Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
0:00 We’ll be right back.
0:30 Good afternoon.
0:31 The August 9th, 2022 Board Work Session is now in order.
0:34 Paul, roll call, please.
0:35 Ms. Belford.
0:36 Present.
0:37 Ms. McDougall.
0:38 Present.
0:38 Ms. Campbell.
0:40 Present.
0:40 Ms. Jenkins.
0:41 Present.
0:41 Mr. Susan.
0:42 Present.
0:42 Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
0:45 Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
0:52 and to the Republic for which
0:54 it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty, and
0:58 justice for all.
1:00 During today’s work session, we’ll be receiving four updates.
1:06 The first is on Title IX, which will be presented by Jackie Saxon-Meyer,
1:10 Title IX Coordinator.
1:11 Ms. Saxon-Meyer?
1:12 Hi.
1:19 Good afternoon, everybody.
1:20 My name is Jackie Saxon-Meyer, and I am the new District Title
1:24 IX Coordinator here within
1:25 Legal Services at BPS.
1:27 A little backstory of who I am.
1:30 I just recently came from the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office,
1:33 working as a deputy for close
1:35 to 10 years.
1:36 During my time at the Sheriff’s Office, I had the opportunity to
1:40 work as a school resource
1:41 officer for close to seven years of that.
1:44 I also worked as an investigator with our Special Victims Unit.
1:47 So that’s a little background of who I am.
1:49 Today, what we’re going to be doing is discussing what Title IX
1:52 is, and we’re going to be talking
1:53 about the grievance process associated with it.
2:05 So what is Title IX?
2:07 Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits federally
2:12 funded educational institutions
2:14 from discriminating against students or employees based on sex.
2:18 Under this federal civil rights law and as a federally funded
2:22 district, we have the responsibility
2:24 to act promptly, effectively, and equitably to complaints of
2:28 gender-based discrimination
2:30 and sexual harassment.
2:31 In order to protect our school community and also to ensure that
2:35 we are following Title IX
2:37 regulations put in place by the Department of Education Office
2:39 of Civil Rights.
2:40 So what does Title IX state?
2:43 It states, no person in the United States shall, on the basis of
2:47 sex, be excluded from participation
2:49 in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination
2:54 under any education program
2:56 or activity receiving federal financial assistance.
2:59 Now, it states, no person, that means no student, no employee,
3:03 no third party who is participating
3:07 in our education program or activity.
3:10 In the United States, Title IX does not apply outside of the
3:13 United States.
3:15 On the basis of sex, we are referring to biological sex, gender
3:21 identity, and sexual orientation.
3:26 In order for this to meet its standards, the complainant has to
3:30 be participating in our education program
3:33 or activity, meaning that they have to be participating in the
3:37 operations of the district to include
3:40 in-person, online education programs, employment, extracurricular
3:45 activities, athletics, and performances,
3:48 and so forth.
3:49 So Title IX related issues, there’s three main categories.
3:56 There’s sex and gender-based discrimination, there’s sexual
3:59 harassment, and retaliation.
4:00 Under gender-based discrimination is basically when an
4:05 individual is discriminated against or treated
4:09 unfavorably due to their specific sex.
4:14 Listed here is several different examples of where this type of
4:17 behavior takes place.
4:19 It could be program equity, recruitment and admissions, and
4:23 access, pregnancy, and the huge one
4:25 that we typically hear about is athletic.
4:27 Employment, recruitment, and hiring, and the list goes on.
4:32 Sexual harassment is what we refer to as an umbrella-type term.
4:38 It actually refers to several different types of complaints,
4:44 which would be quid pro quo, hostile
4:48 environment, sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking, and
4:52 dating violence.
4:54 So quid pro quo, what that is exactly is when an individual asks
4:59 for a sexual favor in exchange
5:01 for some type of special treatment.
5:04 So an example of this might be, per se, a teacher on student-type
5:10 behavior, where a teacher asks
5:13 for some type of sexual favor or conduct be performed by that
5:19 student in order to maybe receive an A grade
5:25 in that course.
5:26 So that would be an example.
5:27 Hostile environment is unwelcomed conduct determined by a
5:32 reasonable person to be so severe,
5:35 so pervasive, and so objectively offensive that it denies them
5:39 equal access to their education,
5:41 program, or activity.
5:42 An example of this might be where a student maybe was sexting
5:50 another individual at school,
5:54 another student, and that sext maybe got out that nude
5:57 photograph of that student and has
5:59 now been sent maybe to numerous students inside the school
6:03 campus, making that individual feel
6:06 uncomfortable coming to school.
6:07 Sexual assault is any type of sexual act.
6:11 Directed towards a person, which includes rape, sexual assault
6:18 includes rape, sodomy, sexual assault
6:22 with an object, fondling, incest, and statutory rape.
6:26 And then there’s dating violence.
6:29 Dating violence is violence on the basis of sex.
6:32 Typically it is when the complainant has been in an intimate or
6:37 social-type relationship
6:38 with the respondent.
6:39 And domestic violence is violence on the basis of sex.
6:44 When the complainant has been in a relationship, typically it’s
6:48 going to be either with a spouse
6:50 or a former spouse or an individual that the complainant has had
6:54 a child in common with.
6:57 And then there’s stalking.
6:58 Stalking is engaging in a course of conduct directed at a
7:02 specific person, which causes
7:03 substantial emotional distress.
7:05 Underneath that term is also cyberstalking.
7:09 And then there’s retaliation.
7:11 Retaliation is coercion.
7:14 It could be intimidation, threats, towards an individual who’s
7:19 been a part of the Title IX investigation.
7:21 So it could be towards the complainant, it could be the respondent,
7:28 or it could be a witness
7:29 who’s a part of the investigation.
7:30 For instance, maybe a group of students approached the respondent
7:35 and threatened to hurt them
7:38 if he or she does not tell their side of the story correctly,
7:43 for example.
7:44 That could be a threat of some kind.
7:47 That would actually open up a separate Title IX investigation as
7:50 retaliation.
7:51 So this is kind of the Title IX regulations history timeline, so
7:59 to speak.
8:00 So since 1980, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil
8:05 Rights has had primary responsibility
8:08 establishing compliance standards to be applied to
8:11 investigations and enforcement of Title IX.
8:14 Under the Obama administration, OCR focused on protecting rights
8:21 of victims and survivors.
8:24 It also issued several guidance documents, referred to as a Dear
8:29 Colleague Letters,
8:30 to outline schools’ obligations under Title IX.
8:34 Under the Trump administration, OCR sought to incorporate due
8:40 process protections designed primarily
8:43 to protect the rights of respondents.
8:44 And in November of 2018, OCR proposed the most detailed and
8:50 comprehensive amendments to the Title IX regulations to date.
8:53 In August of 2020, significant amended due process-oriented
8:58 regulations took effect.
8:59 We currently are abiding by the 2020 regulations currently.
9:05 Just this last June, June of 2022, OCR published the Notice of
9:10 Proposed Rulemaking outlining proposed changes to the Title IX
9:14 regulations.
9:14 So they have come up with new proposed regulations, which may
9:19 remove some of the obligations under the 2020 regulations, while
9:24 remaining some.
9:26 However, this, we are not believing it won’t take effect until
9:30 the summer or fall of 2023.
9:33 So currently, we are sticking with the 2020 regulations, and
9:37 that’ll be basically my job to make sure that whatever new
9:42 updated information comes out, I’ll be following it.
9:47 So, steps before the investigation process.
9:49 Step one is the complaint.
9:51 A complaint can come in in person.
9:55 It can be by email.
9:56 It can be, you know, a phone call.
10:00 And it can be made by the complainant themselves.
10:03 It can be by a parent, a guardian.
10:05 And also, it can be made anonymously.
10:07 Any reports need to be made to the Title IX coordinator there at
10:11 the school campus.
10:14 So, there should be a designated Title IX coordinator there to
10:17 report the incident to.
10:18 Obviously, all school employees are mandated reporters and
10:24 should notify the Title IX coordinator if they do hear any type
10:28 of sexual harassment complaint.
10:30 So, the complaint is going to be alleging some type of sexual
10:33 harassment.
10:35 In order for a formal complaint to take place, the complainant
10:40 must complete a complaint reporting form and also state that
10:45 they would like to have an investigation completed.
10:49 So, there could be a complainant come in and state that they don’t
10:53 wish for an actual investigation to take place, which is fine.
10:57 We will try our best to accommodate them with their wishes.
11:01 However, in order for them to go through the full investigation,
11:06 they do have to state that in their complaint.
11:09 If the complainant does not wish to file a formal complaint, the
11:13 District Title IX coordinator has the discretion to file a
11:16 formal complaint based on the results of a violence risk
11:19 assessment.
11:20 So, what I mean by that is an assessment to determine whether
11:24 there is a compelling risk to the health and safety of the
11:27 school community.
11:28 And types of complaints of that sort would be predatory conduct,
11:33 it would be threats, any type of abuse towards a minor or child,
11:37 or use of weapons that have been somehow incorporated into this
11:42 complaint.
11:43 So, I would have the discretion to go ahead and open up a
11:46 complaint myself.
11:50 Step two, supportive measures.
11:54 So, what are supportive measures?
11:56 They are non-disciplinary, non-punitive measures designed to
12:00 protect the safety of all parties in the educational environment.
12:04 A few examples would be a stay-away contract, maybe a class
12:09 change, or an escort to class.
12:12 It could also be a referral to seek counseling.
12:18 A formal complaint does not need to be made to provide
12:21 supportive measures.
12:22 So, even though if a complainant does not wish to pursue the
12:25 formal resolution process, we still will give them supportive
12:29 measures.
12:30 And it won’t just be the complainant, it would also be the
12:32 respondent as well that we would offer these supportive measures
12:35 to.
12:37 Step three is the informal resolution.
12:44 Informal resolution is informally resolving the matter in lieu
12:53 of a formal grievance process.
12:58 A formal complaint must be submitted first.
13:00 So, we must have them, you know, complete that form and state
13:04 that they want an investigation before we can do the informal.
13:08 An informal resolution is preferred by the complainant.
13:12 If it is, the Title IX coordinator will assess whether the
13:15 complaint is suitable for informal resolution.
13:18 All parties and parents must agree with informal resolution of
13:21 discipline.
13:22 So, both parties, both the complainant and the respondent, have
13:26 to agree to this.
13:28 If during the process, say, maybe the respondent is not in
13:32 agreement with the discipline in place, then the informal
13:37 resolution will cease.
13:39 If they do, if both parties agree to this, then no investigation
13:47 will be conducted.
13:50 The incident will be resolved there.
13:52 The formal investigation process.
14:00 So, once a complainant has determined, okay, I want to go
14:03 through a formal investigation.
14:06 I don’t want to do the informal resolution process.
14:09 The Title IX investigator assigned to the school, who typically
14:13 will be either the assistant principal or the dean, will
14:16 immediately initiate the investigation.
14:19 Their first step is to conduct interviews with all parties and
14:24 relevant witnesses.
14:26 The parties would include the complainant, the respondent, and
14:29 any witnesses.
14:31 However, they’re going to come up with a game plan, so to speak,
14:34 on how they’re going to, how to work through this.
14:36 Typically, the respondent is going to be the last person that
14:39 they interview.
14:40 They’re also going to collect any evidence that’s relevant to
14:43 the incident.
14:44 Maybe there is text message communication between the parties.
14:49 They’re going to try to retrieve those text messages.
14:52 Maybe there’s video surveillance on campus of the incident
14:55 taking place.
14:56 They’re going to try to retrieve the video.
14:57 And those types of incidents where law enforcement is most
15:01 likely going to be involved as well with these types of cases.
15:06 They’re going to be conducting their own criminal investigation.
15:09 There are going to be times where maybe there is pictures that
15:12 depict nudity of juveniles and whatnot.
15:14 Obviously, that is illegal to be in possession of.
15:17 It is considered child pornography.
15:19 Those types of images and whatnot are something that law
15:22 enforcement is going to retrieve.
15:24 And we basically, at the school level, will be documenting that
15:29 those types of images have been found.
15:32 We will not be collecting the actual photograph.
15:36 Maintaining thorough investigation records and notes is very
15:40 important when the investigator is conducting their
15:44 investigation that maybe while they’re interviewing an
15:47 individual, they are taking thorough notes of what’s taking
15:50 place, what they’re saying.
15:52 Those notes are going to be a part of a case package altogether,
15:56 a final investigation report.
16:00 It’s also important that whatever evidence that they collect,
16:03 they notate who they receive the evidence from, what day, what
16:07 time.
16:07 There’s a lot of different paperwork associated with this
16:10 investigation process.
16:12 They need to make sure that they are completing everything as
16:14 accordingly.
16:15 So at the end of all this, they are going to compile everything
16:20 and have one investigation report.
16:27 The formal resolution.
16:28 After the final investigation report is completed, the school
16:32 Title IX coordinator will refer the matter to the assigned
16:35 decision maker to review and determine whether policy has been
16:38 violated.
16:39 When we refer to the policy, we’re referring to the 2266 board
16:44 policy on non-discrimination on the basis of sex during a
16:50 program or activity.
16:56 And also, the decision maker is going to be somebody who has not
17:01 been a part of the investigation whatsoever, somebody who doesn’t
17:05 know anything about it, so that it’s non-bias.
17:08 The decision maker will determine the appropriate sanctions and
17:12 discipline when a policy violation is found, and draft a written
17:15 determination that outlines the rationale.
17:18 So they’ll determine as to what sanctions they may put in place.
17:22 The decision maker will then work in conjunction with the Title
17:31 IX coordinator to prepare a notice of outcome letter to be
17:38 shared with the parties.
17:39 So both parties will be made aware of what the sanctions are in
17:42 place for the respondents.
17:49 There is an appeals process.
17:51 Any party may file a request for appeal in writing to the Title
17:55 IX coordinator.
17:56 For this type of incident, it can’t be that maybe the complainant
18:01 is not satisfied with the sanctions put in place against the
18:06 respondent.
18:07 That is not going to be something that is going to be grounds
18:11 for appeal.
18:12 There’s three main things.
18:14 The Title IX coordinator, investigator, or decision maker had a
18:18 conflict of interest or bias, or against the complainants or the
18:22 respondents.
18:23 If that is the case, which is sometimes a rarity, they will, the
18:29 whole investigation may have to be completed from scratch, if
18:33 that is determined.
18:35 New evidence that was not reasonably available at the time, the
18:39 determination regarding responsibility or dismissal was made,
18:43 that could affect the outcome of the matter.
18:45 So, so to speak, say a new video came out from the school
18:50 surveillance, we were able to capture it, the incident taking
18:55 place.
18:56 And if that is something that is going to affect the outcome of
19:00 the matter, they may, that might be grounds for appeal to review
19:04 that video.
19:06 Procedural irregularity that affected the outcome of the matter.
19:11 So, this process is very lengthy, and there are different points
19:15 where individuals have the opportunity to review evidence.
19:19 After the investigation is completed by the, the Title IX
19:23 investigator, both parties have the opportunity to review the
19:28 evidence, any statements that were provided.
19:31 And therefore, they have approximately 10 days to review that
19:36 information and give any feedback that they have regarding it.
19:41 So, for example, if, if they’re only allowed maybe three days to
19:45 review that information, when they’re allowed 10, that could be
19:50 a, uh, procedural irregularity that could cause an appeal.
