Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
0:00 Thank you.
3:59 With policy 7110, student accommodation, student assistant
4:04 superintendent of facility services will provide the executive
4:07 summary, Ms. Sam.
4:08 Good afternoon, everyone.
4:09 I just want to briefly go through what we’re working on today
4:14 and to put it into context.
4:16 There are several policies relating to facilities planning.
4:19 And so this is in your package and kind of gives you an overview
4:23 of all of the facilities planning policies.
4:27 So this policy 7100 is the overview student accommodation policy.
4:34 We’re just making some procedural changes to update our
4:36 terminology.
4:36 7101 is regarding building permits and code enforcement.
4:40 We’re not making any changes.
4:43 7110, we are making changes to this policy.
4:45 Most of the changes in the policy, and I’ll walk through them
4:49 with you, are relating to just updating our definitions and
4:52 making language consistent with policies 5120 and 5121.
4:57 These are policies under Ms. Archer’s equity innovation and
5:01 choice division that are relating to assignment within the
5:05 district and controlled open enrollment.
5:07 So we’re trying to make sure that we don’t have duplicative
5:10 language in our policies.
5:12 Hence, we are also looking at repealing 7120, but also that we
5:16 have consistent language among policies that deal with similar
5:20 topics.
5:21 The major changes that we’re making are really in the Administrative
5:25 Procedure 7110, and this is the administrative procedure
5:29 relating to attendance boundary changes.
5:32 And we’re making some significant changes, and I have these on
5:36 your agenda to look at today because I wanted you to be aware of
5:39 the scope of the changes that we’re recommending.
5:41 We’ve gone through, since I’ve been here for the past five years
5:45 or so, we’ve gone through several rounds of some fairly
5:48 significant boundary change proposals.
5:50 And working with the team, we’ve realized that there are some
5:55 weaknesses in our process that I thought we could update what we
6:01 are doing in order to both better involve the public and also be
6:05 a little bit more efficient in how we do our process.
6:08 So I will get into that, and that’s really the meat of what I’m
6:11 going to be talking about today.
6:13 And then we’re not making any changes to the school closing
6:17 procedure or the school closing analysis procedure, but we are
6:22 recommending appeal of Policy 7120, which is the one that is
6:27 duplicative with Policies 5120 and 5121.
6:31 So that’s pretty much an overview of what we’re looking at in
6:35 the whole context of the Facilities Planning Policy Suite.
6:39 So let me talk about the Student Accommodation Policy 7120.
6:45 This is kind of the overview of what we’re doing, but if you go
6:50 to page 9, which is where I’ll take you.
6:53 I’m sorry, 7110.
6:56 I don’t know what I said, but I meant 7110.
6:58 So 7110, these are the changes to the policy.
7:03 And what we’re doing in this section is just cleaning up the
7:07 definitions.
7:08 We had a number of different definitions, some of which were
7:11 used randomly throughout policies and procedures, and we wanted
7:14 to make sure we’re consistent.
7:15 So we have the major definition is the FISH definition, which is
7:19 also referred to as total capacity.
7:22 That phrase is also used in 5120 and 5121, so we wanted to make
7:27 sure we had the right definition.
7:29 Total capacity, then, is both the permanent capacity, meaning
7:33 the school building, as well as any relocatables that provide
7:37 student stations.
7:38 The remaining changes are simply definitional changes.
7:44 You see the use of educational location option, controlled open
7:47 enrollment, again, consistency with other policies.
7:51 We are deleting the strategy of cap and bust.
7:57 That’s not been something the board’s been considering in the
8:00 past, and it is nowhere else in our recommended strategies, so
8:04 we took it out of this one.
8:06 And then we modified the language regarding new capacity to
8:09 include planning, budgeting, and designing, as well as
8:13 constructing new capacity.
8:15 So sometimes we do need to stand up some planning work in order
8:19 to evaluate where we need new capacity, and I think we’ll see
8:23 that coming up in the future as we all go back to school, we’ll
8:27 be looking at where we are going to need some additional student
8:30 stations based on growth in the community, and so we will need
8:33 to be doing some planning activities ahead of constructing new
8:37 capacity.
8:38 And then I also just wanted to note there is implementation
8:43 flexibility that is already in board policy, and this became
8:47 important when we got to talking about how we were going to
8:51 handle going back to school in the environment of social
8:54 distancing and whether or not we may need to make some moves and,
8:58 you know, be able to be more flexible in how we assign students
9:03 to schools and student stations.
9:05 So that flexibility is already in policy, and I just wanted you
9:09 to be aware of that.
9:10 So those are the policy changes, but let me walk you through the
9:14 administrative procedure changes.
9:16 This is a flow chart that is proposed.
9:21 proposed and this kind of talks through what we’re doing and
9:25 what we would like to do.
9:26 We have a boundary change team proposed and that is primarily
9:30 our internal staff and these
9:32 are the leadership folks as well as folks that are related
9:36 specifically to the schools
9:38 that would be affected.
9:39 We put the boundary change team together, we evaluate whether or
9:42 not we need attendance
9:44 boundary changes.
9:45 If so, then we develop the proposals based on data in terms of
9:51 membership counts, transportation
9:54 issues, demographics, all those types of things.
9:58 We take those proposals to the cabinet and ultimately to a board
10:03 workshop.
10:04 The board will review and provide feedback.
10:07 Depending on the outcome of the workshop, we would either move
10:11 forward or not.
10:12 And then, if we are moving forward, we go into a public input
10:15 phase and this is really
10:16 where the changes are going to occur.
