2022-09-20 - School Board Meeting

9:47 SA good evening. The September 20, 2022 board meeting is now in order. I’m happy to welcome my fellow board members and the public. I would like to take this opportunity to remind the public that the appropriate place for public participation in the meeting is during your individual public comment opportunity as identified in the agenda outside of your individual public comment opportunity.

13:33 Your role in the meeting this evening is as an observer. Mister Gibbs, roll call please. Miss Belford? Present.

13:40 Miss McDougall? Present. Mister Susan? Present. Miss Campbell? Present.

13:44 Miss Jenkins? Present. The board will now hold a moment of silent reflection and invite the audience to join. Thank you.

14:15 Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice world. At this time, I would like to offer my fellow board members and Doctor Mullins an opportunity to recognize student staff or members of the community who would like to start us off.

14:49 Miss Jenkins? Yeah, I just. You know, last time we were here, I gave a shout out to Mister Folston, the assistant football coach at Cocoa High School. And I. He probably isn’t going to be happy with me doing this, but I don’t care.

15:02 After that meeting, he went on to continue to give to those students. Went out of his way to finish that weight room with any equipment that wasn’t in there himself, which was pretty incredible. And of course, was very quiet about it.

15:14 And I don’t even know if he told the principal about it, to be honest. So. You’re an amazing human being.

15:19 And I just want the world to know about it. So thank you, Mister Folston. Thank you, Miss Jenkins.

15:25 So mine is not necessarily as much of a recognition as kind of an idea, but I wanted to do it here at the front because more people pay attention to the beginning of the meeting, maybe than the end. But I was at. I was subbing at Southwest and I was talking to.

15:39 To the media specialist, Carrie Friday, there, and she was. I was asking her about how it’s working without an assistant and how she’s working with volunteers. And she mentioned that one of her volunteers is a senior in high school who was one of her former students who.

15:51 They’re dual enrollment, so, you know, they have Fridays off, and so they come back on Fridays and do the shelving and they’re getting their. Right, their bright futures hours. And I thought, oh, wow.

16:02 Well, had a conversation with Doctor Sullivan. Turns out we have students all accrue to that every year, but it’s still a pretty small number. So I just want to toss that idea out to our juniors and seniors, to the parents of juniors and seniors, if you have a student who’s doing dual enrollment, and they could do a part day or a full day volunteering at elementary school or middle school or high school, working in the media centers or other things, and there’s lots of opportunities.

16:30 Mentoring. Right, Doctor Sullivan? They could do some mentoring. And then there’s another opportunity for our juniors and seniors that might also help with bright futures.

16:38 And it will, it’s a mutual benefit, and that is that juniors and seniors can also apply to be tutors for our raise schools. And you guys know those are our schools that are needing more interventions through the raise program with the state. And there are enough, I just got the list from Jane earlier today.

16:58 There are enough schools on that list that there should be one close to just about every high school. And if they do that, they actually can be paid. And they’re going to be paid the $15 an hour for the tutoring I think they’re doing at the beginning of the school day.

17:11 So, like sometimes it’ll be part of their first period class or whatever. But again, if they’re doing dual enrollment and they have the mornings free, that’s an excellent opportunity for our kids to make money. Well, get this, because of the new rules about bright futures, where it can be 100 volunteer hours or 100 work hours, those hours of tutoring can count towards.

17:31 So either way, it’s going toward a bright future. So do it as a volunteer. Do it for a job, for getting paid.

17:36 It’s just such a great benefit. And then as a now for the tutoring program, there does, there was, if you had a 3.0 GPA, no suspensions, there were some other things, but I just encourage people to reach out to their guidance counselor to get information about applying because that’s a great opportunity for our seniors and hopefully, and juniors and hopefully many of them will take advantage of that opportunity.

17:56 It will help our schools, help our other students who are behind them coming up, and also would be beneficial to them as they get prepared for college or just, you know, whatever is in their future. Thank you, Miss Campbell. I. Do you think we would go buy one without me taking advantage of taking the mic? Here’s what.

18:19 First off tonight on the agenda, we had a couple of things that I wanted to talk about, because if I talk about them during the agenda, then you know what I mean, you guys get a little angry with me talking too much, so I was going to do it at the front. No, because it’s less time. There’s no motions, seconds, you know what I mean? All that stuff.

18:34 So we’re cutting down on time. So just be appreciative of that. Anyways, wrestling.

18:40 There’s a gentleman that has a request that I faced when I was a coach in wrestling at Space coast. So I coached at Space coast for a season. We went undefeated.

18:50 One coach of the year for the county, right? This is the only guy that would beat me. And his name’s Ballard from Palm Bay. And he is.

18:56 I want to give a second. This man gives volunteers his time to do AAU, build a program. And the amount of students that he has given.

19:07 What they have today in life as far as ethics and everything else. Is beyond many of our coaches inside of our district. So Mister Ballard was not only an amazing coach when I was a teacher.

19:18 Wave in the back time when I was a coach. But he’s still doing it. And to say, when you see these McCoco plays a lot over in Texas.

19:25 They play outside the state. That is our championship teams going to try to find outside the state as tough of competition as they can. So that when they come back in the state, they learn things and everything else.

19:35 So big shout out to Mister Ballard and Palm Bay High for an amazing wrestling program. The other thing is, just wanted to point out. I know you guys all saw it.

19:44 LJ Power services, our generators. And if you caught that line inside the contract, 17.1% increase in services.

19:53 This is across the board with procurement. Because of inflation. Our gas prices are up.

19:59 All of our construction costs are up. So we have a lot of. I wanted to take a second and say big thank you to Sue Han.

20:07 Who has not only grabbed and tried to negotiate contracts faster to get ahead of the curve. But to our staff for recognizing this and trying to get ahead of it. So.

20:17 And I also wanted everybody to understand that when we see some of the things where they’re trying to speed things up. Understand that we’re saving millions of dollars by going a little bit early. So I just wanted to point that out.

20:26 And then. Hey, Doctor Mullins, good job, man. Renegotiated the Cigna contract for a savings of over $5 million over two years.

20:36 Do you know how many? Yeah, yeah. I mean, guys like that’s major. Like Doctor Mullins sharpened his pencil.

20:43 Went in there and get him in headlocks. I heard it was a really bad bloodbath. And Cigna came out the other side.

20:47 No, I think that they changed some of the formularies and stuff like that. Did a great job. Our partner, Cigna has been with us for.

20:54 I don’t know I mean, they’ve had the contract for like 14 years. Been great. They came to the table again with more savings.

20:59 Good job to Lockton, who’s our consultant and Doctor Mullins for doing that. Many of you were looking at increases in healthcare. But our healthcare is going the other way because of.

21:10 He took this on a year and a half ago. I said, doctor Mullins got to do this. And I want to give you all the credit in the world for doing that.

21:16 Doctor Mullins, you did a great job. Thank you. And guys, we have 5 million in our savings.

21:21 2.5 a year. I don’t know.

21:24 I’m pretty impressed. And then. No, there’s more.

21:28 There’s more. I wanted to say thank you to Doctor Miller, Doctor Mullins, the bus drivers that spoke to me. Many of the other issues.

21:34 We have a discussion later on and I won’t get a chance to think, but there was a lot of people that after I sent out an email to try to get information on discipline and some of the things outside the buses. I can’t tell you how much. Not only does Doctor Mullins care about our staff and our bus drivers, but how much Doctor Miller advocates for him.

21:50 And I think we got some good things to talk about later on. Last thing. So.

21:55 I know I keep talking about this, but I just said, we are going to. I am going to tackle all of the paperwork that either the state or somewhere else comes up with. And so I kind of sent that out across the bow and I found some.

22:11 And so, Doctor Mullins and I thank you to the Kennedy middle staff for this assessing behavior support effective fall 2022. Along with specialized team transportation requests, Iep planning days, justifying it. There’s a bunch of these paperwork things that they started handing to me that I think is going to be part of the review.

22:31 That if we can start reducing the amount of paperwork that our people have to fill out, we can get into the classroom and start teaching. And I think that part of that is that. I just wanted to say thank you to them.

22:42 Thank you to Doctor Mullins. He said he’s definitely going to take a look at it. But it’s the beginning.

22:46 And I hope that we can come across a big stack of stuff that we can bring up to Tallahassee and say we don’t need to be doing all of this because it’s actually cutting into the time period that our teachers are actually teaching. So reducing paperwork. So that’s that.

