanted all of the board to be able to see it and and if you had questions about it you would be able because we're not going to have an opportunity to have public discourse ahead of that board meeting and it's in an information only status on the board meeting so that's not really an opportunity for discussion so I just wanted to bring it up to say that that had gotten changed and we had all received it from Miss Dobbins and if there was any more discussion that we could have it but I feel comfortable with the document as it is now personally um so did anyone have anything else they wanted to add on that or we're all feeling comfortable good since we will see that as an information only item in the board meeting can we proceed with the um RFQ for Lake wear high Middle School right Miss doin is yeah nodding yes so do we have to wait until December 10th information only because that's just really just for transparency or can we go ahead and move forward immediately I can answer that they're procedures so we're moving forward wonderful there's no board approval it's just are procedures wonderful okay um and my are we going to be doing a typical advertisement for that or are we gonna because I know that we have the ability to do a shortened advertisement um if we so chose so so you remember uh part we um are using JP Pro for that and they are heading that whole procurement so when we RFQ that that will be under and through them we've already scripted out um that RFQ um is it two weeks we're doing the two weeks publication we we haven't set the date of the publication nor the length um we're also moving to look at an eprocurement which means that everything done in the room is electronic versus paper so it's retained so I don't have the exact answer as far as the timeline of the advertisement but we're already working with JP Pro on the scripting of that RFQ okay thank you um and then finally I I asked this I believe in the um board meeting last Tuesday um I asked for an update on the transportation contract that we've hired I know that at the um board member thrower shared we get our updates weekly and I'm pulling the most recent one up right now but that one does not outline the bus drivers that are now driving the MTI route that are a part of the contract and so the reason I'm asking is because when it was presented before us it was said it was going to take some time to hire the 18 bus drive 15 bus drivers whatever it is that were going to be necessary well my question remains in the update that I'm looking to receive as a board member is we've allocated I think $1.7 million for this contract has it started what board what bus drivers have we hired like where are we with this because it is still obviously it was used we were using it to address some shortcomings in other zones and so where are we with it and that is not reflected in the the weekly update we get from Dr gullet so I don't need an answer this moment but that's the same question I have that I had two weeks ago is if we could get an update on where we are with hiring bus drivers to drive the MTI routes that would be wonderful and I I'm very interested in that also so when we get that information compiled if you could send it to all board members that would be wonderful yes I want to is it okay if I yeah sure no all right because it was was my understanding that it was a global update for transportation that you were looking for not the granular of of what you just said but that being said um it's exciting to me to be able to share and this is directly from the Transportation supervisor that as of last week we were for the first time um at or above was it Dr gullet 90% of on time in the morning so that's pretty great and I think that'll be reflected in this week's update because there's obviously a lag so glimmer of of light and hope yes I would just like to see how allocating that money as the board is solving a problem and that is not evident in the update and so I would like as community members talk to me about why why did we spend the money on that or why did those bus drivers make more I would love to be able to say because we're solving the problem this it's this is the way it's solving a problem for the district and other than the on-time arrivals I can't draw a a direct connection between those two because I don't have the other piece of data so okay that's all I got thank you thank you board member thrower thank you um hopefully this will be quick um this is just a a date change that I would like to propose for um the ioc committee reorganizational meeting um I was looking at it and the reorganizational meetings um as it stands now are supposed to occur by January 1st 2025 and it occurred to me that you know we're on break people are traveling so I would propose that we just change F put a three in front of the one to actually be able to meet the timeline so you don't have to answer today but I think that that just makes all kinds of sense and uh board member Campbell you were the one that worked so diligently on getting these bylaws updated I'd love to just hear your thoughts because I know I'm just spitballing it out here um to you guys for your reflection but when you uh when you got this organized do you see any reason why this wouldn't be more beneficial because to come right back from break I mean January 1 is we're not even back in school yet and we're about to be in December so and attorney Powers too yeah and I would support exactly what you're what you're saying there that that's that's a a consideration that we we we we can we can extend that date for the flexibility that it allows I I hate giving ourselves artificial deadlines that are going to put us into a bind and to speak yeah to speak to that there were so many other things in those bylaws that we were working on to make sure that we cleaned up and gave more flexibility yeah so that we weren't pigeon holing ourselves into making sure we had to have an update in the middle of the summer and lots of other things so I'm completely fine with whatever that recommendation is as far as as a a timeline