Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
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13:34 April Daniels Lockaby, a teacher from Space Coast Junior Senior
13:38 High School.
13:41 Thank you. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance.
14:04 And to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God,
14:08 indivisible, according to the end of the straw.
14:12 At this time, I would like to offer my fellow board members and
14:17 Dr. Mullins the opportunity to recognize students, staff, or
14:22 members of the community.
14:24 Who would like to start us off this evening?
14:27 Ms. McDougal.
14:29 Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a couple things.
14:32 First, I want to give a shout out to Principal Jones at Audubon.
14:36 She sent me a video that she provided to the whole community of
14:43 Audubon students and parents of what it’s going to look like
14:46 when you go back to school.
14:47 It was amazing.
14:48 Well done.
14:49 So thank you, Principal Jones, for sharing that.
14:51 And I so appreciate it.
14:53 I also want to remind classroom teachers that Bright Ideas Classroom
14:58 Grant is open and it closes September 18th.
15:02 This is a grant.
15:03 So if you have a great idea and don’t have any money to fund it,
15:06 this might be a place to do that.
15:08 So don’t forget to check at Brevard Schools Foundation.
15:11 And last but not least is, quite frankly, I want to give a shout
15:15 out to our whole staff.
15:17 From our school staff to our administrative staff, to our bus
15:20 drivers, to people who keep the air conditioning going.
15:24 This has been an amazing opening.
15:27 It’s not our typical opening, so I want to just give a shout out
15:30 to everyone who has worked so hard, put in so many hours to make
15:33 this the best it can be at this time.
15:35 So thank you.
15:36 Thank you, Ms. McGoogle.
15:38 Ms. Bustavich?
15:39 Thanks, Ms. Belford.
15:41 Of course, the entire staff, every employee is going above and
15:45 beyond right now with the different circumstances.
15:48 But I’d like to shine a little light on our ET people at the
15:52 moment because they are not only supporting the traditional
15:57 brick and mortar technology issues that we traditionally have.
16:01 They’ve extended that with the same amount of support staff and
16:04 the same amount of employees.
16:06 They’ve extended that to all the e-learning.
16:09 So they’re supporting students.
16:10 They’re supporting parents, teachers in a way they haven’t
16:14 before, in a capacity they haven’t before.
16:17 I reached out to Mr. Cheatham this morning and just asked a
16:19 couple questions.
16:20 And he said today alone they had 1,200 Zoom meetings going at
16:24 the same time.
16:25 And he said that’s not counting Microsoft Teams and all these
16:28 other programs that they’re using.
16:31 That was just Zoom meetings going on.
16:33 And also wanted to thank the tech associates in each of the
16:37 schools.
16:38 They’re spread really thin right now supporting teachers,
16:41 students, parents again within the schools.
16:44 And we recently made some adjustments that have spread them even
16:48 more thin.
16:49 So I’m still very concerned about the amount of tech support
16:52 staff that we have in the schools.
16:54 And last the ET help desk.
16:56 Day one they had 270 tickets they opened.
16:59 And did my voice just get louder?
17:02 Did they turn up?
17:03 Thank you back there Mike.
17:06 So the help desk, like I said 270 tickets they opened on day one
17:10 of issues they had to solve.
17:13 So they’re working tirelessly.
17:15 And Mr. Cheatham also suggested that maybe I give a shout out to
17:18 the staff around the school that are filling in the gaps for the
17:23 rest of our tech specialists that can’t get to all those.
17:27 So, you know, the front desk clerks are answering tech calls
17:30 right now.
17:31 Our media specialists are all of a sudden becoming tech
17:33 specialists.
17:34 Everybody is becoming an assistant tech specialist that is free
17:38 and able.
17:39 So thank you to all those that are supporting technology right
17:41 now.
17:42 We are dependent on it and we appreciate it.
17:44 Thanks, Ms. Belford.
17:46 Thanks, Ms. Descovich.
17:47 And I just have to say to add on to what you said.
17:50 I got an email from a parent the other day that said the SRO at
17:52 the school was trying to fix a webcam on one of the computers.
17:56 So I think truly everyone on the team has been pitching in to
18:00 try to provide that support.
18:02 So thank you.
18:03 Ms. Campbell.
18:04 Thank you.
18:05 I’m going to piggyback a little bit on Ms. Descovich’s because I
18:08 had techs on mine as well.
18:10 I got to visit 10 of my schools yesterday on opening day and,
18:15 you know, things were, you know, there was the whole Zoom going
18:20 out on the entire eastern seaboard thing.
18:22 But other than that, things were going really smoothly and
18:24 students were being cooperative.
18:26 But I had a conversation with one of our principals that said, I’ve
18:30 been asking about the computers because we have that, that we
18:33 talked about several.
18:34 I think Ms. Descovich, you asked about how many computers were
18:36 still out, right?
18:37 And one school said they loaned out 400, this is an elementary
18:40 school, 400 devices last spring.
18:43 And as of right now, they’ve gotten all back but four.
18:46 So I think that’s pretty, pretty amazing that they’ve done so
18:50 well.
18:51 And another, I talked to one of the techs at our schools who
18:54 said they, they still had a few left, but they had gotten back.
18:57 Fifteen of the ones they had gotten back were, were broken.
19:00 But rather than just, you know, what’s the process we, you know,
19:04 I forgot the term.
19:06 Yeah, right.
19:07 DCR.
19:08 They, he had said, okay, what can we do?
19:10 Can we piece them together?
19:11 And it actually, team had salvaged 10 of them out of the 15
19:14 broken ones were able to kind of put parts here and there and
19:17 save 10.
19:18 And so they could have devices for this fall.
19:20 So great job and great stewardship of, of our materials and
19:24 appreciate them at the district level as well as the school
19:28 level.
19:29 We have applauded our staff.
19:31 I just would like to say kudos to our students yesterday.
19:34 Every principal that I talked to talked about our students doing
19:37 such a great job.
19:38 They, they had a lot of challenges to deal with yesterday, but
19:40 the principal says that, you know, the students walked in, they
19:43 all had a mask, they’ve been cooperating.
19:46 I saw first graders lining up in the hallway and they were
19:49 remembering to, to space out and, you know, just high school
19:52 principal, same thing.
19:54 Students are doing great job with it.
19:56 They’re really being cooperative.
19:57 So just wanted to give a big thank you to our students for, for
20:00 taking on the challenges.
20:02 The ones who are in the building and the ones who are at home
20:05 being patient and waiting on the technology to work.
20:08 But great job to all of our students who have already come back.
20:12 Absolutely.
20:13 Thank you, Ms. Campbell.
20:14 Mr. Susan.
20:15 Thank you so much.
20:16 You know, the first day of school has always been a magical one
20:19 for when you’re a teacher and the kids are coming in the hall.
20:22 And even for us now, school board members, as we do it over and
20:24 over again.
20:25 Sorry, this thing is driving me nuts.
20:27 And this year it was, everybody came together in a different way
20:33 of magic.
20:35 It was the bus drivers, the crossing guards.
20:38 I stopped and thanked a couple of crossing guards.
20:40 Hey, thanks for, for doing everything you’re doing.
20:42 All the way to the guys that deliver all of our materials, the
20:45 guys, the teachers, the administration, everybody came together.
20:50 And I think that that’s what we do in education and a lot of
20:54 parents and people out there in the community.
20:56 We’ve been doing this for decades and this is a tough one.
21:00 And I’m just so proud of all of our people who came together to
21:02 make this happen.
21:04 And I think that a lot of people need to understand that we all
21:08 need to keep moving forward.
21:10 There’s going to be hiccups.
21:11 I apologize.
21:12 I think the zoom thing might have been because I was uploading
21:14 all my dependents for the dependent audit.
21:16 I had so many of them going in there.
21:18 I might have crashed the system.
21:19 But I think in general, I think we as a school district did an
21:22 amazing job.
21:23 And I’m looking forward to doing everything we can to make sure
21:25 that we have their backs and that we’re doing everything that we
21:28 can.
21:29 My daughter, she started school, you know, nine years old.
21:33 And she came back and I was like, honey, she was all excited.
21:37 Talked to her before she got on the bus.
21:39 She gets on the bus.
21:40 She comes home.
21:41 I talked to her.
21:42 I was like, please let this thing go right.
21:43 And she said, I loved it.
21:44 We had so much fun, all this stuff.
21:46 But dad, you got to work on recess.
21:48 We’re having to be socially distanced.
21:49 I got to wear my mask the whole time.
21:51 She was she was making some some lobbying efforts on that end,
21:54 but loved it.
21:55 And so when you can see from the beginning from your family as a
21:59 parent, all the way across the board to seeing our teams come
22:02 together.
22:02 I’m just so proud of this district.
22:04 And I just wanted to say that I did want to tell the parents
22:05 that are still out there.
22:07 There’s some of the parents that are still out there trying to
22:09 figure out what they’re going to do.
22:11 Understand that we have to make financial and economic decisions
22:14 based upon what you do.
22:16 So we’d appreciate it if you did it sooner than later.
22:19 So if you can get off the fence and make a decision on which way
22:21 you’re going to go with the direction of the children, let us
22:24 know so that we can do that.
22:26 I wanted to thank the FSU director of football athletics, who
22:29 went on a zoom call with me and walked me through how they clean
22:33 their locker rooms, how they take care of all of their athletic.
22:37 All the way from their equipment to their locker rooms to
22:39 everything else.
22:41 And then I forwarded that information to Dr Mullins, and I think
22:45 that we’re going to be a good.
22:47 We should have some really good responses in one of the areas
22:50 that I think is a very, a very tentative place for the COVID.
22:54 And I wanted to also say thank you to Sue Ham because we have
22:58 our O’Galley locker room is the air conditioning is on the
23:02 agenda tonight.
23:04 And that is a big deal.
23:05 Many people don’t know that we haven’t had air conditioning in
23:08 many of our locker rooms and we are addressing that.
23:11 So I wanted to say thank you to Dr Mullins for making that a
23:15 promise and I’m excited because those kids now will be more in
23:20 tune to taking PE and everything else.
23:21 So with that, I have a couple of things later on that I wanted
23:23 to talk about, but that’s it.
23:25 Thank you.
23:26 Thank you, Mr. Susan.
23:27 Dr Mullins.
23:29 Thank you, Ms. Belford.
23:31 And just thank you to the board members for recognizing so many
23:35 diverse areas of our organization.
23:37 Many folks, you know, only see Brevard Public Schools as the
23:42 school facing reality and that certainly is our core mission.
23:46 But behind every school are hundreds and quite frankly thousands
23:50 of people who make schools run.
23:53 One of the things that we take for granted until it doesn’t work
23:57 is air conditioning.
24:00 And I have to just applaud and commend our air conditioning team,
24:07 our chiller building automation and HVAC folks.
24:11 They literally worked 12 hour days leading up to this past
24:16 weekend to open schools.
24:19 Somebody worked through the weekend responding to issues under
24:24 Sue’s leadership.
24:26 They had proactive measures.
24:28 They knew where the problem points were.
24:31 They turned air on over the, I think on Saturday we had seven or
24:34 eight buildings that were something strange was going on.
24:39 They mitigated those.
24:40 We did have one of our schools that continued to have some
24:43 issues going into Monday.
24:45 They worked, I think, half the night last night to get it up and
24:49 running.
24:50 And just the commitment, understanding the raised necessity of
24:56 maintaining our HVAC with the increasingly lean staff.
25:00 Just I want to echo the compliments to the teams across the
25:04 district.
25:05 Mr. Susan alluded to our distribution team.
25:10 They last week distributed all of our PPE equipment and supplies
25:15 to our schools, all 80 plus schools.
25:19 And we reduced, that’s an increasingly lean team as a result of
25:23 restructuring this past year.
25:26 Our bus drivers, I had a wonderful start to the day yesterday,
25:31 very early at our south compound and about 100 drivers strolling
25:37 in.
25:38 The attitudes, the smiles, the positivity to get back on the
25:42 road and serve our kids.
25:44 It was just so impressive.
25:47 And I enjoyed visiting a few schools myself yesterday.
25:53 And our administrative teams, the support they provided to
25:58 teachers, the positivity in the schools as I visited them was
26:03 top notch.
26:06 It was just so impressive.
26:07 The teaching staff to support everything possible from escorting
26:12 kids, the systems they had in place because parents couldn’t
26:16 escort their kids to class.
26:18 Our parents were absolutely fantastic.
26:21 They didn’t, they understood the new rules and the procedures.
26:25 They were compliant.
26:26 They walked their kid up to the front of the school.
26:28 They said goodbye and they understood.
26:30 And we, I just want to express my appreciation to our parents
26:33 and our community.
26:35 And then our teachers took over.
26:36 They’re there in the hallway.
26:37 They take them to their classes and just opened up their hearts
26:41 to our kids immediately as they, as they came onto campus and
26:45 even beforehand.
26:45 The virtual tours, the orientations, the drive-through registrations,
26:51 the logistics of opening a district are enormous.
26:55 Enormous anyway, and our, our administrative teams and our
26:58 teaching staff just went above and beyond to, to make it all
27:01 happen.
27:02 So we did, I want to share, we did open our first new elementary
27:06 school in Brevard Public Schools in over 10 years.
27:10 And so they got off to a great start yesterday.
27:13 I want to remind our community.
27:15 We opened Vieira Elementary School debt free paid.
27:18 That school was paid for with impact fees.
27:20 And we were only able to do that because of the commitment of
27:23 this board and the fiscal responsibility of the school board and
27:28 our community.
27:30 So they got off to a great start yesterday as well.
27:32 I was able to spend a few minutes with them and just a positive
27:37 experience all day.
27:39 So to put it into context, I met with cabinet at the end of the
27:41 day, we planned for a two hour debriefing to go over all the
27:46 challenges and the issues.
27:48 We were done in 90 minutes.
27:49 I think that’s a record for cabinet meeting.
27:51 So that’s because our team that you see in the back were right
27:55 there for their schools to support them and to be responsive.
28:00 So my thanks to our leadership team as well.
28:03 Thank you, Ms. Belton.
28:04 Thank you, Dr. Mullins.
28:06 First, if you all would please join me in wishing Ms. McDougall
28:11 a happy belated birthday.
28:13 She had a birthday this past weekend and if you can imagine the
28:17 stress that school board members were feeling on Sunday as she
28:22 was celebrating her birthday.
28:23 And I know that we were all anticipating and hoping and praying
28:26 that we had a smooth start on Monday.
28:28 So sorry that we were not able to be with you, but I hope you
28:32 had a very, very happy birthday or the happiest that you could
28:34 given the circumstances, Ms. McDougall.
28:36 Thank you so much.
28:37 Thank you.
28:38 Um, like everyone else, I was out in schools yesterday and just
28:42 floored at the positivity and the excitement.
28:47 And, um, you know, even this weekend, talk about the preparation
28:52 for going into Monday.
28:54 Um, this weekend, our, our lawnmowers were out mowing schools to,
28:59 to try to ensure that they were, uh, ready for students to
29:03 return on Monday.
29:04 And so, um, not without glitches, obviously we had our, our, um,
29:08 online glitches, but I’ll tell you, I was in schools when
29:12 teachers were dealing with that.
29:14 And the positivity, even during that frustration, um, of just,
29:19 they were in communication with the parents continuously,
29:21 letting them know what was going on via, um, text or, you know,
29:25 different applications, keeping them in the loop.