19:54 Important considerations.
19:59 No discipline can be enforced until the investigation is
20:03 completed.
20:04 Both parties have the right to due process.
20:08 They have the right to hear the allegations against them, have
20:11 the opportunity to speak on their behalf, to review the evidence,
20:15 and have a advisor of their choice be present with them.
20:19 And when I talk about an advisor of choice, that could be
20:22 potentially an attorney.
20:24 It could be a friend.
20:25 It could be a teacher, a counselor.
20:28 However, they are not there to be a voice for them.
20:32 They are there to support them during this process.
20:35 Law enforcement criminal investigations can delay school
20:39 investigations, but not relieve the school of its duty to
20:42 respond.
20:43 Like I mentioned earlier, law enforcement criminal
20:45 investigations are going to probably be taking place at the same
20:48 time we are doing a Title IX investigation.
20:50 That does not stop us from doing our investigation.
20:55 However, there are going to be times where law enforcement may
20:58 say they’re not done interviewing a witness at this point in
21:01 time.
21:01 We really need you to hold off before you continue continue.
21:05 I will be communicating with the local agencies to find out when
21:09 we can proceed.
21:10 However, um, so it really does depend.
21:13 It may delay us a little bit, uh, but we still need to try to
21:17 act prompt as promptly as possible.
21:20 Again, the investigation process is very lengthy and take a
21:23 minimum of 30 to 60 days.
21:25 So, like I was mentioning earlier, the, uh, complainant and the
21:29 respondent parties both have 10, 10 days to review the evidence
21:33 against them.
21:34 Uh, after that, uh, the case package, so to speak, goes to the
21:37 decision maker.
21:39 The decision maker gets 10 days to review the information.
21:42 If it goes to an appeal process, it’s another 10 days.
21:46 But that’s not also putting into account the time it’s spent for
21:50 the investigator to do the, the interviews and also to collect
21:53 all the evidence.
21:54 It’s very time consuming.
21:55 There is no expectation of FERPA.
21:59 So, uh, basically, uh, students’ records are, can, are somewhat
22:05 exposed.
22:06 Uh, there’s no redaction as far as names during these reports.
22:11 Um, so, and I, and I don’t know if I mentioned this earlier, but
22:14 also the advisors, too, who are, who are there to, or not
22:18 represent, but also to be there as support, uh, for the parties,
22:21 they, too, get access to the, uh, to any sort of statements and
22:25 evidence.
22:29 And lastly, all title nine questions refer to the title nine
22:33 coordinator there.
22:35 This is a very rough understanding of the process.
22:37 There’s a lot to it.
22:39 Um, so most likely, uh, parents are, are, are going to call and
22:43 have questions.
22:45 Please, please, if you could refer it to me and I will try my
22:47 best to, to help assist you.
22:49 Um, but I don’t know if anyone has any particular questions at
22:53 the moment.
22:55 Thank you, Ms. Sachsen-Meyer, and welcome to the team.
22:57 Thank you.
22:58 Uh, we, we appreciate the briefing this morning.
23:00 Board members have questions?
23:01 Ms. Campbell?
23:02 So, thank you for that presentation being so thorough, because
23:06 this is the thing we talked about as we went through the policy
23:09 revision process in the spring, but it helps.
23:11 Um, so just a couple of, just quick questions, um, in the slide
23:17 that talked about who can report, um, it’s, you mentioned it, it
23:23 can be reported, uh, anonymously.
23:25 How does, how does that work?
23:28 Um, I’m assuming that you can’t really do a formal investigation
23:31 because you said you have to, they have to have to fill out
23:33 something.
23:33 Um, what, what, what happens with those?
23:38 So, um, basically, uh, we were going to, with that information,
23:42 try our best to speak to any witnesses and whatnot.
23:47 So, I may, at that point, be the one to put the complaint in, if
23:50 it’s anonymous.
23:51 Thank you.
23:52 Um, are, are, are our charter schools getting the same
23:56 information and training?
23:58 I know they’re responsible to have their own Title IX coordinators,
24:01 and we, we don’t have, do Title IX work for the charter schools,
24:04 but are they receiving?
24:05 Because I know when we had, um, who’s your assistant that we
24:09 just lost?
24:10 Valerie.
24:11 Um, we had some, you know, she had offered them some counsel,
24:15 but they are responsible for their own process, right?
24:19 But I was wondering, how much of this are they getting?
24:21 So, I can tell you that I just recently attended, uh, training
24:25 that was put on, um, through ATICSA.
24:27 And, uh, we definitely did have administration from our, um,
24:32 from our other schools attending that.
24:36 Um, so, yes, they, they, they were participating.
24:38 Good.
24:40 Thank you.
24:40 And I’m not trying to grill you, I promise.
24:42 This is not your initiation.
24:43 Um, who typically would the decision maker be?
24:47 So, um, and I’m not too sure at this point in time, but what we’re
24:51 doing is, is, is making a pool of individuals here within the
24:55 school district that we’re going to be choosing.
24:57 I just don’t know who those members are.
25:00 It would probably be an administrator at some level.
25:03 Yes, ma’am.
25:04 Okay.
25:04 Um, all right, sorry, I’ve got just a few more, um, the, can the,
25:10 you, I think you said this part, but I, I was writing something.
25:14 Um, the advisors, those can be the parents, correct?
25:17 So, the, the child is going to be allowed to have their parent
25:20 there regardless.
25:21 Okay.
25:22 This is an additional person.
25:23 Okay.
25:23 Yep.
25:25 Um, and then the 10 days, and I think I remember this from the
25:28 pro, the revision process, but that’s, is that, that’s work days,
25:31 right?
25:32 Not calendar days, or is it calendar?
25:34 I believe it’s calendar days.
25:35 Okay.
25:36 Um, and then the last one is in the last slide said no
25:41 discipline can be enforced until investigation is completed.
25:47 I’m going to assume that we have our regular discipline that’s
25:51 going on and if, if it’s obvious to an administrator that
25:53 something has happened, just like any other situation, somebody
25:56 shoved a kid into the wall.
25:57 Um, just because it’s a Title IX doesn’t mean that we can’t have
26:02 any discipline whatsoever, um, alleged, am I correct?
26:06 Unfortunately, we cannot, uh, do any sort of enforcement of
26:09 discipline.
26:10 So until this process is completely completed, I’m just going to
26:15 put hypothetical to make sure I’m understanding.
26:17 So if we, so we have awareness, our staff is awareness, not of
26:21 something that’s brought to us because of a reporting, but that
26:24 staff, you know, saw themselves of, let’s say a sexual assault
26:28 or, or whatever, then we can have that, the respondent still on
26:34 campus for however many days until this process is completed.
26:37 There, there is a possibility, yes, there is an emergency
26:40 removal process that would have to be done through the threat
26:43 assessment team.
26:44 Okay. And of course you said law enforcement handles it. So I’m
26:47 assuming that also in the case of sexual, sexual assault on a
26:50 campus that law enforcement can handle it.
26:52 Yes, ma’am. The law enforcement is definitely going to be
26:54 involved with those types of cases.
26:56 Which means that the student may not necessarily be still on
26:58 campus.
26:59 So there, there could be other things been in place, um, as far
27:02 as a no contact order or whatnot, but that is completely, it’s
27:05 going to be separate.
27:06 That’s going to be with law enforcement, um, you know, put in,
27:09 put them put in place by a judge.
27:12 Okay.
27:13 So, um, you know, and like I said, unfortunately we won’t be
27:16 able to, to put in any type of discipline.
27:19 However, there is that emergency removal that we may have to
27:22 look at, or, um, again, we’re going to be doing the supportive
27:26 measures of trying to separate the two.
27:28 Oh, gotcha.
27:29 Okay.
27:30 I’m thinking somehow when that part was written that.
27:34 Let me just, if I can interrupt, just for clarification, law
27:37 enforcement will also be, well, obviously if, if, if, if law
27:42 enforcement is warranted, they will be involved and this does
27:46 not preclude, preclude law enforcement doing what they need to
27:49 from a criminal perspective.
27:50 I think that’s maybe what you are getting to, and so in fact
27:53 there could be, there could be criminal determination as well.
27:58 And, and as such law enforcement would take the actions that
28:01 they would.
28:02 Correct.
28:03 Yes.
28:04 That’s what I was getting.
28:05 Yeah.
28:06 Law enforcement is completely separate from this.
28:07 So if they get arrested as a result of the sexual assault, they
28:10 would be in jail, but we can’t do school discipline.
28:13 Her process is only school discipline process.
28:16 Okay.
28:17 Which means suspension, expulsion, none of that can happen.
28:20 That’s correct.
28:21 I just have one, it kind of dovetails onto Ms. Campbell’s.
28:31 So I want to make sure that, can we move somebody to another
28:35 classroom?
28:37 Can we separate them?
28:40 Can we have a no contact?
28:41 I want to make sure that that’s okay because there could be
28:43 issues where that could arise.
28:45 Yes.
28:46 So everything you just described would be supportive measures.
28:49 So yes, we’d be able to change their classes.
28:51 We would be able to have an escort of some kind, and then the
28:54 stay away contract.
28:56 Exactly.
28:57 Thank you.
28:58 So I just, something that might be different to you guys, and it’s
29:01 going to feel different to our parents.
29:04 In the past, whenever we’re handling a case, and it’s an
29:06 investigation that doesn’t involve Title IX, and we’re looking
29:09 at a stay away contract or moving classes,
29:12 typically the person who is the complainant, the person who came
29:15 and brought the complaint forward stays in the class they are,
29:19 and the respondent is moved.
29:21 As Title IX, it is everybody has to be treated with equity until
29:26 the investigation is done.
29:29 Meaning if somebody has to move, we need to look and see whose
29:33 move impacts the other less.
29:36 So you are absolutely going to get phone calls from parents
29:39 saying why was my daughter moved, or why was my son moved, when
29:43 I’m the one that brought forward the complaint.
29:46 It’s going to feel different, it’s going to sound different, and
29:49 we just wanted to make sure that you guys were prepared for the
29:52 impact that that might have as we move forward with Title IX.
29:55 In terms of the decision maker, we moved forward and had
29:58 probably 100 people trained in the decision making process.
30:03 That’s an exaggeration, it was more like 50 now that I’m
30:05 thinking about the room.
30:07 So it just has to be somebody that’s unbiased.
30:10 And so right now the directors and a lot of our people up here
30:14 were all trained to be decision makers.
30:17 And then of course we have to have a separate appellate person.
30:20 So Misty Bland and Danielle McKinnon are right now kind of our
30:24 focus for the appeals process if we have to select them.
30:28 But we knew the discipline piece, you guys are going to start
30:30 getting phone calls.
30:32 And we knew the safety measure piece, the safety plan, not the
30:37 safety plan, supportive measures are going to also feel
30:40 different.
30:41 So we wanted to make sure to give you guys plenty of warning
30:43 when and if you start getting phone calls.
30:46 But just to reiterate, that’s not a new policy or procedure that’s
30:51 based on what the district, Brevard County Schools has done.
30:54 It’s based off of this 2018 law that we are having to apply.
31:00 It’s based on the regs, the regulations that are attached to
31:04 that law.
31:05 The laws may be 50 words.
31:07 The regulations are about 1500 pages.
31:10 So it’s all based on the regs.
31:13 Ms. Saksmeyer, thank you.
31:20 We’ve never had this in-depth conversation about Title IX.
31:23 It’s your first day on the job or in front of us.
31:25 So I just wanted to say thank you.
31:26 Welcome aboard.
31:27 Oh, I appreciate it.
31:28 Thank you.
31:28 You did very good in the crossfire right there with Ms. Campbell.
31:31 She was bam, bam, bam.
31:32 So great job.
31:33 Welcome to the team.
31:34 A lot of us went through the COVID stuff.
31:36 So this is your way of catching up with that.
31:38 There we go.
31:39 All right.
31:40 In your face.
31:41 Here we go.
31:42 So welcome aboard.
31:43 Thank you.
31:45 Can I ask a question?
31:46 So it’s okay if you don’t know the answer to this.
31:48 Okay.
31:49 I don’t know the answer to anything in the weeds, but just
31:50 because Ms. Campbell’s question
31:51 just kind of made me start to think a little bit.
31:53 So you had mentioned on one of these slides about OCR and in
31:56 2020 kind of went in favor
31:59 of due process of the respondent and then things might change.
32:02 Yes.
32:03 So what Ms. Campbell was asking about, is that something that
32:06 was modified over the past
32:09 few years and maybe will be changed or do you have any idea?
32:14 So currently we are under the 2020 regulations, but there’s
32:18 going to be new regulations coming
32:20 out.
32:21 Hopefully I’m understanding your question correctly.
32:24 But we don’t know exactly.
32:26 I mean, they gave us the proposed regulations that potentially
32:28 are going to be coming out.
32:30 But right now there’s a process going on.
32:33 I believe it’s a 60 day comment period that anybody can
32:35 basically put comments in regarding
32:38 the proposed regulations that they have.
32:41 So, but we don’t know fully what’s going to be taking place
32:44 until fall or summer 2023.
32:47 Okay.
32:48 Thanks.
32:49 And I want to say welcome to the team as well.
32:51 And congratulations to Ms. Moore because I’m sure she’s really
32:53 glad that you’re here
32:55 taking a lot of the weight off of her shoulders.
32:58 But I also really appreciate and respect your background because
33:01 it couldn’t be more applicable
33:03 to this job.
33:04 So thank you and welcome to the team.
33:06 I appreciate it.
33:07 Thank you.
33:09 Almost done, I think.
33:10 I just have a few.
33:11 Okay.
33:12 And I don’t think any of them are too hard.
33:14 Some of them were already asked.
33:16 So you’re good there.
33:17 This one I’m pretty sure I know the answer to.
33:20 You had mentioned if there was, if they get to informal
33:25 resolution that there is no investigation.
33:29 But prior to that you had indicated that if there was something,
33:32 if there were certain circumstances
33:35 met that you could make the decision to go ahead and do an
33:37 investigation regardless.
33:39 So is there a scenario where we might come to an informal
33:42 resolution but you look at it and
33:44 say no we need to do a formal investigation on that.
33:47 So for instance, and this is prohibited, you can’t do an
33:51 informal resolution when there’s
33:54 an incident where there’s a teacher and a student involved of
33:57 any type of sexual harassment.
33:59 So no formal resolution would be able to take place even if the
34:02 complainant said well I’m
34:06 okay with what happened against you.
34:08 So that would be something that we would continue on with the
34:11 formal.
34:12 And then the appeals process.
34:17 Well I guess this kind of applies to everything that you have
34:19 said here.
34:20 So you mentioned that the determination was made whether or not
34:23 our district policy had
34:24 been violated.
34:25 But our district policy is based on the regulations of Title IX.
34:32 Right?
34:33 Yes.
34:34 So we have a policy in place, the 2266, that goes over our grievance
34:40 process.
34:41 So, and also everything involved with Title IX is inside that,
34:45 basically that policy.
34:47 So if we see that any part of it’s been violated during the
34:51 final end when the decision makers can
34:55 come into a conclusion, that’s when they’re going to accordingly
34:58 come up with some type of
34:59 sanction.
35:00 So is there, and if you don’t know the answer to this, okay.
35:04 Is there a difference between our policy and the Title IX
35:08 regulations?