22:58 And I think that’s it for me. Thank you. Miss McDougall.

23:02 Before you go, I’m just going to correct mister. Susan, don’t get angry with me, but I think we just have to say this. You said we’re going to reduce paperwork so our teachers can get into the classroom and start teaching.

23:11 And I would argue that they have been teaching their hearts out for decades. So I know that’s not what you meant. I just wanted to make sure that it wasn’t, it didn’t go on the record that way.

23:20 You know what I mean was not your intent. I know literally, the less paperwork that we have that we, our teachers don’t have to fill out, the more they’re able to spend time in the classroom. And what this is, is it’s trying to reduce the barriers for education and barriers for care.

23:38 So thank you for that. I think every one of them would never think that I would mean that. So thank you.

23:43 I did not think you meant it either. I just wanted to make sure we had an opportunity to get it right on the record. Yeah, I just get excited sometimes.

23:49 Stuff just starts coming out. Thank you, thank you. I just have to one, I want to feedback on facilities, because facilities once again leads the way here in keeping us from having Noah’s ark here.

24:03 So not only facilities, but thank you for all the staff. Yes, I did. That’s the old Testament.

24:11 I know, I know, I’m really proud and I was getting there. Oh my goodness, the two of you, they’re correcting me. I got you.

24:21 So I want to thank you because doctor said he was here. Our custodians, our facilities department. Who am I forgetting? I mean, I know there were so many people who came in move boxes.

24:32 We have Mister Wilson, Mister Wilson. I just want to thank all of you because you came in on your day off in the middle of the night, stayed probably till three in the morning. We have amazing staff and things happen and they rise to the occasion.

24:47 So thank you so very much for going above and beyond. I can’t thank you enough. So that’s that for our staff who are amazing.

24:57 And the other thing I want to do is reach thank Daniel. Doctor McKinnon, she put on with a group and I don’t know all the principals, I just know one principal that was one of my schools from Gulf, um, Miss Razzle. But I know there was Miss Diaz and there was another committee and I know, I don’t know the names.

25:18 Doctor Sullivan, I’m so sorry. But leading and learning put on a great night last night for Latino Hispanic Heritage Month. And it was a lot of fun and there was food and dancers.

25:28 And thank you to Melbourne jazz band who came, who played amazing music. If you’ve never heard them play their jazz music and they’re playing someplace you can go, I highly recommend it. They did great.

25:41 It was great music. It was really toe tapping and you wanted to get up and dance. But we had some dancers there last night and it was just a really nice time.

25:50 So thank you very much for putting that on. Doctor McKinnon. And leading and learning.

25:55 Well, that’s all I have Doctor Mullen. Thank you Miss Belford. First I want to, Mister Susan, thank you for the acknowledgments of the pharmacy contract.

26:08 Definitely appreciate Lockton’s, you know, taking the lead on that. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t extend the appreciation to my team. Doctor Thetti, Miss Scipio really hit the ground and certainly helped sharpen the pencil and really get to the hard work to bring a great opportunity to prepare schools.

26:30 And you’re correct. Projected savings of over $5 million over two years just towards our pharmaceutical contracts. So definitely an enormous great move in the right direction.

26:40 So doctor Thetti, thank you. Miss Scipio, I know you’re probably out there somewhere watching. Thank you as well.

26:47 Appreciate that. Mister Susan, I want to extend my congratulations again actually to our exemplary science teachers. Last week I had the opportunity to congratulate them in person.

27:00 Since 1999, the Space Coast Science Education alliance has recognized science teachers who have been exemplary in the classroom. And last week we recognized five more science teachers across the district. Ann Cook from West Melbourne Elementary School for Science, Jennifer Marcoux, Viera Elementary School, Dennis Matson from Coco High School and Mary Schrop from West Shore Elementary, West Shore junior senior high.

27:30 And then Thomas Englert was recognized as a recipient about three years ago and he was nominated again and now will be joining the hall of Fame science teachers in Brevard county. And just want to congratulate those amazing science teachers who bring science alive for our kids in the classroom, but in the world around us. But also to SCSEA for their continued support of this recognition.

27:59 Appreciate their partnership led by none other than our own former ginger Davis, an exemplary science teacher herself and resource teacher. She remains on the board even in her own retirement now for several years and helps lead that effort. So congratulations to them.

28:16 I want to take a minute and Mister Susan acknowledged our bus drivers, but literally, coincidentally, we’re going to talk about our bus program a little bit later in this evening and we’ve been talking about that. But we have amazing men and women across the organization. This is a surprising scenario, but thank goodness we have heroes like our drivers in our community to intervene, literally.

28:43 This morning, Miss Renee was on her route to pick up students at her elementary school and saw. Miss Renee Hill saw a two year old alone on the side of the road at 745 this morning. The child was only wearing a diaper.

29:02 There was not a parent around at the bus stop. Asked parents if they knew what was going on, knew anything, immediately called for dispatch to call 911. Deputies were dispatched.

29:15 Six deputies were there within minutes and immediately intervened and started to assist and help what was going on. Took the child into custody and obviously is doing an investigation as is appropriate. But Miss Renee was the first one to take action and stayed there for the entire time.

29:39 Just a testament to her. She said, it’s my duty as a human being to make sure the child was safe. And now that she’s a new bus driver, she’s only been with us less than six months.

29:51 And Renee, if you’re out there by chance watching, maybe you catch it on the, the replay. We commend you for being aware, intervening and following through. And we appreciate you being a superhero in our community for our kids, even at two years old, not even one of ours yet.

30:13 But we, we appreciate you. That’s not her first rodeo. Saving another, saving a life.

30:21 Because sometime a short time ago, she saved a kitten from the middle of the street, stopped the bus, and then when shared the kitten with her employees back at the compound, someone adopted the kitten. So she is just an amazing human being. I can’t wait to meet her in person.

30:40 And I had to share that with the board and our community. Tonight. Brevard Public Schools has superheroes for sure.

30:47 Thank you. Thank you, Doctor Mullins. I have two fairly quick ones.

30:57 One, you know, I think that our public does not understand the extent to which this job is a 24 hours or 365 days a year job. Not my job, but the job of district leaders, because I swear they never sleep. And it is constant over the weekends, over the just is nonstop, as is it for many of our administrators and our teachers.

31:28 But I have to give a shout out to Chris Moore because I will tell you, in my opinion, everyone here works hard. But I think she has one of the most emotionally difficult jobs in the district. And there I have told her before, when I see her name on my phone, I just have to take a deep breath, because oftentimes when she is calling me, especially on the weekend, it is because she is dealing with a tragedy in our district.

31:55 And so kudos. To her for all of the work that she does, because she immediately gets into the role of providing support, working with our principals, working with the crisis response team. And kudos to all of those that she’s working with during those times because those are really the super difficult things that we deal with.

32:16 Sorry. But Chris, I always appreciate that you are on it. I shouldn’t have led with that one.

32:34 Yeah. Should have talked about the dog book. So for those of you unaware, my other hat is drowning prevention.

32:43 We had a drowning in my community and Chris was the one who had to make the unfortunate call to me this weekend. So with that, I will move on to something a little more lighthearted. And that is just thanking again, all of those individuals.

33:02 For those of you that are not aware, we had major, major flooding here at the ESF building over the weekend. And I know there has been recognition of our facilities team. And to doctor Thede who came out, I think, in the storm.

33:14 Was it still storming when you headed down here, Doctor Theti? Okay. Headed out, still in the storm to check on the building and make sure that everything was okay. But also to all of those who responded over the weekend and to all of those that have been so gracious and understanding as the teams have been trying to address all of the issues within the building since then, because many of them have been displaced.

33:39 There is much technology that is not accessible because all of our plugs are filled with fans and dehumidifiers. But the entire team has been really gracious and doing their best to work around those challenges. So kudos to all of you that are dealing directly with it and trying to get everything repaired and replaced and move forward.

34:00 But also kudos to the rest of. Of the team who is, you know, continuing the. To fight through more challenges, yet more challenges in doing the work of the district.

34:11 So, thank you. We appreciate it and look forward to everything getting back to normal. You’ll notice we’re missing some baseboards here in the boardroom.

34:19 And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. So appreciate all the work that’s being done. All right, I think with that, we are moving on to adoption of the agenda.