29:27 I was able to see when a couple of kids had been not able to get
29:29 on for a little while, and then everyone was able to come
29:32 together and the excitement of it actually working.
29:35 Um, every school that I spoke to in, in different ways mentioned
29:41 the enormous amount of collaboration that has gone on in our
29:45 district within schools and across schools.
29:48 Um, Dr. Mullins and I were at Imperial and the phenomenal music
29:52 teacher there.
29:53 If you get a chance to go by and take a look at her classroom
29:54 and the way that she’s adapted, um, absolutely amazing.
29:58 But she was telling us how music teachers throughout the
30:01 district came together to figure out what do we do about singing?
30:05 What do we do about instruments?
30:07 What instruments can we play?
30:08 We can’t do the recorder anymore.
30:10 So what can we do?
30:11 How do we get those instruments?
30:13 Um, one of our rockstar teachers at Coquina reached out to me
30:17 and shared that all of our sixth grade teachers in Brevard
30:20 County have a group Facebook page.
30:23 where they’re sharing resources and, um, you know, just, just
30:29 anything to not recreate the wheel and supporting each other and
30:33 understanding technology.
30:35 Um, there was MIMS I was at yesterday and they were talking
30:40 about the fact that several of the teachers who are not teaching
30:46 in the e-learning platform,
30:47 but have stronger technology skills have been giving up their
30:50 own personal time to help their peers with the technology and
30:53 how to utilize everything.
30:55 So just amazing the way that everyone has come together through
30:58 this and, and the, the amount of excitement and creativity that
31:02 we’re seeing in our schools is great among all of the, the many
31:07 challenges as well.
31:09 Um, also want to think we had up in the north end, um, North Brevard
31:16 charities.
31:19 That’s not the right name, but anyway, we’ve had several groups
31:21 that have been doing, uh, prayers for our schools.
31:24 And so I was able to participate in a prayer walk with astronaut
31:26 high school last week, Thursday night, we’re doing, um, space
31:30 coast, but we’re doing the entire feeder chain.
31:32 And so we, we went from astronaut to, um, Oak park to Madison
31:36 middle school and just a group of folks walking and, you know,
31:42 praying over the schools and the students and the parents and
31:44 the, all of us making our way through all of this.
31:46 Um, and I know there’ve been several others throughout the
31:48 county as well.
31:49 So I want to certainly thank all of those folks.
31:52 And then as if we didn’t have enough going on, um, we had
31:56 obviously everyone heard about, uh, the closure of legacy and
32:02 according to the judge’s order, timing was bad, um, for those
32:05 families.
32:06 But I gotta tell you, our team, everyone from leading and
32:10 learning ET, Mr. Novelli from operations, um, you name it.
32:17 I think just about everyone on the team has been out there, um,
32:20 to address that situation.
32:22 And our principals have been absolutely phenomenal reaching out
32:24 to each and every one of those families and welcoming, welcoming
32:28 them back into our schools to ensure that they were ready to go
32:30 today.
32:31 So I have to give them a huge shout out for taking that on, on
32:34 top of everything else.
32:36 Um, and then before I go into our agenda, I wanted to take just
32:43 a minute because there’s been a good bit of conversation.
32:46 Um, and then we’re going to take just a minute.
32:47 We’re going to take a minute.
32:50 Um, we’re going to take a minute.
32:51 We’re going to take a minute.
38:39 Okay, good evening board members.
38:42 Thank you for the opportunity to keep you informed on several
38:45 topics.
38:46 The first topic I want to cover is the current and projected
38:50 impact of the coronavirus on the state budget,
38:53 specifically reoccurring general revenue.
38:57 We will also revisit FY78 state reductions.
39:02 We also would like to discuss what projected state general
39:06 revenue declines could mean to our current budget outlook.
39:12 Talk about what steps we’re currently taking and finally round
39:16 that out with a brief on enrollment for the first day numbers.
39:27 So the impact of the coronavirus severely impacted the state’s
39:30 general revenue collection the last quarter of FY20.
39:36 They were actually, Florida was doing very well.
39:38 The state was doing very well all the way up into March.
39:41 And then, you know, the last quarter general revenue went down.
39:48 It went below the January estimate by almost $1.9 billion, which
39:54 is a 5.7% decline.
39:59 Sales tax was 6.1% below its expected level, accounting for
40:04 about 85% of the shortfall.
40:07 So tourism is something that the state of Florida depends on.
40:12 And the last quarter of 2019 took a severe hit.
40:19 On August 14, the Office of Economic and Demographic Research
40:26 held their general revenue fund estimating conference.
40:30 There were substantial adjustments to the earlier general
40:35 revenue estimate in January.
40:38 And then you can see in 2021, there was a $3.4 billion
40:43 adjustment.
40:45 And then there was also a – which equates to a 9.9% decline
40:50 compared to January estimates.
40:53 And then in FY21-22, the adjustment was $2 billion or a – or a
41:00 – or a 5.6% decline.
41:02 Again, that is compared to the January estimates.
41:06 And in January, you know, no one had any idea that we would be
41:11 where we are today.
41:13 Now, the estimates assumed several things.
41:18 They assumed a vast improvement with the availability of a
41:22 vaccine in 2021.
41:25 And it also assumed that Florida is permitted to utilize
41:27 remaining CARES Act funds to mitigate any revenue shortfalls.
41:31 So those were the two assumptions that they used when coming up
41:34 with this forecast.
41:36 And again, it is a forecast.
41:38 And then below, you can see that the state’s adjustments during
41:42 a similar time in 2007 and ‘08.
41:46 And there, this provides context to where we are projected to
41:51 experience this year and next.
41:55 And then you can see in 2007 and ‘08, there was an adjustment of
41:59 $2 billion or a 7.5% decline.
42:11 And finally, in mid-September next month, there’s going to be a
42:16 long-range outlook conference.
42:20 And this will include the adjusted general revenue estimates
42:26 that the EDR projected.
42:30 So they will include those.
42:31 And then when they do that, they will create a three-year
42:33 outlook.
42:34 And from that three-year outlook, we’ll get a really good
42:38 preview of what FY21-22 will look like.
42:41 Again, that’s going to be next month.
42:43 And then the legislature will use that information when they
42:48 reorganize following the November election.
42:52 And they’ll have a better idea.
42:53 And they’ll have, again, they’ll have estimates, but they’ll
42:57 have a better idea.
42:58 And then come and decide what they want to do and examine the
43:02 health of the state budget.
43:04 So more to come on that.
43:09 So revisiting fiscal year ‘27, I’m sorry, revisiting fiscal year
43:16 ‘78, you can see that the state overall reduced the FEFP budget
43:25 by nearly $500 million.
43:29 And what they did was they took a percentage across the entire
43:35 board of FEFP across all the districts.
43:39 And the first reduction that we took in 2007-2008 was in the
43:44 second calculation.
43:46 And you can see that was $7.4 million.
43:49 And then Brevard took another decrease in the third calculation,
43:54 and that was $6.1 million, equating to $13.5 million in 2007-2008.
44:02 And, again, that just kind of gives you some context about the
44:06 last time there was a downturn in the economy and what the
44:10 impact was.
44:12 So what does a potential reduction mean for BPS and FY21?
44:29 You know, again, during fiscal year 2007-2008, BPS lost $13.5
44:40 million in state FEFP revenue by extrapolating the current state
44:46 revenue loss and state variables.
44:49 The worst case scenario would be a 3.9% reduction, and that
44:56 would equate to a $22.4 million reduction.
45:00 Now, this reduction assumes that the state does not use any
45:04 reserves to offset their revenue shortfall.
45:08 It also assumes that they take a proportional cut across all
45:12 entities that receive general revenue funds.
45:17 It is likely the state will use a portion of the state’s
45:20 reserves, but conservatively, because, you know, again, there’s
45:25 still a lot of unknowns out there.
45:29 The state will not know how long the coronavirus will affect the
45:33 state, so this is my opinion.
45:36 I don’t believe they will use all the reserves.
45:39 It wouldn’t be prudent, but I believe that they will use some of
45:43 those to offset any kind of budget reductions.
45:48 And again, the EDR has provided updated estimates, and we don’t
45:53 know exactly what the budget impact will be for BPS.
45:59 We will have a better picture following the long-range financial
46:03 conference mid-September,
46:04 and while we remain responsible and prudent, we will focus on
46:08 reopening our schools safely,
46:11 protecting our current teacher staff, and focus on delivering
46:15 excellent education to every student,
46:17 and we will continue to monitor expenditures for ongoing savings
46:21 and protect fund balance to buffer any potential mid-year
46:29 revenue loss.
46:34 And then I know the board understands this next point, but this
46:37 is just something I want to say for the public to understand.
46:40 When we talk about a budget plan, a budget plan is based on
46:46 projected revenue to cover projected expenditures, and it is
46:52 just a plan.
46:53 It is not money in the bank.
46:55 And so when revenue comes in less than expected, then there has
47:02 to be adjustments to balance the budget.
47:08 So again, revenue or a budget isn’t money in the bank.
47:12 If we don’t collect that revenue for whatever reason with the
47:16 uncertainties that there are, there has to be some kind of
47:20 adjustment to make sure that we balance.
47:24 If we’re looking to CFOs across the state, they have advised
47:28 their boards to hold onto as much savings and posture for
47:32 potential mid-year reductions.
47:35 And then every dollar we save today is a dollar that can benefit
47:40 us tomorrow.
47:42 And then so what are we doing?
47:44 These are some of the prudent steps that we are taking as we
47:46 move forward.
47:47 We’re analyzing district positions as they become vacant.
47:51 We’re restricting out of county travel.
47:53 We will continue to monitor contracts for potential savings,
47:57 evaluate the use of CARES Act funds to see if we can use those
48:01 funds to maintain workforce stability.
48:04 We’re going to do a district-wide position analysis and also
48:09 establish quarterly rebudgeting process to continue to evaluate
48:15 the lapse rate.
48:17 And that way we will have a timely data that can give us a
48:21 better insight of where we are with our financial position.
48:29 Any questions so far?
48:34 And so now we get to move into student enrollment.
48:37 And as everyone mentioned, yesterday was our first day of school.
48:41 And this is just kind of the first snapshot of the first day
48:46 count.
48:48 You can see that we were under-enrolled in the first count.
48:52 First day counts are always difficult to project.
48:54 And this year, as you can imagine, it was a bit more challenging
48:58 from Zoom going down to late buses and simply the human element
49:01 of hand counting kids in classrooms.
49:04 That said, we do have many kids that have not yet registered for
49:08 school.
49:09 And our administrative teams are reaching out to those families
49:13 to help get them registered.
49:16 The state anticipated these enrollment fluctuations this year.
49:19 And through the July 6th emergency order, the DOE committed to
49:26 hold school districts harmless for lower enrollment through at
49:31 least the fall semester.
49:34 So we have some time.
49:35 And again, the first day counts are always a little bit messy.
49:41 You can see on this slide, if you compare student membership
49:45 last year to this year, there is about 11,500 student difference.
49:52 As each day goes on, I think those numbers will balance out and
49:58 grow.
49:59 And this is just a first look.
50:02 You can see Brevard Virtual.
50:04 That number increased quite a bit from last year.
50:07 Charter schools also increased.
50:09 Home school, I’ll talk about that one at the bottom.
50:15 The home school on the top chart, underneath charter schools,
50:19 talks about home schoolers that are, receive some kind of
50:26 benefit, some kind of service from Brevard schools.
50:29 They are listed on that row underneath the charter schools.
50:39 McKay scholarships went down a bit.
50:41 And family empowerment scholarships did go up.
50:44 When you look at that bottom line, the home education, that is
50:47 the one that we need to monitor and watch.
50:50 If you compare the actual from last year to this year, you’ll
50:55 see that there is a significant jump in home schooling.
51:00 And that’s something, again, that we’ll have to monitor.
51:04 The last number that I heard we were down was 7,000 students.
51:16 Are you saying we are down 14,000 students?
51:19 Ms. Descovich, Cindy, I’ll go ahead.
51:24 Go ahead.
51:25 So this number represents all K through 12, pre-K to 12.
51:31 We knew we had about 7,000, I think it’s down to 5,500 now,
51:35 elementary that haven’t registered.
51:38 So, yes, this represents students K through 12.
51:43 So that 5,500 to 7,000 are inclusive of the 14,000.
51:48 Keep in mind that we don’t have any confidence that that number
51:52 is accurate right now.
51:54 The counting process isn’t very manual, it is completely manual.
52:02 Literally, people in buildings walk around to classrooms, they
52:05 count heads, and they put them on a piece of paper.
52:08 That piece of paper gets translated to the office.
52:10 They accumulate those and tally numbers.
52:14 Our first day count is always difficult in a normal circumstance.
52:19 The reality is we had to validate e-learning kids.
52:25 We had to see them online.
52:27 So some kids didn’t log on until later.
52:30 They got bumped off because of Zoom and we couldn’t count them
52:33 because they weren’t online.
52:35 We had parents coming into our schools all day yesterday and
52:39 today.
52:40 I know our e-learning numbers jumped over 1,000 overnight from
52:44 last night to today.
52:45 So, at this point, at this moment, working with staff, we’re not
52:51 alarmed with enrollment.
52:54 Certainly, homeschool increases is concerning.
52:58 That’s 1,000 students.
53:00 But we see parents coming into our schools every day.
53:04 Our next official count is Thursday and then the following
53:08 Tuesday.
53:09 The following Tuesday or Monday?
53:12 So, Monday is our third official count.
53:17 I would echo Mr. Seusson’s comments earlier.
53:20 We know we have parents who are waiting to see our schools going
53:24 to stay open.
53:25 We are open and we are continuing to be open.
53:28 And we’re going to serve our parents and our kids.
53:31 I echo the sentiments of the board.
53:35 The success of starting our schools yesterday.
53:39 And the great work of our teachers to welcome our kids back and
53:43 our administrative teams.
53:44 We continue to remain ready to serve our families, both in any
53:48 one of the platforms, e-learning or face-to-face.
53:52 And we’ll continue to reach out to our families to connect with
53:56 them and bring them into our schools.
53:58 I appreciate that you’re not panicked, but that’s a hundred
54:02 million dollar price tag if those families don’t enroll their
54:05 children in our schools.
54:07 That’s, I think it’s, I think it’s okay to panic.
54:14 That’s, that’s, that changes the look of Brevard Public Schools.
54:18 If that continues to maintain, absolutely.
54:21 I just think we need to be very clear and loud about that.
54:25 So people know what this looks like down the road over this next
54:29 year.
54:30 If 14,000 students do not return to Brevard Public Schools,
54:33 because I don’t think the public understands.
54:36 Mr. Susan.
54:40 So I wanted to say thank you so much for your presentation.
54:43 I love the fact that we restricted out of county travel.
54:46 And just so that everybody knows that includes out of county,
54:49 out of state, everything out of county is restricted.
54:52 So I wanted to say thank you to that.
54:53 I love the fact that you are establishing quarterly rebudgeting
54:57 for the labs.
54:59 One of the most frustrating things, Dr. Mullins, that we talked
55:02 about is at the end of the year, how much money is falling to
55:05 the bottom line.
55:06 But you’re actually taking a proactive so that we can adjust
55:08 based upon the year.
55:09 So thank you so much for that.
55:11 I do, would say one of the areas that we could add to this, this
55:14 is just me speaking.