for that U meeting specifically and then knowing that we also will have to create bylaws for a new committee and have new committee assignments for the sales ctax maybe that timeline also can be a part of the December 12th presentation since we're talking about sales ctax I the bylaws we will need to have established and when we need to have that committee seated for our new oversight committee for the ctax and that's probably something that attorney power needs to somewhat lead but if it can be in conjunction with while we're talking everything sales ctax December 12th if we can so what's what's the ask for the 12th and I have an update on the transportation that's what I was checking on so perfect attorney Powers would create the the language for the oversight over our spending because we we don't create our oversight over our own but what's the request from us so it to a placeholder on our work session for attorney powers to be able to talk to us about those bylaws and when we need to have those positions seated who we need to have for the voting seats and the alternates that can you also include the qualifications or if there's qualifications right if we want to put forth qualifications I'm we those people that we recommend sure and I I expect given that it's the same type of committee for the bylaws to be extremely similar um and the the the notices of whom we would like to see on those committees are likely going to be quite similar maybe not extremely but they will be quite similar as well um and then appointment um considerations we'll make sure that those are included in there as well so yeah I just need time to put it on for a work session I can lay those out let the board look at it I think that there will given that we have done a lot of work on the on ioc before on selection and on bylaws and things like that I don't think we have to you know reinvent the Wheel from scratch I mean we we'll we'll have quite a bit of a head start there so December 12th if that works for you I think it does okay perfect Madam chair I have one other item if you don't mind I just wanted to go back and refer to last week's update board you don't have to do this right now but your convenience there was an update included last week school district Services transportation that talks about the piggyback agreement and the transportation and and the and the update there'll be another one included this week but if that's not what you're looking for let me know but it was included last week and how many um have been how many have been hired and cleared and um that will continue thank you all right yes great and yes I think this is something that we all encounter as as board members um when it comes to transportation and the contracted drivers it happened you know a few years ago during Co and um you know why are they making more money and I was able to confirm again that they're they don't get benefits and this is another opportunity for the district and us to amplify to our employees how much the benefits we get really are worth um because it's quite a bit and that one of the major reasons why we need these contracted bus drivers is because we have and check your update quite a few employees that are on FMLA and it just is what it is and they have things that they have to do they have things going on in their lives but if they can't work they can't work so we need people that can drive so that's you know and they don't grow on trees another thing that came to my attention was stent attendance response committee meeting and this was new information to me because when I focus on attendance you know I my focus is on the kids so they can get the education they need want and deserve but I I did not realize and this is something something I need more information on to confirm it but my according to what I was told there we have a lot of employees that are in unpaid status that are still working for us more or less I guess when they feel like it and not so you know um that's something that I'm going to be asking for a lot more information on because that doesn't help the cause either all right other than that uh um I will say that it was been it was a long meeting today but it was very productive as usual we covered a lot of ground and have a wonderful full week of Thanksgiving and spend time with your family and be blessed thank you Reverend Cummings Len I'll be I'll be very brief um it has been a long day it has been extremely long and um very spirited I I do want to wish everyone a a a great holiday Thanksgiving holiday but I also um um it's a Thanksgiving holiday I'm thankful for something because I don't know if something went under the radar I don't think we all know about this and I'm going to share this because we need to celebrate the small victories especially when we're in a big war um um we know the situation here at Maring technal institution but did you guys know that last week was the whole week not one fight that's right at this school so that tells me something that the culture is changing at the school so we have to continue to to be uh proactive and positive about this place and I know we did exposion and all that kind of stuff this morning um that's the unfortunate part of the rough part of what we do as board members but I I'm I'm encouraged when I hear news that that the culture here is changing and we didn't have one fight now somebody might say well that's nothing oh it's we're here that's that's something great so shout out to the MTI staff and the administration principal Jones for what they've done have a Happy Thanksgiving good all right thank you all right I do have a little list here so I'm going to try to be quick um the first thing I'd like to do is I just want to publicly thank uh Miss Martinez and attorney Powers um jumping into chair seat in the middle of the day um Tuesday and they've taken and I have taken some of their time the last uh few days and a half and um I just want to thank you taking calls after hour clarifying things and answering questions and so I just wanted you know I appreciate all the extra