2023-03-07 - School Board Meeting

0:56 SA good evening. The March 7, 2023 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 by the agenda outside of your individual public comment opportunity.

8:32 Your role in the meeting is as. As an observer. Paul, roll call, please.

8:37 Mister Susan. Here. Miss Wright.

8:39 Here. Miss Jenkins. Here.

8:40 Miss Campbell. Here. Mister Trent.

8:42 Here. The board will now hold a moment of silent reflection and invite the audience to join. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance.

9:12 I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which stands one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice. At this time, I would like to offer my fellow board members and doctor Shiller an opportunity to recognize students, staff, or members of the community. Does anybody want to go first? Miss Jenkins? Yeah, I appreciate going first.

9:45 I know we’re going to have a little bit of happiness going forward, but I want to acknowledge our communities of surfside and cocoa and bayside. We’ve had some really significant tragedies over the past couple of weeks, and my heart goes out to the families, but the students who are impacted by this. The staff at those schools, the schools that serve some of those children prior to.

10:16 And I also want to do a special acknowledgement to the staff here at district, who, unfortunately, has to handle those challenges and those phone calls more often than people want to imagine. And so I apologize for being such a somber start to this meeting, but I thought this was unprecedented. It wasn’t something that we could ignore.

10:39 And so everyone who was impacted by those three significant losses, please know that our hearts are with you. You are in our minds, and BPS is here to support you every single step of the way. I will go next.

11:02 So, we are following up with that. Again, our hearts are broken with families that lost their loved ones. And there is no way that any words that we say is going to make that better at all.

11:13 But we mourn with them. Honestly. Those are our students.

11:16 I also wanted to. I’m going to give a couple shout outs. We’re going to.

11:19 We’re going to change the tempo and a couple things that were positive. So I got the opportunity this last week to witness a NIMsy presentation. So, for anybody who doesn’t know what the acronym NIMSI is, because I don’t speak an acronym, but Brevard County Public Schools does.

11:33 That is the National Math and Science Initiative. They launched a college readiness program. And we had the opportunity to go to Vera high and we honestly, it was one of the most impactful things that I really needed to see and witness in the last month or so.

11:50 It was very, very good. So Doctor Sullivan was there. So Doctor Sullivan, I’m going to give a shout out to you because you represented our district in such a positive way.

11:59 She led the charge there and just. I was really proud of her, honestly. It was an amazing presentation that you put on there as well.

12:05 But we also got the opportunity to meet Doctor Bernard Harris, and he is the first African American to have done a special. He’s an astronaut, so this is a prestigious honor. He is one of about 70 people in the entire world that have done a spacewalk.

12:21 So his message was encouraging, it was inspiring. I think the students walked away there feeling like they could be an astronaut, which is one of the reasons that we love the Space coast so much. So that was a huge honor.

12:32 I also had the opportunity to visit Titusville High School, and so I’m going to give a shout out to Miss Coachman. So she is in charge of the best buddies program. And the best buddies program is something that’s in some of our schools, not all of them.

12:43 Hopefully one day it will be in every single school. But this is where they take a child that does not have a disability and they partner that child with a child that has a different disability. And so they put on a huge event.

12:56 They had the Titusville police force came out, the sheriffs, the FWC, it was the mayors came, vice mayor. It was a great event. And just to see the joy and the purest of forms of these kids that were being celebrated and honored was an honor to be a part of.

13:10 So that was very, very good. The other thing I want to give a shout out to is, this is an individual in our community. And so, so many times we see individuals step up and they see a need and they meet a need, which is a really, really beautiful thing to see happen.

13:22 So Tia Mahan created this Facebook page called Adopt a senior from Space Coast Junior senior 2023. This arose from COVID really. And what she has done is she found, hey, these seniors need the community to love on them because they were graduating.

13:39 This is a huge, monumental thing in their life. And it was weird. I mean, it was awkward.

13:44 It didn’t happen the way it was supposed to happen. So she had the community come around and intentionally adopt a senior student. And this is now going on year three, where our community comes around.

13:56 They pick a student, and they intentionally love on that kid. So they bring them stuff, they’ll give them balloons. They honor them in a way that makes them feel like, hey, we are with you.

14:05 We appreciate the dedication you had to your education, and we’re proud of you. So I just want to give her a shout out. So if anybody has any, any seniors at Space coast, you want to make sure you get your senior on there, because the community will come around them and love on them.

14:18 And that’s a great thing. So that’s all I have for recognitions, Gene. All right, so I’d like to give a shout out to everyone coming out tonight, though.

14:32 I appreciate it. This is what we need is to see more and more of our community. So we’ll get to that later.

14:39 I echo the sentiment of our board members talking about the loss in our community and how just unapproachable that’ll be to happen anywhere but to be in our own backyard here. But our hearts go out to everyone involved, family and friends. So some of the good things that we have had in the district, I’m just going out and visiting schools, seeing what’s going on in the classrooms.

15:09 I had some visits. I’ll talk about a few of them with the Myla in Merritt Island. Doctor O’Brien’s got some great things happening at that school.

15:18 It’s very nice to be able to see schools that everyone’s pulling in the same direction. And you can go from classroom to classroom and see what’s going on. And we appreciate their work, the work of our staff, from our custodians to our IAS to the teachers to the office workers, all the way up to the principals.

15:24 And you can really, you can really tell the ones that’s all of ours that are working as hard as they are. So I can tell you I’m out there and I’m seeing it. So also, we had some great visits at Saturn, both at Saturn and also at Endeavor, Miss Hurst and Miss Murphy, the programs that they have many times being understaffed, the amount of work that’s put in front of them with not being full staffed, and they still have the smiles on their faces and coming to work every day.

16:12 But we’re meeting those issues head on. We’re taking note, and they’re not making excuses. They’re just moving ahead and seeing those kids at recess and at the cafeteria, they don’t know they’re understaffed at some of those places, and they’re needing five additional ias.

16:32 They. We’re doing our best to get everything met there. So very excited about the future of brevard schools and the direction and that we’re going.

16:40 So thank you, Doctor Schiller, just for recognitions. And then we’ll come back to Gene for. Yes, thank you very much.

16:55 And I also, on behalf of the staff of this wonderful school district, offer our deepest condolences on the tragedies. And our hearts are also saddened because of a number of students and a bus driver who were injured today in an accident. And we hope that they have speedy recoveries.

17:19 I have a number of things to say, but I’m going to have other people say them. For me, the best part of my weeks are the times I’m able to go out and visit with board members or just happen to need to get out to see, get back to my roots, the wonderful people who are serving our schools in a support capacity or as teachers. And every time I go out and I can’t spend the time here to take me hours to talk about just what I saw in the last couple of weeks.

17:49 But one thing that I wanted to bring attention to is that in my long career, I’ve gone to a lot of, and hosted a lot of events to honor employees. The Brevard County foundation does it right, probably the best I’ve ever seen in the nation. And all of us had the joy of witnessing these tremendous employees, staff members, principals, teachers, and to recognize the kind of quality that’s here in this district.

18:25 We got to get that message out. We have. And I’m telling you, I’m unbiased because I do these things in a lot of places.

18:34 I’ve never seen the devotion, the loyalty, the care. I’ve been to places where children with special needs, the kind of comfort and direction that our staff offering well beyond any expectation. But I’m also always surprised about how those who may kind of bubble up in consultation with the board chair.

18:59 And as we shared with the board a few weeks back, we want to continue the recognition of some very special employees. The ones who had been honored by being chosen as employee of the year, teacher of the year, principal of the year. And tonight we’re kicking off something we haven’t done before.

19:22 Mister Susan, would you like to explain a little bit of what we’re kicking off? Yeah, thank you, Doctor Tiller. What we wanted to do is we from a school district wanted to hear the voices of the individuals that are inside of our schools. So tonight we are going to hear from Roderick Foster, from McNair, the employee of the year, him he’s going to introduce himself, and then he’s going to come back on a rotational basis to give us what the employees and his sector of the employee groups are feeling, what they’re doing, and everything else, so that we can have a heartbeat and a thumb on the rail of what’s happening inside.

19:56 We all visit our schools, we all talk to everybody, but there’s some times where we are not talked to from a perspective of a leader. So, mister Foster, if you want to come up and speak real quick, our employee of the year, ladies and gentlemen, mister Foster. I want to say one thing real quick, just so you guys know, the first time I saw him, I think it was three years ago, you were up in Coco, and you were putting together the.

20:22 The drone teams. Not only is he involved as an employee of the year, but he also runs a ton of clubs, and he is a very special individual who’s dedicated to our students, and I’m so proud of him. So a ton of them.

20:32 Mister Foster, let us have him. Good evening. Can anybody point me to the nearest veterinary clinic? Because these pythons are sick.

20:47 I like to start off all my speeches with some type of joke to break the ice. I was hoping to. I didn’t really know what to expect coming up here talking, so I wrote a little speech.

21:07 So this time, I’m not going to freestyle anything that I got to say today. I’m just going to go. I’m going to stick to the script.

21:15 So. Good evening, members of the school board. Thank you for this opportunity to speak tonight.

21:21 As a representative of the district employees, I’m deeply honored to have been named as employee of the year. But I stand here tonight not just individual, but on behalf of all the dedicated and hardworking educators and staff in our district. I also want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the tremendous support and guidance we receive from our colleagues, supervisors, and school district as a whole.

21:48 Without their support and the opportunities they provide us, we would not be able to exceed in our roles and make the positive impact that we do on our students and community. Speaking of impact, I would like to share some examples of how our teachers have contributed to the success of our school district. Our educators have worked hard and tirelessly to improve student outcomes.