35:10 Like is there any place where we’re in conflict?
35:13 Like have we defined the appeal process differently than Title
35:16 IX defines an appeal process?
35:18 Or are we, is our policy basically Title IX reg?
35:23 So, I don’t know.
35:25 Our appeal process, like I said, there’s only three main, three
35:29 main grounds that we can go
35:31 off of.
35:32 But I don’t know if that is any different from any other policy
35:35 that we may have.
35:36 Our policy is based off of Title IX.
35:39 So the grievance process is going to be in compliance with Title
35:40 IX.
35:41 Title IX says you have to have, like a lot of things, but they’ll
35:45 leave up the, whether
35:46 it’s calendar days or work days, up to you and your definition.
35:49 So there are some things in our policy that were left up to us,
35:52 and we’ve defined those.
35:55 Like it’s calendar days instead of work days, yeah.
35:59 And so going back to the area that was as of concern about us
36:04 not issuing discipline prior
36:06 to the investigation being completed, that is not our
36:09 determination, correct?
36:11 That is Title IX requirement?
36:13 Yes, that is the Title IX.
36:15 Okay.
36:16 And then, I think that’s it.
36:22 Because the rest of the questions dealt with connection,
36:25 alignment between our policy and
36:27 Title IX.
36:28 Okay.
36:29 Anybody else have anything for Ms. Hexenmeyer?
36:32 Great.
36:33 Thank you again.
36:34 Thank you very much.
36:35 Welcome to the team and great job handling your first
36:37 presentation to the board.
36:38 Thank you.
36:39 And the firing squad.
36:40 Just wait until Matt asks a question.
36:42 Matt’s waiting.
36:43 Not allowed to.
36:45 All right.
36:47 Our next topic then is going to be truancy and will be presented
36:50 by Christopher Reed,
36:51 Director of Students at Risk.
36:53 Mr. Reed, welcome.
36:54 Nice QR code.
36:55 Like a little dinosaur.
36:57 I did not create that.
37:00 Yeah.
37:01 Take credit.
37:02 That was good.
37:03 Good layout on your power.
37:05 Thank you.
37:07 All right.
37:08 Good afternoon, everybody.
37:09 Again, my name is Chris Reed.
37:10 I’m one of the directors at Student Services.
37:11 And I’m going to tell you a little story about why every day
37:16 counts in the realm of attendance.
37:20 So the first thing I want to share with you all is we’re
37:22 changing our expectations or changing
37:25 one of the key metrics that we take a look at with regard to
37:28 attendance.
37:29 And that new metric is chronic absenteeism.
37:33 And I’m going to do my best to share with you why we’re making
37:36 that change to looking at chronic
37:38 absenteeism instead of average daily attendance.
37:42 Average daily attendance has been what we’ve traditionally
37:45 looked at in school districts across the state,
37:48 across the nation.
37:49 And we’re all starting to catch on that chronic absenteeism is a
37:52 better metric to influence change.
37:56 So the reason average daily attendance can give a false positive.
38:03 So here in this graph, I have three schools here in Brevard
38:07 County.
38:08 And I’ve got in blue the average daily attendance for last year.
38:13 And we can see we’ve got 89.6, 90.22, and 86.29.
38:18 B plus, A minus work, right?
38:21 Everyone’s happy.
38:22 That’s very exciting to see.
38:24 When we take a look at the chronic absenteeism, that data starts
38:27 to tell a different story.
38:29 We can see at Apollo we had 39% of the students met the
38:32 definition of chronic absenteeism.
38:35 35 at Southwest and 43 at Cocoa High.
38:38 Chronic absenteeism is defined by missing 10% of possible days
38:43 of school.
38:45 And that’s for any reason.
38:47 So I say, I’m going to tell you a story about attendance today.
38:52 Any day you’re not in school for any reason is a lost learning
38:55 opportunity.
38:56 A lost learning opportunity that we can’t regain.
38:58 There may be valid reason, there may be invalid reason.
39:01 But if we miss a day of school, that’s a lost learning
39:03 opportunity.
39:04 Any day that a student is absent from school is also a missed
39:07 teaching opportunity.
39:09 And a teacher’s penalized because you must catch that student up
39:13 for what was missed that day.
39:15 So it slows their momentum of the instructional delivery.
39:19 So again, average daily attendance is with a metric that we used
39:23 to look at.
39:24 We are evolving into that chronic absenteeism.
39:27 And chronic absenteeism at the end of the year would be missing
39:30 18 days of school or more due to the fact that we have 180.
39:36 When we look at chronic absenteeism throughout the school year,
39:39 we’ll be looking at 10% or more.
39:42 Now all data I share with you today from last year was again for
39:46 any absence with the exception of Q for quarantine.
39:51 So students that were out for quarantine still had lost learning
39:54 and it was a missed learning opportunity.
39:57 But for this presentation, we did remove Q from the data.
40:01 But doctor’s notes, court dates, unexcused, excused absences do
40:06 meet the definition of chronic absenteeism.
40:09 So again, we are evolving to chronic absenteeism to prevent that
40:13 false positive that average daily attendance can and to find
40:18 where our real problems are.
40:20 So as I said, chronic absenteeism is missing 10% of the school
40:26 days possible for any reason.
40:29 And then that little asterisk, we didn’t count quarantining in
40:32 Brevard’s data.
40:34 So it counts again all absences including suspensions.
40:38 What we want to emphasize is the number of days missed.
40:41 Again, as I said, a missed day is a missed learning opportunity,
40:43 a missed teaching opportunity.
40:46 And no matter what we do or how well we do it, it’s still a lost
40:49 learning opportunity.
40:51 So we look at that academic impact, but we also want to focus on
40:55 that social and also the behavioral pieces that come along with
40:58 that.
40:59 Again, starting, stopping, beginning, taking a break, restarting,
41:04 any gap in that instruction will have an impact on that
41:07 instructional delivery.
41:10 So we focus on prevention and problem-solving strategies.
41:15 What we found is being punitive in nature isn’t as successful as
41:20 taking more of a restorative approach to that.
41:25 But curbing chronic absenteeism is a very difficult task, and
41:29 the best way to do that is through relationships.
41:32 And I’ll attempt to share some successful ways as we continue.
41:37 So becoming chronically absent is really easy.
41:42 So if you take a look at this graphic here of a calendar, you
41:45 can see missing two days a month.
41:49 Two days a month throughout the school year, sometimes three,
41:52 you easily can hit the mark for that chronic absenteeism.
41:55 Our current attendance policy is you are allowed nine unexcused
42:00 absences per semester.
42:02 So already we’re allowing kids to miss that 18-day mark or that
42:06 10% mark.
42:08 You can see by this illustration that it is very simple to reach
42:12 that 18 days absent or that 10%.
42:15 And we, again, want to make sure we have awareness of that so
42:20 that we can curb those lost learning opportunities.
42:25 So let me share some stats from Brevard.
42:27 Last year, 21-22, we had over 13,000 students that were chronically
42:33 absent from school.
42:35 To put that into perspective, 9,432 were chronically absent the
42:40 year before.
42:42 So our situation is getting worse.
42:47 I don’t have a clicker here, so it’s clicking on its own.
42:49 Sorry, it’s got a mind of its own, guys.
42:51 So last year, last school year, 21% of the students in Pre-K
42:55 through 12 met the definition of being chronically absent.
43:00 21%.
43:01 Missed more, 10% or more.
43:04 The year before, it was 14%.
43:06 Okay?
43:07 Now, I give you that stat of 21 from last year.
43:10 Please know that as you saw on that first slide with Apollo and
43:13 Southwest and Cocoa High, some schools are higher, some schools
43:17 are lower.
43:18 That’s our average of that 21% from last year.
43:22 And again, some kids missed 10%, some missed 60%.
43:29 So this bar graph gives you an idea of how we look and how we’re
43:31 performing in our elementary schools.
43:34 You can see on the left side, I’ve got a red line that indicates
43:38 for you the number of elementary schools that fell below that 10%
43:42 overall average.
43:44 And you can see the majority of schools fell above that 10%
43:49 average.
43:50 What I want us to focus on is that third grade, third graders
43:54 that are chronically absent, and traditionally that would be
43:56 first, second, and third grade being chronically absent.
44:00 You’re twice as likely to be retained.
44:04 Okay?
44:05 And the result of retention is you’re not meeting the state
44:07 standards.
44:08 You’re not meeting expectations on the state assessment.
44:11 You are behind.
44:13 And again, the majority, as you can see by this slide, are above
44:17 that 10% target line.
44:19 The story continues through middle and high school.
44:24 We can see that one middle school was at 10.
44:28 All others were up beyond the line.
44:30 And in high school, we can see that two were below that 10% mark,
44:34 and the others were all above.
44:36 And we can see the different percentages.
44:38 As I said, some schools are near 10.
44:41 Some schools are a little above 10.
44:43 Some schools are well beyond that 10% average overall.
44:49 Another stat to look at is students that miss zero to four days
44:53 per semester, or eight days per year, there’s some statistics
44:59 that show they have an 87% graduation rate.
45:02 Those that miss 15 to 19 per semester, or up to 40 a year almost,
45:08 have a 21% graduation rate.
45:11 So this begins back in elementary school, when students start to
45:15 miss those learning opportunities, and it begins compounding.
45:18 As it compounds over time, more and more learning is missed, and
45:22 then students miss out on those academic, social, and behavioral
45:29 wins.
45:30 This slide tries to tell the story of what that looks like over
45:34 time.
45:35 So this is a study of a cohort of students in Florida, and it
45:38 takes a look at them from kindergarten through sixth grade.
45:43 So what it shows here is that first blue bar is 37%.
45:48 That was their kindergarten year.
45:50 They missed 37% of the possible days of school that year, and
45:54 missed out on 37% of the learning opportunities for whatever
45:58 reason.
45:59 And that path of absenteeism continued as that student went on,
46:03 although it got better.
46:05 So we can see first grade, second grade, things were bad, but
46:09 getting better.
46:11 Third grade year, we can see at that 6% mark, again, that data
46:14 point I shared, two times more likely to be retained in third
46:18 grade.
46:19 What I want you to see, or what this graph is trying to explain,
46:23 is over the course of those seven years, by being chronically
46:28 absent a lot or a little,
46:31 this child, by the end of sixth grade, has missed an entire year
46:35 of instruction.
46:37 So I ask you, what grade is worthwhile of us skipping and
46:40 cutting out, right?
46:42 No grade is worth that.
46:44 But when we piece them together, piece by piece, that can result.
46:48 And in the situation in this study, this showed us that we have
46:52 a year’s worth of lost learning.
46:55 So the good news of this slide is, it got better as they got
46:58 older, so our interventions began to work.
47:01 What I want you to see is that it compounds over time.
47:06 And then lastly, is that we can miss up to, in this case, a year’s
47:11 worth of learning.
47:14 So let me tell you a little bit about how we’re addressing the
47:18 problem.
47:19 And this is where things will get a little difficult.
47:23 Chronic absenteeism should be its path of its own.
47:26 Truancy should stand alone as well.
47:29 We cross lanes all the time in my role.
47:32 So we’ve got a truancy path that deals with unexcused absences
47:36 only.
47:37 Chronic absenteeism deals with all absences, okay?
47:41 It’s a lose-lose, but statutorily, we have rules about unexcused
47:46 absences and a path towards truancy.
47:48 Chronic absenteeism is our indicator of people are missing out
47:51 on good learning opportunities,
47:53 and we need to get them back in the building.
47:56 So let me talk to you a little bit about what we do to address
47:59 the problem.
48:00 And so I want you to think of a triangle.
48:02 And at the base of that triangle, we’ve got our Tier 1
48:04 interventions that we do that are effective for the majority of
48:08 people.
48:09 And that’s the masses.
48:11 So we like to say that that would serve about 80% in a perfect
48:14 world.
48:15 The next level would be Tier 2, and we would shoot for about 15%
48:19 in that level that those interventions would be effective for.
48:23 And that last piece, that most intensive or that Tier 3, would
48:26 be for about 5% of the students.
48:30 And so look at this as we address the problem is that will be
48:33 that continuum, the majority to the minority.
48:36 So it begins at the school level with truancy or chronic absenteeism.
48:41 The school is where 80% hopefully of those problems can get
48:45 addressed and/or be solved.
48:47 And our procedure at the school level is at 3 unexcused absences,
48:52 we make an attempt to make communication.
48:55 Parent phone call, conference, letter.
48:58 At 5 days, we attempt to do that again to discuss what we did at
49:02 3 days and to continue to problem solve and figure out what we
49:05 have in place.
49:06 We put interventions in place and we start documenting what we’ve
49:10 done in FOCUS to be able to continue that work.
49:13 Now, I will tell you one of the greatest things about FOCUS is
49:16 going to be telling our story over time with students.
49:21 There are hundreds of ways that schools document right now and
49:24 have been.
49:25 FOCUS is going to unite us and give us a one stop shop to tell
49:28 those stories of those interventions from School A to School B
49:32 to School C.
49:33 So I’m very excited to be able to unite all of our schools and
49:36 be able to tell that story of what those interventions have been.
49:40 The second way that we move into if we’re not effective at that
49:44 Tier 1 at the school level that has the most influence on our
49:48 students would be to involve our truancy team here.
49:52 Now, we have five members on the truancy team and they report to
49:54 me.
49:55 What our procedure is, is that eight unexcused absences, someone
49:59 at the school will activate a member of the truancy team.
50:04 At eight, it’s just putting them on our radar.
50:07 It’s helping us know that we have a problem at a school and that
50:09 we’re starting to partner.
50:11 We’re starting to be part of that think tank with that school
50:14 level team that’s intervening.
50:17 Again, we’re just a partner at that time.
50:20 At 15 days of unexcused absences, that’s where the truancy team
50:24 officially gets activated and starts to take a leading/supporting
50:28 role instead of a supporting role.
50:30 At 15, you meet the definition of being truant and therefore we
50:34 can start to begin to put some sanctions and some different
50:38 types of interventions in place.
50:42 For example, in a 90-day period is when we start to put into
50:46 place the suspension of permits and driver’s licenses for
50:51 students age 14 and above.
50:55 Again, as they refer to truancy, it’s not a, this is now your
50:59 problem.
51:00 It’s a partnership between the school and the truancy team.
51:05 Again, the team is a party of five and they are very good at
51:08 making home visits and sharing why and helping families connect
51:11 the services that they didn’t have.
51:13 But they are a party of five.
51:15 So it’s again in a partnership with schools.
51:18 More often than I would like, those strategies are ineffective
51:22 between truancy and school and we have an option to start to
51:26 involve the court system.
51:28 New last year was truancy court.
51:32 We had the opportunity to launch here in Brevard and the first
51:35 step before we officially begin truancy court is something that
51:39 we call court diversion program, truancy court diversion.
51:44 When you’re enrolled into the truancy court diversion, we serve
51:48 a subpoena to a household to appear in front of a judge.
51:53 And in front of that judge, you’re given two choices on your
51:56 first day.
51:57 A, start coming to truancy court every week and reporting to the
52:01 judge.
52:02 Or B, enroll in the truancy court diversion program.
52:07 Truancy court diversion is designed to say, “Hey, we’ve been
52:11 trying to get you to come to school.
52:13 Mom, dad, kid.”
52:16 And it hasn’t been working.