34:31 Doctor Mullins, madam chair and members of the board, on this evening’s agenda, we have two administrative staff recommendations, two presentations, 15 consent items and two action items. Changes made to the agenda since release to the public include a revision to items twelve f, instructional staff recommendations, 27 a. Administrative staff recommendations, and 26 b.

34:53 Procurement solicitations. What are the wishes of the board moved by Miss McDougall, seconded by. Miss Campbell.

34:59 Is there any discussion? All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Same sign.

35:05 Motion passes 50. Doctor Mullens, will you let us know about the administrative staff recommendations for this evening? Yes. There are two items for your consideration.

35:14 What are the wishes of the board? Moved to approve? Moved by. Miss McDougall, seconded by. Miss Jenkins.

35:19 Is there any discussion? All in favor? Please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Same sign.

35:25 Motion passes 50. Doctor Mullen. Oh, Doctor Mullins, did you want to say anything on any of those, or.

35:34 No. Okay. Sorry.

35:54 Then will you tell us about tonight’s presentation? Yes, it’s my pleasure to introduce. Don’t need to introduce. Doctor Stephanie Sullivan, assistant superintendent, secondary leading and learning, will provide introduction to a presentation on Project FAFSA, NASA liftoff and elevate brevard.

36:07 Doctor Sullivan? Thank you, Miss Belford. Members of the board, Doctor Mullins, really appreciate the time today to share the amazing work of our community. I can’t lie.

36:10 You guys don’t know. I know. I don’t get speechless.

36:29 I’m a little fangirl today with this assembly behind me, faces that I know you recognize as premier leaders in our community, civic leaders and in philanthropy. And the fact that they’re all here today tells you about our community’s commitment to our students. And it honestly, it’s a bit overwhelming.

36:47 Today we’re going to talk about college access for all. And as many of you guys know, I typically take a strategic approach on eliminating barriers. And the barriers to access are deep and complex, and it’s certainly nothing that can be done in isolation.

37:19 I want to emphasize, when we talk about college access for all, that means all have the opportunity, all have a quality education, and all are set up to make the choice that’s right for them. And oftentimes, those choices may be directly into the workforce, maybe directly into the military or some other adventures, if you will. But we want to make sure that our children have the tools to make that decision for them and themselves, and there’s not barriers that are keeping them from making an informed decision.

37:32 Before I go on, I do want to introduce one person myself. Doctor Doakes is going to introduce our esteemed guest. But I want to make sure I get the opportunity to introduce Paula Beworsey.

37:48 And many of you guys know Paula, but maybe haven’t had the chance to speak to her. She is our passionate leader for college and career access. She is the single point person in the district and has been working tirelessly on FaFSA access for years.

37:58 And I just want to thank you, Paula. I have challenged Paula every year when we go through our data challenges in my division. Hers has been fafsa every year running.

38:22 And every year she takes another approach, a creative approach. And this year, with the strength of the community, I know that the outcomes are going to be even greater. And so, just to put a little bit of data on the table, that our average FAFSA completion rate for 2022 was 55%, just over 55%.

38:32 And it should be noted that that was a significant increase from the year before. Hence this beautiful trophy. And FAFSA completion means opportunity.

38:52 It means that some of the barriers that students presume about college access are eliminated. So last year, with that 55%, our estimated Pell grants were over $8 million for our students. And I want you to keep in the back of your mind some of the other data indicators we’ve shared with the board.

39:17 The increasing poverty rate in our families, the increasing challenges that people are facing with inflation and economic difficulties, and how important access is to changing the trajectory of someone’s life. So it makes it even more important. One thing that we know is that if a student completes a FAFSA application, they are 84% more likely to enroll in college.

39:47 That’s a pretty significant data indicator, and this is the troubling part for me. Schools with higher rates of free and reduced lunch tend to have lower rates of FAFSA completion, and I want to let that settle in for a minute. It might naturally assume that there is an affirmative relationship between income and FAFSA completion, but it’s actually an inverse relationship.

40:27 And so what we see is students in economic difficulty often have compounding barriers in completing the application process that may likely give them full and complete access to post secondary education. And this includes trades programs, vocational programs, so many of those post secondary programs that increase someone’s outcome. When I think about our incredible partners at Eastern Florida and how FAFSA completion can just about COVID everything that a child needs or a young adult needs to be successful in the students that are financially in the lowest quintile, that lowest 25 20%.

41:00 Economically, when they complete FAFSA, the data shows that they have a 127% increase in attending a post secondary institution immediately after high school. And those are some other data indicators that we’ve looked at for years. And so a lot of things are important to keep top of mind that there are many reasons to complete a FAFSA application, and sometimes it’s for Pell grants, sometimes it’s for opportunities to finance.

41:38 Sometimes it’s to receive scholarships and other merit based opportunities that are also dependent on FAFSA completion. So we really believe it’s important for every single student and their family to complete it, to have a baseline of what is accessible to them and what opportunities. Because I don’t think there’s a single family in our community that wants to leave opportunity on the table and set their child up for, hopefully, a debt free future after post secondary education.

42:10 And so one of the things that is leaving me speechless is the way our community came to together around this issue. Paula has been our lone wolf for many years, and when I say lone wolf, working with eastern Florida and our colleges. But as of this initiative, we have the full support of our community in really tackling this problem to make sure all of our students have access to post secondary education.

42:50 And without question, I believe that the most complicated projects that our society face, the challenges that our society face, have to be solved in community. With our community and the strength that exists in our community and in meeting the team, to see their independent passion for something that you care so much about is really pretty special. So, at this time, it is my honor turn the microphone over and allow Doctor Doakes to take the mic and lead us through the work that she has done tirelessly to tackle this problem.

43:03 Doctor Doakes. Not that she needs introduction. Thank you for having us this evening.

43:09 I just want to say that elevate brevard is not an it. It’s a weird. It takes all of us in order for this to happen.

43:21 So I just want to introduce everyone. We have Rob Rains, president of United Way stand up. Peter Menino.

43:45 He serves as the chair of our executive circle, but he’s also the president of bank of America, East Central Florida, a resident director of Merrill lynch. And then you had a vp in there someplace. Yeah, he does everything, and he answers my calls, and we love basketball games, and we go together.

43:55 Then we have Christine Tripp from eastern Florida State College. She’s the associate dean of transition services and enrollment management. Thank you for representing.

43:59 We have Doug. Doug’s my it guy. Every time.

44:05 My computer. No, he’s representing family promise of Brevard. My supervisor.

44:11 My manager, Tara Paglarini, was unable to be here. She’s at a conference. She’s the executive director.

44:26 But Doug is standing in, and he also is representing. Community foundation for Brevard. We have Teresa Grimison, president and CEO, community Foundation for Brevard.

44:45 We have Jonette Genling, Space Coast Health foundation president CEO. We have Paula Rorcy, and she’s a resource teacher for brevard public schools, college and career readiness. And we have James Carlson, United Way VP of community impact.

45:00 Thank you guys so much. I’m done here. Okay, so elevate.

45:13 Brevard is a collaboration of community partners. We get together, everybody in Brevard is going to elevate post secondary education and sustainable employment. So we have to close that skill gap.

45:37 So we’re identifying the areas that we can address to increase, so we can decrease the working poor and get them sustainable jobs. So lots of acronyms in education, right? We’re the first Elcan in Brevard county. What is an Elcan? We’re a local college access network, and we fall under the umbrella of FCAN, which is the Florida College Access Network.

45:53 And we always start with our. Why? Why are we doing this? Because by 2030, we want 60% of adults in Brevara county to earn some kind of industrial recognized credential. So that’s training, certification, two year degree, four year degree.

45:59 It’s all of that at CTE is all of that. We want 60%. Right now, I think we’re at 45 as a county.

46:06 I think it’s doable. I mean, someone asked me, like, how are you gonna do that? Percentage points. That’s 15 percentage points.

46:15 If every day we help one person, that’s all I’m out here trying to do. You know, you can’t see the elephant. We just have to take little nibbles and bites out of that.

46:35 So every day, if we can just get someone involved in doing the FAFSA, graduating from high school, going back to school, that’s all we’re worried about. People also asked me, hey, you know, someone even said that, they said, where did you come from? And, you know, it’s been January. No, they’ve been doing this for a while.

46:51 Back in 2019, Afkan and Wells Fargo came here and said, hey, is Brevard County a good place to start at Elcan? Career source jumped on board in 2020. Again, we were in the middle of this thing called a pandemic. They said, yep, step one, Brevard county is a good place for an El can.