22:13 Whether it’s through innovative teacher teaching practices, personal personalizing learning approaches, or targeted intervention for struggling students. Our staff have also played a critical role in creating positive and an inclusive school culture, whether through building relationships with students and families, promoting social emotional learning, or. Or fostering a sense of belonging and safety for all.

22:44 It’s a school. All students should feel safe. That should be the best place in the world for our students.

22:50 Some students don’t eat at home, they eat at school. Some people don’t. You know, like, school should be the CEO for all of our students and our teachers, too.

22:59 They shouldn’t be scared to go in classrooms and whatnot. Oh, all right, here we go. We know that none of this would be possible without the power of collaboration, teamwork and ongoing professional development.

23:14 We’re proud to work alongside of our colleagues who are passionate about their work and committed to our shared goals. Whether it means collaborating on a lesson plan, supporting each other in the classroom, or engaging in ongoing learning and growth through professional development opportunities, PD is very important. Always be learning, you know, always, you know, trying to be better than you were the day before PD.

23:43 However, we also know that we are facing significant challenges in our work. Whether it be limited to the. Whether it be the limited resources we have to work with, the increased workload and demands admin and teachers face, or the ongoing impact of the pandemic on our students and families.

24:02 We encourage the school board to continue investing in its employees, whether that means providing more opportunities for professional development, ensuring competitive compensation, or finding other ways to support and recognize our efforts. I believe that by doing so, we can continue to make a positive impact on our students, our community, and the world at large. Thank you again for this honor and for your continued support of our efforts.

24:37 Does anybody want to say anything? Mister Foster? Go ahead. Mister Schiller. No, I just.

24:42 This was not coached or outlined. Free to speak to it. I think you have an understanding of why this gentleman, as articulate as he is, didn’t need any guidance, didn’t need any coaching.

24:58 He’s so self assured. But he is also very humble. We thank you, Rod, for all that you do every day.

25:03 Thank you, sir. Is anybody else. Thank you, doctor stiller.

25:06 Do you want to say anything? Not much to add to that. You’re a great example of what when we go home and talk about how great BPS is in the. From the students to the teachers to the, you know, the it people, which, you know, being a teacher myself, you are so important to us.

25:26 Thank you so much. But besides what you do at work, I can just tell you, you’re that type of guy. I appreciate your efforts.

25:33 Thank you. Yeah, I thank you so much for all you do. I can only imagine how many children say you are their favorite teacher.

25:42 So with jokes like that, I’m sure that you. You are a good teacher to have for sure. So thank you for all of your.

25:49 He’s at a middle school, so that’s even better. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you.

25:53 Thank you so much for all you do. We appreciate you. Yeah.

25:59 I don’t remember if it was you or one of your colleagues in your video, but noting that all of the educators on campus call you a wizard. Not sure if it was you. I think it was.

26:11 They make me feel like a wizard. Yeah, they make you feel like a wizard because you fix everything. But no, I appreciate you so much and I had the pleasure of sitting at your table with you and your girlfriend at the time.

26:22 And I know that you guys are expecting a little one to come to BPS soon and so I wish you congratulations on that. And man, that baby’s got a really good, really good dad coming, coming to him. So thank you so much for everything you do.

26:41 Mister Foster, I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming tonight. I know you didn’t like, you were just like, what in the world am I in front of? But I wanted to say thank you so much. We look forward to seeing you in the future.

26:51 And I wanted to say, I know from experiences in the past, watching you engage with the students, watching what you do, your shining example. And I hope that we can rally other people to follow. Follow.

27:02 So I love the speech about collaboration, working together, safety, that kind of stuff. Thank you so much for bringing that forward and I appreciate you, man. No problem, anytime.

27:11 Doctor Schiller, you had. She had already said she wasn’t. You’re good to go.

27:16 Yes, you had the next, next famous individual. Well, I don’t know about a famous individual. Famous, all right.

27:23 But one of the great pleasures was when a principal invites me to visit and Jerry Solomon, Jeremy Solomon reached out and said, hey, got nothing to do. We’d love to talk to you. Unfortunately, this gentleman is retiring shortly.

27:39 And I said, love to. Where’s your golly? Well, anyway, sure was. I had passed it once before, not knowing where I was coming back from the King Center a couple a month or so ago.

27:55 So he and I started talking and we started walking to school. It was not planned, there was nothing staged. And we happened to pass this classroom where a teacher was standing outside, I guess it was passing period.

28:11 And I noticed a crimson tide banner and we started talking. He said, would you like to come into my classroom? I’m not going to explain what I saw. We’re going to see what I saw through the eyes of these two gentlemen.

28:31 Now the three I asked two other older men who are technologically disabled tried to take a photo when we all were trying to pick up a phone to take a photo. Couldn’t do it. Young girl who is in this program decided not only take the photo but create a video.

28:53 Oh nice Jeremy. Mister Bill McInnes, the magician who has created one of the most outstanding programs and in the audience. I know Miss Peggy, wife of McInnes is here.

29:08 I don’t know if anyone joined you with. We have several students, we’re going to ask them to come up in just a second. Thank you very much.

29:14 I appreciate you giving us the opportunity to talk about the aviation program at Ogalley High School. Eight years ago we were blessed to have Mister McInich come join us to launch a program that started in the varsity football locker room after I kicked them out to give them a classroom and a small eight section chain link fence area in our parking lot that had a small piper plane in it. Since then we’ve come a long way.

29:39 Mister McInish has garnered about just shy of $3 million in donations through the leadership and support of Miss Sullivan. Doctor Sullivan. We have a hangar now that has jet planes in it, air helicopters, piper planes, and most importantly we have developed just very strong relationships with our business community, with NASA, with Embraer, Lockheed Martin, Piper and countless others and we are a true ready to work program.

30:11 I couldn’t be more proud of it, couldn’t be more proud of our students. And with that I’m going to cut it off because we do have a video. I’m going to let Mister McInich speak for a few minutes.

30:17 Thank you. Thank you. First I want my support team to be my wife and my daughter and my grandson and my granddaughter would please stand up.

30:27 You got to embarrass them. I can get my two students to walk up this way for me. I’m here tomorrow.

30:40 No, I’ve got three. Oh that’s right. And I got my Embraer employees up here also.

30:46 So I have the easiest job in the world. Get students off their parents payroll and onto industries payroll. Parents like that? Yeah.

31:02 I have both my private pilot students. I have representative from my technical students. These two students are four that are currently interning while in high school, drawing high school credit and being paid to be there and learning skills.

31:18 At Embraer we have many other, we’re up to like 20 different companies that our students have left our program that currently works right now and so I appreciate them spending the time, especially my Embraer employees who left work early today to be here with us. So if I can find the mouse now, I’m just going ahead and play this video. Originally, I was a military search and rescue air crewmen flying in different helicopters and airplanes.

31:53 When I was in Alabama, I was a technology educator there, and I did 17 years in Alabama and retired out of Alabama. And then we moved back here. He’s written the state standards for this.

32:06 We applied to the state that we wanted the program, and when working with the state, we created the standards, the curriculum, all through it. So this aircraft was donated by astronaut Winston. We got Doctor Gary over in Tampa to donate this million dollar jet to us.

32:23 This is an operational jet. It was taken apart over there, brought over here, and the kids put it back together, you know, wings, the body, everything, and we got it all put back together. And now this is a training device for the kids.

32:36 So when they come through the program, from first an at one, learning their hardwares, and AP three, where they’re working on the jet itself, working on jet engines here. The helicopter has been donated. We’ve had many engines, propellers donated.

32:54 We started out in a locker room with a Conex box. This was a parking lot with an airplane with a fence around it. It’s where we started eight years ago.

33:03 And now we have a complete hangar full of airplanes and helicopters that kids work on. This is the airplane, AP one, working on tools and hardware. When they become an at two, they get to work on the propeller airplane.

33:21 They don’t get to work on the jet airplane. To it, they’re an at three, it’s an updraft paint booth. We have.

33:30 We have painters come over corporation to teach painting, and when they teach painting, they’ll hire the kids directly from here to embryon to their paint build. When the students graduate from my program, they either go directly on a job or they’re going to go directly to college. And that college leads to a job in aviation, or they’re going into aviation in the military.

33:54 So our kids go directly to work, and for the last three years, we’ve been at 100% places. If they go in the military, they’re going to make about $22,000 going to one of our aircraft assembly jobs, they’re making $30,000. If they go out to the space center for Blue Origins or one of the other space companies are making $50,000 a year, and that’s right out of high school.

34:16 Our students, as they leave this program, are ready to enter. Ready to enter the workforce program. Very proud of it.

34:25 We have land, sea, and air. We have auto mechanics, marine mechanics, and aviation. And through those three big programs, we’re serving many, many students, and we’re developing those programs.

34:36 They’re growing. We’re building our relationships within the community. I’m very proud of that.

34:48 Thank you to Laura Hendrickson. She is the one that did the video when us old people couldn’t make it happen. So you need students like that around.

34:58 But our students are building things that are currently on the International Space Station. We have built that the astronauts use when they do their spacewalks. Our current project is we’re building the wheels for the moon mining machine that launches to the moon in 2025.

35:14 So this program here is actually taking kids, giving them the skills that they need, and putting them on the job working in aerospace and aviation. The ones you see here. This is the future of aerospace and aviation.

35:29 I thank the school board. Without their support, we wouldn’t have gone from a locker room to a hangar. Thank you, Doctor Sullivan.

35:36 By the way, we had support of our state senate, our state senators, and many others that have jumped in in industry. Embraer given us a $12,500 check this year that was appreciated very much. But this program is about the kids and seeing the kids get the opportunities.

35:58 All you got to do is give them an opportunity. They’ll wow you. Just give them the opportunity.