55:16 We have a series of speakers, consultants and individuals that
55:19 come in and they, they speak to us in various forms, right?
55:22 But we’ve never really set up a metrics to see how that impacts
55:26 directly into our education.
55:28 So that might be some, an area we look at in the future.
55:32 And that’s just the fact that sometimes we have these people
55:34 come in, they get, they teach us.
55:36 But then how it unpacks into the schools may not be as prominent
55:39 as what we want.
55:41 So at a time when there’s this, maybe that’s some, an area that
55:43 we could look at.
55:44 That’s all.
55:45 And then I did, I wanted to say one more time, Dr. Mullins,
55:49 parents, please.
55:51 Besides the fact of trying to figure out how we’re going to do
55:53 this, when you come in late,
55:57 it impacts the staff, the teachers, the staff has to sit down,
56:01 re-register, do all that stuff.
56:02 They have to reschedule.
56:03 The teacher has to sit down and add that person to the classroom,
56:06 catch that person up.
56:08 Everything’s kind of impacted beyond that.
56:10 And we want everybody to take the time to make the right
56:12 decisions.
56:13 But at some point, please let us know.
56:15 But other than that, everything else here, I absolutely love.
56:19 Thank you so much for all your work.
56:21 Really appreciate you coming on board and doing everything that
56:23 you’ve been doing.
56:24 Just want to give her a shout out for that.
56:26 Thank you.
56:28 Thank you, Mr. Susan.
56:29 Any other board members have questions that are coming?
56:31 Ms. Campbell?
56:36 There we go.
56:38 So one of the things that you mentioned was the executive order.
56:42 And I think Mr. Gibbs, if you could correct, the part that the
56:46 judge struck just recently,
56:47 and we’re yet to see how it didn’t affect the funding part,
56:51 correct?
56:52 As far as them.
56:53 It doesn’t change as far as they’re saying they’ll hold us
56:55 harmless for this.
56:56 Right.
56:57 He left that in as constitutional as long as it wasn’t tied to
57:01 the opening brick and mortar
57:02 by the end of August.
57:03 Right, gotcha.
57:04 So, but I just wanted to clarify.
57:06 At this time, the state hasn’t given us necessarily a promise
57:10 that that won’t be adjusted come spring.
57:14 Is that correct?
57:15 That’s correct.
57:16 I think they still need to evaluate the numbers, but they did
57:20 promise not to hold.
57:21 They promise to hold us harmless through the fall and not to use
57:25 the October survey numbers.
57:27 Right.
57:28 So, so our funding that we’ll get in the fall months.
57:32 I, I can’t remember exactly the times that it comes in.
57:35 But we, you know, when those, we’ll get our, according to our
57:39 projections from last spring.
57:40 But there’s, like I said, there’s no promise necessary that that
57:42 won’t be adjusted in the spring
57:43 as we get our, our numbers in the February count.
57:46 Right.
57:48 That is correct.
57:49 And so one of the things that we need to look at if, if numbers
57:53 do stay lower and enrollment stays lower
57:55 is to make sure that with less need for teachers, because there’s
58:01 less students, that we grab that lapse rate
58:04 from the teachers and make sure that we save that funding in
58:07 order to possibly have to pay something back.
58:10 Right.
58:12 After the fall.
58:13 Thank you.
58:14 Ms. Campbell, just to clarify.
58:17 The difference between the district’s six day count, the first
58:21 week of count and our October counts.
58:25 The state’s first official count of our students is in October.
58:30 We do our counts at the beginning of the year.
58:32 That’s an internal function to then evaluate where we may need
58:35 to do some allocation adjustments in our schools.
58:41 So these numbers are just done internally.
58:44 They’re not reported to the state.
58:45 That’s not done until October for what’s called October FTE.
58:49 And then again in February for second semester for February FTE.
58:54 Thank you.
58:55 And to your point, Ms. Campbell, they can guarantee our funding
59:04 through the fall semester based on student numbers,
59:08 but that doesn’t guarantee that they won’t make an adjustment as
59:11 Ms. Lucinski referenced.
59:13 Right.
59:14 As the legislature comes back.
59:15 There is the potential for an adjustment based on student
59:16 numbers as well as an adjustment based on state revenue.
59:21 Right.
59:22 As we move forward.
59:23 And I think that’s.
59:24 Right.
59:25 An important thing.
59:26 That is a scary point.
59:27 It is a very scary point.
59:28 Yes.
59:30 Just to add clarification.
59:32 It is a, it is a difficult year to speculate exactly what could
59:37 happen.
59:38 In 078, there was not an adjustment to enrollment.
59:42 It was a statewide budget reduction.
59:45 It was a percent reduction.
59:48 That’s why we make the analysis or comparison to 078 when there
59:55 was a like $2 billion reduction in revenue.
1:00:00 Which the state has obviously has done and could do again.
1:00:05 Adjustments in enrollment are difficult because in our February,
1:00:10 our February FTE calculation doesn’t come back until I want to
1:00:13 say, or the adjustments don’t come until April.
1:00:16 So that’s well, well into three quarters of the year into our
1:00:21 budget, which is very difficult at that time to make budget
1:00:23 adjustments.
1:00:24 That’s why we’re monitoring it early now and carefully
1:00:28 considering what the projections are and watching our numbers
1:00:33 and looking closely at our schools.
1:00:37 Our principals are working right now to reach out to their
1:00:41 families and make contact and provide them the support that they
1:00:44 need and understand where our numbers are.
1:00:47 The, the, the number I, that we can, we know, uh, is impacting
1:00:52 our enrollment is home education.
1:00:56 That’s a, over a thousand students higher than it was a year ago.
1:00:59 So, uh, there’s no question that that is an accurate number.
1:01:02 So, that does have a significant, significant impact on the, the,
1:01:06 uh, enrollment in our schools and potentially future revenue.
1:01:10 Miss Lisinski, do you know the balance of our, the 3.2% contingency
1:01:15 that we have, the, in reserves?
1:01:19 I’m sorry.
1:01:20 The dollar amount. Do you know the dollar amount?
1:01:22 Um, it’s 19 million. I’m looking at Karen.
1:01:26 19.9 million.
1:01:28 Which, I mean, that.
1:01:33 Potential 22 million hit if the state reduces.
1:01:43 We have 19 million in reserves.
1:01:48 A potential 100 million hit mid-year.
1:01:53 You may not be panicking.
1:01:58 This does not look good.
1:02:03 So, for all of our parents out there, and Mr. Susan, I think you
1:02:05 make a great point that people are probably still trying to
1:02:08 figure out what’s right.
1:02:09 But, um, in the best interest of students, if they’re not
1:02:11 comfortable coming back into brick and mortar schools at this
1:02:14 point,
1:02:15 we would certainly encourage them to take advantage of the
1:02:17 learning opportunity so that we can keep them on the same pace
1:02:22 as their peers in the classrooms.
1:02:23 When they’re ready to come back to the classroom, um, you know,
1:02:25 that would be a smooth transition for them.
1:02:28 But, um, you know, the bottom line is that we currently have a
1:02:31 lot of students that we don’t know where they are or what
1:02:34 education they’re getting in.
1:02:35 So I think if we can get to a point of, of clearing that up, we’ll,
1:02:39 we’ll be much better off.
1:02:42 Ms. Lysinski, thank you so much for your leadership in all of
1:02:45 this.
1:02:46 I know it’s been a trying time and the information that you’re
1:02:49 putting forward certainly put some additional stress on, on your
1:02:52 department to figure out how, how to, uh, guide us going forward.
1:02:56 But we appreciate you.
1:02:57 Ms. Lysinski, I appreciate that.
1:02:58 Thank you.
1:02:59 Ms. Lysinski, absolutely.
1:03:00 All right.
1:03:01 Ms. Moore is next, I think.
1:03:06 Ms. Moore is next.
1:03:11 All right.
1:03:12 Let’s see if I can find what I’m looking for.
1:03:30 This is it.
1:03:32 Hey, good evening, everyone.
1:03:34 How is everybody?
1:03:35 Fabulous.
1:03:36 Thank you.
1:03:37 I first want to start off by introducing our new assistant
1:03:41 assistant director for student activities, Dr. Andrew Ramjet.
1:03:45 And so he started with us, um, July 14th, I will say in the
1:03:51 height of everything we were trying to do and all the
1:03:54 controversy.
1:03:56 So I first wanted to make sure to bring him up here.
1:03:59 I promised him he would not have to present today for the first
1:04:02 time.
1:04:03 Um, but I did want everybody to lay eyes on him and to be
1:04:05 introduced to him and know that he has been a tremendous asset
1:04:09 to student services and has really owned a lot of all of the
1:04:12 decision making that we’ve had to do.
1:04:14 So, so thank you personally for meeting you.
1:04:16 Thank you.
1:04:17 Um, before we start talking about fall athletics, I just want to
1:04:21 talk just very briefly about return to activity, uh, because I
1:04:25 would be really remiss if I did not, uh, give a personal thank
1:04:29 you and a personal shout out to our athletic directors.
1:04:32 Um, you know, everybody has opinions about the right thing to do.
1:04:37 And what we have found is we have gone through this time that
1:04:41 most, you know, 50% of our, our staff and community really
1:04:46 wanted athletics and 50% didn’t 50% really wanted us to come
1:04:51 back to school and 50% really didn’t.
1:04:53 Uh, it was, it was, it is no surprise to us when we, um, try to
1:04:56 get some feedback and we find out that every decision we make is
1:04:59 going to make somebody happy and somebody angry.
1:05:03 Um, but one of the things that we do try to do every time we
1:05:06 make a decision is go into it.
1:05:09 Eyes wide open.
1:05:10 How do we mitigate all of the factors that could potentially
1:05:14 cause any risk of harm or health?
1:05:16 And we did that with our athletic directors and we sat down with
1:05:19 the return to activity plan.
1:05:21 We trained, uh, them, we trained our principals and they took it
1:05:25 very seriously.
1:05:27 And so as we go into our fall program, I have absolute
1:05:31 confidence that our athletic directors and our coaches are going
1:05:36 to take, uh, the precautions and the mitigating factors
1:05:39 seriously as we move, uh, move into our plan.
1:05:43 Um, it was hard work what our athletic directors did.
1:05:48 It was unlike anything they ever had to do before.
1:05:51 And so if, uh, if I could ask anything, a personal shout out to
1:05:55 some of our athletic directors at some of our schools would go a
1:05:58 long way, um, to letting them know how much we appreciate, uh,
1:06:02 the protection that they took and wrapped around our students
1:06:05 this summer.
1:06:06 So as we go into, uh, fall athletics, we really, thank you,
1:06:10 Andrew.
1:06:11 Uh, we really wanted to keep a couple of things in mind.
1:06:13 Um, and I’m going to tell you that this, uh, presentation was
1:06:17 already sent to the board.
1:06:19 I’m going to say last week, early, uh, late last week.
1:06:22 Um, so I’m not going through the entire presentation.
1:06:25 I just want the community to know what’s in here.
1:06:28 It’s available for them to see.
1:06:29 It’s available for them to look for their own personal interests.
1:06:33 So I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time on a whole lot of
1:06:35 slides.
1:06:36 Uh, but I am going to give an overview of what’s in here.
1:06:39 I think this slide is really important because it talks about,
1:06:42 you know, why we made the decisions that we did first off.
1:06:45 You know, when you have a lot of people with a lot of opinions,
1:06:48 uh, most of them dissenting from one another, we have to go to
1:06:52 who guides us.
1:06:54 And in athletics, who guides us is FHSAA, the Florida High
1:06:57 School Athletic Association.
1:06:59 And within the Florida High School Athletic Association, they
1:07:02 have a group called the sports medicine.
1:07:05 What does AC stand for?
1:07:06 Advisory.
1:07:07 Advisory committee.
1:07:08 Um, I just call them smack.
1:07:10 Um, but the sports medicine advisory committee also, uh, advised
1:07:14 Florida athletics.
1:07:15 And for those of you guys who don’t know, as, uh, as is any
1:07:19 large organization, they had to come together and talk and then
1:07:23 go away and think and come together and talk and go away and
1:07:26 think.
1:07:27 And I think it was finally on the fourth meeting that they came
1:07:31 back with, uh, Florida sports, Florida high school sports may
1:07:36 start as early as August 24th.
1:07:39 And that then left us to go, okay, we may start on August 24th.
1:07:44 What is best for our students?
1:07:46 What is safest for our students?
1:07:48 How do we build up, uh, protections and, and address health
1:07:52 concerns while starting our fall athletic program?
1:07:56 So our second consideration is that Florida high school, uh,
1:07:59 athletic association kind of, kind of said, listen, as long as
1:08:03 you play within some time period, we’re going to allow your
1:08:07 teams to be qualified for the state athletic series.
1:08:10 So we wanted to make sure we stayed within the parameters that
1:08:13 our students could still be competitive within the sports, uh,
1:08:16 the state series.
1:08:18 And, and that’s important for a lot of reasons, but none of
1:08:22 which is that least among them is that, uh, it will allow our
1:08:26 students to be seen, uh, on a competitive stage against, um,
1:08:30 some of the, some of the best in the state.
1:08:31 And we wanted to make sure that that happened.
1:08:32 It’s not going to surprise you, um, that not third on our list,
1:08:38 but one of the other areas that we really wanted to pay
1:08:43 attention to was costs.
1:08:45 Uh, we had a big board workshop.
1:08:47 Um, it seems like a lifetime ago, but I, I think it was maybe
1:08:51 six months ago about the rising cost of, uh, our athletics,
1:08:55 including a rising cost for our officials.
1:08:57 Uh, right. Some of some other contract language has increased
1:09:01 how much it costs to run a sports, uh, program.
1:09:04 So we really tried to look at ways to minimize, minimize the
1:09:07 cost going into this year, as well as how do we minimize health
1:09:12 and safety concerns.
1:09:14 So, uh, so that was the third thing.
1:09:17 And then the last thing is that we really, really, really wanted
1:09:21 to allow our students to continue to participate in sports.
1:09:26 Uh, in a way that was safe and healthy in a way that we can
1:09:30 mitigate risks in a way that we could, um, control as much as we
1:09:35 could for the unknown.
1:09:37 And when we get to kind of the end of the presentation, I’ll
1:09:39 talk to you a little bit about, you know, things that we’re
1:09:42 doing and concerns moving forward.
1:09:44 Because the last thing we want is for athletics to impact
1:09:48 instruction.
1:09:49 Uh, and, and I have to be honest and frank and say that there’s
1:09:51 a possibility that that’s going to happen.
1:09:54 And I’ll talk about that at the very end.
1:09:56 So how is this presentation set up?
1:09:59 Um, in each of the fall sports, uh, you’re going to see a facing
1:10:03 slide that talks about the stages.
1:10:05 So stage one talks about, um, when we had very small groups, we
1:10:08 had less than 10 in a group.
1:10:10 Um, that was right up until this today, the 25th, right up until
1:10:14 today for, uh, for football.
1:10:17 And then we wanted to provide them about a week to two weeks to
1:10:21 work in some larger groups, still less than 50, still
1:10:26 controlling the movement of, uh, equipment, still really making
1:10:30 sure there’s not physical contact.
1:10:33 We are building up as we go into the school year.
1:10:36 And then as we go into stage three in every single sport, you’re
1:10:39 going to see, it looks like the full FHSAA practice.