52:18 We’re serious.
52:19 You have six weeks to get it right.
52:21 And students in that diversion program have six weeks that they
52:24 have to have no unexcused absences.
52:27 Okay.
52:28 The diversion program is for students age six through 15.
52:32 If you are not successful in the diversion program, you
52:35 immediately get enrolled into truancy court.
52:39 And again, the difference is you come every week to court and
52:43 you appear before the judge.
52:45 Same rules apply.
52:47 And again, she wants you to be successful for six weeks.
52:50 But at any time, she can extend that longer than needed or
52:54 longer than the six weeks if needed.
52:58 Again, it’s court ordered.
53:00 You meet weekly.
53:01 We do have a positive spin on things.
53:03 We try and make it as productive for the students.
53:06 Again, it is punitive.
53:07 You’re coming to court.
53:08 You’re subpoenaed.
53:09 There’s law enforcement involved.
53:11 But our goal still is to instill a love for learning in school.
53:15 And therefore, we need to form that partnership and educate
53:18 families and students the importance of coming.
53:21 So in truancy court, that is our goal as well, just like it was
53:26 back at that first row.
53:28 When that is unsuccessful, we have a program called SINS-FINS,
53:32 children’s in need of services or families in need of services.
53:37 And this is designed for students 10 to 15 years of age.
53:42 So it’s a little older.
53:45 And the teeth behind this program really is this is where we’re
53:49 looking at removing a student from the home and placing them in
53:52 a setting that will ensure that the student comes to school.
53:56 Many times the barrier is the parent or the guardian in their
54:00 life.
54:01 Many times it’s a student.
54:02 Many times it is both.
54:04 but that is a piece of the equation that we have that the judge
54:06 does have the ability to turn that intervention on in certain
54:12 cases.
54:14 But we like to walk through all of our lower, less intensive
54:18 interventions before we consider something like that.
54:22 The last is potential parent prosecution.
54:26 And this would be the involvement of the state attorney.
54:30 And this would be a misdemeanor charge for any parent or
54:34 guardian that is not meeting the statutory requirements of their
54:37 child attending school.
54:40 This happens the least and we haven’t had this happen under my
54:44 watch yet.
54:45 Not that it hasn’t happened, but it hasn’t happened under my
54:47 watch yet.
54:48 So addressing the problem.
54:53 Things that again at the school level that we’re doing that we’re
54:56 having great influence and impact on.
54:59 One is parent liaisons.
55:00 Last year we launched a program in late September, early October
55:06 where we put parent liaisons in some of our buildings with the
55:09 most need to remedy chronic absenteeism, truancy, attendance in
55:15 general.
55:16 And we put those liaisons in place and it was not the greatest
55:20 launch because we had great difficulty in hiring people.
55:24 We are proud to say we have that program in place again this
55:27 year in 35 of our schools.
55:29 And we hope to fill all those vacancies and start from the very
55:32 first day.
55:33 And I was on a campus yesterday and I saw a liaison already at
55:35 work on their first day.
55:37 They knew what to do, how to do it and where to go.
55:39 So that is behind us now of training some of them.
55:43 Again, those parent liaisons are a key role at some of our sites.
55:47 What I want us to understand though is curbing attendance is
55:50 about making connections and strengthening relationships.
55:54 I can be punitive, I can bribe you, I can take things away, but
55:59 really that desire to come to be part of that school family is
56:04 what’s going to get kids in that school.
56:06 Knowing you’re missed when you’re not there, knowing that
56:08 someone’s counting on you to be there and be there on time, both
56:12 for the adults and for the students is an important piece.
56:16 And that’s what those liaisons are able to try and do.
56:20 They’re strategically placed each morning at places in the
56:23 school to make sure that their hot, hot kids are met, are
56:27 greeted and are felt like they’re loved and are ready, that are
56:30 recognized that they’re there.
56:32 What I want to note again is people have the most influence over
56:36 others.
56:37 And again, I can turn my truancy team on for any problem, but
56:40 when they go knock on that door, they are a stranger knocking on
56:43 that house, okay?
56:45 Everyone’s on their back heels.
56:47 But if a classroom teacher or someone that your older sibling,
56:50 your older child had or your sibling had, knocks on the door,
56:54 that’s a familiar face and someone that has influence.
56:57 So just know that those school level interventions have to have
57:01 that connection.
57:03 So the graphic shows that we strengthen those relationships at
57:06 school and home.
57:08 Some ways that we’re doing that in schools indirectly would be
57:12 the training that we’re doing at Sites and Conscious Discipline
57:16 where we’re looking to build a school family.
57:18 Other ways that we’re doing that is the mentorship program and
57:23 PBIS.
57:24 And again, what we want to think of through those relationships
57:27 being strengthened is cooperation.
57:30 Coming to school, following our rules, doing our academics.
57:33 Cooperation comes on the coattails of a connection, okay?
57:37 A bond, a relationship, that rapport.
57:39 We can’t get anyone to do what we want them to do until they
57:42 want to do it for us or for themselves.
57:45 So we’ve got to form those connections, okay?
57:48 Relationships matter.
57:49 And again, the judge has influence, right?
57:52 But they’re not friends and they’re happy to be gone from that
57:55 situation when they’re in court.
57:58 Truancy has influence and parents are happy to have them gone
58:01 when the situation is fixed.
58:03 School and that team have the most impact.
58:09 Two quotes from two principals that have liaisons in their
58:12 building, very similar in nature.
58:14 Katherine Murphy at Endeavor says, “Parent liaisons forms
58:17 connections with disconnected families.
58:21 Attendance is multifaceted.
58:23 Liaisons are able to give time needed to support our families.”
58:27 Gina Tejie at Cambridge Elementary, very similar, “Having the
58:30 connection between school and home to encourage consistent
58:34 attendance and provide assistance to families has been
58:37 invaluable.”
58:39 Again, a lot of times families just need to be connected to
58:42 resources they didn’t know they needed or to see the value and
58:45 importance of coming to school each day.
58:48 As I’ve already said, we have a district team.
58:51 We have five members on that team that work under me and they’re
58:54 geographically assigned a caseload.
58:57 Chris Ward, Stephanie Brandenburg, Andrea Jones, Janice Waltemeier,
59:01 and Lisa Kieser serve as our attendance team.
59:05 To give you some data of the statistics that they work with,
59:10 last year 630 truancy referrals were submitted to them.
59:15 As I said again, a school said, “We’ve done A, B, and C,” and 630
59:20 times they clicked the button to say, “Help us.”
59:24 Those 630 cases that we received, we had a 64% closure rate.
59:30 Now, I’ll be honest, once an attendance problem is started and
59:33 you reach our truancy team, it’s very difficult to break that
59:37 pattern.
59:38 That 64% is a lot of kids that moved away, right, or enrolled in
59:42 a different setting outside of Brevard.
59:45 So I don’t want you to think that as amazing as our team is,
59:49 that is an impressive stat that is influenced by some data that
59:54 wasn’t in our control.
59:56 What I want to point out, though, is that that next line says
1:00:00 students with absences greater than 25 unexcused.
1:00:05 We had in Brevard 2,293 students that had 25 or more unexcused
1:00:13 absences.
1:00:15 2,293.
1:00:16 And only 27% of those cases got open.
1:00:25 So of the 2,293, only 630 were open.
1:00:29 So, what that tells me right now is our truancy team is being
1:00:32 underutilized.
1:00:34 We’re not pushing that button to activate them.
1:00:38 But I also need to recognize that if all 2,293 got activated
1:00:42 under those five people, right, they could knock on, I don’t
1:00:46 know how many doors you can knock on on a day, but it’s not 2,293.
1:00:51 So we’ve got some room to grow at that tier one level of A, or
1:00:56 tier one into two, activating truancy, but also determining what
1:01:01 can we strengthen at that school level still as well.
1:01:04 Okay, remember, 80% falls down at that tier one level.
1:01:08 Truancy starts to become that two and three.
1:01:11 So again, the core functions of the truancy team partners find
1:01:15 those families and connect them with resources.
1:01:19 And again, this year we created truancy court.
1:01:22 We have a manual that we use and that we are partnered with our
1:01:26 judge and we’re seeing some positive results that I’ll share
1:01:29 with you now.
1:01:30 So truancy court is done with Judge Serrano.
1:01:35 Mr. Gibbs and I get to go over there on a very regular basis.
1:01:39 We have had 44 cases go through the truancy court.
1:01:43 So the 44 is 36 plus the 8.
1:01:47 But truancy court, the 36 cases that are open, we’ve had an 82%
1:01:53 success rate.
1:01:55 Now, not all of them are done yet.
1:01:57 So that’s a very high number.
1:01:58 Like, again, that’s great.
1:01:59 That’s going well, right?
1:02:00 Well, that’s of the eight cases that have run their true course,
1:02:03 right?
1:02:04 So a lot of them are still pending and open.
1:02:07 But we’re doing creative things like bringing the families in
1:02:09 before school started and saying, are you registered?
1:02:12 Here’s a registration packet.
1:02:13 The judge is saying, be there tomorrow.
1:02:15 Turn it in.
1:02:16 I’ll be seeing you next week.
1:02:18 So we’re having great success and have a great partnership with
1:02:22 that judge.
1:02:23 But again, that’s a very small minority of our students, 36.
1:02:27 Again, I showed you over 2,000 that could meet the criteria for
1:02:31 this potential service.
1:02:33 SINs is that children in need of services.
1:02:37 And we’ve had eight students go into the SINs court.
1:02:40 And that as a, I wouldn’t call that a success rate, but 18% of
1:02:44 the cases end up leaving truancy and going to SINs or were in SINs
1:02:49 before we launched and had a truancy option.
1:02:52 What is exciting though is those 36 kiddos or those 44 kiddos
1:02:58 that when we decided truancy court was the intervention to
1:03:03 unlock for them, those students, when they got their subpoena to
1:03:08 report, on average had a 51% attendance rate.
1:03:12 Terrible, right?
1:03:13 Well, under the supervision with the judge, they had a 4% absenteeism
1:03:18 rate.
1:03:19 Okay, so truancy court works.
1:03:22 Just again, I can’t put 2,260 kids in truancy court.
1:03:26 We’ve got to find a way to effectively keep doing this while
1:03:29 effectively meeting the masses and catching students well before
1:03:34 they become a problem.
1:03:36 And that, so I’ve been telling a truancy story, but really the
1:03:40 intervention is intervening when a kid becomes chronic.
1:03:44 Okay?
1:03:45 Intervening when a kid becomes chronic.
1:03:47 So in two weeks, when we’ve got 10 days of school under our belt,
1:03:52 okay, missing one day meets the criteria to be chronic.
1:03:56 Okay?
1:03:57 The question is when do we start, what day of school do we start
1:04:00 to say that’s a warning, right?
1:04:02 Is it the three unexcused absences?
1:04:04 Teams at schools, that’s what we’re trying to work with and
1:04:07 develop those systems to be proactive instead of having to get
1:04:11 to this case where we can be really effective.
1:04:14 But we’re super proud of this.
1:04:16 It is effective.
1:04:17 But we can’t put everyone into truancy, regrettably.
1:04:21 Or regrettably, I don’t want anyone in truancy.
1:04:26 I just want those kind of stats.
1:04:27 So we do every, again, when you connect with a judge, you’re
1:04:30 connected to resources.
1:04:32 When you’re connected to one of our truancy personnel, you’re
1:04:34 connected to resources.
1:04:36 Student services has created this manual that’s online with the
1:04:40 QR code, as you mentioned, Mr. Susan, that can connect families
1:04:44 to those services that they don’t know that they need.
1:04:47 No one wakes up and says, I don’t want my kid to go to school so
1:04:50 that they don’t learn.
1:04:52 But they don’t yet see the value or the importance.
1:04:55 And so there’s a list of different things that are in our
1:04:57 resource manual that we’re helping connect families to and
1:05:00 providing them a way to connect to them outside of our presence.
1:05:08 That is all I have for you on the story of attendance and why
1:05:12 every minute matters.
1:05:14 We’re making sure that your link works.
1:05:17 Crossing my fingers.
1:05:20 It does.
1:05:21 It’s on a postcard that we hand out.
1:05:23 It worked.
1:05:25 Chris, thanks for the time, the presentation, and everything
1:05:27 else.
1:05:28 Chris used to be a principal in my district and loved him.
1:05:31 Caused havoc when he left because everybody loved you so much.
1:05:34 But he had a good support staff come in, and Wes was good when
1:05:38 he came in as the principal.
1:05:41 But I wanted to get into this.
1:05:42 This is amazing.
1:05:43 This last piece, because it’s where I’ve been kind of wrapping
1:05:47 my head around, is that we know that it’s not just taking a kid
1:05:50 and saying come back to school that makes them pass eventually.
1:05:54 We know the reason that those students are actually leaving and
1:05:56 that they have truancy and that they have issues.
1:05:58 There’s stuff going on at home, mental health, hotlines, crisis,
1:06:02 all that stuff.
1:06:04 I wanted to say thank you so much for putting that together at
1:06:06 the end.
1:06:07 It was phenomenal.
1:06:08 Where are your difficult – because, look, health care, dental,
1:06:13 and vision resources.
1:06:15 If we refer those kids out, are they receiving the care, or is
1:06:18 there a capacity issue there?
1:06:20 Capacity issue with mental health.
1:06:22 Capacity.
1:06:23 You see what I mean?
1:06:24 Because this is what I’m getting at, and I’m sorry I’m rolling
1:06:27 here.
1:06:28 We spend so much time working on a student inside of our schools.
1:06:33 I mean, we change diapers.
1:06:34 We do all this stuff, right?
1:06:36 We have gone – the school district from what we did 30 years
1:06:39 ago to what we do now is so many services, right?
1:06:43 We’ve taken on those services.
1:06:44 And my argument in some cases is that many of the other
1:06:46 municipalities, cities, infrastructures, and all of those things
1:06:50 have gotten a free pass on some of that stuff.
1:06:53 And let me explain.
1:06:54 So, like, when I go into Temple Terrace over there at O’Galley,
1:06:58 there’s students inside of there, and the county has resources
1:07:04 and things that they provide that family and that child.
1:07:07 We provide our resources and everything else to that child.
1:07:11 The city of Melbourne provides resources and all those things to
1:07:14 those child.
1:07:15 But I don’t know if we’re always coordinating on those children.
1:07:18 Does that make sense?
1:07:19 One hundred percent, yeah.
1:07:20 And when I see this, I’m like, wow, this is amazing, because you’ve
1:07:23 got it all right here.
1:07:25 So the next step is, how do we get everybody to collaborate if
1:07:28 that’s not happening?
1:07:30 And then where are your stress test pressures?
1:07:33 Because this is it right here.
1:07:34 This is where our grades are at.
1:07:35 This is where everything’s at, right here.
1:07:37 This is our A to B.
1:07:38 This is everything right here.
1:07:39 So how do we help you with the mental health referrals to make
1:07:42 sure that those get taken care of?
1:07:45 How do we help you with the health care, dental care, visual
1:07:48 resources, that kind of stuff?
1:07:50 Is there anything we can do?
1:07:52 I didn’t come with a punch list for you to take on here, but
1:07:56 more is always going to be more helpful.
1:07:59 Like accessing mental health, we submit mental health referrals,
1:08:03 and those agencies are limited of how many people they can
1:08:05 intake, right?