36:03 And that’s what this program is about. And I thank everybody that’s been part, and I thank our board and our superintendents and everybody that’s been involved in this. Thank you so much.

36:16 Hang on. Mister Bill. Mister Bill, Mister Bill.

36:20 You and your boys are going to end. Girls are going to have to come up here. Well, I was just going to say, ogalley’s not even one of my schools, but I brag on that program all the time.

36:31 When people talk about CTE, I’m like, let me just tell you what we have in Brevard. Did you know we have this? And people get so excited, so. But I also just have to say.

36:38 Roll. Tie. Miss Jenkins, did you want to say anything? No.

36:46 I mean, other than just your kids are remarkable. Your program’s remarkable. I appreciate you highlighting that for our community.

36:53 There’s so many amazing things that BPS has to offer that are really difficult for the public to see. So thank you for opening. Opening everyone’s eyes.

36:59 Thank you, Jean. All right. Well, I do get the honor to introduce our.

37:05 No, wait. Oh, you’re mistaken. What more can I say? The program’s awesome.

37:12 You guys are awesome. I appreciate it. And, you know, just keep it up.

37:17 Thanks, guys. Thank you, guys. You guys are rock stars.

37:23 So honestly, I think about how this is such a cool program that no other school district has, and the fact that you’re attracting kids to this program and teaching them such a skill that they can use immediately out of school with 100% success rate as far as job placement, it’s amazing. So you guys should be very, very proud. We are extremely proud of you.

37:42 Thank you for all you’re doing for our students. Yeah. There should be a big announcement coming from Lockheed Martin about our program here soon.

37:51 All right, so wait, wait. So just so you guys know, years ago, I was the board member when he started his program, and I would get phone calls. I made the mistake of going by them and giving him my cell phone, said, hey, Bill, like I do everybody, anytime you need anything, give me a call.

38:10 Oh yeah, that phone never stopped. 1st, 1st week, you know, they’ve got me in a locker room. You got to come down here and see this I’m trying to do.

38:18 And I walk down there, the kids are carrying an airplane wing through the hallway, right? And he’s like, I can’t fit it in here and all this other stuff. Then I get a call. I mean, it was every other time that was I’d be at the EDC on the executive board.

38:30 Here comes Bill Askin and he never stopped asking for money. And everybody got to know that if you have Bill present, he will at the end of his speech. Now this is what I need, and this is what I’m going to get from you, right? The best conversation I had was, I’m sitting there and I’ll never forget it.

38:44 I get a phone call and he says, hey, Matt, I got a jet. And I said, that is great, bill. And he said, we got one problem.

38:50 I said, what? He goes, it needs to be dismantled and carried across state because it was in Tampa, right? So I said, what in the heck you got me into, Bill? So I called Arby Creech, who’s now the head of transportation over in Osceola, and I said, arby, I got a problem. We got to go get a plane, right? So Bill went over there, what, it was two or three weeks ahead, dismantled the wings, got it all on there, and they threw it on a trailer and brought it over here. So he’s not the type of guy that says, hey, I need these things.

39:15 He’s the type of guy that says, I’ll take them. And then he goes and gets them. He’s found stuff at the airport that he puts inside there.

39:21 I mean, it’s been a phenomenal program. But I did want to say this. The one thing that not many people know about Bill is that he’s a preacher.

39:29 And there was a couple of years ago, and I’m going to talk about this for a second. There was a couple years ago when there was a group of students that had disabilities that had no home. So Bill told him, you bring them into the church, and there’s a lot of things that this man does that we’ll never know about because he’s humble and he talks.

39:45 Bill, you’re one of my favorite individuals. You’re an amazing part of our school district. And I wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.

39:59 So we forgot about Miss Campbell. She’s got to do a couple of these things. So we have some special recognitions coming up in just a minute.

40:04 Let me do mine really quick. I’ve got five quick ones. So a couple Saturdays ago, we had our elementary music festivals, north and south.

40:12 Both concerts were wonderful. Congratulations to all our awesome elementary musicians and their teachers for putting on a great weekend. Also, one of our amazing employees over in HR is Charlie Smith.

40:27 He’s retiring soon and he did kind of a routine training. I was reading through the leadership team packet one week, and it said for the principals to come to their par training. And I don’t remember what par stands for, but it has to do with how many of each kind of employee we get and the student counts and all that.

40:44 But I had known since early on my time on the board that Charlie is like the guru when it comes to par. And they were saying, if you want to go through training again, the last one that he’s going to be doing, you sign up. And I said, you know what? I get questions about allocations all the time.

40:56 So I just wanted to thank Charlie Smith because I asked Mike Alba, can I watch that training? Did both of them, actually. He did a fantastic job. Wish him the best.

41:06 He’s not done yet. But I just wanted to thank the staff for the opportunity to get to sit in on that virtual training. A few weeks ago.

41:14 No, last week, actually, on the 28th, I held my community forum and I wanted to thank all the people who came out. We had parents, we had teachers, we had a couple of principals, a social worker. It went really well.

41:26 Bored. The challenge is on. Get yours on the calendar.

41:29 We need to hear from our people before we make our final decisions on these important policy decisions coming up. And I did. But I want to thank everybody we had some great discussion back and forth.

41:39 It was really great. It was just mainly a listening session. And what I’m going to do is tomorrow.

41:42 It’s been on my to do list for a while, but tomorrow I get a chance. I’m going to email all of you kind of the format that I used and just kind of let you know. That way you can borrow it if you’d like, but I’ll let you know what we ended up doing if you want to borrow my kind of the layout.

41:57 Two other things. Miss Wright challenged all of us to do a bus ride along. That’s also been on my to do list for a long time.

42:04 But I finally got down to it. Thank you, John Davis from South Transportation, for hooking me up with Keith, who’s one of our standby drivers. Had great.

42:12 I did the afternoon route because that’s always the harder. I told him, don’t give me an easy route. So had a bus full of little ones from Palm Bay elementary and then I had a bus full of high schoolers after that.

42:23 And it was great on a bus. It didn’t have air conditioning. So all of y’all want to make sure I experience the real thing.

42:28 We had the bus with and it was 88 degrees that day. So thanks for the challenge and it was great. I loved having conversation with Keith.

42:36 He’s fantastic. And then finally, next week during spring break, the Melbourne High School orchestra is going to be competing once again. They did last year along with O’Galley, who won the whole competition in satellite, in the National Orchestra Festival competition.

42:52 And they will be competing again. Mel High will be competing again this year over in Orlando next Thursday. So we wish them the best.

42:59 I got to go on Friday night to their pre AsTa concert. And here they happen to have a really fantastic redheaded cello player. But the name of that cello player.

43:12 Oh, I can’t embarrass her that much. But anyway, just wish them the best. They sounded fantastic.

43:17 I know they’re going to make us proud and represent. By the way, they are the only orchestra from the state of high school orchestra from the state of one Florida actually competing this year, even though it’s in Orlando. So congratulations to them.

43:28 And then we’ll leave it to. I’ll leave it to you guys for our special recognition. Thank you so much.

43:32 Doctor Schiller, you had one? Yes. I just wanted one other announcement that I think is very important. As you know, all school districts are struggling to find candidates to fill our pool of available teachers and assistant principals and principals and all staff members.

43:51 And something that’s not as glitzy as what we are seeing here are really eye shocking is important for me to share under the leadership of the folks in our HR area, Doctor Green and Mike Alba and their wonderful staff, that there’s a bit of a distinction. We’re focusing on how to recruit outstanding individuals. Well, for the past three years, bps and other select districts around the country have participated through the Wallace foundation in a professional learning committee and to strengthen the leadership pipelines within your district.

44:34 To that end, directors and from directors from elementary and secondary leading the whole academic focus team and leadership team that been doing a deep dive into the current assistant principal and principal development programs for our district. And they’re able to hear from and communicate with other leaders around the nation. Because of the part of Wallace foundation and the staff have made changes to our current AP pool application process, the groundwork has been laid in order to implement leadership tracking system and ensure that our program currently are aligned with the Florida leadership standards.

45:16 Well, we are so proud to announce that BPS has received the invitation to join just 47 other districts around the country that continue to work of strengthening this pipeline for another year and that will be able to continue receiving significant support from the Wallace foundation to go on and to build this and attend a really nationally recognized assistant principal training academy. A good part of the work that our staff do behind the scenes is to build for the future that because the greatness of BPS can only be continued by what? The greatness of our staff and the leaders. So I just wanted to offer that as just something that doesn’t get a lot of attention.

46:04 But I think it’s something that you understand how critically important it is. And I want to do a special shout out to all the directors and assistant superintendents who are collaborating on this and is largely led by Mike Alba and Miss Green. But thank you very much for that time.

46:22 Thank you, mister chairman. Okay, so now, Mister Jean Tramp. We’re good.

46:29 All right. So we’re going to continue the good feel up here while it lasts. Each year, the state holds a black history month contest.

46:37 Students in kindergarten through third grade across the state were invited to submit original artworks. There were only four winners in the state of Florida, and one of the winners is a BPS student. Zalen Hill is a second grader at Gulfview Magnet Elementary School.

46:54 Zaylin, can you and your family please stand up? Come on, mom. Zalen submitted a painting titled the Highwayman, which aligned with the contest’s theme celebrating the achievements of African American Floridians. His inspiration is his great great uncle, Robert Lewis, one of the 26 landscape artists commonly referred to as the Florida highwaymen.

47:26 As one of four winners throughout the state, Zalen received a $100 art supply gift card, a plaque, and a one year pass to Florida state parks. He and his family were also provided an all expense paid trip to Tallahassee last month for a reception at the governor’s mansion with Governor DeSantis and the first lady, Zaylan. We’ve taken some photos of that night and created this collage for you.