10:19 In the past, we have asked you to appoint an evaluation
10:23 committee member and we’ve brought
10:25 in an evaluation committee that includes both your
10:28 representatives as well as some staff folks
10:31 and we’ve asked them to score proposals.
10:34 And that worked really well when you’re comparing two proposals
10:38 for the same thing.
10:39 But we’ve been comparing one proposal with itself.
10:44 And so the scoring really didn’t appear to be relevant.
10:48 And from a staff perspective, we felt that it was much more
10:52 important to have a public involvement
10:54 process that is really customized for the particular
10:58 circumstance.
10:59 So if we’re affecting one or two families, we may have the
11:02 principal reach out to those families
11:03 directly and just have that conversation.
11:05 If we’re affecting neighborhoods, we would anticipate going
11:09 through our municipal partners,
11:11 our county partners, getting local governments involved,
11:14 bringing those neighborhoods in and just
11:16 doing a more customized approach to public involvement.
11:20 And so that would be the major difference in the administrative
11:25 procedure as it’s written now
11:27 and as it would be implemented in the future.
11:30 And then again, we would bring that input back for final review
11:34 and then go through the typical
11:35 process through the information agenda, the action agenda, and
11:39 board approval.
11:40 And what that looks like in – oops, I’m sorry – in procedure
11:48 –
11:50 What that looks like in procedure is the language that creates
11:57 the boundary change team, talks about
12:00 controlled open enrollment and references policy 5121, similarly
12:05 talks about 5120 and the criteria
12:08 for attendance boundary changes, it does eliminate the
12:13 evaluation committee.
12:15 And then we talk through the general procedure, preliminary
12:22 proposals.
12:23 And this is the section on public input where we’ve made the
12:28 major changes.
12:29 So we talk about gathering information from communities of
12:33 potentially affected schools and using whatever
12:36 tools we have available, which might include social media, focus
12:40 groups, public meeting surveys.
12:41 I think there’s different ways to reach the community depending
12:46 upon the scope and magnitude
12:47 of the boundary change proposal.
12:49 But we really want to be sure to customize what we do to right
12:54 size it for the boundary change
12:56 proposal that is being considered.
12:58 And then also note that we’ve commented or we’ve included
13:03 submitting to the capital outlay.
13:05 This is part of our interlocal agreement.
13:08 The capital outlay committee is basically our municipal
13:11 representatives and they’re typically
13:12 either city managers or city planners.
13:15 But we want to make sure that we are keeping our municipalities
13:19 engaged because they also have
13:21 direct relationships with your constituents and are often asked
13:24 about our attendance boundary
13:25 change proposal.
13:26 So we want to make sure that we’re communicating well with those
13:29 folks so that everybody understands
13:31 what we have on deck.
13:32 So that is the kind of the crux of what we’re doing on 71-10 and
13:38 this probably might be a
13:39 good time to pause and take any questions.
13:45 I just had one.
13:49 In the administrative procedures, in B, in light of what we just
13:53 voted on as far as the reorganization
13:55 of the cabinet, do we need to change the language because we’re
13:58 going to have to go back and
14:00 fix that because it still says in B-3 and B-7, it’s still using
14:07 the assistant superintendent
14:09 of?
14:10 Yes, ma’am.
14:11 We’ll take care of that.
14:35 And we’ll take care of that.
14:36 So we are not making any changes.
14:38 We’re just simply repealing this.
14:40 Thank you.
15:06 What?
15:07 Oh.
15:36 Good afternoon.
15:37 So we are proposing a simplified version of policy 9800 for
15:55 charter schools.
15:57 Because the state legislation changes every year regarding charters,
16:02 we would have to come
16:03 back and revisit this annually.
16:05 And sometimes they make very small changes.
16:07 And other times they make very large changes.
16:09 But otherwise, it makes more sense just to simply say we are
16:13 going to follow Florida statute
16:16 1002.33 and leave it at that.
16:20 So we are going to update it in a more generalized policy.
16:25 And then, unfortunately, NEOLA makes a recommendation that they
16:32 use the exact language from 100.233.
16:37 Which, again, is 18 pages of statute.
16:40 And so our recommendation, again, is just to make it short,
16:44 sweet, and simple.
16:46 So this charter school 9800 is what is currently in play.
16:53 And I don’t want to go through all of this.
16:54 But as you page down and you go through this version and the
16:57 corrected version, we’ve taken
16:59 about 18 pages and condensed it down to a couple of paragraphs
17:04 and a list.
17:05 Still allowing us to authorize charter schools per this
17:09 particular Florida statute and the ability
17:12 to non-renew or terminate as well.
17:15 So we’re not taking any authority away from Brevard Public
17:18 Schools Governing Board.
17:20 We’re just going to abide by it.
17:22 And this one has not been renewed since 2014.
17:26 So any questions?
17:28 I don’t think you want me to read all those goodies on that.
17:32 Okay, thanks.
17:42 Thank you.
17:43 I wonder if I have time to drive home, Matt.
17:48 How long do you drive home?
17:55 I wonder if I have time to make it all the way home or if I
17:57 should just sit here through
18:01 yours.
18:02 Yeah.
18:12 I wonder if I have time to drive home.
18:14 I wonder if I have time to drive home or if I have time to drive
18:15 home.
18:15 I wonder if I can drive home.
18:16 I wonder if I have time to drive home.
18:30 I wonder if I can drive home.
18:31 I wonder if I have time to drive home.