effort um and helping me get up and running today so thank you very much I also want to take um a second to thank our team and actually I was afraid my computer was going to die so I took a picture um our team was here this morning um to present goal three uh and and goal took to go goal to took about 2 hours and we knew we had a long agenda still as you see we're still going at 3:34 and so the decision was made right before we took a break um to reschedule that but there was a lot of preparation um and they sat here all morning so I just quickly U Miss Morant and Miss Harris Miss Brockington Mr Carson Miss Gary miss zadnik and miss n noon I just want to say thank you you for the work uh you put in and being prepared today thank you for your flexibility for allowing us to um reschedule and thank you Dr gullet for letting us also reschedule that it just we would have another two hours ahead of us so um thank you all for your flexibility is greatly appreciated very quickly I want to give a shout out um I did see um Dr James at the magnet Fair last Thursday it is one of the most magnificent events that I've seen our district put on was very proud of all of the schools the school staff the students um all of the pieces that they were able to it it really is close to Hurricane prep um all of the things that they hauled out to W robotics painting musicians all of the things it really is a great resources for resource for our parents and our families it's One-Stop shopping to see all the wonderful things that are happening in Mary County again they had worked all day left school packed up their cars and headed um to set up for the evening so thank you to all who participated in that yesterday morning uh we had breakfast um with the c there was a thinkk a teacher presentation um with Megan magal and it was partnered with the HCA presentation of a specific heart procedure and it was just um fantastic how she tied that in um recognizing our teachers as the heart of what's going on at our schools and that they're recognizing a new teacher every month so please don't forget to go online I think almost every board member has shared it if you're on uh uh social media so just reach out and help us continue celebrating the good work that's being done on on our campuses I want to um the fafo art show was Friday no it was not Friday it was night it was Tuesday night it was great to see all of our students work on display um really quite amazing all the different talents and gifts that we're we have right here in Marian County also would like to invite you Friday a new rock uh the new rock is opening at Liberty Middle School if you're available I'd love to have you join me um would love to see you there and just a quick update on parades because we've been trying some back and forth about parades so I just want to make sure I have this correctly um 126 is the Hill Crest parade at 10:30 we'll be at fsba mhm yeah we won't be here yes we will but that was they did send out an invitation okay um Dell and parade is 127 yes okay Miss Martinez do we know where the banner is or has that already been okay so we do have the banner thank you um 128 is the B Belleview parade at one o'clock one o'clock we have to get together two parade okay is that it is then Saturday is the Ocala parade that's the 14th right and it begins at 5:30 and they usually like us there by she'll say 3:30 okay okay thank you I just wanted to um review that because we've been going back and forth on that and then um Dr gullet I had one clarifying thing I think it was mentioned the other day on the 13th we have um several re-entries was the was it 26 re-entries that we had for the 13th what dear God I don't think it was 26 I think there maybe 13 13th of what December December well but I I'd have to verify there that many okay I I just wondered if we could do that earlier instead of after I don't know um what the rest of the board's calendar look like but I would prefer to do that earlier than the day instead of after our um client session if it's the 13th that concur I'm sorry I couldn't hear you if it's the 13 1th of December for early re-entries I concur I would like to do get them done in the morning and if there's only 13 I don't know that we B them over two days Gathering okay what date that is that's what I have written down from our meeting Madam chair just for clarification I've not received any notification discussed yesterday I haven't done an ad or anything no the only thing I show for the 13th right now that it's certain was the uh notice of hearing we have for an employee issue correct there wouldn't have been any notice because we discussed it at Agenda review it just came up as a as a proposal uh since the board is here for that for a hearing um from 1 to three the suggestion was made we could do it after but that's up to the board we haven't as you know we haven't done anything we haven't made any how many I have to verify she thinks 13 you thought close to 13 and we have two hours a lotted for this hearing yes well but we would have to go with those two hours because these students are going to be arriving to meet us so yeah I mean I have an East Mar and attendance meeting which I I hold dear to my heart at 8:15 on Friday morning but I could be here you know by 9:30 um if I if I stayed the full length of the meeting at East Maran so I would much prefer to do a Friday morning than a Friday afternoon I would too me too I have a couple I guess I can move them what time do are I mean I I just scheduled one at 8 and I have another one at 10:30 but I mean I if if I need to move them I I can work on moving them one of them I've rescheduled four times but it's okay we'll pick another date well I'll get with yes I don't have confirmation of number yet okay if you just keep certainly will absolutely what you need from us on that okay and I think that wraps up I want to thank uh the board for a great day great conversation great input a lot of patience um and resiliency and with that um with no further business we'll adjourn at 3:40 p.m. thank you and have a Happy Thanksgiving for