47:56 Hopefully, this is just one more way for you to remember this great accomplishment. We’re so proud of you and would love for you to give you a chance to tell us about your experience. Hi, my name is Ellen Hill, and thank you for supporting me.

49:57 I’m like, you’re gonna be successful. I can see it. Sorry.

50:10 I’m sorry. It’s not challenged. I haven’t put any numbers in there, by the way, but I have been tracking.

50:17 I have been tracking. I got one. Mister Schiller, did you do the professional learning? All right, everybody in Brevard, we make champions.

50:33 Led by head coach Nick Robinson, Viera High school boys soccer won its first state championship, beating Fort Myers in the class six. A championship game four two. Vieira finished its season at 210 one, winning the school’s 6th team championship of any kind.

50:52 Many other individual championships there, too. The Hawks outscored their 2023 postseason opponents 17 to four. But the highlight of Mike, but everybody should know is they beat the pants off of St. Thomas, who’s a private school and shouldn’t be playing them, but they beat their butts in that semifinal.

51:10 Thank you very much for that. They came up here and they went home packing, didn’t they? So since 2021, Viera boys soccer has won the three district championships, three regional titles, made the state final four, were state runners up last season. And now, for the first time, 2022 to 2023 school year, they are state champions.

51:31 We have created a. Yeah, yeah. Good guys.

51:40 We’ve created a little something. Now, if anybody’s ever been to the championship trophy case over at Viera, it’s pretty insane. It, like, literally has hundreds of them.

51:50 So what we did was we put together our own little thank you championship trophy for you guys like this. So you guys could put it up there, right? So anyways, got that over here. Coach.

52:04 Coach, we’d love to hear from you. From you. And they have a designated player that’s the personal representative that will be speaking.

52:09 Also, you may hear his accent is actually finnish, so we’ve got a translator up here just in case. And I did tell the boys, too. We’re also waiting for an invitation from Governor DeSantis as well, so hopefully we can get that better.

52:38 So, over the course of the last four or five years, I’ve asked and I’ve demanded a lot of excellence from this group in all aspects, not just on the field. Well, this is one of many reasons I feel like we got to this point this season. The most important reason is because it’s a group of very selfless human beings that thoroughly enjoy and relish in the individual success of each other.

53:04 Because of this selflessness and the team first mentality, it’s created a culture of sustained success and some really remarkable achievements, just like this season. And more importantly, some memories that us, as a group, we can cherish forever. It’s not always about winning and losing.

53:22 And let me say that this state championship definitely didn’t come easy. But as a unit, we have been able to experience some challenging times over the last several years, learn from the mistakes, some heartbreaking losses. And a testament to this group is that they turn those losses into positives by taking accountability and responsibility through those tough moments and turned it into what you guys see before you, an undefeated season and a state championship.

53:49 So I just want to give these guys a big round of applause. Super proud of each and every individual. Thank you for you guys, for having us tonight.

54:06 Thank you to the families administration for all the support, and this achievement was thoroughly earned, and we’re looking forward to defending it next season. All right, I’d like to introduce everyone to our star goalkeeper, Alvy. He’s going to say a few words.

54:23 All right, Alfie. Let’s hear it, man. Hello, everyone.

54:27 My name is alvi kaufman, and I’m the goalkeeper for the viera boys soccer team. I would like to first thank the members of the school board for having us here tonight. I would also like to thank my friends, family, and oliver for the support throughout the season.

54:40 Thank you to our coaching staff for pushing us to become the best, best players we can be. And thank you for everyone coming out here tonight to celebrate us as a team. I can’t wait to defend our state title next season.

54:51 And go hawks. All right. All right, guys.

54:56 Got anything else? Does anybody want to say anything to them? Good. Hey, everybody, come on up so we can get a picture. Family members, too, so it’s going to be a big picture.

55:14 Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

56:50 That’s so awesome. Yep. No, it’s finger.

56:56 Know where the cameras are? I said, is that new? And he’s like, no, it’s been. You gotta pay attention. It’s good stuff.

57:07 Mister. Schiller. Doctor Schiller.

57:10 Good. Feeling good. You just gotta know where to position yourself.

57:12 Stay off. You good? What are you looking for? Candy. I think they’re underneath the plugs.

57:26 All right, we ready? You good? Everybody else good? All right. That brings us to the adoption of the agenda. Doctor Schiller.

57:35 Yes? I guess we. Thank you, Mister Susan. I guess we really have to go do some work now.

57:40 After a wonderful time. What wonderful people that we have in this district, and children and athletes and it’s just mind boggling. Anyway, on this evening’s agenda, we have administrative staff recommendations, two proclamations, one presentation, 20 consent items and six public hearings and one action item.

58:03 Change has been made to the agenda since it was released to the public. And that is a revision to agenda item a. Seven administrative staff recommendations, the addition of f 14 student expulsions and the deletion of g 38, a renewal charter contract of the Odyssey Preparatory Academy.

58:29 Thank you, Doctor Schiller. Do I hear a motion to approve the agenda? Motion to approve again. Is there any discussion? I do.

58:42 Just real quick. Wes Herold is no longer going to. He’s the administrative staff and a personal friend of family.

58:51 Also former principal of Ralph Williams. Also former principal of Mims elementary. Outstanding human being.

59:00 And I wish his family well in the next step in their lives. And we’ll miss him. And if he ever wants to come back, we always have a place for him.

59:08 But I did want to say thank you for all his terms and years of service here in Brevard. So with that, does anybody else have anything else? That’s it. That’s it.

59:18 Please vote. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye.

59:22 All opposed? Passes. Mister Gibbs, Doctor Shiller, would you please let us know about the administrative staff recommendations? Yes, Chairman Susan. Members of the board, there is one item for your consideration.

59:37 Do I hear a motion? Second. Any discussion? Please vote. All in favor, signify by saying aye.

59:46 Aye. All opposed? All right. Pass this again.

59:50 Mister Gibbs, we are now on item c eight to proclaim march as women’s History Month. Miss school board member Megan Wright will read the proclamation. Am I. Am I down there? I think you do.

1:00:02 Do we want to pass it before you go, or do we want to pass it when you get back? Read it. Let’s go. Read it.

1:00:08 Do I read it down there? Yeah. No. Get down there and read it.

1:00:11 Come on. You’re official should have all the ladies stand up next to you, too. That’s not you, Doctor Schiller.

1:00:19 I’m just making sure. Doctor Schiller. How do I get to see it from this angle? That’s a little different.

1:00:27 All right. Well, hey, I am very excited about this. As a woman myself, I think it is important that we leave our mark on history.

1:00:33 And there have been several women that have come before myself. And I believe there will be many more. So it’s important that we honor our strong female leaders.

1:00:41 So, women’s History month. Whereas american women in every race, class, and ethnic background have made historic contributions to the growth and strength of our nation in countless recorded and unrecorded ways. And whereas american women have played and continue to play a critical economic, cultural, and social role in every sphere of life of the nation by, excuse me, constituting a significant portion of the labor force working inside and outside of the home.

1:00:53 And whereas american women have played a unique role throughout the history of the nation by providing the majority of the volunteer labor force of the nation. And whereas american women were particularly important in the establishment of early charitable. I’m going to mess this word up.

1:01:28 Philanthropic. I know you guys are rolling r they’re thinking philanthropic. Thank you.

1:01:33 In cultural institutions in our nation. And whereas american women of every race, class, and ethnic background served as early leaders in the forefront of every major progressive social change and movement. And whereas american women have served our country courageously in the military.

1:01:37 And whereas american women have been leaders not only in securing their own rights of suffrage and equal opportunity, but also in the abolitionist movement, the emancipation movement, the industrial labor movement, the civil rights movement, and other movements, especially the peace movement, which create a more fair and just society for all. And whereas, despite these contributions, the role of american women in history has been consistently overlooked and undervalued in the literature, teaching and study of american history. Now, be it resolved on March 7 of 2023, the board, the Brevard Public School board, does hereby proclaim the month of March as Women’s History Month.

1:02:51 Thank you, Miss Wright. Do I hear a motion? Move to approve? Second. Is there any discussion? No.

1:02:58 All right, please vote. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye.

1:03:02 All opposed? Another one favorable, Mister Gibbs. Next is item is c nine. To proclaim march as Bleeding Disorder Awareness Month, Mister Russell Brune will read the proclamation.

1:03:17 I need blue. Got blue. Good evening.

1:03:23 Whereas, hemophilia is a rare disorder in which blood does not clot normally because it lacks sufficient blood clotting procedure proteins. And whereas, if a person has hemophilia, they may bleed for a longer period after an injury than a person would have blood clotted normally, causing weakness of the voluntary muscles and whereas, symptoms of hemophilia may include unexplained and excessive bleeding, large or deep bruises, pain in joints and nosebleeds without a known cause and whereas, the Bleeding Disorders Coalition of Florida is an advocacy organization founded by the Hemophilia foundation of Greater Florida and the Florida Hemophilia association to be the voice of the Florida Bleeding Disorders community and whereas, the Bleeding Disorders Coalition of Florida has been serving the bleeding disorders community to improve the quality of life by offering programs and services such as medically supervised camp scholarships, advocacy efforts, emergency financial assistance, and educational programs to support healthier and more independent lives. Be it resolved on March 7, 2023, that the Brevard Public School Board does hereby proclaim the month of March 2023 as hemophilia and Bleeding Disorders Awareness Month to bring awareness, education and support to those who are affected by the hemophilia and bleeding disorders in Brevard county and throughout the world.

1:04:54 Miss Sam, do you want to say a couple words? Hi, everybody. My name is Samantha Nazario. I’m a variety resident and I’d like to thank the school board for again, let’s point out the good second year in a row making history nationwide as the only school district in the nation to recognize bleeding Disorder Awareness month.