1:10:43 It’s full, full contact, full pads, full equipment.
1:10:46 However, we are still minimizing the teams to the, the minimum
1:10:51 limit for FHSAA.
1:10:53 Um, it, it does mean that some students may not have the ability
1:10:56 to participate in sports, uh, as we, as we have in the past in
1:11:02 that we’re not fielding teams of 60 kids on football.
1:11:05 We’re minimum requirements, 50 kids.
1:11:08 That’s what we’re fielding.
1:11:09 So again, each fall sport is going to have a facing page and
1:11:13 each sport is then going to just have a page that talks about
1:11:16 what their divisions look like.
1:11:19 So some of them are divided up into, uh, division one and
1:11:23 division two based on both ability and crosstown rivals and
1:11:26 minimizing travel.
1:11:28 Uh, and some of them are divided into north and south.
1:11:31 And so that was the work of our athletic directors and some of
1:11:34 our coaches that got together and had those conversations.
1:11:38 And you’ll see to the right, um, that we tried to maximize the
1:11:41 number of games that we could play in the time that we had
1:11:44 available.
1:11:45 Uh, and in each one you’re going to see that it is in county
1:11:49 games only.
1:11:50 Um, just as a reminder, we do have a return to school plan.
1:11:54 The return to school plan was really super specific about things.
1:11:57 And when those things were already in place, we used those
1:12:00 things for our athletic program.
1:12:02 So no visitors, no visitors, no out of county field trips, no
1:12:06 out of county athletic trips.
1:12:09 Um, this is actually, as I’m even looking at this PDF, there was
1:12:13 a change to this PDF that is not accounted for here.
1:12:17 And it says no JV to be played.
1:12:19 We are playing JV.
1:12:20 So that I apologize should have been taken off of there.
1:12:23 We are playing JV.
1:12:24 We have that scheduled.
1:12:25 We’re good to go on that.
1:12:27 Um, parents don’t panic.
1:12:28 I’ll make sure when we upload this to, uh, the board website
1:12:31 that it gets corrected.
1:12:33 So again, I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time.
1:12:37 You see volleyball has the facing page, then the division page,
1:12:41 and it is the same with all the sports, golf, swimming, diving,
1:12:44 cross country, and bowling.
1:12:46 Um, I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time on individual
1:12:48 sports because I know everybody has their own sport they’re
1:12:50 looking at, and it’s just going to be easier for you to dive in
1:12:57 and pull this off of the website and to look at it.
1:13:04 Um, I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time on individual
1:13:07 sports because I know everybody has their own sport they’re
1:13:10 looking at, and it’s just going to be easier for you to dive in
1:13:13 and pull this off of the website and to look at it.
1:13:15 Again, the only change is there is JV, uh, JV sports in, uh, in
1:13:20 the, in the sports that have that.
1:13:24 So here’s what I just want to spend a little bit of time on.
1:13:29 Uh, we are still holding to universal precautions, and this is
1:13:32 really itty bitty tiny print, um, but I, none of this is going
1:13:36 to surprise anybody that’s watched any of our presentations.
1:13:40 Um, what we try to do is decrease exposure as much as possible
1:13:44 and increase the protections that we can give kids.
1:13:49 A great example of that would be that when you are indoors
1:13:53 having a team meeting, we are following the return to school
1:13:58 mandate of school face, uh, of face coverings.
1:14:00 And if you are not able to, uh, socially distance.
1:14:03 So the things in here are not going to surprise you.
1:14:07 Um, again, the last two bullets are probably the ones that we’ve
1:14:11 had the most people write us about.
1:14:14 And, and want, want to see, um, want an explanation of.
1:14:18 And the explanation of it’s part of our return to school plan.
1:14:21 No visitors, no out of county travel.
1:14:27 Uh, continuing we are going to ask players and coaches and, uh,
1:14:31 and officials to screen.
1:14:34 This is an extracurricular activity.
1:14:36 They are choosing to be there.
1:14:38 And so we are making sure that they are healthy as they
1:14:40 participate.
1:14:42 Uh, face coverings we already spoke about.
1:14:46 Um, as you see, there’s going to be some things in there that
1:14:49 you, that you think, well, I can see how that works in, you know,
1:14:53 in golf or bowling, but I don’t see how that works in football.
1:14:57 And so what’s really important to know is that our athletic
1:14:59 directors are getting together.
1:15:01 What day is that?
1:15:02 What?
1:15:03 Tomorrow.
1:15:04 They are getting together tomorrow and they’re going to start,
1:15:07 uh, looking at each of these sections and do some, uh, very
1:15:11 sports specific guidelines.
1:15:13 So for example, uh, face coverings on sidelines, I had a, uh,
1:15:18 principal call me today and say, Chris, I think we have, I think
1:15:21 we have a solution for that.
1:15:23 You know, we’re going to get those ones that are worn around the
1:15:25 neck and the kids are going to pull them up and pull them down.
1:15:28 And they’re not going to leave their face coverings on the, uh,
1:15:30 on the sidelines and they’re not, and they’re going to have them
1:15:34 available.
1:15:34 And they’re the only ones that are going to touch them.
1:15:36 Um, so schools are already thinking through these mitigating, uh,
1:15:40 factors that, that could protect them.
1:15:42 Uh, as much as possible.
1:15:43 So, um, continuing on to sidelines and benches, just like I said,
1:15:49 it’s not going to surprise you to hear.
1:15:52 We want the, the least amount of people standing on the sidelines
1:15:56 as we can possibly get, uh, that we want to make sure that they’re
1:15:59 cleaned and that they’re not sharing equipment.
1:16:01 You know, these are the little things that we can do that could
1:16:05 help mitigate, uh, the transmission of, of really, for those of
1:16:12 you who have been in, in, uh, athletics for a long time, you
1:16:17 know, wrestling season doesn’t come and go without kids getting,
1:16:19 uh, ringworm.
1:16:20 Uh, some of these protections that we have in place should,
1:16:23 should probably be in place all the time anyway.
1:16:26 Um, because I imagine we could avoid a lot of, a lot of
1:16:28 infection and illness if we did it.
1:16:31 And so I think that we’re starting a great precedence for future
1:16:34 or future needs.
1:16:36 Uh, locker rooms.
1:16:38 Um, we are going to make sure that those are clean and sanitized
1:16:40 daily and that we are going to be looking at those high touch
1:16:43 surfaces.
1:16:44 None of this is new.
1:16:45 This is all part of the reopening plan.
1:16:48 Um, locker room etiquette.
1:16:50 We had a couple of phone calls saying, um, well, I really want
1:16:53 my child to be able to shower and, and dress.
1:16:56 Uh, you know, they’re going to be able to do that.
1:16:59 We’re discouraging that.
1:17:01 it if they are able we would much rather than go home use their
1:17:05 shower at home you
1:17:07 know leave their dirty clothes and sweaty clothes at home but we
1:17:10 do
1:17:11 understand that you know for example cross-country runs early in
1:17:14 the morning
1:17:14 and they’re probably going to want to avail themselves of the
1:17:19 locker room
1:17:20 facilities before they go on to school so it’s available just
1:17:23 discouraged but we
1:17:25 do want to make sure that our coaches are really monitoring how
1:17:28 many people are
1:17:28 going in and using those things travel I have spoken about we
1:17:36 are going to follow
1:17:37 the same bus transportation guidelines as we have in the return
1:17:41 to school plan and
1:17:42 I think that could be everybody’s kind of kind of running
1:17:45 through their head as we
1:17:47 start talking about athletic decisions the very first document
1:17:51 that we go back to
1:17:52 is what does it say in the return to school plan we can’t have
1:17:55 one rule for
1:17:55 for instruction and another rule for athletics a game day staff
1:18:00 we wanted to
1:18:01 make sure that our officials understood that when they come on
1:18:05 to our campuses and
1:18:05 they are working with us that we hold them to the same standards
1:18:08 that we do our
1:18:09 coaches and our kids and our venues are going to be oh there it
1:18:16 is our venues we
1:18:17 wanted to make sure to take care of letting our cheerleaders our
1:18:20 dance teams our mascots all know
1:18:22 they’re welcome but they are not welcome in the small area in
1:18:26 which our players are
1:18:28 are our to be so for example on a sideline there’s a box along
1:18:33 the football sideline and the players have to stay in that box
1:18:35 we don’t need any extra people in there we don’t need we don’t
1:18:35 need the cheerleaders in there we don’t need we don’t need
1:18:35 anybody else in there so we’re going to make sure that that that
1:18:35 we practice social distancing as best we can on the sidelines as
1:18:35 well
1:18:35 venues are going to be filled to 25% capacity and schools are
1:18:42 going to be monitoring that and figuring that out we are going
1:18:42 to ask spectators who come to a test that they are
1:18:42 don’t need we don’t need anybody else in there so we’re going to
1:18:45 make sure that that that we practice
1:18:47 social distancing as best we can on the sidelines as well venues
1:18:51 are going to be filled to 25 capacity
1:18:55 and schools are going to be monitoring that and figuring that
1:18:58 out we are going to ask spectators
1:19:00 who come to a test that they are they are answering the covid
1:19:04 verbal screening questions
1:19:07 they these questions will be posted at each venue we are asking
1:19:12 spectators to wear face coverings
1:19:15 we are telling spectators they are not allowed on the fields
1:19:20 during the during events before or after
1:19:23 the events and if they are congregating in a small area we are
1:19:27 asking them to move away from one another
1:19:30 in those areas just like some other events that we have had we
1:19:36 are asking our spectators to practice
1:19:39 social distancing in the stands they can stay with their direct
1:19:42 family parties but other than that we
1:19:44 want them to be social distancing and we are going to make sure
1:19:48 that there’s signage about that so like
1:19:51 andrew said we are going to have a sports specific guideline
1:19:54 meeting starting tomorrow and we believe
1:19:57 we have all the right people in the room for that oh this is the
1:20:02 wrong i sent the right powerpoint slide
1:20:06 and then no let me correct i sent the wrong powerpoint slide
1:20:08 which is this one and then i sent the
1:20:10 right powerpoint slide and then i opened the wrong one um so i
1:20:14 do we do have marching band guidelines
1:20:16 uh the one that i will send you will make sure that you have
1:20:19 that so that you are able to see what
1:20:21 the marching band guidelines are in fact i think the one i sent
1:20:23 you had the right one the marching band
1:20:25 guidelines finally the middle school i’ve had a lot of questions
1:20:30 about middle school andrew’s
1:20:31 been working with the athletic directors for the past two days
1:20:36 they we now have 16 athletic middle
1:20:38 school athletic directors that have 100 consensus on what the
1:20:42 plan is so we’re going to be bringing
1:20:45 that to dr mullins tomorrow and i’m sure he’ll be sharing it out
1:20:49 to you but what i really wanted to
1:20:51 end with was the work that our coaches and our athletic
1:20:56 directors have to do so as many of you
1:21:01 are aware as well as having athletics fall under student
1:21:05 services so so too does the department of
1:21:07 health and much of our covid response and so we have been
1:21:14 actively involved in what it looks like when
1:21:18 we have a case what it looks like when we have a contact to a
1:21:22 case and the impact that it might
1:21:24 have on our buildings and so what what is absolutely essential
1:21:30 is that our coaches can tell us
1:21:33 who’s playing and where and when our athletic directors are able
1:21:40 to get that information to us
1:21:42 quickly and that our parents when their children are ill don’t
1:21:47 send them to school or when there is a case
1:21:51 in the home they don’t send them to school when you talk about a
1:21:57 case in a school
1:22:01 our schools have been set up to really minimize the impact of
1:22:06 that case on the school if if they’re
1:22:10 practicing social distancing and we have a case in the school
1:22:14 one or two kids might be impacted
1:22:16 if we’re following all of our guidelines it might be more
1:22:20 depending on what kind of activities are going
1:22:23 on in that school or or the type of class but when you’re
1:22:27 talking about sports one student is going to
1:22:31 impact 20 to 30 to 50 students and so everything that we put in
1:22:38 place is to minimize that from happening
1:22:43 but one student showing up for the good of the team one parent
1:22:47 wanting to see their child play in a crosstown
1:22:51 rival game will shut a program down for a minimum of three weeks
1:22:56 two weeks for quarantine and one week
1:22:58 for conditioning and so it behooves all of our parents all of
1:23:02 our coaches all of our athletic directors
1:23:05 to really understand that the pieces that were put into place
1:23:10 were put into place in order to keep kids
1:23:15 playing and safe and healthy but most okay healthy is most
1:23:21 important but second to that is to keep our
1:23:25 schools open and running and instructing because those 20 to 30
1:23:31 to 40 athletes who are impacted are
1:23:35 also students in our buildings and they will be quarantined from
1:23:40 instruction they will be home
1:23:42 and we will end up waiting to see if there’s a breakthrough case
1:23:47 which could possibly close a school
1:23:50 so we take these things very seriously i’ve spoken to the
1:23:54 athletic directors about taking it all very
1:23:57 seriously and i know based on their reaction that they do based
1:24:01 on the work they did over the summer that
1:24:04 they do and i think that’s i i don’t want to want to stop this
1:24:10 presentation on a negative note but i think
1:24:14 it’s actually positive that our coaches and our our principals
1:24:18 and our athletic directors understand the
1:24:22 trust that our community has put in them and have stepped up to
1:24:25 that plate and we will continue to
1:24:28 monitor that and address each issue as it arises and make sure
1:24:32 that we are protecting the safety and health of
1:24:35 our our whole community by doing so
1:24:38 thank you so much miss moore any board members have questions or
1:24:43 comments miss mcdougall
1:24:45 well first i want to thank you and all of our athletic directors
1:24:49 and our coaches because i have been
1:24:50 communicating with them at various times so thank you very much
1:24:54 could you please once again tell our
1:24:56 community where they will find this information i just want to
1:25:00 make sure that they because i have
1:25:02 people say i can’t find something so if you could just again let
1:25:05 our community know where to find this
1:25:07 well sure as soon as i make sure i have the right one we’ll be
1:25:11 posting it on our student services page
1:25:13 right now it’s going to be just posted on the board agenda and
1:25:16 then we’re going to be posting it on the
1:25:18 student services page so if you go to the student services page
1:25:21 we’ll make sure it’s up front and
1:25:22 center on that page i know that one of the things andrew said on
1:25:26 his first day here was how come i don’t
1:25:28 have an athletics page and i said i don’t know why don’t you
1:25:32 make one so i know that that’s in his list
1:25:35 unfortunately we’ve kept him really hopping since his first day
1:25:40 here so as soon as he gets a little
1:25:42 breathing room he’ll he’ll he’s going to add an athletic page
1:25:45 attached to our student services page
1:25:47 right thank you can we also ask miss hensley to post that on the
1:25:50 covid um
1:25:56 and i know for a fact she has the right one so that’s good
1:26:03 uh mr susan i think you had questions for miss moore yeah thank
1:26:09 you so much for the time i i really
1:26:11 appreciate it um you did kind of skip over the marching band
1:26:15 guidelines can you since the public’s
1:26:17 watching can you kind of walk us through that yes if you let me
1:26:21 load that yeah yeah yeah i don’t know
1:26:23 if you just want to do it from a 30 000 listen there’s so much
1:26:25 going through this brain right
1:26:27 now i try not to store any of it
1:26:32 in the interim while miss moore is pulling up the additional um
1:26:35 powerpoint presentation andrew i would
1:26:39 just like to say welcome very much to the team and thank you for