1:08:07 And so we’re continually adding more and more and trying to
1:08:09 serve them.
1:08:10 But personnel is the key there, and it’s a double-edged sword.
1:08:14 The better we get at referring, the more stress we’ll put on any
1:08:17 agency as well.
1:08:19 So our procedures are sound, it’s just a matter of connecting
1:08:22 services and then knowing why we didn’t get connected that’s a
1:08:25 piece we’re working on fixing
1:08:26 as well so for instance you have um we were talking about aftercare
1:08:30 programs she’s here thank
1:08:32 you i can’t wait for your presentation um the thing is is that
1:08:36 in some schools we don’t have
1:08:37 aftercare programs so we’ve relied on say like boys and girls
1:08:41 clubs or melbourne’s after school
1:08:44 programs or whatever that is but i’m not sure if we’re
1:08:46 coordinating with the resources and stuff
1:08:49 like that and we may be and the only reason i say this is is
1:08:52 that i was in chicago about two months
1:08:54 ago and they have a truancy situation just like this except it’s
1:08:58 on a massive scale and they’ve
1:09:00 actually taking all the entities together and they work on it
1:09:03 together okay here’s what we have in this
1:09:05 area we have a food desert or whatever it is and we need to we
1:09:08 need to get access to food you see what
1:09:10 i mean it’s not just so many times kids are looking at us and
1:09:13 they say well the kids aren’t doing well
1:09:15 that’s cool because it’s your fault mr chris reed but it’s
1:09:18 actually the fault of the community and
1:09:20 what it is is that those individuals inside the community are
1:09:23 not doing as much as they can or we
1:09:24 could coordinate with them that’s that’s what i was getting at
1:09:27 is there an avenue for us to do that
1:09:28 are we doing that what’s happening we’re working to strengthen
1:09:31 that all the time um again though
1:09:33 we don’t have a a monthly meeting globally across you don’t need
1:09:38 monthly meetings trust me i understand
1:09:39 that to organize you know there’s different pieces like what you’re
1:09:42 describing uh mr susan is very
1:09:44 much like the community partnership model at endeavor right
1:09:47 there that is an exemplar of what could
1:09:49 happen across the board where we’re providing medical we’re
1:09:52 providing dental there’s on-site mental
1:09:54 health but that’s a pinpoint uh in brevard county right now but
1:09:58 that’s what you’re describing sounds
1:10:00 similar to that and i don’t know what you wanted to add oh yeah
1:10:03 i think um the care coordination piece
1:10:05 different as you look at different models they have different
1:10:09 care coordination so when you look
1:10:11 at this truancy model by having sin spins in there as well as
1:10:14 the court as well as the school
1:10:16 the answer would be that’s our care coordination and then we add
1:10:19 the piece of the referral for services
1:10:22 you know if you look at the um some of our mental health models
1:10:25 there’s a different care coordination
1:10:28 and different agencies that do that dcf is the umbrella agency
1:10:31 that actually is um designated by
1:10:34 the state to do care coordination in a lot of these areas the
1:10:37 problem is there’s so many areas no i mean
1:10:39 you hit you hit the nail on the head there’s so many areas and
1:10:43 and it’s i i don’t i i hate to use
1:10:44 the word impossible because i always think there’s a way through
1:10:48 um but to get all of the right people
1:10:51 for all of the right reasons at the table is is a challenge all
1:10:54 right and i understand especially
1:10:56 with covet especially with all the things we’re dealing with i
1:10:58 just dr mullins goes up in front
1:11:00 of all these league of cities and he gives a presentation over
1:11:02 our children and he does all
1:11:03 those things and i’m looking out at many of those cities and
1:11:06 counties and they’re doing things they’re
1:11:07 trying to do stuff but it’s not coordinated with us and it’s not
1:11:10 our fault but i’m trying to figure
1:11:12 out if there’s a way because we met with a bunch of the care
1:11:14 providers mental health counselors stuff
1:11:16 like that in an off cycle meeting about two and a half months
1:11:18 ago and we were talking about what do
1:11:20 we need to do to go forward and the whole mental health arena is
1:11:23 a completely other topic of discussion
1:11:25 from the way the insurance is covered between the providers
1:11:28 capacity and all of those things then you
1:11:30 look over health dental vision services like we don’t have the
1:11:33 capacity to do everybody i’m great that
1:11:36 endeavor has it but why not all the kids right so i don’t know i
1:11:39 just i just first off didn’t want
1:11:41 our school district to take the heat for everything that happens
1:11:44 with a child the second thing is is
1:11:46 that i’m going to start having conversations some of our mayors
1:11:48 and city council members like hey man
1:11:49 like what else are you doing for our schools or hey lady i don’t
1:11:52 want to say man because then i get
1:11:54 to say that it’s only men that are city council members but the
1:11:56 thing is is that we need to coordinate
1:11:58 you know what i mean council women i will tell you they’re uh
1:12:01 probably the model that is most cohesive
1:12:03 right now yeah is through um i want to say family promise of brevard
1:12:09 right and it is uh the umbrella
1:12:11 over it or the agency that is over it is of course the county
1:12:15 commission um so that they have a really
1:12:17 good model i’ve read their plan a lot again limited in scope but
1:12:20 great yeah great coordination of services
1:12:23 so i think we just we just need to find the model that’s in
1:12:26 place and and build on that but you’re
1:12:28 right that’s one of the biggest issues but i do want to say
1:12:30 because um one of the things and i i’ve
1:12:33 only been to court once chris goes every week paul is there
1:12:36 every week one of the things that we talk
1:12:38 about and that we see is if when our families come in and their
1:12:44 kids have been out 50 60 80 days of
1:12:49 school they come in and they really they they bring they they
1:12:53 have lost hope they they don’t know what
1:12:56 else to do right and so when the court starts saying okay first
1:13:00 things first let’s get your
1:13:03 your child to school and whatever the response is from the
1:13:06 parent if the parent is i can’t get
1:13:08 them there the true uh one of our truancy um social workers is
1:13:13 there saying uh if we’ll make sure
1:13:17 he’s on a bus if it’s that he doesn’t have clothes we’ve gone
1:13:20 out and got clothes so that service piece
1:13:23 in the court i can’t overstate because when the parents get
1:13:27 there whatever whatever reason they lay out
1:13:30 before us we’ve got to figure out but truly it is a lack of hope
1:13:34 at that point yeah so just giving them
1:13:37 back hope that their child can succeed is probably number one in
1:13:42 in in our purpose there and we have
1:13:44 over 2 000 there that are possible and we’ve only got 600 so how
1:13:48 do we get more of them referred
1:13:51 that yes and serve them as well right but both both those are
1:13:55 both important and the budget for truancy
1:13:58 comes from the county where’s it coming from is it the court
1:14:01 itself yes uh the that that’s i don’t
1:14:05 want to say county because i think it’s state the county had to
1:14:08 apply to the state and get approved to
1:14:10 add a court okay like they bear the burden of the officer
1:14:14 serving the subpoenas that was something we had
1:14:16 a procedure we had to work through okay as well but and
1:14:19 obviously we’re not paying the judge’s salary
1:14:21 the clerk’s salary or her legal aid salary those are things the
1:14:25 county are taking on we’re paying
1:14:27 the hey you need a ride you got some clothes all of those things
1:14:31 correct the five truancy people
1:14:33 that with the truancy resource teachers who work for us but work
1:14:37 under me that are activated at
1:14:38 eight and fifteen days of unexcused absences those would be
1:14:42 personnel hired that are staffed by brevard
1:14:44 some of these kids coming in from juvenile justice courts
1:14:47 anything like that juvenile any any any
1:14:50 situations like that where the sheriff’s has his uh budget as a
1:14:54 part of any of the services for any of
1:14:56 these children so the um the the brevard county sheriff’s part
1:15:00 is they serve all the subpoenas
1:15:02 they do all of that work um djj the the department of juvenile
1:15:07 justice has a different requirement for
1:15:10 attendance meaning if you don’t go to attendance you get taken
1:15:13 off of formation and possibly arrested
1:15:14 again so they don’t actually i don’t think we’ve had a single
1:15:17 student go through truancy court that was
1:15:19 under djj what i mean is that if the doj understands that if we
1:15:22 don’t put them into if they’re not getting
1:15:24 arrested and sent back into our jail system where they’re being
1:15:27 fed where they’re all the stuff that’s
1:15:28 going on there there’s revenue there like i’m what i’m trying to
1:15:32 get at is is there’s so many multiple
1:15:33 agencies that wrap around that one student that with currency
1:15:36 and that when they’re when we’re looking
1:15:38 at the costs of that one individual on the entire group and then
1:15:42 we laid the brunt of the conversation
1:15:44 of why they didn’t graduate or why didn’t they do that stuff
1:15:47 those agencies also need to be a part of
1:15:49 that conversation too that’s all i’m done thanks chris i’m sure
1:15:53 you guys have i’m gonna go use the rest
1:15:55 um so i have an i have an important question so one of the uh
1:16:00 alarming data points that we have in
1:16:03 brevard public schools that we don’t really talk about too often
1:16:06 um is our students that are homeless
1:16:08 or in transition um so i’m just curious if we have data to say
1:16:13 you know of that 2 000 students how many
1:16:17 of them are in that in that situation in that circumstance and
1:16:19 and the reason i ask that question
1:16:21 is because um so often sometimes people in the public when they
1:16:26 hear about truancy and kids not coming
1:16:28 to school you know they blame the parent they don’t understand
1:16:31 the total situation that a lot of our
1:16:32 students are really living uh when i worked at harbor city we
1:16:35 had multiple families that would drive up in the
1:16:37 cars that they slept in with their clothes tied to the top of
1:16:40 the car um it’s a reality it’s a reality
1:16:42 here in brevard and it’s an alarming number so do you have data
1:16:45 that tells us how many of these pieces
1:16:48 are actually those students that are really struggling and
1:16:51 really need that help and support so i oversee
1:16:54 students in transition as well so yes i just don’t have it with
1:16:57 me today right now so that’s an easy
1:16:59 data point to be able to pull um our students and identified as
1:17:02 in transition and to pull their attendance
1:17:05 and we we look at grades we look at attendance and we look at
1:17:08 promotion retention credits that they have
1:17:12 and as you would guess they’re not always the greatest of
1:17:15 statistics and again it’s continuing
1:17:17 to keep those those resources connected to those kids often at
1:17:21 court will realize someone’s in transition
1:17:23 or they’re living with others they’re in a hotel we’ll start to
1:17:26 connect them with those services
1:17:28 but that is a data point that we look at and we’re going to get
1:17:31 better at looking at but for this
1:17:33 purpose we just looked at them as a whole so they’re part of
1:17:36 that data set so the reason i ask that
1:17:38 question is because when we have only 20 of those cases that we
1:17:43 can functionally handle with our um with
1:17:46 our staff you know what prioritizes each case why do we go to
1:17:49 one versus another is it because of the
1:17:51 number of days or do we take into consideration the
1:17:53 circumstances that are leading to these children
1:17:56 having those absences in the first place so right now the way
1:17:59 our system works is we don’t we we can
1:18:03 see there’s a problem but we we don’t act until some certain
1:18:06 things have been done at the local at the
1:18:09 school level the first step is getting that truancy team
1:18:12 activated once activated and they’re not having
1:18:15 success at that level an application comes to miss moore and i
1:18:19 and miss moore and i review that application of past
1:18:22 past interventions current attendance things that have been put
1:18:25 into place if they have an iep or 504
1:18:28 meetings and and changes that have been made and we decide which
1:18:32 of those cases can go forward we had
1:18:34 set a goal um and we’ve exceeded what our cap was supposed to be
1:18:38 we’re supposed to do 25 cases we got
1:18:40 to 34 this year um in truancy court so we were just trying to
1:18:44 make sure that we didn’t break the system
1:18:46 before we started so again first step is identifying and taking
1:18:50 care of those school level steps then
1:18:53 truancy sees they’re not having success and then truancy makes a
1:18:56 case to miss moore and i and we both
1:18:58 have to agree that to send that student forward okay thanks you’re
1:19:02 welcome
1:19:03 and just if i could just piggyback on that response
1:19:09 one consideration is age they age out at 16. so if somebody’s
1:19:13 like 15 and three quarters years
1:19:15 we’re not going to start them on truancy process because right
1:19:17 after they get to the judge they’re
1:19:19 going to say i’m 16 i’m out of here have a nice day so it’s not
1:19:21 going to be successful
1:19:22 well it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re not doing those
1:19:25 interventions at the school level correct
1:19:27 it just that’s correct okay um because we want those kids to
1:19:31 continue on to graduation um just really
1:19:34 quickly are the statistics that you mentioned the third graders
1:19:38 being twice as likely to be retained
1:19:40 and our graduation data is that our data our bps data no that’s
1:19:44 from various studies throughout this
1:19:46 presentation i just pulled from various studies right over
1:19:48 different years um and then just to just to
1:19:53 clarify the sins fence process that’s not bps directed right
1:19:57 that’s the judge is saying okay we’ve got to
1:19:59 you know at this point now you’re going into that situation yes
1:20:03 yes and no we have the option to
1:20:07 pursue that but it does require that the judge is on board with
1:20:10 that mr gibbs you might be able to
1:20:12 explain that a little better for me we can access sins without
1:20:16 going to the judge it’s easier that they
1:20:18 have their own standards and what they would take and before we
1:20:21 had truancy we tried to go that route but
1:20:23 they weren’t taking many of the cases for various reasons
1:20:26 including parents refused to cooperate and sign
1:20:29 paperwork so they can’t use those that paperwork as evidence in
1:20:33 court for sins if the parent doesn’t
1:20:36 agree to the release right they can get it they’ll know that
1:20:39 they are truant or whatever but they
1:20:41 cannot use it as evidence because for statute if the judge in truancy
1:20:45 orders sends fans and transfers
1:20:47 it to sends fans they no longer have that barrier and they can
1:20:50 use those records i know that’s last case
1:20:52 that’s not what we want to see right and the it’s the same judge
1:20:55 so that’s a beautiful partnership that we have
1:20:58 and then just the five people who are on that team this is not
1:21:03 their only job correct this is their
1:21:07 primary role this is this is their their primary role yes and i
1:21:10 mean so what they’re doing is they’re
1:21:12 intervening but they’re also training teams helping them
1:21:15 understand the reports helping them run their
1:21:17 own reports helping them lead meetings identifying interventions
1:21:20 for families okay okay um did we have
1:21:24 these five in place i know truancy court is kind of a new that
1:21:27 what we’re doing now the model we’re doing
1:21:28 now is new but did we have these five in place before yes okay
1:21:33 um i’m glad thank you for updating us
1:21:35 on how the current liaisons are going i know i just just as a
1:21:38 point of remembrance for us the board as
1:21:40 i recall that’s being funded by esser’s esser funding and so we
1:21:44 just need to be aware that after
1:21:47 the next couple of school years um we need to decide right this
1:21:51 school year this after this next school
1:21:53 year okay then we need to decide how are we going to continue to
1:21:56 fund that if it’s a need because
1:21:58 clearly it’s a need i don’t think i mean i’m optimist i’m
1:22:01 hopeful that this year we’ll have fewer
1:22:03 interruptions and our number will at least go back down to what
1:22:06 it was um pre-pandemic but i mean if
1:22:09 if some of our schools are chronically chronic you have a
1:22:13 chronic chronic absentees and problems
1:22:16 and so you know we’re going to have to decide as a board um are
1:22:20 we going to find a way to fund those
1:22:23 because if it’s having an impact making those first connections
1:22:26 because i know our we have social
1:22:28 workers that can help with that too but the parent liaison can
1:22:30 be that first you know they’re kind of
1:22:32 that first connection data gathering and information you know
1:22:35 connecting families and then you know
1:22:37 and also it’s a lot easier to find a parent liaison as hard as
1:22:39 it was than to find a social worker
1:22:41 because the social workers require such a certain level of
1:22:44 certification and our parent liaisons in
1:22:46 my experience with the principles that i’ve talked to are often
1:22:49 coming from our parents within the
1:22:50 school hey would you’re a parent of one of our kids would you
1:22:53 like we have this job to be a parent
1:22:55 liaison here’s the training and and it’s someone who’s already
1:22:57 familiar with the school and so um i think it’s
1:23:01 if it continues to show through this school year that we have
1:23:04 left of the ESSER funding
1:23:05 that it’s that it’s been worthwhile we need to we’re going to
1:23:09 figure out how we’re going to fund it in
1:23:10 the future
1:23:11 yeah it was great to have you as principal in my district also
1:23:20 um i’m curious do we have a sense of
1:23:24 what change from the 14 to the 21 what is there a difference in
1:23:31 the cases would we see something
1:23:33 different so my best guess to be honest with you would be we
1:23:36 still had that virtual option we had
1:23:39 hybrid teaching and so absenteeism wasn’t possibly identified as
1:23:44 you know we weren’t identifying as much
1:23:47 you could be at home participating minimally and still be marked
1:23:51 present so i do believe that that
1:23:53 is part of the equation it’s tough to really say exactly what
1:23:56 but if i was to give to the biggest
1:23:58 number why that would be it also again as i said in chronic absenteeism
1:24:03 that social piece right so so