46:58 Community leaders got together. They did. The recommendations and family promise of Brevard became our backbone.

47:09 They’re the nonprofit. So people always ask me, you know, is elevate Brevard a standalone nonprofit? We are not. We are a program under family promise of Brevard.

47:29 And you see how that correlates family promise of Brevard. They tackle housing insecurities, if we can get people who are in that housing crisis to teach them to go back to school, get them the funding and the sport they need to go back to school, then they can get the jobs to stay in the houses. So it’s a really good marriage of services there.

47:38 They developed a couple work groups. They did data communications and asset mapping. They started a CNA in an ESOL program in Coco.

47:59 We got a grant from the University of Central or University of South Florida to start a data community of practice. And this is where we identified our six indicators, and I’ll be talking about them momentarily. We also partner with Lee Brevard, any leed Brevard people, best class of.

48:17 Okay. So they did a cap project where they identified student advisory counselors, like, in the community. I believe the head of communications, Russ, he’s one of the advisors to a group of Coco high students.

48:32 So we asked the students what they want and how we can serve them, and they give us the feedback that they’re looking for. We are driven by resident feedback and student feedback. You have to start there to know how we’re going to tackle this.

48:47 Then, in 2021, Peter and Jaron became the co chairs of the leadership council. And then they hired me in January 2022. And we’ve been rocking and rolling ever since.

49:04 Just this past Tuesday, we had a meeting with over 60 members of the community on our phone call. It used to be that we would put all the members on one sheet of paper, and now they cannot fit on one sheet of paper anymore. But I’m here to tell you, it’s about 100 people involved in 70 organizations.

49:22 And everybody at the end of the meeting is just like, how can we help? It’s broken down a little bit like this. The executive circle, they fundraise, the leadership circle, they set the strategy. So executive circle is like, five people.

49:31 Like, most of them are sitting behind me. And then the leadership circle is about 25 people. And they set strategy as well as the executive council.

49:42 Then the community partners are the majority of those hundred people. People like tick stock and children. They were on the call children’s hunger project.

49:51 Just anybody that you can think of, they are involved in this. We have work groups, like I said, data asset mapping, communication. Students and residents.

50:22 Residents are defining the needs and the priorities here. The data group came up with these indicators, and we’re going to increase FAFSA rate, we’re going to increase graduation rates, increase CTE, increase high school students going to college, increase anybody in the community that wants to go back to college, we’re going to start a FAFSA group that’s going to help adults as well. That’s what the CAp project this year for lead Brevard is going to do.

50:36 And hopefully that will decrease the percentage of Alice by location. And Alice is defined by United Way as the working poor. There’s this really cool tool that all you guys can access.

50:52 It’s by this link, or you can just simply google FcAN FAFSA challenge and this will come up. Put 2022 in because they’ve been doing this since 2015, and it’ll show you where our high schools fall. This was last, I last pulled it August 26.

51:02 There’ll be updated data, but that’s where I go to out there to see where our schools are. And then I double check. I call the school as well.

51:24 And, you know, last year, 5.9%, I sort of kind of was up there bragging, saying we were going to do it back to back to back so we can get this 5% this coming year because of all the support. And United Way is spearheading this challenge, and I believe we can do it back to back to back 5%.

51:40 The challenge is out there. And so there I was sitting at my desk, and Rob Reigns calls and he says, hey, you guys want to go get some tacos and talk about this FAFSA challenge thing? I said, sure. We went over into Rockledge on Barton, ate some tacos, and that was history.

51:49 I want to introduce Rob reigns. He’s going to have the second half of this. We are so grateful for United Way picking up this challenge and spearheading this effort.

52:01 Thank you. Isn’t doctor Doakes amazing? I’m worried I’m gonna, like, cut the sprinklers off. You don’t need more water in the building, but hopefully I’ll run the PowerPoint.

52:13 Okay. So, man, I am really excited about this. And before I called Doctor Doakes, Tara Paglarini, and she should be here.

52:16 She is a dynamo. If you don’t know her. She is a force of nature.

52:28 She is making a difference in this community big way. So Tara asked Danette and Theresa and I to lunch. Was that a year ago? Maybe about a year ago.

52:35 And started talking to us. And we get pitched a lot, you know, community foundation, Space Coast Health foundation, nine away. Hey, we got this great idea.

52:53 We got pitched a lot, this great idea. And Tara comes in and, you know, I don’t know what was going to happen, but she just wowed us, and we all jumped in and said, this is something that’s really important. We jumped in and that they had Peter Menino and Jaron on there already.

53:00 It’s like this is something that’s going to happen. And so it has been a learning curve for me because I really didn’t know that. I’m old.

53:15 My kids have been way past FAFSA stuff and everything. But when you learn that Florida $300 million in pell grants are unused, and I don’t know if we have the number here. That’s a lot.

53:33 That’s a lot. And so as we learn more about it, we wanted to become more involved. And as doctor Doakes shared, there are multiple efforts under this Elkan, under elevate brevard, including high school graduation, all those things that you saw there.

53:46 But United way, we said, look, we will take point on the FAFSA piece. And we reached out to our partners and our good friends over at eastern Florida State. I’m glad Christine is here, and her team is fantastic that we’ve been working with.

53:55 And then Jim Carlson’s new to our staff, and I bring him in. I said, hey, I really want to do this. And, you know, anybody at the school district? And he says, yeah, my sister in law is Paula.

54:09 And so that worked out really well. We’ve learned so much from Paula. And so as we get into this, you know, it started out we’re looking at Coco.

54:22 Cynthia’s hyper focused on coco. And you looked at the high school class last year, about 180 seniors, and you looked at the FAFSA completion, and it was like 30. Oh, yeah.

54:28 I have a PowerPoint. I should hit some buttons. So this is that work group that we got.

54:34 You know, I get pictures. I got a picture. And then, so then I talked about, we talked about fatware.

54:41 Fafsa is 48 Florida in the nation. Even though we’re moving up. Can you imagine? 48 in the nation and FafsA completion rates? That’s crazy.

54:59 We’re leaving millions on the table. So what we looked at doing is funding a grant to try and get more people to complete the. So the school district, all her team, all the counselors, the principals do an amazing job on the student.

55:04 Half of it. The students do their part. They complete their part of the application.

55:13 But when it comes to the parents, and again, everybody’s in different situations, they have to dig out taxes. English may not be their first language. There may be undocumented.

55:25 There are a lot of issues to get the parents to complete that side of it. And sadly, sometimes it’s just they’re busy and they don’t. So what we wanted to do is we wanted to try and motivate that.

55:29 So we said, hey, let’s get some more funding. I’m gonna. Let me see here.

55:41 Go to this next one here, because I think there’s like, I chart here. I’m gonna come back to some of this stuff. But this chart right here talks is a, is the five year completion rates for the nine schools.

56:07 These nine schools had FAFSA completion rates less than 50%. Now, if you look all the way at the bottom at astronaut high, you can see they jumped from 36% to 57%. And so we asked, well, what, what happened there? And we were told, well, they got $500 and $500 in unrestricted dollars.

56:14 They did some incentives, they got the kids, they got excited. It always starts with leadership. And they made a huge difference.

56:39 And we talked to, as we were building this, we talked to some of the counselors, and Christina Gordon, who’s the counselor there at astronaut, was sharing this story of a young man, and she’s trying to get him to complete the FAFSA, get his parents to complete the FAFSA. And he says, miss Gordon, you know, I’m barely passing high school. I’m barely going to graduate.

56:47 She goes, yeah, I know that, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a future. Doesn’t mean that you can’t get financial aid. And so she worked with him.

57:03 They completed the FAFSA application. He was eligible for $6,000 in Pell grants. She worked with them and looked at Daytona, looked at eastern Florida state, enrolled in eastern Florida state is an h vac class now.

57:10 And here’s a kid, 2.0 not going. And now he’s going to be coming out making $40,000 a year.

57:19 And so that’s, that’s inspiring. And that’s what we want to do. How do we get more? How do we get more of that? And so we united way, we set aside $30,000.

57:42 We’re not going to go over all the little programs there, but we have 2500 of those nine schools. And we are going to allow them to make some choices from like a menu so they can use dollar 500 to support FAFSA events in the evening. They could.

58:01 Again, you’re trying to motivate behavior. And so this grants are trying to motivate behavior change for the parents to complete it. And so we have a gift card, like a $500 gift card that, hey, if you complete the parents, complete that side of it, they can be in the drawing to get a gift card.