1:26:42 not turning around and running when
1:26:44 you realize the uh insane time that you were joining that
1:26:47 particular team we appreciate all that you’re
1:26:50 doing because we certainly do understand the impact of athletics
1:26:54 to our ability to educate students as a
1:26:56 whole and so we appreciate all the support that you’re giving to
1:26:59 our school-based athletic directors
1:27:01 and coaches and making sure that we can do this as safely as
1:27:03 possible thank you so very much
1:27:05 andrew that’s all great what she just said but is that an fsu
1:27:08 mask you’re wearing
1:27:09 okay that’s that’s much better than everything she just said
1:27:13 thank you
1:27:14 the priorities i think that was his introduction introduction to
1:27:18 dr uh mullins as well so um i’m
1:27:21 going to slow down and talk about marching band a little bit
1:27:24 thank you for for forcing me to go back
1:27:25 in and it’s it is in the presentation so as some of you guys um
1:27:31 who have had students in band know
1:27:33 not all of them want to march but they all have to march it is
1:27:38 part of the curriculum of band and so
1:27:42 this year and this year only marching is going to be optional
1:27:47 for students we don’t want parents
1:27:49 to get used to that it is part of the program it is part of the
1:27:52 curriculum it is the expectation but
1:27:54 for this year and this year only band directors in consultation
1:27:58 with their principals will have
1:27:59 the opportunity to consult about their level of participation
1:28:02 meaning how many kids are going
1:28:05 to go out onto the field or not how many kids are how many
1:28:08 performances they’re going to do or not
1:28:11 every single band program is different and some are going to be
1:28:15 heavily you know they may have a great
1:28:19 drum section and they may want to do go everywhere because drum
1:28:23 is safe and you know there’s no
1:28:24 respiratory droplets in drum and so they’re going to work on a
1:28:28 different program than maybe a school
1:28:30 that has a heavy horn section and and i’ve just pretty much
1:28:33 exhausted my knowledge of musical instruments
1:28:37 so jump in anytime you want you did pretty good um we are going
1:28:43 to maintain social distancing guidelines
1:28:45 per the instrument used um our new music person i don’t know
1:28:50 that she’s been introduced introduced to
1:28:52 you guys her name is minnie or she uh yes oh there you go great
1:28:58 choice uh she’s wonderful i will tell
1:29:01 you uh she came down to my office she was smart she was decisive
1:29:06 she was on it uh she had great feedback
1:29:08 from the band directors and uh it most of this the vast majority
1:29:13 that came from recommendations from the band
1:29:16 directors uh so she has been using the uc boulder study uh for
1:29:20 determining what the guidelines are going
1:29:23 to be per instrument and so um that has already been shared with
1:29:27 our marching bands
1:29:29 each school is going to have to determine how they’re sitting
1:29:32 and performing in the stands you know
1:29:34 some bands are really um bigger than others uh and they may want
1:29:38 to be in the stands some are may want
1:29:41 to be on the field some may want to come out and perform and
1:29:44 leave so you know it’s hard for us
1:29:46 to dictate that from on high and and so we want our band
1:29:48 directors to work with our schools in determining
1:29:51 that um although volunteers are prohibited with the reopening
1:29:56 plan um we do ask that our our teams have
1:29:59 a chaperone of of one two i think it’s one to ten if my memory
1:30:03 serves me correctly um because these kids
1:30:06 are going to be in the stands and they do need to be i mean they’re
1:30:09 lovely band kids are lovely but you
1:30:11 know all kids when they get together need a little supervision
1:30:16 and so we are going to allow chaperones for
1:30:18 those events um listen i don’t know what protective coverings
1:30:24 for bells of brass and woodwind instruments
1:30:27 are but many did and so we will make sure that uh that we use
1:30:32 those uh we will ask that marching bands
1:30:35 wear masks at all times when uh when playing wind instruments
1:30:39 when social distancing is not possible
1:30:41 again mr susan i have no idea what that looks like but many
1:30:44 seemed certain that it could happen and i
1:30:47 trust her um band directors will work with principals on the
1:30:51 schedule for custodial services because as you
1:30:54 guys know when a band performs at um at a halftime show they
1:30:59 they they take up you know the band room
1:31:02 the chorus room the hallway and then they’re out at the football
1:31:05 game the entire time and they may
1:31:07 still be in those same rooms at 11 p.m so we really want our
1:31:11 band directors to work with our principals to
1:31:13 say i need uh custodial staff you know to be in here first thing
1:31:17 monday morning because i’m going to have
1:31:19 kids in here first thing monday morning and so we have asked for
1:31:22 that to happen um we do know that bans
1:31:25 run concession uh we wanted them to be able to continue to do so
1:31:30 if they desire to do so but we do want
1:31:32 them to coordinate with bps food services uh to determine if
1:31:35 there’s any new food safety guidelines
1:31:37 period at the end of that sentence um and bands will not be
1:31:43 going to away games and that was by
1:31:46 consensus with the band directors so that’s what we have right
1:31:50 now for band i will tell you that with
1:31:52 all things covid and i consider this covid as we get into it we
1:31:57 discover things that we missed things
1:31:59 that we forgot things that we have to ruminate on this was no
1:32:02 different we put this out and immediately
1:32:04 i got a text that said hey what about middle school sports and i
1:32:07 acted like i remembered uh and then i
1:32:10 said hey listen we’re on it we’re on it we’re talking about it
1:32:13 tomorrow and we did and we were and we
1:32:15 have a plan ready to go by tomorrow awesome so um i had a quick
1:32:20 question because this came up and part
1:32:22 of the discussion was if i’m a coach that’s normally on board at
1:32:27 the band and i’m not paid are we
1:32:29 allowing sometimes like on football we had coaches that
1:32:33 literally were just great guys they said hey i
1:32:35 don’t need to take a supplement they’d been there 10 years um
1:32:39 and i’m sure it’s the same way in the
1:32:40 band are we allowing that to be the chaperone uh chaperone is
1:32:44 determined by the band
1:32:45 director as it fits within our district security guidelines okay
1:32:48 and then um in the event that
1:32:50 there’s a way that say the the say that the issue is is that and
1:32:55 i’m just speaking out one of the
1:32:57 things we used to do was you could take and divide your um
1:33:01 supplements i think so like if i’m a if you
1:33:03 wanted to give uh two coaches on the freshman staff you could
1:33:07 give them a one of the freshman supplements
1:33:09 and divide it in half maybe would that signify if they wanted to
1:33:13 divide one of the supplements
1:33:14 to allow more people to be a part of the band i would have to
1:33:17 refer that question to dr thetty
1:33:19 okay but that is the sign i guess that’s the difference is that
1:33:21 you’re saying that unless
1:33:22 they’re paid they’re out but if they are paid a supplement that
1:33:25 they can be a part of the band
1:33:27 well they’re really i don’t want to get into supplements but i i
1:33:33 they’re they they they do have
1:33:36 a supplement for an assistant band director and for a band
1:33:39 director but oftentimes what they’re paying in
1:33:42 band is not a supplement it’s a stipend based on um instrument
1:33:46 and and they they pay somebody to come
1:33:48 in and just trying to figure out a way it’s not a supplement
1:33:51 through our hr yeah sorry i i just thought
1:33:53 of that while you were doing that and then the decisions left up
1:33:56 to the school on what they want
1:33:57 to put on their field what they want to do that’s all up to the
1:34:00 school and from what i’m sounding like
1:34:01 it sounds like there’s only going to be one band that actually
1:34:04 plays at every game because the visiting
1:34:06 team’s no longer going to be traveling that is correct okay and
1:34:10 then um okay so that’s good on
1:34:11 marching band um now we all know that 25 is going to reduce the
1:34:16 cost and we’re going to be in a
1:34:17 financial need for our athletic programs and we know that
1:34:21 football pays for all the other athletic
1:34:23 programs dr mullins you want to speak to where we’re going with
1:34:26 that yes i’ve already met with miss
1:34:27 more and we’re looking at uh analyzing gate receipts from past
1:34:31 years and the projected costs of this
1:34:35 season because it’s shorter and truncated and not as
1:34:38 comprehensive so we’re doing an analysis to
1:34:40 determine what assistance our teams would would need to
1:34:44 accommodate this season got it and then
1:34:48 what time would that just as an idea maybe you don’t have an
1:34:51 answer but i know that a lot of the
1:34:53 operational needs of each one of these athletic programs is
1:34:57 pretty quick right so if there’s any
1:35:00 way to make those decisions based upon the need of the schools
1:35:03 um on what they’re going to get you know
1:35:05 what i mean that would be good too well just as a reminder all
1:35:08 of our schools start off without
1:35:10 those gates so they are they’re they’re operating now as they
1:35:15 always have on last year’s funds so
1:35:17 they’re not starting behind other than they wouldn’t have had
1:35:21 spring uh gate right but as you said spring
1:35:25 gate doesn’t drive athletic programs it’s fall gate absolutely
1:35:28 so yeah they’re they’re they’re not
1:35:30 operating from behind right now but they will be as they move
1:35:33 into the winter sports one of the issues
1:35:36 though that i would i would i would bring to the attention is
1:35:38 that they haven’t been able to fundraise at
1:35:40 all and our booster clubs are the ones that drive the cost i
1:35:43 mean if we look at the athletic budget
1:35:46 and the gate as a percentage of what the athletics and
1:35:49 activities are playing it’s a small fraction of
1:35:51 what they go and fundraise for right and they haven’t been able
1:35:54 to fundraise at all so literally
1:35:55 they’re flatlined right now um programs everything so i know
1:35:59 that in a normal environment we would wait
1:36:01 until the gates and everything else but there is a sense of
1:36:04 urgency and i know andrew you know about
1:36:06 that and everything else and i’m sure those athletic directors
1:36:09 they’re like the somali war
1:36:10 lords i know that they they make their issues won’t they need it
1:36:13 but if it’s a board um i i would say
1:36:16 that that would be an issue for me um and then 25 are we
1:36:19 sticking there or is there like a metric that
1:36:22 says that we can open it to 50 i had some questions on that i
1:36:25 didn’t know what your thoughts were there
1:36:27 um just like the reopening plan we’re going to be evaluating it
1:36:30 at the semester okay so each semester
1:36:32 it might be an opportunity or throughout hey where we can move
1:36:35 open up okay um and then the temperature
1:36:38 checks was interesting do they are they allowed to opt out of
1:36:41 that or is that something that they they’re
1:36:43 forced to do yeah this is an extracurricular activity so they
1:36:46 are choosing to participate as
1:36:48 opposed to uh a school which they are mandated by uh state law
1:36:52 to participate in okay so yeah we are
1:36:54 doing temperature checks okay and then you were right about when
1:36:57 you talked about the ringworm from fsu
1:37:00 all right um i’m sorry when you talked about the ringworm fsu
1:37:04 said fsu said what they had said was
1:37:06 they have not done anything in the last eight years differently
1:37:10 to deal with the the covet they are
1:37:12 doing the exact same thing that they’ve done in the past so i i
1:37:15 did want to say that that you’re 100
1:37:17 right but it brings me to the other level is is that we need to
1:37:20 make sure because i know that the i i i
1:37:23 mean ringworm staff everything that’s inside those things some
1:37:26 of these kids don’t wash their uniforms for
1:37:28 like weeks and they i mean are we going to be able to allow them
1:37:33 as part of the covid revenue to
1:37:36 purchase the cleaning and the sanitizing and all the stuff that
1:37:38 they need inside there are we allowing the
1:37:40 athletic teams covet money for those sanitation um needs we did
1:37:46 not budget that okay but that doesn’t
1:37:48 mean that we can’t look at it with new funds do you need
1:37:51 anything do we need to have a discussion
1:37:54 because i when i was when i was looking at that that seemed like
1:37:57 one of the areas that was a cause for
1:37:59 concern for me was them not having the needs and and things that
1:38:02 they have inside that room to sanitize
1:38:05 because those kids coming in one of the things that fsu does is
1:38:08 that they use a mr and everything else
1:38:10 yeah i want to clarify i’m sorry and i don’t mean to interrupt
1:38:13 because i was in in my brain i was
1:38:15 still on the dirty laundry piece um but yes they we actually did
1:38:20 um budget for additional cleaning
1:38:22 supplies for sports uh we matter of fact the way we even figured
1:38:28 out how much to how many thermometers
1:38:31 to give and how many was based on kind of sports and what was
1:38:34 happening in the summer so yeah they they
1:38:37 do have supplies i imagine they’re going to need more supplies
1:38:39 the schools have gotten uh a separate
1:38:42 budget and again we just got some additional cares act money um
1:38:47 that that may or may not i don’t know
1:38:49 where we’re at with that when does that do um dr sullivan do you
1:38:52 know
1:38:56 i she’s she’s she’s she’s not happy with me i’m sorry dr sullivan
1:39:01 i didn’t i didn’t mean to giving
1:39:02 her an evil eye that she is i’m so sorry um so the cleaning
1:39:07 allocations and supplies were by schools
1:39:11 primarily by classrooms and by space and so we would expect that
1:39:16 all schools would use their general um
1:39:19 um covid related things in spaces like weight rooms and things
1:39:23 like that because that’s part of the
1:39:25 school experience and so there was not an extra allocation for
1:39:30 athletics um in out of our cares act
1:39:33 because it was not designed that way the cares act was primarily
1:39:37 for resuming school
1:39:39 um separately we did receive uh cares act number five a week ago
1:39:46 that was designed to offset the doe’s over
1:39:52 expectation that much of ppe could be reimbursed by fema um last
1:39:58 thursday they recognized last thursday
1:40:02 dr mollins they recognized that they overstated that and
1:40:07 basically were wrong and so we received a much
1:40:12 smaller allocation right now our bps allocation is about 771 000
1:40:18 and i have about 1.6 million already
1:40:22 encumbered and so basically we’ll be moving some of what we
1:40:26 expected from fema reimbursement over to
1:40:30 the care’s act number five um which we are affectionately
1:40:34 calling the cpr fund um but that’s going to
1:40:38 really offset some of what we’ve already purchased um that i’m
1:40:42 sorry one more that being said uh miss
1:40:45 more is correct the schools were given um individual allocations
1:40:49 to buy additional supplies and we’ve
1:40:51 bought tons of them and wanted to remind you that each school
1:40:55 did get a mister and so there would be no
1:40:58 reason why that school shouldn’t use those mister in those
1:41:01 common spaces like the band rooms and the
1:41:03 locker rooms and things like that so those spaces aren’t
1:41:06 excluded in our mind they’re part of the
1:41:08 school so um we would expect them to be using those misters
1:41:12 quite regularly in those large common spaces
1:41:15 thank you yeah because when we we had an outbreak at space coast
1:41:18 and we decided that we were this was
1:41:20 not an outbreak of covid but back in the day we had staff and we
1:41:23 had some other stuff and the coaches
1:41:25 we’re using buckets of bleach and it rusted out all the clips as
1:41:28 long as we’re not going that route and
1:41:29 a lot of them have the available things that they need to do it
1:41:32 properly i mean i commend you so i
1:41:35 just wanted to say although dr sullivan gave me the evil eye i
1:41:37 think it should be said um she has borne
1:41:40 the the heavy load of the cares act uh and the next cares and
1:41:45 the next cares and the next cares and
1:41:48 nobody knows it better than she does so i defer to her expertise
1:41:52 um she has been outstanding awesome