1:24:07 we won’t know the ramifications of missing the amount of school
1:24:10 that’s been missed um for years to
1:24:13 come but we know that everyone is different than they were
1:24:16 before um we had those big gaps so i would
1:24:19 say that that’s the reason is that we had you were at school or
1:24:24 you were not at school last year oh thank
1:24:26 you and miss uh camberl talked about uh sin spins and that was
1:24:30 my question also so thanks for covering
1:24:32 it and chris thanks for the report thank you almost done mr reed
1:24:37 all right um so when we moved into um
1:24:45 covid crazy we started taking parent notes for excused absences
1:24:54 have we maintained that practice
1:24:56 we have but we are that that practice is ending this year so
1:25:00 what we had in place was if you were a
1:25:02 symptomatic student you could send in a parent note and you
1:25:06 would be have an excused absence okay but
1:25:09 again sometimes you were connected to the learning at that time
1:25:11 sometimes you weren’t we didn’t have a
1:25:13 virtual piece so you still were home some got connected to
1:25:17 learning material some didn’t but it was an
1:25:20 excused absence next year we will not we will still take parent
1:25:23 notes but they won’t be considered excused absences
1:25:26 when you say next year do you mean the school you’re starting
1:25:29 tomorrow tomorrow yes sorry yes
1:25:30 i haven’t i haven’t fully committed that that you know that’s
1:25:33 still hours away for me
1:25:35 hours let’s be clear mr free it is only hours
1:25:43 um and have we communicated that to our parents do you know we
1:25:48 have not made that communication yet to our
1:25:52 families um we have communicated uh that to our principals that
1:25:56 these are the available codes
1:25:58 that we have for attendance and this is what they mean okay um
1:26:01 they do still have the ability to send a
1:26:04 parent note as they always did pre-covet again the key is excuse
1:26:09 not excused right okay um and you
1:26:13 you mentioned that we are transitioning in the district to
1:26:17 focusing on chronic absenteeism as
1:26:19 opposed to adt is the state transitioning to chronic absenteeism
1:26:23 as a measure as opposed to adt or are we
1:26:26 dual measuring so i believe the answer to that is yes so on the
1:26:30 the state site and i i don’t remember what
1:26:34 it’s called the equivalent of our report card they’re now um as
1:26:38 of the last couple months is a chronic
1:26:41 absenteeism rate by county by by um by counties across the state
1:26:46 so we are all catching up to this
1:26:49 research that has been taking place for many many years that
1:26:52 this identifies problems instead of
1:26:55 um feeling good about the overall okay um and then um two kind
1:27:01 of comments as opposed to questions one
1:27:05 and i’m just going to say this because i think it needs to be on
1:27:08 record repeatedly the state of florida
1:27:10 does not require compulsory education until the age of six and
1:27:13 so when you look back on that graph and
1:27:15 the huge absentee rate in kindergarten you know i just want our
1:27:19 parents to understand that even though
1:27:22 the state doesn’t require it until the age of six for for
1:27:25 children to be in school um those are still
1:27:28 really really important times for kids to be in school and i
1:27:32 think you know we see when it gets into like
1:27:35 assessment time in third grade those absences go down
1:27:38 significantly but i don’t think we’re necessarily
1:27:40 taking into account the impact of the prior absences as you said
1:27:44 you know an entire
1:27:45 year of education by sixth grade so um i don’t know why we still
1:27:50 are looking at six for compulsory
1:27:53 education but anyway um and then the last thing is um to you and
1:27:58 miss more both um thank you for talking
1:28:01 about the service piece in the court and how that allows us to
1:28:04 really provide hope for the family and
1:28:07 to uh you know we say all the time wrap around our arms around
1:28:10 them and get them you know the help that
1:28:12 they need to be successful because i think that a lot of people
1:28:16 um when when the truancy court
1:28:19 information came out to the public there were a lot of comments
1:28:22 that oh bps just wants to arrest parents
1:28:24 um and and i i hope that in hearing this today that they
1:28:27 understand that is not at all the case it is
1:28:30 um it is the last thing that we want to do but that last thing i
1:28:34 think is important as well do we have a
1:28:38 statutory requirement to address truancy like is it the state
1:28:42 tells us that we must take action on this
1:28:45 right it’s not yes 100 yes so so again back to that statutory
1:28:50 record statutes dictates that three and that
1:28:53 five at the school level that our policy is is born from that
1:28:57 statutory language and then um compulsory
1:29:00 compulsory attendance is also from statute as well okay i think
1:29:04 that’s just important for the public to
1:29:06 understand that it’s not the district that’s saying oh we’re
1:29:09 gonna force you to bring your children to
1:29:11 school it actually is is state statute that we are required to
1:29:14 follow through on in the event there
1:29:16 is an issue with attendance with a child yes so thank you and
1:29:20 and like i said thank you for
1:29:26 yes um i would not for today because we’re running late but it
1:29:30 would be really good to have cross
1:29:32 reference and you may have already done this our attendance data
1:29:35 with our academic achievement data
1:29:38 because i mean the three schools that you particularly pick i
1:29:40 already know those are some of our schools
1:29:43 that we’re focused on this year academically but if we’re if we’re
1:29:47 seeing that our schools with the
1:29:49 greatest rates of chronic absenteeism are also you know pretty
1:29:53 well matched to our schools that are
1:29:55 you know our lowest school grades and things like that you know
1:29:58 that’s really important to
1:29:59 to kind of see that equation and we’ve talked about it but if we
1:30:03 can just make that direct correlation as
1:30:05 much as we can and i’m just going to put a little plug because i
1:30:07 know we’re talking about culture this
1:30:09 year a lot we talked about last year and this year and i’m glad
1:30:11 you talked about i i wrote it down knowing
1:30:14 you’re missed that is so important from the classroom level
1:30:18 especially to the school level knowing you’re
1:30:20 missed it works in the church world we talk about that too
1:30:24 knowing you’re missed you know oh man we
1:30:26 missed you um and i would just put out there i would like to see
1:30:32 sometime the rates of absenteeism for
1:30:34 kids who are involved in things like music cte sports the things
1:30:41 that really
1:30:43 are are engaging you know um that we want every child to be in
1:30:48 something like that the intramurals
1:30:51 that we’ve been you were adding those are just one more thing if
1:30:54 you have i’ve got an intramural
1:30:55 volleyball game today i’m talking about i’m talking about sports
1:30:58 mr susan that you know that those
1:31:00 are the things that you know the student is going to come these
1:31:04 middle school students because i’ve got
1:31:06 a ball i’ve got a volleyball game after school today my team’s
1:31:09 counting you know those are the kinds of
1:31:11 engaging things that that change the culture and get kids in the
1:31:16 building so i plug in that in there
1:31:18 i’d like to see that someday that cross reference to attendance
1:31:21 for students who are involved in
1:31:23 those programs thank you
1:31:23 every now and then mr susan
1:31:30 i feel like i’m a part of this
1:31:31 ms balford i can’t help but chime in you know uh ms campbell you
1:31:37 you really hit on the conversations
1:31:40 we’re having as we dissect our student achievement the data the
1:31:44 performance of our kids over the last
1:31:46 year and i would suggest there’s been an unfair attention given
1:31:51 to berbard didn’t earn an a
1:31:54 this last year we didn’t we missed an a by one point when you
1:31:58 look at the growth we made from the
1:32:00 previous year like every district we we outpaced other districts
1:32:03 compounded by the reality of our
1:32:08 absenteeism whether it was a legitimate illness or it was
1:32:12 quarantined unnecessary you know of a healthy
1:32:15 student if you will as well as our teachers last year the number
1:32:20 of academic hours missed
1:32:22 is a missed learning opportunity and a missed instructional
1:32:26 moment
1:32:27 and um that’s why we’re we’re doubling down on understanding how
1:32:33 do we tackle attendance more
1:32:34 effectively how do we provide quality interventions at the
1:32:38 school level not the
1:32:39 least of which is through a strong connection with the school
1:32:43 but then also at those those target
1:32:45 points we’re hearing from principals okay this is a much better
1:32:48 perspective for us rather than
1:32:49 tackling perfect attendance for all it’s how do we really narrow
1:32:54 our focus on the students who
1:32:55 we’re beginning to see where there are disruptions in their
1:32:58 regular attendance and
1:33:00 the only the greatest disappointment is is we’re going back to
1:33:05 another year with no
1:33:06 school achievement for school grades this year as we transition
1:33:10 into a new
1:33:11 a student assessment program but uh i’m i’m confident we’re
1:33:16 going to see the the the regrowth that we
1:33:19 would have anticipated without such a impact on absences this
1:33:23 year so
1:33:25 thank you for recognizing that as well and i’ll just i want to
1:33:28 give my thanks to student services for
1:33:30 both presentations um and i the the word quality comes to mind
1:33:37 and since consistency across both
1:33:39 presentations a commitment to quality process for keeping our
1:33:44 kids safe and protected as well as our staff
1:33:47 through our responsibilities to title nine but then also quality
1:33:52 interventions for ensuring that our
1:33:54 students can maximize the learning opportunities they have
1:33:57 available in our classrooms so my thanks to uh
1:34:00 both the saxon meyer and mr reid for your presentations and and
1:34:04 bringing us up to speed
1:34:08 all right thank you so much mr reid run run quickly all right dr
1:34:17 ivry we’re ready for you now all right
1:34:18 our next topic is bavard after school and we will be presented
1:34:21 by dr karen ivry director of bas
1:34:24 good afternoon thank you for allowing me this time
1:34:30 so this afternoon i want to talk to you about the updates that
1:34:33 we have for brevard after school
1:34:34 program and some of the progress and changes that we’ve made
1:34:39 so as you know our brevard after school program is the
1:34:43 enterprise fund
1:34:45 and it provides the services that we provide are before school
1:34:49 services after school services and summer
1:34:52 child care services and we provide it to parents of students
1:34:56 with bps and to our employees because
1:34:59 it’s an enterprise fund it abides by the generally accepted
1:35:02 accounting principles that basically means
1:35:05 we run it as a business and not a government agency
1:35:11 this slide here is sharing our comparison of what we’re what
1:35:16 other programs are throughout our county
1:35:19 now kid connection of titusville that’s the one program
1:35:23 throughout the county that has the same
1:35:26 services that we have and if you look at the bottom the bottom
1:35:31 is our 22 23 services and we are
1:35:35 still um less expensive so parks and recs of course i put it the
1:35:41 best deal in town
1:35:43 sorry dr ivry parks and recs of course is the least expensive
1:35:48 but they don’t offer as many services
1:35:51 as we offer we offer all of the services that our parents can
1:35:55 possibly need and in as a matter of fact
1:35:58 when dr mullen says this is the best deal in town this summer we
1:36:02 also added daily drop-in rates
1:36:05 i mean daily drop-in for summer which we had never done that
1:36:08 before and we also added summer wraparound
1:36:12 services so if they attend a summer school program then they
1:36:16 could then turn around and have wraparound
1:36:18 services so i just wanted to share the comparison of what we
1:36:22 have versus what we have throughout the county
1:36:29 so we have several fee options employee limited use and with the
1:36:33 employees i’ll get to that in in another
1:36:35 slide but we have daily drop-in morning only program afternoon
1:36:40 only program full program which is
1:36:44 morning and afternoon an annual pass in a summer camp our
1:36:48 morning program averaged our average daily
1:36:52 attendance for our morning program last year for the entire year
1:36:56 um averaged 895 that had average daily
1:37:02 attendance amongst our 57 schools our afternoon program averaged
1:37:08 300 i’m sorry 3533
1:37:13 we have a student ratio of one to 25 so basically what that
1:37:17 means is for two people we have a coordinator
1:37:21 and we have a group leader a coordinator usually serves as a
1:37:25 safety monitor so they make sure that
1:37:29 they’re checking in parents making sure the whole program is
1:37:32 safe so that one to 25 doesn’t really count the
1:37:37 coordinator which is a safety monitor so at 26 that’s when we
1:37:41 can get another employee and that’s important
1:37:44 for some information i’m going to share with you later and we
1:37:47 also offer paid enrichment activities
1:37:50 our paid enrichment activities can be anywhere from chess to the
1:37:55 zoo to cheerleading so each each school
1:38:00 has the opportunity to get paid enrichment vendors to come in
1:38:04 and offer services after school
1:38:07 and we’ll be able to go to school and we’ll be able to do it so
1:38:10 our employee now this is the best deal in town
1:38:12 what the benefits to our employee and i say that because i had
1:38:15 two kids through the school system
1:38:17 and i used it both times and my youngest kid just worked summer
1:38:23 school program so it is the best deal
1:38:26 in town so basically the employee limited use an employee can
1:38:30 decide that they are only using it for 8.75 hours per week
1:38:37 and then they only pay ten dollars per week they can’t go over 8.75
1:38:44 hours and that’s usually if they have a faculty meeting or if
1:38:48 they come in the morning
1:38:49 they choose when they use that now once they go over that and we’re
1:38:54 monitoring that once they exceed that
1:38:58 then they have the option of the am pm am pm only this also is
1:39:04 for our sros that work at our schools
1:39:07 and our school health health nurses so once they decide that
1:39:15 they may need it then they can go to
1:39:18 maybe 50 to 55 percent off discount depending on what they say
1:39:21 what they use so this is very valuable to our employees
1:39:28 so let’s talk about our year to date expenditures remember when
1:39:34 uh in april 2020 you the school board
1:39:38 decided to approve a fee increase and it was for five percent
1:39:42 and it was because we had a negative fund
1:39:44 balance and i don’t know if you remember or not but the bas pays
1:39:50 the district approximately 2.2 million
1:39:54 but at one point in addition to 2.2 million the gas which is
1:40:00 sort of like a retirement we weren’t taking
1:40:03 money out that the state requires so this item in red part of
1:40:07 that benefit is approximately 400 000
1:40:11 that is also required to take out for our employees for
1:40:14 retirement so the right now our net revenue will be
1:40:20 one one one million dollars after the 2.2 transfer and after
1:40:25 that about that 400 000 for them for the gas
1:40:31 i want to share that if you notice we haven’t in 2020 nor in
1:40:37 2021 due to covet weren’t able to pay that 2.2
1:40:41 million to the day so this year we are able to pay that if you
1:40:46 decide that you want to give you want to
1:40:49 keep it let us keep it we’ll keep it also but um so that’s going
1:40:55 to take our ending for our fund balance
1:40:58 to 1.5 starting next year so i just wanted to share with you now
1:41:03 if you see under miscellaneous sources
1:41:06 that is that that is that county cares money that they gave us
1:41:11 that when we wrote that grant form
1:41:13 to offset some of the costs that we had for um covet the miscellaneous
1:41:20 sources are the rebates based on
1:41:23 the credit card so our net revenue after all fees for this year
1:41:30 is one million dollars
1:41:32 this slide is the five percent fee increase now you approve the
1:41:39 five percent fee increase um in 2020
1:41:45 and the last fee increase was the 22 22 23 school year which is
1:41:51 this school year now when if you see these
1:41:56 numbers for in blue that’s the student participation for last
1:42:02 year which is still about 300 kids shy of what
1:42:08 the student participation was when you approved this fee balance
1:42:13 so we’re still missing like 300 kids
1:42:16 and bait and basically we can get kids but we need to be able to
1:42:22 have the staff to support them so right
1:42:25 now our enrollment last year at this time the first week we’re
1:42:31 counting this kindergarten enrollment also
1:42:35 was 3529 our enrollment as of 12 pm today and is still growing
1:42:42 is 3 362 so we’re about 330 off but when you look
1:42:49 at it we are actually 160 we have 163 families that needs that
1:42:55 are requesting services this year compared to last year
1:43:01 now with a in addition so the 411 000 is that revenue that this
1:43:11 is the um light yellow one is the revenue
1:43:14 that’s in addition to what we made this year that’s the revenue
1:43:17 that we anticipate earning that’s based on
1:43:21 the 2021 kids now so of course that revenue will increase or
1:43:28 decrease based on how many kids we have
1:43:31 now right now we do have a waiting list for some of our programs
1:43:36 but um last year we capped the programs
1:43:40 basically we didn’t allow kids to register because we didn’t
1:43:46 have the employees and we didn’t have a way of
1:43:50 getting the employees they just weren’t applying this year we
1:43:54 have the same programs on a waiting list
1:43:57 and we’re in the process of working with aue and we also offer a
1:44:04 program where our custodians are our support staff
1:44:07 custodians ias cafeteria workers who come and work in our after
1:44:13 care program they can either
1:44:14 do it as a temp g or uh i think it’s the dot 30 which is a
1:44:18 second job for them we have that option
1:44:23 so dr arvery can i jump in there because i think you meant also
1:44:27 the reduced revenue although it’s based
1:44:29 on a five percent increase in the rate based on current numbers
1:44:34 but keep in mind the other big
1:44:36 change is we go to a 15 dollar an hour minimum wage so the
1:44:39 reason there’s a reduction in revenue
1:44:41 anticipated this year is because that additional cost in uh
1:44:44 salaries did i say that right yes so the
1:44:49 reduction in the green are you weren’t approved in the 2020 year
1:44:54 that’s just information for you if we
1:44:58 continue with the five percent increase that we’ve that you
1:45:01 approved in 2020.