58:18 We have a backup program towards the end just to individual gift cards so the high schools can personalize. We have a social media. They can do $500 to do TikTok and other kinds of things that I don’t know about to work on this.

58:39 So we’re going to learn a lot in this first phase. We had a great call led by Paula and the counselors ask a lot of great questions. We’ve gotten grants from these first nine schools, and then we’re going to do a second phase, kind of inspired by the small grant that astronaut got, that the next.

58:52 The next five are going to get $500 grants. And so we’ll evaluate the program. We’ll figure out which of the strategies seemed to work best, how the execution was, and we look to continue to do this further and again.

59:23 The next step is we will see those FAFSA rates go up, but just because they completed it, you got to get to that next step like Miss Gordon did and get them in and working with eastern Florida state to get that pathway and help them through that enrollment. I’ve been doing this work for a long time, and I am really excited about this partnership with all of these great folks and with you. So that’s what we have today.

59:37 All right, any questions for Boris? Board members have questions. Thank you. Board and doctor Doakes and I are available if you have any questions.

59:44 Thank you. Just a few comments before I have a question. But you said something that was.

59:57 That really struck me. You had 100 people on a call, and over 70 organizations participate in a call. I’ve been in a lot of Zoom calls and group calls, and I have never been in a participation of one that had that much attendance.

1:00:06 So hats off and congratulations. And I would assume it’s only going to keep continuing to seed out and grow. So that’s absolutely incredible.

1:00:21 And I. You know, I was literally writing questions down the entire presentation, and you guys kept answering those questions. But one of the things that I had written down was if there was any attempt to reach out to adults that haven’t taken advantage of it. So I appreciate you already taking advantage of that.

1:00:40 Yes. We tabled at six events during registration this summer, and we have 165 parents who are interested in going back to school. I just got a computer to the first two gen when I have a parent and a student who both want to go back and get their geds, and I delivered a computer to their house.

1:00:59 So we’re trying to do that two gen approach to get them back into school. And definitely 165 parents said, you know what? This pandemic showed that we need to be in a better position for the next natural disaster. So they’re asking, yeah, can you find a way that I can go back to school? That’s incredible.

1:01:03 You know, obviously that benefits all of our communities. It benefits our businesses. It just.

1:01:10 Awesome. Absolutely awesome. I’m going to assume the answer is probably yes to this, but I’m going to ask it anyway.

1:01:24 But I’m just curious. It just wasn’t talked about. So has there been any reach out to local officials, city governments in particular, those schools that you’re highlighting at the top? You know, you guys are offering incentives and stuff, but, you know, there’s some of those schools are really, really struggling.

1:02:11 So as they’re going to reach out to those local city council members or mayors to have a conversation about maybe putting a little tiny line item in their budget to double down on that, to incentivize, but also possibly help out with advertising in their community, connections that they have with businesses and stuff, putting a sign in the window or something, just kind of the recognition and reminding of people in the community that are out there going around doing their thing that it needs to get done. You’re a mind reader, and that’s coming out of the toolbox later on, but I’m going to challenge each municipality to at least send two students. Like, so if it’s Coco high city of Cocoa, if it’s Mel High city of Melbourne, like, it’s not so much to ask for two students in their line item budget.

1:02:30 I’d also like to recognize Bernard Bryant and the South NAACP. They’ve been doing this work alongside us without the structure for many years. And so we plan to keep working with those pioneers that cared about this work all along as well.

1:02:36 Awesome. Thank you. This is really exciting.

1:02:49 And I had the same thought, and you guys addressed it, the parents, how many of them when they actually have to sit down and fill it out? And by the way, I get my first introduction. You did too, last year. And I’ll say, oh, my gosh, perhaps it’s gonna be so hard.

1:03:05 And once I actually got in there, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it’s still intimidating and finding the records, if you even have them. So having somebody walk through, kind of hand hold through that process. But I wondered how many parents, when they’re going through it, might realize, oh, I can do that.

1:03:16 Now that I’ve done it for my child, it can do it for me too. And I’m so glad that we’re, that you guys are working, you know, multi strand effort. So that’s really exciting.

1:03:24 I do want to know what alice means because that was my question, I was previewing. You can’t just tell me what it means. I want to know what it stands for.

1:03:46 Asset limited, income constrained, employed the United Way in New Jersey and Rutgers University looked at that and it’s a very data driven, and he looks at each county, each community of what that living wage is. And so that’s what Faso is all about, is to get people to lift them up to that being able to earn a living wage. Right.

1:03:57 Thank you, Mister Susan, have anything, any questions, you’re going to go after me. Did you want to go first? Ladies first. Sure.

1:04:17 Okay, Mister Rains, first off, I’ve sat on that meeting that you have, we’ve spoken. I was a part of that for all of those groups. And it was like the most mind numbing, just like Miss Jenkins said, that there were so many influential people that care, that were on that call, that are trying to go to that direction.

1:04:24 I want to say thank you for having me on for those phone calls and everything else. Where you guys are going with this personal story. A little bit of background.

1:04:40 As a coach, I used to do this for all my football players because nobody else would do it for them. And year in and year out, I would stop, bring the, the booster club in. So one of the things I noticed was that the moms from the booster club and some of the fathers would do fast and night.

1:04:59 And I know that at Coco, I think they do that some of the other schools they may not. So it might be a way to tap into some of those students is to grab the seniors and do that maybe athletic night, because for whatever reason they, they’re always available and ready to go as an idea. Mister Rains, as soon as the pandemic happened, I have to, I have to say that.

1:05:07 Thank you for this. Your heart. In my district, I do a lot of work with the boys and girls club in Temple Terrace.

1:05:22 And we were running around giving that food out, that doctor Mullins, we had gone in that mobile thing and I was out there every day with the teams. We were handing out the food, knocking on doors and I noticed one of the kids wasn’t there. And I said, where is she at? And they said, oh no, they all moved.

1:05:30 The whole family moved beachside and they’re in a hotel room. I said, wait a minute, there’s ten of them. And so I raced over there, across the thing.

1:05:46 Remember that? And Mister Rains, literally, by the end of the day, had a check in that hotel’s hands so that those kids could stay there for at least a month while you found housing for those families. And that’s the stuff you do every day. I just had one little glimmer, and that’s what you guys are doing.

1:05:50 So what you do for us is amazing. And I just wanted to say thank you for everything that you do. Mister Rains.

1:05:54 Hat’s off. You know, you’ve always been there for us, so thank you. Appreciate it.

1:06:05 That’s it. I just want to say thank you, and I’m very excited. I think it’s a fabulous program, and I. We’re on the right track, and certainly brevard could really use this.

1:06:37 And thank you all for doing what you’re doing and being part of a vital part of our community. And I just have a question, and maybe you’ve already thought about this, but last year, we had the historic black college night, and are we having that again here? This would be a perfect place for you all to come, and we could get some parents here to start signing up for the fasta, because, yeah, it can be intimidating because you hear about it and you think it’s worse than it really is, but, yes. So thank you.

1:06:40 Thank you all. Thank you. Yeah, we’ll break it down to the parents.

1:06:48 It’s 30 personal questions, 15 financial questions. If you can break it down that simple, it’s not that scary. Basically, that whole fafsa, they’re just like.

1:06:56 But the student can get most of that done at school, and then the parents have to tackle those 45 questions. And then Matt. Yeah, we’re gonna.

1:07:00 We’re gonna have FAFSA, first downs. We’re gonna have FAFSA, first base. We’re gonna have FAFSA.

1:07:03 Free throws. We’re gonna have FAFSA. FAFSA, FAFSA.

1:07:12 All in sports. So I’ve already pitched it to athletic directors, so please infuse FAFSA into the sporting event events. They’re gonna look.

1:07:22 You know what’s gonna happen? The federal government’s gonna look at us, and they’re gonna be like, what just happened? Cause they’re gonna say. Cause we’re number 48. But somehow we moved up, like, seven spaces just because of Brevard county.

1:07:24 Right? Yep. That’s my hope. Thank you.

1:07:32 Together, we’re gonna elevate brevard, y’all. Thank you. Like my peers, thank you for this work.

1:07:37 It is so critically important. You’ll find Doctor Doakes. You’re welcome to come back up, but you don’t have to.