1:41:55 and then i think one of the things that i noticed is that when i
1:41:58 was coaching before some of the kids
1:42:00 um just for something to keep an eye on some of the kids that
1:42:03 was the only shower they got
1:42:06 and they they they needed that you know so um if we don’t make
1:42:10 it so hard on them some of those kids
1:42:13 that’s all that went before they go home you know they bring
1:42:15 their clothes so just something to think
1:42:17 about and then i’d also like possibly in the next school board
1:42:20 meeting to talk about the media
1:42:22 i would like to talk about what access that looks like and
1:42:25 everything else because we have
1:42:28 some really good programs all the way from florida today and
1:42:31 other options that would like to cover some
1:42:32 of our sports and being the fact that now 25 aren’t out there we
1:42:36 need to give them as many options as
1:42:37 possible that’s all so just something to think about and i’m
1:42:40 good and i want to say thank you for
1:42:42 everything that you put together um thanks for keeping our kids
1:42:45 playing and trying to come up with
1:42:47 options to keep them safe thank you
1:42:48 thank you mr susan any other miss campbell so first of all since
1:42:55 the question was asked how do you
1:42:58 you know how is band going to work i’ll just tell you that i
1:43:00 just got a text from my daughter a little
1:43:02 while ago hey mom on the way home can you pick up some hosiery
1:43:05 to go over the end of my instrument
1:43:06 so and then our band directors are being very creative and
1:43:10 having um mothers and and families
1:43:13 bill i’m excited mothers could be fathers too families so little
1:43:16 um bags to put your clarinet and
1:43:21 saxophone in it’s very interesting you should google it’s it’s
1:43:25 wild oh and also mom i need a mask that i
1:43:27 can cut a slit in so i can play my instrument through the slit
1:43:30 so they’re getting very creative and all
1:43:32 that is based off that the boulder study um has been waking its
1:43:35 way around all the music rooms so
1:43:37 thank you um i don’t necessarily have a question but i just want
1:43:43 to add to what you said i i very much
1:43:46 appreciate the um the athletic directors and the coaches taking
1:43:50 this seriously i just want to put out
1:43:52 the challenge to our students and families um because the truth
1:43:57 is there is what we must do as a district
1:43:59 which is educate kids and there’s what we don’t really have to
1:44:02 do which is athletics and but it is
1:44:07 very important you know i’m i’m a band orchestra choir mom but
1:44:12 those are extracurriculars as well and i
1:44:15 understand the value of our kids belongings and learning the
1:44:19 team and adulting and all kinds of
1:44:21 things that they learn and so but i just you know we’ve we’ve i’ve
1:44:25 had some comments oh hey well if
1:44:27 the nba and the nfl and ncaa well let’s just let’s just talk
1:44:30 about some numbers just so you know my
1:44:33 husband’s huge sports fan so he was a good resource for me the nba
1:44:36 is spending 150 million dollars to be in
1:44:38 their bubble in orlando the nfl has boatloads of money and they
1:44:43 have put their own testing site at
1:44:45 all 32 team sites and so they test every day and they test you
1:44:49 know and they’re going through all
1:44:52 that and making the results back immediately so you know money
1:44:56 right and and they’re adults and they
1:44:58 can they that’s our focus the ncaa i actually was really pleased
1:45:01 to see uh several interviews in the
1:45:03 last few weeks of some college athletes and coaches i won’t
1:45:07 mention the teams because i don’t know why
1:45:09 you to boo um but one of them was alabama um but who talked
1:45:14 about what they’re doing these athletes
1:45:17 want to play so badly they want this season to come off here in
1:45:21 the sec and the acc who are actually
1:45:22 having a season that they have said we go to class we go to
1:45:27 practice and we go home and they’re taking it
1:45:31 seriously because they want to play so bad they know how
1:45:34 seriously that how serious it is and so
1:45:36 they’re going to class they’re going to practice and they’re
1:45:38 going home and i’d like to think that
1:45:40 our high school athletes and our middle school athletes would
1:45:43 have the same level of seriousness
1:45:45 that’s a lot of faith so we’re going to take it’s going to take
1:45:50 our families to join them and the
1:45:51 other thing is our college athletes when they go when they say
1:45:54 they go home they they generally go
1:45:56 to live you know to their apartment where they live by
1:45:59 themselves or their dorm or they go to an
1:46:01 athletic dorm like ball players all live and study and work
1:46:04 together um they’re they’re not going
1:46:06 back to families who are all in general who are also going all
1:46:09 all different places so i just so that
1:46:12 our our athletes and our families really understand the impact
1:46:16 that they would have that could actually
1:46:18 shorten their season or eliminate it or you know worse have a
1:46:23 disruption to our our schools i we just i just
1:46:27 implore all our athletes and their families to take this
1:46:30 absolutely serious because we if we want to
1:46:32 have this we want to have it successfully it is going to be
1:46:36 dependent on their behavior not only
1:46:38 in practice and on the field but at home and so please take your
1:46:43 cue from our professional and college
1:46:45 level athletes and and just realize what you do outside of
1:46:49 school and outside of practice is greatly going to affect
1:46:54 how we do school and how we do practice and games and so i just
1:46:58 really want our families all the ones
1:47:00 who have contacted me i’ve tried to add that into my email if
1:47:03 there’s some i’ve got still sitting in
1:47:05 my inbox just say hey we need you we need you to help if this is
1:47:08 going to be successful you’ve got to be
1:47:10 on board so um but thank you thank you for the work that you
1:47:13 have done and your team and your
1:47:17 new protege here right for all things uh athletics and student
1:47:21 services um very much appreciate the
1:47:23 work that you’ve done thank you miss campbell anyone else have
1:47:27 questions comments for miss moore
1:47:29 i will just say thank you so very much i know that you have been
1:47:35 um been carrying a lot through this
1:47:39 and i know you’ve been very dedicated to making sure that we are
1:47:42 making the decisions that keep us as
1:47:44 safe as possible so we appreciate you thank you all right we are
1:47:50 now at public comments in response to
1:47:54 the coven 19 pandemic speakers could record comments through
1:47:57 advanced registration or maybe here in
1:47:58 person if we already have 30 public attendees inside the boardroom
1:48:02 additional speakers may be waiting
1:48:03 outside which i do not believe we do um so we have seven
1:48:09 speakers scheduled in person this evening and
1:48:13 then we have one recorded comment so our first three speakers
1:48:18 will be robert ray brian watts and anthony
1:48:20 calucci mr ray if you’d like to approach the microphone in the
1:48:23 center please sir
1:48:24 i’m robert ray i’m one of your substitute teachers and uh the
1:48:35 last time i was here i asked what can
1:48:37 we do to prepare better and uh dr city and her team prepared a
1:48:40 beautiful powerpoint presentation just in
1:48:43 time for us to uh start work anyway uh so thank you for that
1:48:47 powerpoint presentation it really helped out
1:48:50 uh i just thought i’d tell you a little bit about what happened
1:48:52 the last two days um i’m on an
1:48:54 extended ap history uh assignment over at coco beach high and uh
1:49:00 first of all my room it was really
1:49:02 fantastic uh there were 21 desks they were nicely placed apart
1:49:06 and i took a measurement of the room it was
1:49:09 30 by 30 so it was really good and it was more than adequate for
1:49:13 all the students that i had
1:49:14 and i was really pleased when i went in this morning everything
1:49:17 had been cleaned
1:49:18 very very nicely a few things had been moved but it was okay um
1:49:21 also the 90 minute blocks that they’re
1:49:25 doing for the secondary schools is really really a very
1:49:27 effective uh thing it’s really nice to be
1:49:30 able to stretch out an activity and you know for 90 minutes uh
1:49:33 as opposed to what usually happen
1:49:35 um the masks the kids have been fantastic about the masks um a
1:49:40 lot of peer pressure going on if
1:49:43 somebody doesn’t have their mask on like i don’t right now uh
1:49:45 the other kids will say hey you know
1:49:48 put your mask on which is really really good uh the sanitizers
1:49:51 there there’s sanitizers in my room
1:49:54 and i’m really uh i i i tell the kids to use them um i’m not so
1:49:58 certain that it’s really happening all
1:50:00 the way in in all of the areas of it i didn’t see much of it
1:50:04 anyway um as far as social distancing is
1:50:07 concerned uh very very good uh the kids really take uh take care
1:50:12 to taste it six feet apart and um
1:50:15 it’s really nice to be back thank you it’s been long since march
1:50:20 it’s just nice to be working with
1:50:21 kids again thank you thank you mr ray all right mr watts hi good
1:50:31 afternoon can i turn good afternoon
1:50:38 i recently applied for the substitute teacher position i’ve had
1:50:43 some issues with the process
1:50:46 uh just wanted to be clear that i i substituted in orlando so i
1:50:50 thought it’d be challenging
1:50:52 i’m not doing anything uh haven’t worked for a few years i’m
1:50:57 retired so it indicated that you needed
1:51:01 supervisor references and i was advised that was a statute uh i
1:51:08 had emails i traded with uh
1:51:12 beth fetty and then she had uh i also spoke with cordia patterson
1:51:20 so we got past the requirement for
1:51:24 supervisors the statute doesn’t say that but that’s fine so then
1:51:29 i had an issue with
1:51:31 i don’t have my high school diploma so i got a letter emailed to
1:51:36 me from my high school
1:51:38 in new york and that was not accepted so i understand you have a
1:51:43 shortage of substitutes
1:51:45 and i’m just advising you that you know the pay isn’t very high
1:51:50 i wasn’t doing it for the money but
1:51:52 you know these little challenges is going to make it difficult
1:51:55 for almost anybody so i’m retired for a
1:51:58 few years i was with the police department for over 30 years in
1:52:01 new york so even getting supervisor
1:52:03 references that wasn’t possible for that position so i’m just
1:52:06 saying this is what i’ve run into
1:52:09 so the application is probably going to list be listed as
1:52:12 incomplete i did the online
1:52:14 test all of that stuff so i just wanted to bring that to your
1:52:20 attention as well as
1:52:22 well for salaries i wasn’t doing it for the money but the salary
1:52:27 is just inadequate so i just wanted to
1:52:30 mention that since i was here and i saw your budget presentation
1:52:34 i will say that that is a little
1:52:38 concerning that you have an actual and a projected difference of
1:52:43 14 000 students so i think the
1:52:46 questions that some of you folks are raising are legitimate so i
1:52:51 hope the board and as wasn’t i didn’t
1:52:53 come here for this but i hope the board will be proactive and
1:52:56 when you get real numbers
1:52:59 i mean i think it’s a stretch to think you’re going to find 13
1:53:02 000 students so all i’m saying is
1:53:05 i know how budgeting works and you don’t want to wait till the
1:53:08 last minute you might want to start
1:53:10 planning because nobody likes surprises and i’m sure the
1:53:14 districts don’t i’m sure the students and
1:53:17 the teachers aren’t going to be happy either you know taxes are
1:53:20 fine i’m okay with taxes going up a
1:53:22 little bit but nobody likes surprises and i think that is a
1:53:25 little area of a concern thank you i appreciate
1:53:28 it thank you mr watts we appreciate you coming mr kalucci
1:53:41 my name is anthony kalucci i’m the president of the brevard federation
1:53:44 of teachers yesterday circuit
1:53:47 judge charles dodson granted the florida education association’s
1:53:51 motion for a temporary injunction
1:53:53 against florida education commissioner richard corcoran’s
1:53:56 executive order
1:53:57 in his decision the judge noted the order is unconstitutional to
1:54:02 the extent it arbitrarily
1:54:05 disregard safety denies local school boards decision making with
1:54:09 respect to reopening brick and mortar
1:54:11 schools and conditions funding on an approved reopening plan
1:54:14 with a start date in august
1:54:16 the judge noted that the evidence was clear that teachers want
1:54:20 to get back in school but teachers are
1:54:23 being told they must go back into the classroom in unsafe
1:54:26 conditions there are some signs that the spread
1:54:30 of covid in brevard is heading in the right direction and that
1:54:33 is good news however science tells
1:54:36 us with schools reopening our numbers are likely to start
1:54:39 heading in the wrong direction
1:54:41 while the case will continue to be argued in court i’m calling
1:54:46 on this board to direct staff to
1:54:48 start developing contingency plans that could offer more than
1:54:52 just brick and mortar or e-learning we
1:54:54 strongly believe that it is time for the board to have a staggered
1:54:58 schedule plan in place if we get to a
1:55:01 situation where this board can actually decide for itself
1:55:04 without the state threatening to take funding
1:55:07 a staggered schedule appears to be a way to offer mitigation
1:55:11 efforts such as social distancing bubbles
1:55:14 and contact tracing while still providing some face-to-face
1:55:18 instruction and the ability to meet
1:55:20 students social emotional and physical needs we asked that this
1:55:24 plan was developed months ago but it
1:55:26 was overshadowed by the governor and commissioner of education
1:55:30 bullying districts into five days a week of
1:55:33 brick and mortar do not wait develop this plan in case our
1:55:36 numbers start heading in the wrong direction
1:55:39 a neutral judge said five days a week disregard safety because
1:55:44 this board chose to comply with this order
1:55:47 it can be said that you’ve disregarded safety if fea ultimately
1:55:52 prevails in the lawsuit the brevard
1:55:54 county school board will not be able to point a finger at the
1:55:57 governor it will be solely your decision
1:56:00 that puts kids and staff in harm’s way while we are still in
1:56:04 brick and mortar five days a week i cannot stress
1:56:07 enough not only to our teachers but to our entire community do
1:56:11 not let your guards down we are smarter
1:56:14 than the virus but the virus is more patient than we are wear
1:56:18 your mask social distance proper practice
1:56:21 proper hygiene and stay home if you’re sick thank you thank you
1:56:25 mr kaluchi next up we have mr savage miss
1:56:28 skipper mr hilliard and then our last in-person speaker will be
1:56:33 laura de paul mr savage
1:56:45 we have uh did we get a wipe thank you
1:56:54 you can have my hand sanitizer when you’re done mr savage i made
1:57:01 it worse sorry doctor
1:57:04 you can have my hand sanitizer when you’re done um i really
1:57:10 appreciate it
1:57:10 um i really appreciate it it’s going to make this more
1:57:12 uncomfortable now
1:57:12 thank you miss belford thank you the board thank you dr mullins
1:57:19 i needed that um i just want to
1:57:23 start out by saying my two sons started school yesterday at capeview
1:57:26 elementary and i felt like a
1:57:29 kindergarten parent all over again i was nervous that they were
1:57:32 going to be safe i was nervous that
1:57:34 they were going to have a good time i was nervous that they were
1:57:37 going to want to go back tomorrow
1:57:40 so i just want to give a huge shout out to our teachers in brevard
1:57:43 because they made my kids have
1:57:45 a wonderful day i didn’t know what to do on tuesday they knew
1:57:49 they want to go back to school
1:57:50 and because of our teachers and i know that this didn’t happen
1:57:53 in two classrooms that happened in
1:57:55 classrooms all throughout brevard so a huge shout out to our
1:57:58 teachers i know elementary leading and
1:58:00 learning secondary leading learning has done a lot so thank you
1:58:03 um i’m going to change up my speech a
1:58:08 little bit looking at those enrollment numbers there’s a problem
1:58:12 like we can hope 13 14 000 kids are
1:58:15 coming back but i’m a season ticket holder for orlando city i
1:58:19 still have season tickets for this
1:58:21 season they’re sending me emails to try to go to a game tomorrow
1:58:24 guess where i’m not going tomorrow