1:45:02 so 2023 projected revenue and expenditures so when you add that
1:45:10 411 000
1:45:13 our anticipated revenue and keeping with that 2021 number of
1:45:17 students is 7.8
1:45:19 so with our expenditures our expenditures is the amount that we
1:45:26 now have to spend because of the
1:45:30 minimum wage and we’ve added that into our benefits also i mean
1:45:38 yes our benefits
1:45:39 our benefits are going to be available for us we’re going to
1:45:43 have to be available for us
1:45:44 so we’re going to have to be available for us we’re going to
1:45:46 have to be available for us
1:45:47 and we’re going to have to be available for us and we’re going
1:45:49 to have to be available for us
1:45:50 and we’re going to have to be available for us and we’re going
1:45:51 to have to be available for us
1:45:52 and we’re going to have to be available for us and we’re going
1:45:53 to have to be available for us
1:45:54 so that’s about 180 000 that we added to that in addition to
1:46:02 adding the temp g services and the
1:46:06 um job 30 services for our other employees sometimes we have to
1:46:11 reach out to aue to staff programs and so
1:46:16 those sites that are waiting to have waiting lists we’re
1:46:20 reaching out to aue as we speak to try to get
1:46:23 some staff for those schools another thing we do is our district
1:46:27 staff they also go out to schools
1:46:29 to cover the programs that we have waiting lists for so in the
1:46:33 end at the end of the day
1:46:37 our expected revenue forecast is 257 000 and remember it’s a
1:46:46 drop because of the added um minimum wage
1:46:52 so that’s based on projected revenue and minimum wage increase
1:46:57 and so let’s i want to talk about our current goals so one of
1:47:01 our goals is to increase hosting summer
1:47:04 programs last the year before last we had eight summer sites and
1:47:10 this year we only had six summer sites
1:47:13 and it was a difference of 500 kids now our ability to host a
1:47:18 summer site and our ability to keep our
1:47:21 programs open is based on if we are able to hire staff so one of
1:47:26 the things we did is this year we are also
1:47:30 increasing professional development opportunities for our
1:47:33 district staff so when they go into the schools
1:47:36 they can support our school based after school staff and one of
1:47:41 the um pd the first one of the first pds
1:47:44 that they did and it was they took it a long time ago as
1:47:46 conscious discipline and we thought that
1:47:49 they we wanted our employees to use the same language that they
1:47:54 used in the school day so we have had our
1:47:57 children trained on the conscious discipline and we are going to
1:48:01 resume our gold key and that is accountability
1:48:05 piece to basically check the quality of our programs we’re going
1:48:09 to start doing those goal key visits in october
1:48:12 and that’s it if you have any questions
1:48:25 um thank you um for all the work that you’ve done i know to to
1:48:31 get that uh and your staff
1:48:33 that are working with you to get that recruitment up and and
1:48:37 going out and beating the bushes to
1:48:38 let people know what we should to hire people but also get the
1:48:41 students back um so i’m very
1:48:44 interested in that have we done that before allowed others uh bps
1:48:49 employees to take this on as a second job
1:48:51 have we done that before we have are we just doing extra
1:48:55 outreach now is that a change as far as that
1:48:58 goes so last year with copet we couldn’t staff some of our
1:49:02 programs if we didn’t do it so what we
1:49:05 end up doing is reaching out to some of the principals and
1:49:08 asking them do you have any staff
1:49:10 that may want to work extra hours um do we have do we have to be
1:49:14 careful of them not hitting that over
1:49:16 time or is it because it’s a different fun it doesn’t matter so
1:49:20 right we do have to be careful with that
1:49:22 okay so our staff it can be anywhere from one hour a day to four
1:49:28 hours so if they are a six and a half
1:49:31 hour employee like an ia they would only work the one hour or
1:49:35 the 1.5 hour so that’s the difference between
1:49:38 the temp g and the job 30. got the temp g is only working like
1:49:42 an hour hour and a hour to 90 minutes
1:49:45 of afternoon which i’m assuming would be the busier time anyway
1:49:49 when we have that would probably be
1:49:51 when we have the most students anyway right correct okay that’s
1:49:53 all i have thank you
1:49:54 um so i noticed here you got before and after school art
1:50:02 wellness game stem music nature dance
1:50:08 what about sports so let me let me explain why because there’s
1:50:12 another side slide in here that
1:50:13 says if i’m reading right says paid enrichment activities so i
1:50:18 think they did have some sports so
1:50:21 i was over at uh hang on i got i got an idea i’m just gonna
1:50:24 float by they have sports what i didn’t
1:50:26 hear that part because i’m just i have this whole other thing i
1:50:28 want to say um i was over at the
1:50:31 headquarters at aau about six months ago and they had mentioned
1:50:34 that they would love to partner with a
1:50:37 after school program to provide coaches and opportunities
1:50:41 through the aau to play your
1:50:43 minimum sports we’d love to give you in conversation with them
1:50:46 if that’s an opportunity just to entertain
1:50:48 they have aau coaches all over the county that are currently
1:50:52 doing basketball and everything else
1:50:55 i think it’s worth a conversation just to see if there’s
1:50:58 capacity there an opportunity to set up like
1:51:01 a intramural soccer maybe a little bit of track right like if
1:51:05 anybody if any of you have ever been to a
1:51:08 after school right program it is like like massive chaos when
1:51:14 they go in there sometimes because the
1:51:16 kids are just so rambunctious after they get out of school right
1:51:19 so sometimes giving them the opportunity
1:51:20 to go outside and do that in a organized way with a might be
1:51:24 able to do that so i’ll put you in touch with
1:51:26 them okay do you think they’ll also be interested in working
1:51:29 with our 21st century program you just
1:51:31 ask them now here’s the deal and dr mullins is having heart palpitations
1:51:35 right now because i didn’t
1:51:36 mention this to him ahead of time but aau has great capacity at
1:51:40 a low cost and one of the problems
1:51:42 we’re having throughout our district is is that children when
1:51:45 they go to play recreational league
1:51:46 they are having to pay thousands of dollars to be on these rec
1:51:49 league teams and it’s out of control
1:51:51 and one of the opportunities and the main reason i push to have
1:51:54 sports is because our youth needs
1:51:56 another opportunity and many of the kids that we that can’t
1:51:58 afford that may be some of the targets
1:52:00 that need it so um they have you can buy an aau card for 14 and
1:52:06 then they provide the coach and
1:52:08 everything else and it’s on their insurance so it doesn’t have
1:52:11 to touch us it’s a great opportunity
1:52:12 but if you told them you need x y and z they’ll try to provide
1:52:15 it because they do it nationwide
1:52:17 it’s just the capacity of coaches and setting it up with
1:52:20 fidelity that’s all okay all right so you’ll
1:52:22 get me the information uh if it’s okay with dr mullins i want to
1:52:25 make sure it’s okay there it is
1:52:27 he didn’t have a stroke so but we have some guidelines to follow
1:52:31 anyway so it doesn’t hurt to look at it
1:52:33 well i think i think when you look at them i know all of the
1:52:36 after school activities that are offered they
1:52:38 are well within that scope and they’re already in our schools
1:52:40 they already have articulation agreements
1:52:42 because they use our gyms so thank you anybody else before i um
1:52:50 a quick one dr ivory i promise
1:52:53 what is the youngest age that we serve in bas kindergarten so um
1:52:59 we have and and i’m asking
1:53:02 this because it’s a conversation i’ve had with the community and
1:53:05 so i already know the answer to it i just
1:53:06 want them to hear that we have looked into it and the reasons
1:53:09 why we’re not um if we have vpk programs
1:53:14 at our schools or we have um teachers who have children under
1:53:20 five that are in programs at our schools
1:53:23 why are we not providing after school care for the younger ones
1:53:27 so after school care is based on school
1:53:30 age and a four-year-old is not considered school age there are
1:53:34 different criterias and responsibilities
1:53:37 and inspections that we have to do once we consider the
1:53:41 preschools and that’s through dcf and different
1:53:44 monitoring practices they had it a while ago but because dcf
1:53:49 changed the criteria or the state changed the
1:53:52 criteria now it is school age and formerly it was called school
1:53:56 age child care but it’s because of the
1:53:58 the rules based on dcf and in the state of florida and ratios
1:54:02 right because the ratios once you go
1:54:04 under that school age the ratio student correct it’s much lower
1:54:09 right perfect thank you okay thank you
1:54:14 miss belford i can’t i have to just make sure we recognize give
1:54:18 recognition or recognition is due
1:54:20 so for the first time in at least the last five years brevard
1:54:23 after school showed a profit
1:54:27 at a time when we had reduced participation in enrollment and
1:54:31 that is because of dr ivry’s
1:54:34 leadership to dig into the program to look at where there was
1:54:38 excess reconfigure reassign do some
1:54:42 staffing adjustments and so on our administrators deserve a
1:54:46 shout out because we had some tough
1:54:49 conversations with them as well and programs that were running
1:54:51 in the red you need to take the responsibility
1:54:54 of recruitment and bolster participation because we can’t run
1:54:58 programs in the red and so dr ivory although
1:55:02 a lifelong educator adopted a very ambitious business mind
1:55:07 approach to this program as she should because
1:55:11 it is a self-supporting revenue generating program and should be
1:55:16 commended for taking a program that we were literally a year ago
1:55:20 talking about eliminating because it was no longer
1:55:23 uh financially feasible and now has turned it around so thank
1:55:27 you dr ivry for your leadership and
1:55:29 and doing the tough work you’re welcome and since you are
1:55:33 thanking me i really want to take this opportunity to thank my
1:55:36 staff the
1:55:37 they did a lot they had to do a lot of growing and a lot of
1:55:41 changing to some of the things that i wanted to do and
1:55:45 they did it and i’m happy and they’re happy and just if they’re
1:55:49 listening thank you and and while we’re on that topic dr ivry i’ll
1:55:54 just throw this out there this is all you do right you only do
1:55:58 bevard after school
1:56:00 i wish so no i don’t wish i don’t wish i don’t wish i like my
1:56:05 schools i i i like my schools well
1:56:08 and i think that’s important because i think oftentimes people
1:56:11 think wow well you know they’ve
1:56:12 got someone to run for art after school and they’ve got someone
1:56:15 to run this but the reality is can can you
1:56:17 just share some of the other things that fall under your
1:56:20 responsibility so i am a principal supervisor i have
1:56:24 nine schools i’m also over i’m also responsible for major
1:56:27 discipline for elementary school i’m also
1:56:30 responsible for k-12 reading plan i am also responsible for
1:56:34 summer school i’m also responsible for asp and i
1:56:38 just got guidance you’re a rock star thank you thanks everyone
1:56:43 her biggest responsibility is her daughter
1:56:46 who’s wonderful and i got to meet at graduation at rockledge so
1:56:50 she’s amazing good lady all right
1:56:54 my former principles huh another one of my former principles yes
1:56:59 yes the last topic on our agenda
1:57:01 for the workshop today is our head start update and it will be
1:57:05 presented by dr wendy smith director of
1:57:08 head start hard act to follow few hard acts to follow but i’m
1:57:13 here to share with you today our head start
1:57:16 update update for august as i always share our vision and
1:57:20 mission wait wait a minute dr smith it really
1:57:24 isn’t a hard act to follow because don’t you have like a state
1:57:28 award winning head start program i mean
1:57:31 like well we presented to the region for it’s coming you you’ve
1:57:35 got your you you’ve got all your own
1:57:38 big shoes i just got to give credit where credit is due what is
1:57:42 this award what is this we we will get to
1:57:44 that yes we will today today today yes okay i just want to make
1:57:48 sure i promise i promise we’ve been at
1:57:51 it a while but i know i have never been here this long i usually
1:57:54 present first um so with our vision
1:57:58 and mission i have some key words that i’d like us to focus on
1:58:01 as we go through this part of our
1:58:03 presentation and in our vision the word community the words
1:58:07 quality education the words dedication and the
1:58:11 words collaboration we hear that a lot throughout our our
1:58:16 message this year and we too share it in the head start program
1:58:20 so this year our 2022-2023 head start locations remain the same
1:58:27 there are three in the north area
1:58:29 four in the central area and five in the south area we have
1:58:33 funded enrollment of 624 that has not changed
1:58:37 with 34 classrooms 19 are our head start vpk which means head
1:58:43 start four-year-olds and 15 classrooms are
1:58:47 head start three-year-olds the four-year-old classrooms are capped
1:58:51 at 20 students and the three-year-old
1:58:54 classrooms are capped at 17 students i do want to remind you
1:58:58 about our community assessment that i presented the
1:59:02 the last time and due to that community assessment and summit um
1:59:06 enrollment we decided to move a
1:59:10 three-year-old class from mims to saturn so we still have the
1:59:15 same amount of children the same amount of
1:59:18 head start locations but we did make that change based on our
1:59:22 community assessment so met now mims has
1:59:24 one three-year-old class and two four-year-old classes where saturn
1:59:28 now has two three-year-old
1:59:30 classes and two four-year-old classes and we can make that
1:59:34 adjustment annually if we if we so choose
1:59:37 so the agenda for today is going to be a notice of our our award
1:59:42 for 2022-2027
1:59:44 i believe what dr mullins was talking about our region four
1:59:48 leadership presentation
1:59:50 our pop schools improving family services to our families
1:59:55 enrollment and we’ll end with our dental
1:59:57 hygienist update so first of all we are going to celebrate our
2:00:02 notice of award as you recall we