1:05:14 So thank you for making that happen again, all of you. I appreciate your support. My son is a proud bulldog graduate from Mill High.

1:05:21 I gave you guys copies of Factor man, his first printed artwork for hemophilia awareness. We have 300 page 300 students in Bavara county schools with bleeding disorders. And we have 121 adults that actually work for the school board that also affected by bleeding disorders.

1:05:37 We implore you to take this month to educate yourself. If you don’t know what a bleeding disorder is, you’ve never heard of it. Look up hemophiliaofgreaterfluor and educate yourself.

1:05:45 Come out. We have year round events. All of our events are free and open to the public.

1:05:50 We also would like to thank BPS for leading by example when it comes to awareness. As far as bleeding disorders go, I do want the public to know because there was a little bit of, you know, complaint last year. This helps bring awareness to a cause that costs a family anywhere from a quarter of a million to $2 million a year.

1:06:07 My son’s medication is $16,000 a dose. That’s one dose that can be anywhere from once to ten times a month, depending on how we’re doing. Bleeding disorders have affected our lives and actually we’re the driving force behind turning me into an advocate.

1:06:22 It’s led to many other arenas, as many people here know here in the county. But my main passion is my bleeding disorder awareness. And I will be heading to Washington tomorrow to show off our proclamation.

1:06:32 So thank you so much for your support, BPS, and we appreciate everything you do. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Nazario.

1:06:43 Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to say thank you. We can all start heading that way and take a picture.

1:06:47 She’s requesting us take a picture with you real quick. Listen, everybody, Miss Samantha Nazario is not only involved in this, but she’s one of our big community connectors to the hispanic cultural groups and everything else. And I really appreciate all that you do.

1:07:01 Let’s go take a picture. Come on. Come on, Sam.

1:07:04 But you bring your friends up, too. Sure. One, two, three.

1:07:49 It’s your email, so should we try to. Good stuff. All right.

1:08:02 Yeah, we are. We’re gonna do it right now. All right.

1:08:04 We’re moving to approve the motion for march as the bleeding disorder awareness month proclamation. Move to approve second, is there any discussion? Please vote. All signify by saying aye.

1:08:19 Opposed? Good to go. Okay. We are at tonight’s presentation.

1:08:24 Doctor Schiller. Yes. To continue the festivities, I’m very pleased to bring to you for the third installment, our chief financial officer.

1:08:36 For those who have not been following the board meetings, what we have been doing is a foundational, from the bottom up building of this next year’s almost $1.5 billion budget. And what we’re trying to do is to help all stakeholders understand the very complicated, involved process that we’re going through.

1:09:01 And we’re trying to reach to the point where all board members have a great understanding of what the foundations of the budget are before we start tearing into the real nitty gritty of the cost per program and the needs of this district. And we’re balancing a lot of competing needs with a fairly limited amount of money to be able to work with. And we will be learning about that amount of money over the last next several weeks and perhaps a month or two as the legislature gets down to business.

1:09:35 So with that in mind, Cindy, you bring a little frivolity to this, that this information wasn’t very exciting last board meeting. So I’m gonna try. I don’t know if it was a board meeting or if I said it to her in a meeting.

1:09:58 I can’t remember? But I like the dogs. All right. I like the dogs.

1:10:04 I gotta say, that was good. I’m sorry, I’m looking for the. I guess we don’t have the dance Mike.

1:10:22 If. When she gets going on that, if you can add it to our screens, too. I’m sorry, I can’t see.

1:10:28 Oh, there it is. There’s the show. Here we go.

1:10:39 No, it’s different than mine. F five. There we go.

1:10:49 I didn’t know that. F five. Okay, so, mister Susan, board members, doctor Shiller, thank you for being here this evening and taking the time to listen to what’s really, actually very important is making every dollar count.

1:11:10 Because every dollar really does matter. And making sure that we’re able to give the very best education to our, to our kids. So we, again, we’ve done this for.

1:11:24 This is the third installment. So we’ll review real quick from the last two and then I will go through the FEFP in six steps and then talk about what’s up next. Again, a budget is a plan.

1:11:41 It’s estimated revenue, estimated expenses, and those two have to equal. And it’s not money in the bank. We’re projecting things a year ahead.

1:11:53 There’s a lot of things that, you know, we do our best estimates, but again, no plan survives first contact. And it’s not money in the bank. It is a plan, but you have to have a good plan in place before you move forward.

1:12:08 Also, a budget is based on priorities. And the budget, you can’t spend more than you have. So this picture is you don’t count the money while you’re sitting at the table.

1:12:24 So you can’t assume you have a certain amount of dollars if you don’t have it in the bank. But we still can plan, but let’s not spend it until we know what we actually have. We talked about this one last board meeting, and this is what is a FTE? That’s it represents one student enrolled in school for a full year with a full schedule.

1:12:53 And then a percentage of an FTE is, if a student comes in halfway through the year, is taking a full schedule, or you kind of get the idea about percentages. But one FTE is one student, full load, full year. And then we also talked about the FeFP.

1:13:19 And the FEFP is how Florida funds, the majority of the operating funds. And that’s what operates our schools. You can make it very, very difficult or make it simple.

1:13:36 It’s basically total FTE, total number of students, full time, full load. And the type of students, type of students, you’ll see in the next couple slides. We also, the FEFP is both state funded and local funded, and you’ll see why that’s important later in this presentation.

1:14:00 Now, when I talk about, I don’t like the cone of uncertainty, we project what we think our enrollment would be a year ahead and we get funded based on that projection. And you just kind of cross your fingers that our projection is good. And Brevard has been excellent in projecting what our FTE is.

1:14:30 And then third calculation is what, when we find out what the actual numbers are. If we, if our numbers were bad, if our numbers were too low, then we wouldn’t get those additional dollars. If we grow, if the state grows higher than their budget, then there would be a proration.

1:14:52 So you really kind of cross your fingers and hope for the best. And it’s really unfortunate, but that’s kind of true for the third calculation. The fourth calculation should be coming out very soon.

1:15:07 The legislative session just started today, and I know that they wanted to accelerate fourth calc so they’ll have a good, the best number that they can have while they are in session. So the FEFP in six steps. I’m not going to go through all of this in great detail, but I just wanted you to see how it’s broken out.

1:15:35 Now, this is, the FEFP has been established for the last 50 years, and it’s based on making sure that no matter where a kid is going to or a student is going to school, that they get the same funding and services. So it’s meant to be as fair as possible to make sure every student gets the same opportunities. And you can see on the, you know, step one, it’s the unweighted FTE statewide, and then brevard.

1:16:10 And this is third calc. And you can see where we are. Then there’s a cost factor.

1:16:16 And you’ll see that slide. I can do it already. You can see the cost factor.

1:16:21 So they do a calculation, they come up with the cost factor based on these seven statutorily established education programs. They put that in here and then, so you’ll get your weighted factor and then your base student allocation. You probably hear that a lot.

1:16:42 A base student allocation allocation is the very, that’s what every student gets or is worth and anything on top of that are things that are added. But the base student allocation is the base amount where every student starts with the funding. And then you can see in our case, we have a DCD district cost differential.

1:17:07 And so that is included in our number. So our number or our BSA is slightly less than the state average. Then you multiply the weighted time, the BSA, and then you get this base FTFP.

1:17:28 And then this slide here is when you start getting into the categoricals. So these are all areas that they address certain things, things about a student population or needs, geographic issues, district size, educational initiatives. So these are all different categoricals.

1:17:51 And what’s important about this, so this is added on top of the base. Not every student would be eligible for all of these or every district, but everything, it’s all established in law and it defines who’s eligible, fines, how you allocate, and it’s very strict. So I kind of call it they fence those dollars.

1:18:16 So if we get a certain amount of money, let’s say mental health, you know, those dollars can only be spent on those things that are eligible for the mental health. We can’t say, well, okay, you know, there was some money left over, let’s use it for something else. So the state is very prescriptive on where these dollars go and what they’re for, and we can’t move those pots around.

1:18:52 And then step four, this one is just, you’ll see in a minute, but it’s subtracting out all of the local effort, tax money and any proration if we had one. And this is our property taxes. So the state, again, part of the funding comes from property taxes, part of it comes from sales tax.

1:19:15 They subtract this out. And then step five, we also get some lottery dollars. And so they add that back in for the state.

1:19:27 You can see that the recognition funds that we received this year came from a different pot of money. It didn’t come through the FEFP. And then when you add the local and the state together, you’ll see our bottom line.

1:19:44 Now why I bring all this up. And we showed this slide last board meeting. You can see that when you look at the FEFP, and I didn’t bring it with me, but it’s pretty thick when you have to, you know, put all the numbers and make it out like this.

1:20:03 But you see that it’s a large number. However, there’s quite a bit of dollars that flow out of the FEFP to charter schools and now to Fe’s scholarships, family empowerment scholarships. And those numbers are going to get larger.

1:20:28 So when you, when people see the FEFP that you start, you have to start subtracting out again. Let’s go to mental health. You have to start subtracting out those dollars and you need to say, okay, well, we get 2.

1:21:08 8 million. Well, but 422 goes to charters, 225,000 goes to FE’s. And so we start putting that money, we’re kind of like washing the money through here.

1:21:30 And that’s only going to get more important when we, when HB one and SB 202. So this is really what I wanted to focus on. And HB one and SB 202 are bills that are at the legislative session right now.

1:21:54 And we just need to understand that what those bills will do is. And some, they’re going to pass in some form or shape or form something is going to pass. It’s a fast moving train, so we need to prepare and kind of jump on.