1:07:52 But I do. You know, Miss Campbell mentioned that she and I both went through the FAFSA process because we both had seniors last year, and I think the biggest message, and you really broke it down fabulously. It’s really not that hard if you just, you just sit down and do it.

1:08:05 And maybe I’m not remembering, but I feel like I didn’t have to go and gather a bunch of records. I felt like I could put in my Social Security number. And they pulled the information from the IR’s as far as tax filings.

1:08:23 Yeah, that’s the thing, is, they want us to do it online. But, you know, some of our families have, you know, they don’t have the technology or they don’t have the Wi Fi, so we still have the paper option. But if you do it online, it’s purposefully connected like that, where if you answer this question, it’s gonna just answer a whole bunch of other questions for you.

1:08:31 And that’s a technical term, very tactical. But it can be scary, too, because, I mean, if there’s the big barrier of trust, right? Because I know for. I had to check.

1:08:38 I’m like, I’m actually going to give you my information. And then I realized, oh, it’s the federal government. They already have it anyway, so.

1:08:47 But there is that. There’s that trust factor, too, that I know is probably a barrier you guys have to go over. I’m going to save personal financial information in front of somebody that I don’t know.

1:09:03 So I know you guys are probably addressing that, as well. And by using those trusted community people that their students are already connected to to help, that’s, you know, y’all are on it. It’s October 1 is when it opens.

1:09:11 We have a checklist of things they already need. Like you said, it was like, I have three daughters. I’ve been through the FAfsa many a times, but it’s like, every year, like, aha.

1:09:22 Where do I have to get what? We’re gonna have a little magnet that goes on the refrigerator. These are the items you need for the FAFSA, and hopefully that can help them out. Just be prepared for that.

1:09:28 October 1. So that was amazing work. Thank you so much.

1:09:43 And I, you know, like I said, speaking as, as a fresh college freshman parent this year, you know what school he is at? Eastern Florida State College. Yes. And so, yeah.

1:09:53 And, yeah, yeah. So, you know, clearly different experiences. But, I mean, it was the process was really not that bad.

1:10:21 So I just, I want to encourage all the parents out there, like, don’t be afraid of it, and reach out for help because, and the last thing that I will say is, if I can personally be of any assistance in the activities that you guys are doing, please let me know. I’m happy to go out and pull groups of students and knock on doors and talk to parents and do whatever I can and get that misconception of it’s only for low income kids and it’s only pal if you fill it out. It opens doors to so many foundations and so much more money, income based and merit based money.

1:10:30 So just everybody do the FAFSA. Miss Belford, can I ask a follow up question? Sure. Just within this conversation, I just thought of something too.

1:10:45 I believe we’re able to probably pull this data. If not, Doctor Sullivan, tell me no. But, you know, we have plenty of students that graduate high school who don’t go on to college or, you know, they take a year and that year gets a little bit longer.

1:11:09 Is there any way to get that information so that we can kind of access those students that, that didn’t go off right away? Yeah, we sure can. We have that available through our clearinghouse data and we have the ability to do some detective work around that. One of the challenges is we don’t capture student contacts, and so that is sometimes a barrier, but we, we can certainly work through that.

1:11:23 We did have our schools this fall, last fall as well, reach out to students who didn’t matriculate and try to target some support for those students as well, particularly with all the opportunities at eastern Florida. But yeah, we can work through that data. Awesome.

1:11:42 Thanks. Yeah. Miss Balfour, if I may, just while the group is here, I am a first generation american, a first generation college student, and I am someone who had a very difficult time through my undergrad because my parents never did the FAFSA.

1:12:12 And so for all the kiddos like me, you guys coming together to do this is overwhelming for me. And there are kids in all spaces that you don’t even realize need this because of how they perform in school. And so I just want to express personal gratitude for, you know, the kiddos like me out there, who without a program like this, would have a much more difficult road and just wanted to thank them.

1:12:43 Yes, thank you all. Miss Belford, if I can just also, I want to add my thank you to team secondary leading learning first because I don’t want to pass up the trophy. Doctor Sullivan, Paula, your great work to keep FAFSA on the mind of our schools.

1:12:58 And the work to make that recognition possible has been amazing. And I know how we have prioritized that as an organization. But with the power of community, we can now raise up opportunity for our kids.

1:13:06 And this is just an amazing demonstration of something I’ve said for a long time. Brevard takes care of brevard. This is it.

1:13:17 Power of community coming together. Thank you for your leadership, Doctor Sullivan. Thank you, Paula, for paving the way and just helping us all come together as community now and take it to the next level.

1:13:32 Congratulations. All right. We are now at the public comment portion of the meeting on agenda items.

1:13:43 We have one speaker signed up this evening. Miss Delaney. Do I need to read the rules, or you think you probably know them by heart by now? So you have three minutes.

1:13:51 The clock’s in front of me. Make sure it’s appropriate I tell you, to line up on the firewall, but that would be odd. Ready whenever you are.

1:14:08 Thank you. Tonight, I was wanting to speak on a couple of the procurements that are on here. H 27.

1:14:35 These two contracts, one of them, bids were waived, and neither of them are local. And so, you know, this is already a done deal, pretty much. But I just hope that in the future, the public can get more of an explanation on why bids are waived.

1:15:04 And maybe trying to, like Doctor Mullins was just talking about Brevard, helping Brevard, keeping some of this, you know, business within Brevard. Maybe there are some companies here that we could be securing their services or products. Then the second thing that I would like to talk about is f eleven, all the budget amendments.

1:15:45 Again, we keep going back and forth on this, but I keep looking for it and it’s not there. There are no broken down, itemized invoices that the public can see. And we asked for them and we were told that we couldn’t see them, you know, because they were too busy getting the budget together and that they wouldn’t be able to get it to us before the budget was passed.

1:16:48 And so I’m just curious, did any of you see any of these amendments actually look at what is being passed or amended here? Because we’re talking about millions, if not, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly, with all these things. And, you know, we. It’s just hard to believe that we do not have the funds in our $1.

1:16:54 4 billion budget to pay our teachers more, to pay our staff more. I hope that the public sees this lack of transparency, and I hope that they vote no on the millage that’s being proposed this November, we should not be asked for more taxes without being able to see what’s in our actual budget. Regardless, if you go on the website and you look in the places where you all mentioned last board meeting, there are no invoices there.

1:17:11 There are no itemized lists. We need to see those things before we accept a millage. Thank you.

1:17:31 Thank you, Miss Delaney. Since that is the only speaker this evening, I’m going to go ahead and just address a couple of the things that were mentioned because I think we are at a point where it just has to be addressed. Number one, itemized invoices.

1:17:54 There’s a difference between a budget and expenditures, and invoices are expenditures and a budget is what we plan to spend. And I believe what our financial services team said last time. And Miss Licinski, please feel free to correct me if I misrepresent your words, but I believe what they said was feel free.

1:18:18 Call us, come in and we’ll show you whatever you want to see. So I do think that that transparency is there. To suggest that we could produce every invoice for everything that is spent in the district is not realistic with and expenses the size of ours.

1:18:36 But they have said that they will gladly provide you access to the information if you would like to see them. And I think if you look at the two procurement items that were mentioned, it does explain in there, typically the requirement for bids are waived if we are getting state level pricing. So other districts have already done the bid process and the state is providing this cost.

1:19:17 It’s following the cost throughout the state. Or if it is a product that we can only purchase from that individual provider, that’s where bids are waived. And then I think the part that was mentioned that we can’t believe that there is no money to pay our staff more.

1:19:51 One of the things that I think really has to be considered is the fact that we are working under a funding formula from the state that does not allow us to really address the wage compression issue because we have to pay minimum teacher salary people a certain amount for every amount that we pay to our people who are making more than the minimum teacher salary allotment. And that formula can’t be worked around with state funding. And so to suggest that, yes, we, in fact, we recently settled our 1010 contracts and our BFT contract has been settled and our staff is getting more money, but it doesn’t allow us to address the wage compression issue, which is largely what the millage is going to be used to address.

1:20:32 So, anything, Doctor Mullins, that I didn’t address that you would like to elaborate on? Well, I would just. I just have to add that over the. Over the last five years as superintendent, for the last five years, I’ve had to present to the board the necessity of cutting budget and operating budget to meet the expense needs related to either meeting our rising healthcare costs or preparing ourselves to provide at least a modest raise to our employees.