2:00:04 wrote a baseline grant we were awarded our baseline grant for
2:00:08 the next five years so big sigh of relief
2:00:11 i had no no worries that we weren’t going to get it but you
2:00:14 always just wait for that letter to come in
2:00:16 the mail and say we received that so our notice of award is for
2:00:20 a five-year project period it began
2:00:23 july 1st of this year it will end june 30th of 2027 our initial
2:00:30 budget period beginning july 1st through
2:00:34 june of next year so this is only a one-year budget our federal
2:00:39 funds are five million four hundred six
2:00:41 six thousand three hundred seventeen dollars our non-federal
2:00:46 match is one million three hundred
2:00:48 fifty one thousand five hundred seventy nine dollars and our
2:00:52 total budget is six million seven hundred
2:00:54 fifty seven thousand eight hundred ninety six dollars now going
2:00:59 back to that non-federal match
2:01:01 it is required to be twenty percent of our federal funds and the
2:01:07 way we receive our non-federal match
2:01:10 is twofold one is cash and one is in kind the cash mostly comes
2:01:16 from our vpk certificates from our four
2:01:20 year olds and our in kind comes from volunteer service hours our
2:01:25 educational consultant that we hire
2:01:28 and services from such agencies like brevard cares
2:01:32 also part of our award we have governance leadership and
2:01:38 oversight capacity screening
2:01:41 this is a requirement within the first 60 calendar days of the
2:01:44 start of the five-year period
2:01:46 and mrs belford i want to thank you for signing this it is now
2:01:50 being reviewed by our policy council
2:01:53 which is basically the school improvement or school advisory
2:01:57 council for head start so it’s in their
2:01:59 hands now this supports our organization in making sure that all
2:02:04 the governance requirements are being
2:02:06 fulfilled as well as looking at the successes and changes that
2:02:11 we need to always have a quality improvement
2:02:14 for our program an additional requirement which will also
2:02:19 require mrs belford’s signature and will be forthcoming
2:02:23 is the health health and safety screening this must be completed
2:02:28 at each head start site within 45 days of the start of the
2:02:33 school year
2:02:34 we need to make sure that our policies and procedures are there
2:02:38 to protect our children and keep them healthy
2:02:40 and safe and again it also identifies where changes need to be
2:02:45 made and to build capacity for meeting our children’s needs
2:02:50 as previously spoken to you about in the in um and a previous uh
2:02:56 presentation we have our program
2:02:59 goals these are part of the baseline grant but i want to remind
2:03:02 you how they are aligned to the bps strategic plan
2:03:05 we wrote program goals that promote school readiness which match
2:03:10 our academic excellence
2:03:11 we wrote school goals to retain a high quality workforce that
2:03:15 matches the exceptional workforce
2:03:18 we are strengthening parent engagement and utilizing data to
2:03:23 recruit families for our head start program
2:03:25 which relates to our community connection and also we are
2:03:29 working to improve our management systems
2:03:32 which relates to operational sustainability
2:03:37 our region for leadership presentation i’m extremely proud of we
2:03:41 put in to present
2:03:44 at the region for leadership summit in atlanta this summer so we
2:03:50 took some of our coaches my
2:03:52 educational consultant assistant director terry barlow and
2:03:56 myself up to atlanta and we were actually able
2:03:58 to offer two sessions over a three-day period we had over 100
2:04:03 participants who chose our breakout session
2:04:06 and the title was a compelling mission implementing quality
2:04:10 coaching making makes all the difference
2:04:12 basically what this was was our coaches were telling other head
2:04:18 start grantees how we are using our
2:04:21 coaches to push out to every school site on a weekly basis and
2:04:25 provide professional development and support
2:04:28 for our teaching teams i’ve talked about our teaching teams
2:04:32 before it’s not just the teacher but it’s the teacher
2:04:35 and the two ias and now we are bringing in the family advocate
2:04:39 as well for our instructional coaches to
2:04:42 coach them to be a strong support for the school so we had an
2:04:45 hour and a half presentation twice like i said for
2:04:49 over a hundred participants and a couple of the comments from
2:04:53 the survey was the brevard school district
2:04:56 leadership team was amazing they have done some great work over
2:04:59 the last year and a half and are definitely paving
2:05:02 the way for other coaching programs i have learned so much and
2:05:05 can’t wait to implement new things in my agency
2:05:08 a second comment was i would like to thank the presenters for
2:05:12 conducting a well-needed training
2:05:14 and showing how effective coaching looks they also provided
2:05:18 suggestions regarding resource binders and monthly
2:05:21 calendar that i will implement at our centers awesome session so
2:05:25 what i have um challenged my team with is okay we
2:05:31 presented at the region let’s go big let’s go national we want
2:05:35 to go to the national head start and we
2:05:37 want to make sure that we put brevard public schools head start
2:05:41 on the map nationwide so stay tuned
2:05:44 i am required to talk to you about providers on probation for
2:05:49 the head start programs this does get a little bit
2:05:52 cumbersome and and a little bit confusing so i’m going to do my
2:05:56 best to have you understand as things are also
2:05:59 changing at the assessment level pre-k through 12. so as what
2:06:05 you see on the data or the data up here
2:06:08 is for flickers pop data head start schools in the last five
2:06:12 years now flickers is a skin kindergarten
2:06:15 screening test that uh kindergarten students take within the
2:06:19 first couple weeks of school
2:06:22 what that data did what that data did was showed the quality of
2:06:25 the pre-k program and how they got the
2:06:29 kindergarten students ready so the cutoff to not be on a
2:06:33 identified as a pop school or provider on
2:06:37 is 60 percent or higher so the flickers assessment um was was
2:06:45 the was the tool and the provider is each
2:06:49 elementary school now it is for vpk students so that doesn’t
2:06:55 only include head start that would include
2:06:58 step forward and blend it as well if they had those at the
2:07:02 school i’m only sharing with you the schools
2:07:04 that actually have head start a couple of them have the other
2:07:08 programs as well but these aren’t all the
2:07:10 inclusive of the vpk programs so it measures the children’s
2:07:14 readiness and kindergarten in the areas
2:07:17 of phonemics phonological awareness and some math last year no
2:07:21 schools were able to go on to pop status
2:07:25 even if they were under the 60 percent but you were able to come
2:07:29 off so let’s look at some celebrations
2:07:31 we have let’s take a look at coquina’s head start program they
2:07:35 went from 50 percent in 2017-18
2:07:39 43 percent in 18 19 1920 we didn’t have the flickers and then
2:07:45 2021 they went up to 62 percent so they
2:07:48 actually got off pop status so huge shout out to the coquina
2:07:54 team before i go on to jupiter i want to
2:07:57 you to take note that this data is is basically a year old so it’s
2:08:02 2020 2021 data that you get
2:08:07 months after that beginning of the school year to help provide
2:08:11 support for that school we won’t get
2:08:15 this year’s pop data i’m sorry flickers data beginning of the
2:08:18 school data um till october november
2:08:22 december for last year’s pre-k program that’s where i say it
2:08:26 gets a little cumbersome um jupiter
2:08:29 of celebration they went from 54 percent in 2018 to 2019 to 75
2:08:36 percent off pop status i also want to
2:08:39 make note of sherwood ellen i mean sherwood had started sherwood
2:08:42 elementary school but 100 of their
2:08:45 students scored at least 60 or more on that screener so new this
2:08:53 year just to make it a little more
2:08:55 confusing remember our vpk will also be assessed three times per
2:09:01 year for the year for progress monitoring
2:09:04 as a continuous monitoring tool for the school year 2022-23 this
2:09:11 current school year that starts in
2:09:12 hours right um there are going to be no um this is a standard
2:09:18 setting year so pop status will go away
2:09:23 and then all schools at the end of this year will end their pop
2:09:28 status and new readiness rates will be
2:09:31 set for the 2023-2024 school year kind of in line with what’s
2:09:37 with what’s going on with the k through 10 10th grade
2:09:42 next on our agendas we’re continuing to strengthen our advocates
2:09:49 who provide those services to our families much in the way that
2:09:55 mr reed was talking about previously with
2:09:57 the parent liaison advocates receive that target coaching by my
2:10:03 instructional coaches now as part
2:10:05 of a team and not a singleton at the school the advocates are
2:10:08 participating in social services
2:10:11 competency-based training program this fall we have monthly
2:10:15 staff development for the advocates on
2:10:17 conscious discipline and how to best present that to parent
2:10:22 groups within the head start program they
2:10:25 do use the parents conscious discipline education curriculum and
2:10:29 have since i’ve been with the head start
2:10:31 program and also one of our goals is going to be improving
2:10:37 father figure involvement and that that is
2:10:40 what our advocates will will have as part of their goals as well
2:10:45 our enrollment i’m excited to announce
2:10:50 that we anticipate starting the school year at 90 of funded
2:10:53 enrollment today we have 527 children who’ve
2:11:01 accepted seats and are registered within our program out of our
2:11:06 624 that is at 84.4 capacity and i believe miss
2:11:12 barlow told me we offered 30 30 seats today so then we wait for
2:11:17 that parent to accept come in and register
2:11:19 their child and they have a little bit more time because they
2:11:23 don’t begin tomorrow but they do begin a week from wednesday
2:11:27 last but not least a update on our dental hygienist and oral
2:11:34 health the first three bullets happened last year so as a recap
2:11:39 due to us hiring our dental hygienist and her support 85 percent
2:11:45 of our enrolled children
2:11:47 have an ongoing source of continuous accessible dental care 57
2:11:52 percent received preventative care
2:11:54 and a or a professional dental exam and we were able to case
2:11:59 manage over 70 children who required additional
2:12:03 dental treatment and case management may be like you were
2:12:07 speaking with mr v taking that child to the dentist
2:12:10 having our advocate drive the parent there um new this year this
2:12:16 summer our staff
2:12:18 collaborated together to develop classroom tooth brushing
2:12:21 procedures and created a short video
2:12:23 demonstration for children that is just precious i’ve watched it
2:12:27 a few times
2:12:28 and this is the exciting part finally finally finally we have
2:12:32 our technology in place we have our dentist
2:12:35 off-site available with our dental hygienist on-site and on-site
2:12:41 dental exams will begin august 24th and
2:12:46 that will increase that 57 percent of enrolled children
2:12:49 receiving a dental exam very nice and that concludes my
2:12:55 presentation
2:12:56 thank you thank you i think i did a great job i knew you needed
2:13:02 to go get something to eat for your
2:13:03 no that doesn’t have anything to do with it we just enjoy you
2:13:06 presenting that way i’m sure that they
2:13:07 will pontificate forever not like myself oh my god oh my word
2:13:11 okay can i i’ll jump in there go ahead
2:13:14 why does it take so long for the flickers data to come back oh
2:13:17 that is a good question for some state
2:13:21 paid people i have no idea i mean because even fsa comes out
2:13:26 faster than that
2:13:28 well good question and correct me if i’m wrong but flickers has
2:13:33 been done electronically recently
2:13:34 right yeah right so it’s it’s not even as though it’s like paper
2:13:38 based and remember that’s
2:13:40 i mean it’s transitioning out with the star early literacy and
2:13:44 so more to come on that i’m sure
2:13:46 so maybe it’ll come faster ms klein told us that the new stuff’s
2:13:49 going to be coming faster so i’m
2:13:51 hoping yes i’m hoping so as well so maybe we’ll be pleasantly
2:13:54 surprised i love the um father figure
2:13:58 involvement initiative that you’re looking at and i’m wondering
2:14:01 because i one of the things that i that
2:14:03 the legislature focused on particularly the speaker of the house
2:14:07 for florida he focused on a similar
2:14:10 initiative fathers is there i don’t know if there’s any funding
2:14:14 attached to that but is there a way
2:14:16 that we can partner in any way or just take a look at that and i
2:14:19 can’t remember what it’s called right
2:14:21 now i’m sorry i have to talk but when you said that i thought oh
2:14:23 legislature had that they passed
2:14:25 something that talked about um that i think it was grant funding
2:14:29 to organizations that provided some kind
2:14:33 of initiative is this ringing anybody else’s phone yeah i just
2:14:35 can’t i i don’t know if and you can email
2:14:39 me and we do have funds to support the father figure involvement
2:14:43 our program goals and so yes some of
2:14:46 our funds that i shared with you right can be used to support
2:14:49 that and we’re extending it that’s why we
2:14:51 say father figures because it doesn’t necessarily have to be the
2:14:54 biological father it could be an uncle a
2:14:56 grandfather an older brother a mentor a community member so we
2:15:01 we just want more men in the lives
2:15:04 of our young kids i love that and i just wondered if there’s
2:15:07 something any opportunity for cooperation
2:15:09 with what the state has going on that’s you know or if it’s and
2:15:12 they just passed it so they may be
2:15:14 still setting up okay i’ll i’ll make it up to myself to go okay
2:15:17 and i will look at that and see
2:15:19 if i can send that a resource sure thank you is that all you got
2:15:24 miss campbell anybody else
2:15:28 questions for dr smith no no phenomenal thank you so much for
2:15:32 all you do we appreciate you immensely and
2:15:35 look forward to that next presentation at the uh on the national
2:15:39 level with training
2:15:41 all right does any board member have anything else to discuss
2:15:46 right now
2:15:48 all right no further business then we will adjourn and see you
2:15:58 all in about an hour
2:16:18 and see you all in about an hour