1:22:50 But basically for the Fe’s scholarships, what these bills say is the caps are going to come off on who’s eligible, and the caps will come off on how many scholarships they can provide. So doing some, so what I’m hearing and doing some research most of, and then this is what we’ve seen already, but most of the growth for Fe’s is actually students that never stepped foot in any of our BPS schools. It’s mainly the students that are already in private schools.

1:23:18 And when their families are eligible and the school accepts these scholarships, you know, they say, yeah, I’m going to use those dollars to offset my costs. And the same thing for homeschool. If you’re homeschooling now and now that you’re eligible for dollars to help you offset your cost, I don’t see why you wouldn’t do that.

1:23:36 So again, this is, you know, today was the first day. I know SB 202, there’s going to have a. The appropriations for Education committee is going to meet tomorrow, introduce the bill.

1:24:10 One thing about SB 202 is they’re looking at, okay, let’s take a look and see for school districts, are there some regulations that we can stop requiring because private schools may not have some of the same requirements, charters may not have the same requirements. So SB 202 says, well, let’s make this fair across the board. We’ll see both of these.

1:24:30 There’s going to be changes. Things are going to be rewritten. But the bottom line, I believe that some shape, form, fashion, there’s going to be an outcome that’s going to change the way we manage the dollars in the FEFP.

1:24:57 There’s also talk about all those categoricals I was talking about that some of those may collapse and then move that into the base student allocation, and that would give us more flexibility, but we would still need to make sure that we budget for those requirements. So there’s a lot of things coming. And I’m just saying let’s be ready.

1:25:31 Let’s be prepared if there’s regulations that no longer make sense or, you know, who looks at it, do we need this? You know, we need to start pulling that together because it’ll probably be a very fast moving train when the state comes down and says, okay, give us some ideas. Give us some things that maybe we should stop doing or reporting. And do you have any questions from here? I was next.

1:25:52 I was going to go to our timeline. And then, so you can see February, we’re on track. March, we’re going, we’re going to meet with the capital allocation committee, and we’ll have an outbreak for you in April for that.

1:26:09 Right. In March, we have a call out to our cabinet members and we will go through all their budgets and we’ll look through it. We’ll ask for new initiatives, you know, changes, things that we need to consider.

1:26:38 Pull all those together, bring those back to you to make sure that you agree with how we prioritize legislation. Session ends May 5, which means we’ll get our conference report, which will give us a really good first indication of what the funding is going to look like. June, we will look at the budget again and the workshop and make sure that we’re meeting your priorities.

1:26:55 And then July, July will have our first hearing, and September will have our final hearing. Yeah. So, Miss Campbell, you have some comments? Yeah.

1:27:05 Comment, question. You know, you’re right. This is not necessarily a glamorous process, but I appreciate the educational value of this, especially on a night like this, when we have a larger room full than we usually do.

1:27:28 And for the people who are watching at home, it’s just good to know the process, because it’s not a simple process that the state goes through or that we have to go through to get all together. Can you go? Because we don’t have this presentation. Can you go back to the slide that had all the categoricals listed? Which one? And I don’t have it on the screen.

1:27:37 This one or the other one? The one that’s a little bit easier to read. Wait, I can’t see. It’s probably that one, but I can’t see it on my screen.

1:27:49 Thank you, Mike. Okay, so just want to go so we don’t get sparsity because we’re not. That’s only for certain counties, right? That’s for large, large counties, right? They’re spread out a few people.

1:27:59 Right. DJ some of these, especially some of the bigger ones, they’re, we are given that, like they’re restricted. Right.

1:28:09 But they’re not everything that we need for that particular category. And I’ll just give transportation as an example. Student transportation.

1:28:21 Our part is $13.2 million, but that’s last I remember. I think they gave us a little bit bigger bump last year, but last I remember, that’s less than half of what we actually have to spend for transportation.

1:28:47 So the rest comes out of operating budget and historically it’s around 66, 67%. We only get sixty seven cents per the dollar for 67. Okay, so in 20 last year we spent 15.

1:29:01 9 million, but we were allocated 10.9 million. Right.

1:29:18 Are there some of those other categoricals that are significantly less than what we have to spend for that particular. I would say yes. Textbooks.

1:29:28 I’ll look at Doctor Sullivan and Miss Klein textbooks. We don’t, it’s. If we didn’t have s or ArP, I don’t know how we would have been able to purchase the textbooks that we needed.

1:29:42 And just for historical and safe schools, we don’t with the security. So just for instructional materials or textbook, for example, over the last couple of years we were. We had to adopt, we hadn’t adopted math or reading english language arts textbooks in forever.

1:29:52 We had to adopt them. We had new state standards, new state tests, but yet this wouldn’t have even gotten. And we had to do both of them like back to back.

1:30:10 Correct. So we used Arp Esser money, the last round of to be able to supplement that because this wouldn’t have even been enough, I believe, to buy all that we needed for one of those subjects. It wouldn’t.

1:30:13 And I don’t want to speak for Doctor Sullivan, but I know that they even saved, because you can’t use it for anything else. They saved it up as much as they could for the last couple years because they knew they had to have this big purchase. And we have to do social studies this year, correct? Or next year.

1:30:16 Next year. Next year. So we’re saving up again.

1:30:18 I like this. All right. And then it’s science and then it’s.

1:30:28 And then we’re back to the beginning. So. Okay.

1:31:00 Just wanted, just wanted to make that point. And Jack, some of these categories are so helpful. We’re so glad they’re given, but it’s not like this is all we spend on those, so.

1:31:31 Thank you, Miss Jenkins. I did want to say something. Doctor Shiller and I and Miss Lucinski went on and on for a while about this, and it’s because one of the biggest factors that we have coming is hb one and house bill one is the one that is going to determine what the outcome of our funding is, how they have universal vouchers for students that have maybe home school and everything else.

1:31:50 And I wanted to say, Miss Licinski, I followed up with, I called a couple of lobbyists today in Tallahassee. The indication is that they’re going to fund the 200,000 estimate that would be or 200 million for the allocation of those extra vouchers. The issue is that currently that’s not a drop in the bucket of what they think it will be because Arizona was 200 million and they were saying that that went, they gave 200 million and it was way over that.

1:32:29 And Arizona is like the size of Miami date schools. So what they were saying, he was breaking it down for me, is that I think the question for everybody is that, you know, they say that only half of the individuals that go into the performance inside the schools are in the private schools will actually apply for it. So they’re trying to really get those numbers.

1:32:58 But the idea is that the state legislature is going to fund the offset, not take it out of ours for individuals that do that who are currently in school board and in private schools. And that’s why when we had the conversation the other day, I was saying that we as a school district, need to begin the thought process of becoming competitive, more competitive to attract all of those 3000, 2000 homeschoolers that left and some of our private schools and some of the charter schools and just becoming competitive and going after it. Because now we are going to, to be in the situation where if we don’t, that they will make the decision to go somewhere else.

1:33:04 And so Miss Licinski and I talked about it. And that’s what doctor Schiller and I were talking at length about yesterday over how we would attain the, you know, come to the board and say, okay, what do we want to do as goals to become more competitive? What are we going to do? And that’s, that’s going to be one of the biggest deals that we’ve ever accomplished here at the school district. So I just wanted to talk to everybody here about how, what we’re looking at and what the ramifications of our budget process is.

1:33:36 And I wanted to say thank you for those conversations. Did you want to add anything to that? I do. You.

1:33:58 So the thing that I’m trying to point out here, and I probably just need to say what I’m trying to say is the concern. It’s all the CFO’s across the state. The concern is how is this going to impact our FEFP? We would prefer that they just put all the fE’s vouchers below the line and not commingle with the other dollars.

1:34:20 And that still all needs to be worked out currently, like I showed you, that they recalculate the FEFP five times in a year. However, they set the voucher amount in the conference report. So if there is a proration, then everything else gets cut.

1:34:54 But that doesn’t. And we just want to make sure that the students within our community schools are able to get the same dollars that they’re supposed to get and earned and deserve. And again, it’s just a lot of process right now.

1:35:16 It’s a little bit messy and this thing is going to blow up. So we need to make sure that there’s good processes in place so we can reconcile and make sure that we know, you know, so last, so this year, we received a million dollars back from reconciling from last year because there were students that, you know, were paid the private school, yet the students were actually going to BPS school. So they reconciled it.

1:35:40 But we didnt get that money back until the next year. So theres, I would love to see what the layout, the process to make sure that we can all reconcile and understand, you know, the funding and so it doesnt, so our kids don’t end up not getting the same amount of dollars. I have something I’d like to add.

1:36:07 Yes. So I think it’s important when we talk about House Bill one and we talk about being competitive, that it’s virtually impossible to be competitive when the turf itself is being poisoned. And we shouldn’t be thinking about it as being competitive when this is a fundamental right to all children, not only in the state of Florida, but in America.

1:36:19 And it’s frustrating. And so anyone who is paying attention and is paying attention to the session that just began today, I encourage you to review House bill one, to ask questions and to pay attention to the fact that two of your state House representatives are co sponsors on that bill. And if you have questions, you have a right to reach out to them and ask them how that will impact your community, public schools that you love and want to continue to flourish.

1:36:28 Thank you, Miss Jenkins. Anybody else? I won. I’m going to FSBA day in the legislature next week, and I think you were part of helping me fill out the information that I needed.

1:36:32 But if there’s that part that you talked about last time, about below the line. If that’s not in that, I would love to write something up. Yeah, that’d be great.

1:36:55 If you could send that to me. That’ll help me just have it in my mind. I just want to make sure.

1:37:12 And again, we have two people that are doing, trying to do the rec. It’s becoming a lot of work, and it’s just, I don’t know, they need some kind of clarity, clarity procedures to make sure everybody knows what, what, you know, what’s going out, what’s. What we aren’t getting.