1:21:11 Cuts were made even before I became superintendent, I believe, two years prior to that. So six out of the last seven years, this district has adjusted their operating budget upwards of over $35 million, where the vast majority of those funds went to either healthcare or rising costs from the state or to employee compensation. There has been no superintendent led initiative with any of those savings at the expense of not doing something for employees.

1:21:31 So I don’t agree that there is discretionary dollars in the budget to tackle the wage compression that the millage is proposed to address at upwards of $36 million. So it took six consecutive years of budget cuts to save 30, close to $38 million. So to suggest there’s another 36 million to tackle what a millage would allow us to do for employee compensation, specifically wage compression, it’s.

1:21:51 If that was available, I’m confident in this board’s leadership. They would expect and drive me to be able to do that, and that’s not been the case. So I am confident in stating there is not the equivalent amount of budget cuts in this budget to do what a millage could do for employees.

1:22:16 And I recognize it’s a decision for our community. As I’ve always said from day one, it’s an important decision, and it’s a big decision. But I can say that confidently, knowing all of the work that’s gone into the last, particularly four plus years, in evaluating, trimming, working through our budget to get to where we are today.

1:22:38 So I appreciate your clarification, but I also wanted to add my own contribution to the discussion as well. Thank you. And, Miss Campbell, if I could call you, catch you off guard, and ask you to repeat you very nicely, kind of wrapped up the message earlier with something along the lines of, I respected people just don’t support taxes, but I want them.

1:22:48 Can you report, can you repeat how you said that? Yeah. You know, as I have had many conversations about the millage since our vote in April with different groups, with individuals. You know, I heard, I think it was in a radio program not very long ago, someone say, why can’t support it? Because there’s no plan for it.

1:23:09 And there wasn’t. And I haven’t seen a plan for the half cent sales tax or accountability for it. I haven’t seen a plan or accountability for the federal COVID relief dollars.

1:23:20 And, of course, in the position that I’m in, I know that we not only do we have a plan, we actually have a website for all three of those things, three separate websites where we’re constantly updating and being as transparent as possible. But what I’m finding is that people are either not looking or they don’t know where to look. And so I encourage people to reach out to us because we can point them to those pages where we’re listing everything.

1:23:34 Here’s what we’ve done. But to what your point is, I fully understand there are people who just are against tax increases for any reason whatsoever. And I respect that.

1:23:48 I want people to vote according to their convictions, according to their conscience, but I don’t want people to vote based on lack of information or on misinformation. And so the information is out there. Now is the time to go get it.

1:23:55 If you’ve got a question, get it answered, because we want people to understand. And I still, even with the information, people may still vote no, but it’s part of our democratic process that the public is going to make that choice. This board cannot make that decision on our own.

1:24:08 The county commissioners could not make that decision on their own when they were moving it along in the process. It’s going to be our community. And so.

1:24:18 But we want the community, just like anything else that we vote on, to have all the information. So the website’s out there. Can we just do a real quick, like, how to get there again? We talked about it before, but I. It’s on the banner at Brevard schools.

1:24:44 Yeah, if you go to brevardschools.org right there, when you first. There it is, the green person and the orange person with the blue person underneath.

1:24:47 You know, there’s. You just click on that and there’s a whole website that will lay out that has the presentations from some of our board meetings, what the percentages are. And I’m assuming now that we’ve got moas with both unions, are we going to be able to put up there the moas, like, how it’s actually going to be broken down for each employee group? Are we going to be able to add that to the website? Yeah, we have those available.

1:24:55 Okay, good, because then our employees will be able to see, too. This is what we’ve already agreed to. If it passes.

1:25:06 This is what it’s going to look like. So hopefully, everybody will take advantage of that opportunity. It’s got as much information.

1:25:26 Again, if you don’t have the information on there, then reach out to one of us, because we’ll be happy to gather that information for you. And I promise. I’m almost done.

1:25:37 We’re moving on to consent agenda. But I just remembered the other thing that I wanted to call attention to in recognitions at the beginning of the meeting was Doctor Thetti and Doctor Green and our entire bargaining team. And the bargaining teams of BFT and Tentend, who very expeditiously, I would say, work to come up with those plans so that we can get them out to our public and share that information.

1:25:48 Because I think that really is critical for them to understand that. So thank you to those groups and individuals as well. Miss Belford, I just wanted to say there was a statement that.

1:26:04 Something about requesting the expenditures and stuff like that. It’s on. I did make that public records request, and they’re fulfilling it.

1:26:09 Limited staff means a little bit longer of a time, but they’ve reached out, they’ve set expectations and everything else. So when I get that, of course, it’ll be available to everybody else if they want anything. And they’ve always been open, as they did in the past with our CFO, who’s no longer with us, did the same thing with me.

1:26:16 I requested the same thing. She was able to provide it and stuff like that. Thank you.

1:26:26 Thank you. All right, that is going to move us into the consent agenda. Doctor Mullins, there are 15 agenda items under this category.

1:26:31 Does any board member wish to pull any item from the consent agenda hearing? None. I’ll entertain a motion to accept the. To approve the consent agenda as presented.

1:26:34 Moved by Miss McDougall. Seconded by Miss Campbell. Is there any discussion? All in favor, please signify by saying aye.

1:26:45 Aye. Any opposed? Same sign. Motion passes.

1:26:51 50. Doctor Mullins, will you please let us know about items under the action portion of today’s agenda? The first item is H 26, procurement solicitations. What are the wishes of the board? Moved.

1:26:53 Moved by Miss McDougall. Seconded by Miss Campbell. Any discussion? All in favor, please signify by saying aye.

1:26:59 Aye. Any opposed? Same sign. Motion passes.

1:27:07 50. Doctor Mullins, the next item is age 27. Department school initiated agreements.

1:27:09 What are the wishes of the board? Moved by Miss McDougall. Seconded by Miss Campbell. Is there any discussion? All in favor, please signify by saying aye.

1:27:19 Aye. Any opposed? Same sign. Motion passes.

1:27:22 50. We are now at board member reports and discussion points. Mister Susan, you had an item that you had requested to be added on transportation, I believe.

1:27:30 Yeah. Thank you, Miss Belford, for allowing me to have the item on there. Appreciate that.

1:27:37 Doctor Mullins and I have met since we made that request. And Doctor Mullins, to his credit, I think I sent the email on Friday. He had already done investigation.

1:27:57 He had already come together. I mean, it’s Tuesday. So hats off to you, Doctor Mullins, for the work that you did.

1:28:04 Concern was that there’s a series of drivers who had some concerns about processes. One of those processes was like when they write a referral and they go to give it to the school, they not always get that back, right? So what they’re saying is that they’ll write the referral for a student doing something on the bus. And they don’t know what the outcome was.

1:28:16 They don’t get it back. So I talked to Doctor Mullins and he said that’s definitely process. And he’s willing to absolutely make that happen.

1:28:35 He’s going to try to find a way. And I had also said maybe part of the training and stuff like that can help is that when you’re on the bus, you are also. It’s an extension of the classroom.

1:28:53 So what you do, if you destroy things inside on the bus, then it’s just like destroying things inside of the classroom. But sometimes there’s a confusion over what that is and everything else. So Doctor Mullen said, absolutely, we’ll take a look at the disciplinary rules to make sure that they’re consistent with what’s happening inside the schools.

1:28:53 He also said that he would deep dive the discipline rules or discipline to see if there’s any inconsistencies. Because, remember, what we did in the beginning was that we said that we wanted to make discipline consistent throughout the county. And what I think was some of the allegations was that maybe some places it is, some places it isn’t.

1:29:21 But Doctor Mullins definitely took on the bull by the horns to do that. We even joked that if there’s a student that may act inappropriately. That we would try to find a way for them to ride on the bus with them so that they could see.

1:29:38 But Doctor Mullins isn’t sure if that’s actually going to happen. The bottom line is that our bus drivers are on the front lines of coming back from one of the worst pandemics. And I have a lot of children that ride in the back of my car.

1:29:50 And it’s almost like a bus, right? And there’s only three of them back there. And the problem is that if I have 40 to 60 kids in the back of my bus and they’re acting inappropriate, we need to be able to support them. And I’ll be honest with you, Doctor Mullins was like, I will take care of this.

1:29:57 This is one of my high priorities. He mentioned that he had been out to transportation at the beginning of the year and met with a lot of them and stuff like that. And we had even talked about, you know, some of the things that we can do to support them.