1:58:26 to a game because i don’t feel safe so we have to do everything
1:58:30 possible to make our schools feel safe
1:58:33 if we we can argue if covet the mortality rate of covet how many
1:58:38 people die from covet it doesn’t matter if
1:58:40 somebody doesn’t feel safe they’re not going to go to our
1:58:43 schools so i intended to come up here and
1:58:45 talk about how in the cares grant there’s about four million
1:58:49 dollars that was just held for the exact
1:58:52 word and was uh held for uh held in reserve at the state on our
1:58:57 behalf so that we can revisit once the
1:58:59 fun and picture is more clear we need to spend every dollar
1:59:02 available for ppe for our class right now i
1:59:05 believe the district gets about 80 percent reimbursement from
1:59:10 fema on ppe is that wrong now you get zero
1:59:13 uh dr sullivan can address that directly well i’ll keep speaking
1:59:17 because i know that’s not appropriate i’m
1:59:19 sorry um we need to be doing everything possible if a teacher
1:59:23 needs best partitions we need to be looking
1:59:25 at that i do know every teacher got one partition to start
1:59:28 school but i don’t think that’s adequate
1:59:31 if teachers need more thermometers we need to be doing that if
1:59:34 we can check temperatures for football
1:59:36 i’m sure we can check temperatures on more of our students when
1:59:39 they come in because at the end of
1:59:40 the day our families need to be safe in some ways we need to
1:59:43 look at it as a restaurant or business if
1:59:46 every student that comes in yes we need to care for our students
1:59:50 but on the budget side that’s money
1:59:52 so we need to be doing everything possible and i think missing
1:59:56 that many students just says that uh
1:59:59 our reopening plan kind of missed the point a little bit and we
2:00:02 need to revisit that and see how we can
2:00:04 attract parents thank you thank you mr savage we appreciate you
2:00:16 miss skipper
2:00:18 good evening members of the board um first of all i just want to
2:00:24 say that lawsuit win wasn’t just our
2:00:26 win i feel like it was your win too um because the one thing
2:00:30 that really irritated me about that
2:00:33 executive orders i knew it was unconstitutional because you guys
2:00:37 are elected to do a job and you
2:00:39 were hamstringed into making decisions when you should have been
2:00:42 able to do what was right for our
2:00:44 district but that’s not actually my speech tonight um our
2:00:49 teachers are doing what they probably never
2:00:54 imagined they would do and while they are all stepping up to the
2:00:59 plate to do this hybrid approach to e-learning
2:01:03 with kids in the classroom at the same time i’m watching what’s
2:01:07 happening at home because my son is
2:01:09 doing e-learning while at the same time i’m getting phone calls
2:01:14 and emails teachers are frustrated not because
2:01:19 they think it’s too much work even though they do but because
2:01:24 they don’t believe that they’re going to be
2:01:26 able to give their students the same educational experience that
2:01:31 they have in the past and they feel like
2:01:34 those kids that are e-learning may be missing out because they’re
2:01:38 not able to in a sense be two places at once
2:01:43 we could do a lot better for students and for teachers if we had
2:01:50 a complete one-to-one district
2:01:56 because the students in the classroom could be online with the
2:02:01 students at home using zoom and everybody
2:02:05 could be having the same experience i was a little discouraged
2:02:10 although i want to say i’m completely
2:02:13 in support of renewing the half cent i was very discouraged to
2:02:18 hear that a good bit of that was not
2:02:20 going to go to putting one to one in our classrooms i want to
2:02:25 read you a quote from the superintendent in
2:02:28 indianapolis public schools who said this about their decision
2:02:32 to be ready to go one-to-one right now
2:02:35 said this in march it’s a massive investment the right
2:02:40 investment but a massive investment we know that in
2:02:45 the fall we need to be very nimble and flexible and prepared to
2:02:49 exist in both a virtual home learning
2:02:52 world and hopefully in an in our our school facility world and
2:02:56 to do that well it requires each of our
2:03:00 students to have access to technology we have students who are
2:03:05 getting computers sent home to them for
2:03:08 e-learning that don’t have webcams or audio we have a principal
2:03:14 who said if you don’t have a computer at
2:03:17 home then you should be here attending school i don’t see how
2:03:22 these parents are going to actually vote for
2:03:25 extending a tax if we’re not actually providing things that we
2:03:29 should be providing them at home and
2:03:32 making them successful in the classroom and at home and making
2:03:36 our teachers jobs not only easier but allow
2:03:40 them to feel that they’re reaching every student thank you thank
2:03:43 you miss skipper mr hilliard
2:03:44 good evening i’m jonathan hilliard second vice president of the
2:03:56 brevard federation of teachers
2:03:59 i really want to recognize our teacher heroes this evening they
2:04:03 are the ones that are the backbone of
2:04:05 this entire situation that we’re dealing with in our school
2:04:09 systems they’re the ones that are making
2:04:12 this whole thing work the load falls on them i’d like to read a
2:04:16 quick leadership quote it says one of the
2:04:20 the test of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem
2:04:25 before it becomes an emergency
2:04:26 one of the things that the leadership that we provided from brevard
2:04:32 federation of teachers
2:04:34 was 500 kn95 masks for our teachers before they entered the
2:04:38 school we wanted to make sure our teachers
2:04:41 were protected we wanted to make sure that they felt safe going
2:04:45 into harm’s way another thing that we did
2:04:48 we’re providing 150 plexiglass carousels just like the kind that
2:04:54 we used to use with a fsa testing the
2:04:57 testing carousel is about 24 inches high we’re going to provide
2:05:01 these so that resource teachers esc teachers
2:05:04 can do one-to-one instruction with our students and provide that
2:05:08 academic support
2:05:11 one of the other things that is very concerning right now and
2:05:14 miss skipper had brought it up is
2:05:17 our teachers are receiving computers without audio or video
2:05:23 capabilities i had a teacher call
2:05:26 me about this and she said this is how she learned about it she
2:05:29 learned about it from a parent who
2:05:32 actually was an it person and they said you know that the
2:05:35 computer that you gave my child
2:05:37 doesn’t have video capability or a speaker or a microphone and
2:05:43 she was like well let me look into
2:05:45 this and she looked into it and she found out that the district
2:05:49 said oh yes we know that that’s going
2:05:51 out but we expect you to just live chat with those kids that’s
2:05:56 the stress that our teachers are under
2:06:00 and miss skipper alluded to it what stresses our teachers out
2:06:04 the most is their passion and desire
2:06:08 to provide that high quality education to their students that
2:06:13 they’ve been accustomed to providing
2:06:15 but now they feel hand tied that’s one issue that’s going on
2:06:21 another is the class size i had a first grade
2:06:27 teacher tell me jonathan 24 kids face to face in my class now
2:06:34 she’s a veteran teacher she knows what
2:06:38 she’s getting into she knows how to organize her classroom but
2:06:41 she tells me i can’t do social
2:06:43 distancing and these are six-year-old babies we sing i got them
2:06:47 you know trying to wear their masks but
2:06:50 they can’t do it because they’re just six that’s what’s going on
2:06:54 right now i’m very happy that we’ve
2:06:57 all been optimistic but these are the real concerns going on in
2:07:01 our schools right now with our teachers
2:07:03 so we need that leadership to see and recognize that problem
2:07:08 before it becomes an emergency thank you
2:07:11 thank you mr hilliard and our final in-person speaker this
2:07:16 evening is laura depaul
2:07:34 thank you thank you for having me i have waited months to be
2:07:39 here in front of you we are a merritt
2:07:43 island family i have three elementary age children attending
2:07:47 tropical elementary this year in person
2:07:53 we moved to new hampshire last year for one year and while we
2:07:56 were there i started substitute teaching
2:07:59 i loved it i told myself i will do it till my youngest who
2:08:04 starts kindergarten this month graduates
2:08:08 so for the next 12 13 years she will be in school i will be a
2:08:13 substitute teacher for you consistently
2:08:16 i have a great background i’m passionate about it i have made so
2:08:22 many memories as a substitute
2:08:24 the one year i did it in new hampshire that it made me want to
2:08:28 do it full time but i’m not sure
2:08:33 that the i know you guys all know but the general public
2:08:36 probably doesn’t realize in brevard county
2:08:41 i get i will get paid less than mcdonald’s you base the pay on
2:08:46 your background in new hampshire and
2:08:49 i’m not sure that anyone would even know how other states
2:08:54 operate they’re very fairly paid equally
2:08:57 doesn’t matter where you came from if you passed your background
2:09:00 check and you’re reliable
2:09:02 they have a flat pay they pay 37 50 for a half day 75 for a full
2:09:08 day and they offer full day substitute
2:09:11 a free lunch i loved it i was happy with that i was a full day
2:09:15 sub it wasn’t big money but it was
2:09:19 better than making minimum wage i truly believe we are not
2:09:24 further from minimum wage and right now during
2:09:27 coronavirus something has changed low risk reliable substitute
2:09:32 teachers should be considered essential
2:09:36 workers there are teachers i’m being told on merit island are
2:09:41 looking for safer lines of work i would
2:09:44 show up and sub for them every single day confidently but if you
2:09:50 have a high school diploma for anyone out there
2:09:55 listening families at home 856 an hour here’s the real shocker i
2:10:00 have an associate’s degree
2:10:03 plenty of other careers in the past i was a stay-at-home mom now
2:10:06 i want to be part of the
2:10:07 school district and do more than just volunteer but i’m making 875
2:10:12 an hour this is what bothers me
2:10:14 in brevard county if i had a bachelor’s degree most likely i’d
2:10:19 be looking for full-time work
2:10:22 i know people friends of mine moms in the community same county
2:10:28 as i same availability
2:10:31 making four dollars more an hour why why am i getting paid four
2:10:37 dollars an hour less than a
2:10:40 bachelor’s degree but with a high school diploma i’m making 20
2:10:43 cents more than a high school diploma
2:10:45 it’s like i can’t understand there’s a shortage of subs i’ve
2:10:50 talked to mr paul thank you so much for
2:10:53 joining us this evening i’m sorry but we’re limited to three
2:10:56 minutes per speaker and that’s here that’s
2:10:58 your alarm going off oh my gosh okay i just i hope you guys can
2:11:02 come up with the solution thank you and
2:11:04 thank you for supporting our schools we appreciate it okay and
2:11:08 we have one call-in speaker that we
2:11:13 still need to hear from this evening
2:11:16 next in consideration of the current health and safety concerns
2:11:27 during the coven 19 emergency guidance
2:11:29 from the centers for disease disease control and prevention as
2:11:32 well as executive order 20-91 issued
2:11:35 by governor disandis it has been necessary to modify our
2:11:38 procedures for public comment tonight your
2:11:41 comments will be recorded and we will play them back under the
2:11:43 public comments section of the board
2:11:45 meeting tomorrow our speaker is limited to three minutes our
2:11:48 moderator will keep track of your time
2:11:50 and ask you to conclude your comments when you have reached
2:11:52 three minutes always keep in mind that
2:11:54 reasonable decorum is expected at all times please keep your
2:11:58 comments appropriate for our children who may be
2:12:00 watching or listening from home before speaking please state
2:12:03 your name the organization you represent if
2:12:05 any and identify the topic you will be discussing we won’t be
2:12:08 answering questions on tonight’s call but
2:12:11 our staff will follow up with you if you have a question or need
2:12:13 a response ben please go ahead with
2:12:15 our speaker all right thank you um so go ahead and press zero
2:12:20 now uh and donna will bring you through
2:12:22 to make your comment go ahead and press zero now and donna will
2:12:24 bring you through to make your comment
2:12:28 okay kathy go ahead and state your first and last name and your
2:12:32 comment please uh yes my name is kathy west um
2:12:37 my question is right now uh do they plan on paying teachers and
2:12:47 staff for hazard pay because we’re going into
2:12:52 to the classroom um in a crisis situation where we’re already in
2:12:59 this situation and this just adds to
2:13:05 the issue and also uh um um we we’ve been waiting on subs have
2:13:14 been waiting on a raise that we keep
2:13:18 we are kept being told that it’s on their radar it’s been on
2:13:23 their radar for a whole year there has been no pay
2:13:26 increase in that year all i’ve heard is lip service for the past
2:13:33 year nothing has been done and now we’re in
2:13:36 another crisis facing two crisis and nothing’s being done okay
2:13:44 thank you very much for your comment
2:13:46 go ahead soon close out okay thank you miss west i appreciate
2:13:51 your comments tonight and we’ll play that
2:13:54 back for the school board tomorrow night’s meeting under the
2:13:57 public comment section so thank you very much and
2:13:59 thank you ben good night all right that concludes our public
2:14:04 comments for this evening did any board
2:14:05 member wish to respond give direction anything like that on any
2:14:09 of the public speakers this evening
2:14:12 um i will ask dr mullins i’ll ask you and uh since you are up
2:14:19 here and your mic is a little bit
2:14:20 clear but if you need to punt to dr sullivan please feel free mr
2:14:25 savage had brought up uh the fema
2:14:27 reimbursement and it was discussed a little bit when miss moore
2:14:30 was at the mic but i think that’s kind
2:14:32 of important for our public to understand what happened there
2:14:36 with the fema reimbursement is that
2:14:37 something that you can speak to or yeah well i i could i could
2:14:42 give it an attempt uh but dr sullivan
2:14:45 certainly is most familiar with the process essentially we were
2:14:48 led to believe that fema
2:14:49 would be reimbursing us at 87 and a half percent of those
2:14:52 purchases and then it uh we were then told
2:14:56 about a week maybe a week and a half ago by the state that they
2:14:59 didn’t anticipate that that was going
2:15:00 to come through and that they were allocating additional dollars
2:15:04 uh for us to charge against but i
2:15:06 it sounds as though that now is being stepped back by the state
2:15:10 as well dr sullivan do you want to
2:15:11 provide additional update yeah you were pretty accurate except
2:15:15 that it was five days ago that they
2:15:17 told us um they had originally in the uh information put out by
2:15:22 the doe had recommended uh districts do a
2:15:26 split as we did and following that directive and then on thursday
2:15:32 in about a five minutes oh by the way
2:15:35 mentioned um we now know that that’s not working so we’re
2:15:38 putting out another cares act grant and you’ll
2:15:41 get it this afternoon so we did receive that this afternoon we
2:15:44 are in the midst of writing that cares act
2:15:47 grant um and it will offset about a little over a half of what
2:15:56 we had anticipated from fema reimbursement
2:16:01 so at this point my expectation is to convert most of that over
2:16:07 to that cares act grant and then continue
2:16:12 to work with risk management to submit ones that we can’t move
2:16:17 over in the event we do get some
2:16:19 reimbursement so we’ll take the first 777 000 move it to new
2:16:24 cares act the rest of the ppe cleaning surprise
2:16:29 and fema eligible items that are in esser we will submit for
2:16:33 reimbursement through fema in hopes of
2:16:36 getting that but knowing that we may or may not get that
2:16:41 reimbursement if that made any kind of sense
2:16:47 that would be surprising because this whole process makes no
2:16:49 sense so hopefully that helped thank you
2:16:53 dr sullivan i know that you have been deep in juggling all of
2:16:56 this we appreciate all the work that
2:16:58 you’re doing um and i appreciate that explanation i think it’s
2:17:01 important for everyone to to know some of