1:37:20 I mean, yeah, there just needs to be a process in place that it doesn’t seem to be quite there yet. Miss Lucynski, you had mentioned that this week we’re going to get a estimate for what our mill is going to be for next year for our local taxes. Is that right? Roughly.

1:37:27 I believe it’s going to be the. What we think the value of our homes are the property value. Right.

1:37:38 And I went out there today because they met yesterday, but the EDR didn’t put it out there. Okay. So we should be able to get that pretty soon.

1:38:00 And then the conference report should be out May 6 or probably three days after they. Does it have to sit three days after they’re done? 72 hours. Yep.

1:38:13 So after that we’ll get the conference report. So we should have a conference report around there. So we’re looking to start that budgetary process of identifying, identifying priorities, what the board direction wants to go, and all those things in the next upcoming month, so that when we do get the conference report, we are ready to make those decisions based on what values are there.

1:38:36 And I really appreciate us the time you took to go through all of that with me to make sure that we had the right direction on the right board meetings and everything else. So thank you so much. Anybody else have any other questions? Doctor Shiller, did you want to say anything? You’re good.

1:39:05 I think we’re making good progress here. But I just point out with that timeline, May is going to be an extremely busy month for the board of big decisions. I wish we could move up the notion of the, of the process of the development of the budget, but this is not a fast moving exercise.

1:39:15 And so I just would just bring that to our attention as the budget has to be a very high priority for this board. It’s your instrument and tool. And after selecting your permanent superintendent in May, after swinging into this, I just want to point out, as we go on to Mister Susan later this evening, perhaps all the priorities of perhaps the scheduling of the special meetings.

1:39:25 And I just wanted to thank everyone that we’re going to be working at a breakneck speed at the next couple of months. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor Schiller.

1:39:37 Thank you, Miss Licinski. We are now on to the public comments portion of the meeting on agenda items. First, I can get a motion to move the public comments.

1:40:03 How about we stop for a second? Are you guys wanting to take a little bit of a break real quick before we get going? We have a total of 24 speakers, which is going to run about an hour and 15 minutes. Minutes. So if you guys want to take a five minute recess, come back.

1:51:51 Is that okay? We okay. All right. Let’s take a five minute recess.

1:52:10 Sa sa sa. We are now at the public comments portion of the meeting on agenda items. First, can I get a motion to move the public comments non agenda items to the public comments agenda items portion of the agenda giving all speakers three minutes and the ability to address the board by name.

1:52:19 Do I get a motion? Move to approve. Move to approve. Do I have a second? They don’t want to.

1:52:31 We got a second. Is there any discussion? Please vote. All in favor signify by saying aye.

1:52:44 All opposed? All right. It passes. Pursuant to board policy, in the above motion, the public is allowed to address the board members by name, but not staff or members of the public, including students.

1:53:19 We have 24 number of speakers and will and each will receive three minutes. I will call up three speakers at a time. Pursuant to board policy and tonight’s motion, you are allowed to address board members by name, but not staff or the public.

1:53:28 The first three speakers are Julie Anton, Bernard Bryan and Elie Bao. Here we go. Miss Julie Anton.

1:53:36 From Mims to here is 35 minutes. In other words, it’s not even legal for somebody who works in Mims until 05:00 p.m.

1:53:43 To speak at a board meeting. It’s impossible without reckless driving. From Titusville is 35 minutes also illegal.

1:54:11 Cocoa Beach, 34 minutes. Illegal. Home bay, 31 minutes illegal.

1:54:42 My house is 26 minutes from house to parking lot. Now that’s barely legal, but it’s not actually possible once you factor in some minutes for parking, getting an entry ticket, perusing the agenda for the number and name of the agenda item, transposing that onto the speaker form, and turning the thing in Myko to here is 40 minutes. 40.

1:55:01 The 530 speaker registration cutoff stacks the deck in favor of those who live or work within just a few minutes of this building. Don’t you agree? The deck is also stacked in favor of the leisure crowd who can enjoy a nice lunch at the avenues, shop a little while, then mosey on over here with plenty of time to spare. Advantage to salaried people, executives or contractors who can make their own hours.

1:55:36 A stack to deck is unequal representation when only certain people have the opportunity to speak. You are not hearing a balanced view from your constituency. People working in the outer reaches of the county have just as much right to speak and be heard.

1:55:53 Please extend the cut off for speaker registration. Allow a few more minutes so people in the outer reaches of the county have the opportunity to work their full workday, earn their full day’s pay, drive legally, wait for trains on the track, wait for drawbridges to go down, get here, park, register and speak, and participate equally in this democratic process. Thank you.

1:56:03 Thank you, Miss Anton. Minister Bernard Brian, good evening. Thank you Doctor Schiller and this fantastic board for allowing me to speak today.

1:56:21 And I do agree with you. Brevard Public school has a tremendous staff. I’ve had a chance to work with many of them, and they are wonderful people.

1:56:46 So I just want to agree with you with that. I just want to say something about the House bill zero one and Senate Bill 202. What some experts are saying that this could have a $4 billion impact on our public school system.

1:57:07 So I would hope that this board would do a deep dive analysis in terms of what the worst case conditions are so that we can understand what the impact of kids that are poor, kids that are depending upon public schools. We’re very concerned about it. The south branch of the NAACP and the concerned citizen are deeply concerned about it, because we are concerned about our public schools.

1:57:23 I also want to state that really, that you work with us, the community. We are concerned about the recent data that we just received, which they call the clearinghouse data, and what it’s saying is a post graduation data. And we are concerned.

1:57:35 Over the last few years, the trend has been very flat. White students are graduating, going to college at only a 60% rate. And when you look at african american kids, they’re going to college only at a 40% rate.

1:57:55 So this is a tremendous impact. Now I understand why the poverty level in Brevard county is not getting better. So I really want you to hurt your head on this one.

1:58:16 And I really want you to get the community involved, because we are concerned about what’s happening to our kids after high school graduation. And I do applaud the 90% graduation rate. But my heart is broken when I see only 40% and 60% of those kids are going to college.

1:58:26 So please do what you can to help this. And one of the things I’m very much concerned about, I’m concerned about the education gaps, the reading gaps and the math gaps. And I hope that this board will just get away from the culture wars and really look at what’s happening to our children.

1:58:34 Our children are suffering. I see them all the time. And I just want to shout out to University park as well as stone.

1:58:48 On February 12, we had a STem program. Over 50 kids participated. And I love what you said earlier, Mister Matt.

1:58:55 Give every child a chance. And I hope that this board will consider that. Look at those kids that need help the most, make investment and really put together a strategic plan about what can we do to help our kids.

1:59:11 So thank you so much, Mister Bernard, if you’ll wait a second. Mister Bernard, if you’ll wait a second. Mister Schiller wanted.

1:59:41 Doctor Schiller wanted to respond to you on behalf of our staff. We thank you very much for the recognition that you have provided. I see this happening every day.

2:00:22 Number two, thank you for your very thoughtful observations and insights. I know in working with this board for the past three or four months that they are absolutely dedicated to the highest equitable education that we can provide for all students. And we admit that we have to really refocus and prioritize some of our, all of our efforts for all children.

2:00:53 What Mister Susan and I have been working on and be presenting to the board is that this staff throughout here, particularly my cabinet staff members, have been doing incredible deep dives into so many critical issues, one of which is scheduled, I believe, on the 28th, to bring to this board and provide lots of data for you to read. Because you’re going to need that doing as your homework assignment. Because this is going to be as deep of a cut as we can into all of the areas, many of which you have just identified, sir, because that’s what this board wants, is to take a look.

2:00:56 What do we know? What can we be proud of? What can we do better? And so I would invite you, please, to stay tuned for not just into dropouts, graduation and achievement data, but looking at it in some other ways, looking at trend analysis, cohort analyses, and more importantly, for this board to say, all right, what can we do? Thank you, sir. And that’s exactly what we’re looking for. And we would like to partner with you as well.

2:01:02 Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mister Bernard.

2:01:10 May I have Miss Janice Crisp? Yeah. Ellie Bow. Janice Crisp.

2:01:22 David Kearns, please. Good evening. Good evening.

2:01:37 Once again, I am up here speaking up for trans kids. This is not my idea of a fun Tuesday night. I would pretty much rather be anywhere else.

2:01:48 But as act up says, silence equals death. And I’m not going to be silent. The current wave of anti trans legislation has a goal, and that’s eliminating trans people.

2:02:02 I’m going to call a spade a spade. You know that and I know that. Those of you who are behind this legislation or support it, you’re not really subtle.

2:02:27 The playbook you’re using is well established. Book banning, rendering people undesirable. Nazis wrote that in the thirties.

2:02:33 The amazing and the beautiful thing is that it didn’t work then, did it? And it won’t work now either. Those of you who support this may be under the impression that our community queer, the trans community, will just lie down and let you roll over us. You’re wrong.

2:02:56 And I will point out that some of us support the second amendment, too. Trans people are powerful. Trans people are resilient.

2:03:14 Trans people are fierce and brave in a way that you only wish you were. Trans people have always been here, and they will always be here, no matter how hard you try to wipe them out. Trans rights now and trans rights forever.

2:03:37 Thank you. Hi. I just want to say thank you to the staff who worked all day today.

2:04:08 You did a great job. I also want to say thank you to Mister Trent and Mister Susan and Miss Wright for dealing with the circus that went on today. First thing I want to address is the lies that Miss Jenkins told.