1:30:02 But the beginning is, is that pulled the discipline stuff. You guys will all get that when we get it, when it comes down. But Doctor Mullins is going to take it by the horns.

1:30:18 He’s going to give you an opportunity. If you want to say something, Doctor Mullins, real quick. Yeah, I just want to.

1:30:37 You know, I already connected with Mister. Mister Wilson, our chief operating officer overseas transportation. He agrees if our bus drivers aren’t receiving the disposition of a referral, they absolutely at the very least deserve the courtesy to know how that was handled at the administration.

1:30:59 And we need to close the loop for our drivers so that they know that their concerns have been addressed and been heard. And just provide our drivers the assurance that we’re handling their concerns and making sure that we’re staying connected with that, connected with them. So absolutely appreciate you bringing it to our attention.

1:31:18 Mister Wilson is already on it and be happy to give the board an update later on. And I think one of the things that I was looking at is my wife tells me all the time, she said, you know, part of this is she says to me, Matt, I tell you, sometimes some of the things that I want to express to you, but you just try to fix it. And sometimes I just need you to listen.

1:31:24 So sometimes we need to show our heart to the bus drivers and say we hear you. And I think that part of Doctor Mullins doing that, and I applaud him for doing that, is we hear you and we’re going to try to do everything we can so that we can keep you guys at the front lines in a good way. So thank you Doctor Mullins.

1:31:48 And that’s it. Thank you Mister Susan. Got a message because our team is just phenomenal.

1:32:00 As we were having the conversation about the millage and clarifying some of those questions, Kellyn with government community relations sent me a message saying, hey, if anyone has questions about Milledge, you can now send those questions to millage. Millage 2022. Rvardschools.

1:32:13 org and our team will answer those questions. So I just want to make sure we got that out there. Yes, absolutely.

1:32:20 Thank you, Kellyn. All right, do any board members have anything else for board discussion? The official agenda is not up, but you guys, between now and our next board meeting, I will be attending our board of directors meeting for FSB. So if there’s anything.

1:32:28 I know, one of the things that we’d be voting for in the board of directors meeting. Part of that three day event is our treasurer that was picked for June. She lost in her primary, so we’ll be electing a new one.

1:32:42 And I haven’t seen the list yet. I think they haven’t finalized that. But once you see it, if there’s some.

1:32:49 If you have a suggestion, I’m the representative for all of us, and so you can share that. FSBA doesn’t necessarily have to follow. We don’t have to have a.

1:33:03 You can tell me who you would like your suggestion. I mean, I get to vote, but FSBA didn’t fall under sunshine, so we don’t have to have an official meeting for you guys to tell me your input on that. But if you want to check out the agenda once it’s published, let me know what you think.

1:33:17 I don’t know what else we’ll be voting on because it’s not up there yet, but I know that we will be choosing a new treasurer. Awesome. Thank you, Miss Campbell.

1:33:38 Does anybody have anything else for board discussion items? Doctor Mullins, do you have anything? Just a couple quick things. One, I want to just let I know some of our board members are participating in tomorrow’s ethics training we’re hosting here again at the district. Kind of a shout out to Mister Susan.

1:33:47 He proposed this a year ago, and we hosted it here and we’ve perpetuated it. We have a business partner that’s sponsoring lunch. But more importantly, our general counsel, Mister Gibbs, and our former general counsel, Miss envoller, coming together to deliver that training.

1:33:58 It’s a great collaborative community opportunity, as we have several community leaders around the county that will come and take advantage of that opportunity. As the board knows, we have to certify every year our participation in ethics training. And both Mister Gibbs and Miss N Ball do a wonderful job of doing that in an engaging way.

1:34:20 So we’re looking forward to tomorrow. And second, I want to give Mister Susan and the board a quick update. Mister Susan proposed, I don’t know, a couple board meetings ago.

1:34:23 The prospect of beach volleyball for our schools across Brevard. We have a couple. We have a couple schools that are really kind of pioneering that sport.

1:34:36 We are going official this year and adding beach volleyball as an FHSA qualified sport available to our schools. We have eight schools that have expressed an interest, and so we will be working with them to make that possible for our students. And who knows? Who knows? Maybe we bring home a state championship in our inaugural year.

1:34:46 We will. There we go. We’ll speak it into existence.

1:35:01 I did want to say one last thing on the bus drivers that I forgot on my notes, we had spoken about. One of the things that we would like to do is, you know how we have teachers that cover classes and they do extra for. And they get paid, whether that’s extra pay.

1:35:08 We now have bus drivers that are taking on two, three extra routes past what they normally would do. Doctor Mullen said, absolutely. He would look and evaluate that and see if that’s something that we can do.

1:35:22 But I think that that behooves us because literally one of the bus drivers that I spoke to said turned in his resignation because he’s doing three, two times what he normally does by going different routes. So I didn’t want to forget that. So thank you, Doctor Mullins, for that.

1:35:43 All right, we are now moving into our non agenda items. Speakers. Each speaker is limited to three minutes.

1:36:01 There’s a clock in front of me to keep track of your time. We have only two speakers this evening, Katie Delaney and Sarah Mirsky. Miss Delaney, whenever you’re ready.

1:36:28 I would like to start off by speaking about public comment and the fact that there is no two way conversation. And when a speaker is speaking, and then we go and sit down, and then all of you can have unlimited amount of time to say whatever you’d like. And we can’t say anything back.

1:37:06 It’s inappropriate and it’s wrong. This is the lowest level of government in our community. We should be able to have these conversations for the entire public to hear.

1:37:11 Now, about the budget. I was lucky enough to have an hour long meeting with Manny Diaz and in person, and spoke to him about a lot of my concerns about what I’m seeing in this district. And he told me that the districts are in control of their budgets.

1:37:34 So what you’re saying is not completely true about the state making you spend certain money on certain things. I know that there are some things that you have to, but there’s a lot of money where you guys can spend it on however you choose. And before any more of back and forth, have any of you ever looked at the budget, looked at every invoice, looked at how many people work in this building? How many six figure salaries are in this building? I’m guessing no, because like you said, it’s a monster of a budget.

1:37:46 $1.4 million. So you can smile and shake your head yes.

1:37:55 But if you have seen it and you haven’t brought it to the public, then that’s the problem. I’m not saying that we should definitely not have a millage. I’m saying that until the public gets to see where the dollars are going, there is no way that we can pass this millage.

1:38:11 $1.4 billion budget and we can’t pay our teachers more. And I understand we’re talking about existing teachers and the wage compression grew up here.

1:38:21 I remember when the teachers stopped getting their step promotions in 2008. Okay. My family has been here just as long as most of you.

1:38:34 I remember. And those teachers gave it away for one year, by the way, when they originally said it, one year, it was supposed to last. And now here we are, 15 years, 20 years later, 15 years later.

1:38:46 So we need to have open discussions, we need to have transparency, and it’s not there. And that’s why you got voted out. Thank you.

1:39:09 Thanks. Miss Delaney. Miss Mirsky.

1:39:13 Good evening, madam chair and board. I am Sarah Mirsky, a wife, mother of two children, brevard public schools. College student, constituent voter, taxpayer, stakeholder, and I live in district two for school board.

1:39:19 I just wanted to talk tonight to say it’s imperative to include incoming school board members in your strategic planning and budget plans for the future. And what I’m asking is to create agility in those plans for tweaking or adjustments for incoming school board members. Both the incoming school board members and the public should have input of your KPI’s as well.

1:39:33 As well. As well as. KPI’s should be adjust.

1:39:42 Should be adjusted where is needed. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Mirsky.

1:39:48 And although Miss Delaney has left, I just want to clarify that what I was laughing at was Miss Jenkins did actually answer her question about how many people were in the building with six figure salary. So it was. It was just comical that you had that right at the ready.

1:39:57 I would love to make that public, too. I actually. You know, we had a wonderful state representative make it sound like we have millions of people who have salaries that are six figures and above.

1:40:18 And when he did make that statement, I did inquire. I’m not going to give a specific number because I don’t want to misquote. So I’m going to say about. The answer was we have about 25 maybe ish people that hit that mark. And that’s including some of our principals. That’s not even just people here at the district. So an organization that has nearly 9000 employees, 20 something people that make six figures is not very many. And, you know, hey, thanks for making the point of why we shouldn’t have appointed education commissioners because he apparently doesn’t know how the money is spent and why. All right. Anything else for this evening? All right, there being no further business, this meeting is now adjourned.