2:17:04 the challenges that we’re facing with some of the promises that
2:17:07 are being made at different levels so
2:17:09 thank you so much for that explanation no problem um and dr thetty
2:17:13 i don’t mean to put you on the spot but
2:17:15 we’ve had a couple of people talk about of course miss west has
2:17:18 been talking to us about substitute pay
2:17:20 increases um mr paul spoke tonight about substitute pay as well
2:17:24 i know that we we obviously have been talking about how to
2:17:29 address our substitute shortage in lots of different
2:17:33 ways but um do you do you have at the top of your mind i know
2:17:37 there’s been so much going on we did a
2:17:40 substitute survey last year and if i recall correctly we off we
2:17:45 asked substitutes if they preferred to have
2:17:49 a per hour pay raise or if they preferred um to get a daily
2:17:53 increase if they were working at priority schools
2:17:58 can you just brief us on that because i think it’s important to
2:18:02 know that we’re not ignoring the issue
2:18:04 but we we did not have consensus that everyone preferred to have
2:18:08 a pay raise over the other
2:18:09 options is that correct that is correct the preferences that our
2:18:14 survey last year indicated one
2:18:15 was a an additional supplement for those who work 60 days in the
2:18:20 school year that was highly desirable
2:18:23 another was additional pay to work at priority schools because
2:18:27 that came out to be more
2:18:28 more than an hourly rate increase there there was not
2:18:32 consistency on what everybody wanted we put out
2:18:35 the the lunch as well as something that was an option we also
2:18:39 put out their reimbursement for all the
2:18:41 fees that substitutes have to pay to become substitutes
2:18:44 fingerprinting drug testing the certification
2:18:49 and reimbursing that as well and that was also desirable for the
2:18:53 substitutes but the one comment about the difference
2:18:57 between a high school diploma and associate’s degree that is
2:19:01 spot on with change in hourly rate that has
2:19:03 compressed the pay between those two ranges so our last speaker
2:19:08 spoke or second to last speaker spoke to
2:19:10 that and that is correct thank you so much for giving us those
2:19:14 details i appreciate it and certainly not to
2:19:16 overlook any of any of the other speakers that we heard tonight
2:19:21 thank you mr savage miss skipper mr hilliard and mr
2:19:24 kluci for bringing forward some of the the uh concerns as well
2:19:28 we certainly don’t mean to make it sound as
2:19:30 though everything went perfectly on day one um but i i we know
2:19:34 that we have some issues to work through and
2:19:36 i’m quite confident that our team in the back has been taking
2:19:38 note of the things that you brought up and
2:19:40 they’ll be reaching out to try to address those so all right
2:19:44 with that we move on to the did you have
2:19:47 something mr susan i just want to say mr ray thank you oh yeah i’m
2:19:50 in and saying such
2:19:51 positive things you got a couple of friends you guys want to
2:19:53 come here more often we’d enjoy it you
2:19:56 know i’m thinking i’m thinking about possibly making the robert
2:19:59 ray award for the the greatest speech
2:20:02 at here you know i mean this guy came down here to tell us good
2:20:05 stuff and and you know not that we
2:20:07 need good stuff to actually we need good stuff so anytime
2:20:12 robert i think dr mollens you can make stuff like that happen he’s
2:20:18 the guy that makes that happen
2:20:19 well i mean he came two weeks ago with a concern yeah the
2:20:22 concern was met and he came to back to
2:20:24 report and said there you go but i just wanted to say thank you
2:20:28 for coming down here that’s all and
2:20:31 i think i am going to have some fun with this robert ray award
2:20:33 thing yeah thank you mr susan i had meant
2:20:36 to to address that directly as well okay moving on to our
2:20:40 consent agenda dr mullins there are 12 agenda
2:20:45 items under this category thank you dr mullins does any board
2:20:48 member wish to pull any item from the consent
2:20:51 agenda seeing none then i will entertain a motion to accept the
2:20:56 consent items as presented move to approve
2:20:59 second moved by mr susan seconded by miss duskovich is there any
2:21:03 discussion yes i have a bit miss mcdougall
2:21:06 i just want to give a shout out because i it’s finally here that
2:21:10 merritt island high school will get
2:21:12 a restroom on their ball field and this is a work in the process
2:21:16 has taken about eight years and i want
2:21:20 to thank sue han and principal reamer and of course the merritt
2:21:25 island community who supported and gave money
2:21:28 to this um this has been ongoing and i’m very excited that we
2:21:32 are moving ahead so thank you
2:21:34 and we are excited for you mr well thank you so much any
2:21:37 additional discussion on the item
2:21:39 or on the agenda or on um number 12 our interlocal agreement
2:21:45 cares act funding
2:21:47 um just don’t want to blow past that without recognizing that
2:21:50 the board of county commissioners
2:21:52 you might want to just give us a little more details but the
2:21:54 board of county commissioners has
2:21:55 agreed to share some of the um county-wide uh cares act funding
2:21:59 that’s come with the school district
2:22:02 we don’t know the amount on that yet right yes so the the county
2:22:06 received their own allocation of cares
2:22:09 act grant funding uh considerably larger allocation than brevard
2:22:15 public schools received however
2:22:18 um they uh reached out to frank abate county manager and asked
2:22:22 might the school district qualify as a
2:22:26 non-profit to apply for consideration of those funds and he came
2:22:30 back and said yes thank you to the county
2:22:32 commission they voted unanimously to include us as a non-profit
2:22:37 agent to apply for funds uh we have submitted i
2:22:42 i believe seven requests totaling well over three million
2:22:47 dollars three and a half million dollars
2:22:50 of requests a couple of the items include uh additional hours
2:22:55 for our health techs in our schools so rather
2:22:58 than uh miss more are they currently six and a half hours five
2:23:02 and a half hours uh we requested funding to
2:23:07 staff them for eight hours in our school so that we would have a
2:23:09 health tech full-time first semester
2:23:11 um we also requested additional funding for mental health
2:23:16 services for our students
2:23:18 um funds to cover all of the individual
2:23:23 um food wrapping that’s required in our food service program
2:23:32 uh miss moore can you think of some of the other requests uh
2:23:36 yeah hot spots uh hot spots for our
2:23:39 students before and after care uh help with our before and after
2:23:43 care um we did it we asked for a help
2:23:47 with it like you said the mental health um program that that one
2:23:50 they can’t uh it was not acceptable
2:23:52 given the parameters of that grant um and then the last one was
2:23:57 nurses there was a last one
2:24:02 there was another one um but they uh they’re supposed to be
2:24:05 getting back with us probably one day this
2:24:08 week to determine if we’re able to move forward with that good
2:24:11 well just wanted to thank the county
2:24:13 commissioners for for allowing us to have that additional
2:24:16 funding it is very much needed and appreciated
2:24:18 the interlocal agreement is just a acknowledgement that if funds
2:24:22 go unused they have to be returned
2:24:24 to the county uh for the grant um i did remember the last one it
2:24:28 was for 20 additional social workers in our schools
2:24:32 and they have to be able to respond to the community they have
2:24:37 to be able to be able to move forward
2:24:37 to the community that we have to be able to move forward to the
2:24:40 community and we have to be able to
2:24:40 be able to move forward to the community and we will be able to
2:24:43 move forward to the community
2:24:44 and we will be able to move forward to the community and we will
2:24:47 be able to move forward to the community
2:24:48 and we will be able to move forward to the community and we will
2:24:51 be able to move forward to the community
2:24:52 all right that is going to move us into our action agenda dr mullen
2:24:59 miss belford and members of the
2:25:01 board there are a total of three action items for us to go
2:25:04 through item g23 is on procurement
2:25:07 solicitations what are the wishes of the board move to approve
2:25:10 second moved by mr susan seconded by
2:25:12 ms duskiewicz any discussion
2:25:28 item g24 is department school initiated agreements what are the
2:25:37 wishes of the board
2:25:37 move to approve second moved by mr susan seconded by ms duskiewicz
2:25:41 any discussion
2:25:42 i’d just like to point out that in a couple of these items
2:25:45 our team is already working hard to cost save if you look
2:25:51 through some of the items that are in here
2:25:53 at the sat in different areas i know that we had a speaker the
2:25:56 gentleman one of the substitutes one of
2:25:59 the substitute teacher speakers uh mentioned that we need to
2:26:03 start now preparing and i just wanted to
2:26:05 point out that even on tonight’s agenda there are areas that uh
2:26:09 staff and dr mullins is looking for
2:26:11 every single dollar to save and tuck away thank you for that
2:26:16 clarification and stuff which i think
2:26:17 that’s important as well any additional discussion all right
2:26:22 contract for the mid coast good stuff
2:26:25 that finally came together all right please vote
2:26:35 the motion passes five zero dr mullins g25 is for the ratification
2:26:40 of emergency procure procurements
2:26:43 related to covet 19. what are the wishes of the board
2:26:45 second is that ms campbell on the first thank you ma’am uh
2:26:52 motion by ms campbell seconded by ms mcdougall
2:26:54 the motion passes five zero we’ll move on to the information
2:27:12 agenda which includes items for board
2:27:14 review and may be brought back for action at a subsequent
2:27:16 meeting no action will be taken on
2:27:17 these items tonight dr mullins there are four items under the
2:27:21 information category does any board member
2:27:23 wish to discuss any of the four information items this evening
2:27:26 i just have a question on the personnel allocations are these
2:27:33 based on i’m guessing maybe this is for
2:27:36 dr thetty are these based on projected enrollment or are these
2:27:42 based on actual enrollment and
2:27:45 at what point does does this change usually we approve it for
2:27:49 the year and it has to stay that
2:27:51 way i’m wondering if for 14 000 students down how how this looks
2:27:55 different mid-year these are these
2:27:58 allocations have not changed over the last few years they are
2:28:01 the same they’re based on our enrollments
2:28:04 you know the the allocation factors are contingent upon student
2:28:08 enrollment so we’ll have to look at
2:28:10 that closely as we go through our six-day count
2:28:12 so we haven’t even made we haven’t made any adjustments in here
2:28:18 for covid either i mean i
2:28:20 this is a separate question because it seems like
2:28:23 anyway have we made any adjustments we have not made a just made
2:28:28 any adjustments for covid no thank you
2:28:33 any additional questions on any of the information items all
2:28:36 right seeing none we will move on to
2:28:40 board member discussion does any board member have anything else
2:28:43 they would like to report at this
2:28:45 time mr susan thank you um just wanted to give the board a heads
2:28:49 up that um so we keep having these
2:28:53 pre-k issues over and over again first it’s best and brightest
2:28:56 then it’s retirement then it’s this then
2:28:58 it’s that and it just and then even with our reopening plan the
2:29:01 stuff was coming out of office of early
2:29:03 learning and there was delay and it’s just like every single
2:29:08 time we talk about pre-k we find that
2:29:10 they’re not respected to be a part of our k through 12 right so
2:29:14 one of the things is as many know like
2:29:16 i was in tallahassee with them we were pounding away we got some
2:29:19 headroom we changed some of the we
2:29:21 educated a lot of people on some of the issues and we got some
2:29:24 stuff moving but the problem is we just keep
2:29:26 coming up with stuff so what when i was talking to debbie mayfield
2:29:30 thad altman placentia and the rest of
2:29:33 them and i said look i said instead of us just trying to fix
2:29:36 this thing like one at a time
2:29:37 i think that we need to come up with a pre-k commission ask the
2:29:41 legislature to sit down and
2:29:43 just evaluate it as an early learning coalition put it together
2:29:47 as how it ties into k through 12 and
2:29:49 address all the issues that we have with pre-k so i called jane
2:29:52 goodwin from the florida school board
2:29:54 association and some of the other groups and said hey would this
2:29:57 be something that you would think
2:29:58 about possibly putting on our agenda um so what i was going to
2:30:01 ask is now is not the appropriate time
2:30:04 but think about possibly being one of our legislative issues
2:30:07 that we have coming up
2:30:08 and in the meantime i’m going to go try to bird dog some of the
2:30:11 other legislators to tell them hey
2:30:13 would you think about this so that it’s one of the issues we
2:30:16 have is is that we establish our thing
2:30:18 everybody gets elected then all of a sudden session happens and
2:30:21 it’s just so fast right so if i can
2:30:22 put it in their ear now if i can start aligning some of the
2:30:25 stuff so i just wanted to tell you guys
2:30:27 that um and then one little note dr mullins is that our
2:30:31 reopening plan says k through 12. if we can add
2:30:34 pre to the whole front of that um that’d be good too and that’s
2:30:37 it i just want to tell you guys that
2:30:39 so if you hear me moving around you know my direction and what i’m
2:30:41 trying to do but i do know that that
2:30:43 as far as a district that comes up for us to discuss but i’m
2:30:46 going to try to push it personally
2:30:49 all right miss klein is requesting attention uh-oh what happened
2:30:54 mr susan um the pre-k plan is a
2:30:57 totally separate plan so our plan is our k through 12 plan and
2:31:03 we have a separate pre-k
2:31:06 and there were there have been every day this week marilyn chappie
2:31:13 has sat on a office of early learning
2:31:15 coalition meeting and they are making additional adjustments to
2:31:21 the pre-k opening plans
2:31:30 thank you miss klein any additional items for discussion this
2:31:34 evening i’ve got something i wanted
2:31:38 to share i believe i shared last pre-covid i don’t remember how
2:31:44 long ago that the city of palm bay
2:31:46 was wanting to host a palm bay steam day and they were going to
2:31:51 invite the schools especially schools
2:31:53 who have steam academies or programs to come and be a part um
2:31:57 you know kind of all got put on the
2:32:00 back burner for the last several months but they are i met with
2:32:03 the youth advisory board last night
2:32:05 and deputy mayor johnson shared that they are moving forward
2:32:09 with that they’re changing plans instead of
2:32:11 an indoor venue it’s going to be at fred poppy park but the date
2:32:15 is november the 14th from 10 to 3
2:32:17 they’re going to do it outside and um you know all the
2:32:20 precautions and everything but they’re moving
2:32:22 forward and and real excited to have this opportunity for our
2:32:25 students who would like love to come out and
2:32:28 and uh and get to see you know science technology engineering
2:32:34 arts and mathematics all in in motion
2:32:37 and what it would look like and inspire them to pursue careers
2:32:39 in those areas um that’ll be on november
2:32:42 the 14th and i’ll send out some more information as we get
2:32:45 closer um to the date
2:32:48 and then also just wanted to remind everybody who may not have
2:32:52 done your census they have extended the
2:32:55 deadline for getting your census information to october so if
2:32:58 you’re still waiting out there
2:32:59 you don’t want people to come knocking on your door then go
2:33:03 online and fill out your census information
2:33:07 so that we can because every dollar counts every person counts
2:33:10 and we want to make sure that brevard county
2:33:13 is actually looking really good compared to the state and the
2:33:16 nation so keep it keep it up brevard and and
2:33:18 go get counted but those deadlines have been extended to october
2:33:22 thank you miss campbell any other board
2:33:24 members have any issues to address dr mullins anything else to
2:33:27 report this evening seeing no further
2:33:29 business this meeting is adjourned have a great night
2:33:58 Thank you.