2:04:29 The biggest one was that there was no porn ever in Brevard county schools. She may have forgotten or just doesn’t live in the same reality that everyone else does. Because genderqueer was taken out of two schools, and that book had, in cartoon pages that was obviously not for high school, but for much younger audience, had not only pornography, but child pornography.

2:04:43 It had adult child sex graphically in its pages. It went on to have illustrations on how to for that child to find an adult online. Then it went on to have the actual address of a BDsm website.

2:05:10 But then I guess Miss Jenkins doesn’t find that as pornography. That’s education for a child. And so we have this lie that’s being perpetuated.

2:05:19 Propaganda is what I call it, a book banning. There’s no books being banned here in Brevard county because the organization that here in Brevard county that’s calling it book banning, actually has a nonprofit that they’re buying these books to give out to everybody as much as they want. So if there’s book banning, where are they bringing them in from? You know, is that the cartel coming out of Mexico? Better check them for fentanyl.

2:05:42 Maybe that’s, you know, maybe that’s part of the deal. I don’t know. But obviously there’s no book banning because they’re giving them away for free.

2:06:01 Secondly, I would like to address the ranting that went on by Miss Katie Campbell. She said the same thing for 45 minutes when all she had to do was one time make her statement. One time Mister Schiller said, I would have liked you not to do that.

2:06:12 Okay, we disagree, but we’re moving on. And the presentation was actually a great presentation that showed the underserved, the understaffed and the underfunded of people that your two schools are not a part of. So you obviously didn’t care.

2:06:18 Shame on you both. And you know, thanks for the staff, and thanks for these three individuals for having the backbone to stand up to you. Thank you, Miss Crispy.

2:06:24 Next up, Mister Kearns. Then Cindy. Saturday, Melinda Vilain.

2:06:34 Hi, my name is David Kearns. I live in Palm Bay, Florida. I want you once again to read the signing behind you.

2:07:10 Our mission is to serve every student with excellence as a standard. I often think that perhaps somebody’s erased that. None more so than when I was in Atlanta, Georgia, driving around.

2:07:16 Somebody sent me a link to the Space coast rockets coverage of this meeting. The last meeting, you had a school board member point out that conservatism isn’t getting rid willy nilly of school superintendents like cats, and then expecting to have people come to this district, educated people, and for one of the school board members to then turn around and say, well, we only serve conservatives here, just about, just about boiled my blood. We only serve conservative people.

2:07:24 I raised three kids here. I’ve been here 30 years. Nobody’s going to tell me where to move.

2:07:35 My children are excellence itself. I have a daughter who was raised in an agnostic home. She is now a PhD in chemistry.

2:07:50 The second child is now a lawyer in training. She was also raised in an agnostic home. And I have a third child who works for the railroad system.

2:08:00 And he’s preventing people from dying every night when he works there. He doesn’t ask people whether they’re Democrat, whether they’re conservative, whether they’re gay, whether they’re trans, whether they’re straight. He’s out there risking his life for each and every one of us on that rail system.

2:08:09 My daughters risk their lives sometimes for their opinions. And I’m proud of them for that. I was raised to do so and I’ve raised them to do so.

2:08:18 I am a proud Democrat. And anyone who is going to try to tell me where to live better just come on over and try to make me move. That’s what I’m saying.

2:08:43 And I want people to understand this. You make me move because I’m not going anywhere. I’m not moving, I’m not budging, and you’re going to see me.

2:09:00 And here’s a further thing. The last time people said this kind of thing at the Palm Bay city government, last time I was there and spoke out, we found out that some people who were saying these kind of things were actually up to criminal behavior. One of our esteemed colleagues on the Palm Bay city government ended up in jail where he belonged because he was running a prostitute house 2 miles away from my home.

2:09:13 We had several different people on Palm Bay City government ended up being interviewed by the FBI. So nobody’s going to make me move, okay? No one’s making me move. Mister Trent, you can get up and come over here and try to make me move from this podium, but it’s not going to happen.

2:09:20 And I invite anybody of a seminal stripe thinks they can make democrats move out of this county. I’m standing right here and I’m not going anywhere. And I’m inviting all my friends of a democratic strike to move back and stand with me and stand strong.

2:09:26 Thank you. Thank you. Mister Kearns, Cynthia Saturday.

2:09:51 Melinda Villon and Andrew Villain. Sorry. Delaney.

2:09:59 Cindy Saturday. Are you Cindy Saturday? Who’s Saturday? Happy Tuesday, y’all. My name’s Cindy Saturday.

2:10:17 I live on us one Pompeii, Florida. Drain the swamp. That’s all I’ve heard since 2015.

2:10:27 But here in Brevard county, despite the motto the swamp just refills, our swamp does runneth over. Matt Susan and Jean Trent are part of that swamp. You both lied on your employment applications for brevard public schools and you gained employment as teachers through deception.

2:10:36 Mister Susan has a significant financial fraud arrest history from age 20 to 20. 719. 95 reckless driving with known suspended revoked license.

2:10:47 Speeding through Florida State University campus, trying to elude police. 1996, passing worthless checks. 97 worthless checks.

2:10:56 98 worthless checks. 2002, fraud, insufficient funds. Had I known about Matt Susan’s arrest, arrest history and financial fraud history, I would have never voted for him.

2:11:09 I do hereby publicly recall my vote for you, Mister Susan. Mister Trin has been arrested twice and lied about it. One for assault, the second one for alcohol.

2:11:47 Related charge, May 2016. Matt Susan wrote a signed statement stating that the only arrest he’d ever had was evading eluding police. You lied again.

2:12:04 By the way, where is the school district in their investigations of Gene Trent? Manipulating test dates and hemline on his Brevard county public School application. According to your human resources, providing false information on any employment application as grounds for a termination. Why hasn’t brevard public school board fired you guys yet? Everyone behind me in this room room tonight would agree that they lied on their if they had lied on their job application about an arrest record, they would be terminated the moment that their deception was found out.

2:12:16 But you have zero tolerance for schoolchildren. Our swamp, including Matt and Jean, are filled with hypocrites. You all act, speak, lie, live, and operate as if you are above it all accountability, above the rules, above regulation, above being asked tough questions, and above the law.

2:12:31 But despite your sense of elected self entitlement, you are indeed employees of mister and misses taxpayer. There are not two standards. There isn’t one for elected officials and a different standard for the rest of us.

2:12:48 That would make it double standards. Where you hold school children, parents, and the public to a higher standard than you hold yourselves or live yourselves, that would mean you really aren’t public servants. You are really no service to anyone except for yourselves.

2:12:59 Matt, Susan, and Jean Trent, if you had the courage, fortitude, and moral compass, you would both resign as teachers and board members. Not only have you lied to yourselves, worse, you lied to your public repeatedly. You can’t even abide by the code of conduct for brevard Public Schools, pre k through 6th grade.

2:13:04 Thank you, miss Saturday. I appreciate coming out tonight. Next up is going to be Melinda Vilain, Andrew Villain, and Gwendolyn Vilain.

2:13:09 Hi. It really is villain. Like, it’s.

2:13:12 Oh, I know. People never want to say they think they’re afraid of insulting us. It really seriously is.

2:13:28 Okay. Hello. My name is Melinda Villon, district one.

2:13:41 I am here to talk about discipline and those students who are neurodivergent. When I first heard about the crackdown on discipline, I was concerned for my child with add anxiety and of 504 to fall through the cracks, for her disability to be confused with willful disobedience. You see, she was diagnosed a little over two years ago, and we are still finding what works and what doesn’t.

2:13:47 We have been through numerous medication changes and we’ve been working at home to put tools into our tool belt. We’ve had numerous 504 and parent teacher meetings since her diagnosis. Sometimes my concerns about how her add presents itself are ignored or pushed to the side.

2:13:59 Often she’s compared to neurotypical kids. But add is not a light switch. You can’t just turn it off and on.

2:14:11 It is also not one size fits all. What works for one kid might not work for another. The last school meeting we had, we left concluding that she would be given grace and understanding in the classroom while we tried new things to see if they should be added to her 504.

2:14:22 During that quarter, her grades soared and so did her confidence in school. My child just received a new teacher. Her last interim had her behavior marked as a u with no comments and no conference requested.

2:14:39 We asked for a conference and nothing happened. Then last week she had a PBIS teacher taken activity taken away from her. In talking to the principal, she had an abundance of check marks, some of them directly related to her add.

2:15:00 After speaking to the principal, we finally have a different teacher requesting a conference with the whole team. Throughout this time, no communication has been given to my child about my child’s problems in class, some of which are the reasons behind why her 504 accommodations are in place. Just an unexplained view for her behavior and taking away a pajama party.

2:15:12 Also, during this time, her 504 was not being adhered to properly how am I as a parent supposed to work at the school if I only find out about the behaviors the teacher finds unacceptable only after a punishment is given? How is it that my child with a disability is being compared to neurotypical children and their behavior in the classroom? My child is new or divergent. She has a disability. We are honest and fair about it.

2:15:29 We are working on all the problems that arise in the classroom from it. But she has already been lumped into being a misbehaved kid because she cant change who she is overnight. It takes patience, hard work, open communication and understanding.

2:16:03 So I am worried that this is the beginning of a habit that will continue through her school years because children with Add and other neurodivergencies are twice as likely to be punished in school, including suspension and expulsion, than their neurotypical peers. Thank you. Thank you.

2:16:12 Andrew Villon and Gwendolyn Villon probably hear a few repetitions here. My name is Andrew Villan and I’m the parent of a district one student, though we’ve known for a number of years beforehand, our daughter was diagnosed with ADHD in 2021, specifically add without the added hyperactivity element. She does, however, have issues associated with attention and attentiveness trouble with instructions at first, extreme anxiety with timed tests and assignments, difficulty focusing and minor fidgeting.

2:16:20 Because of this, a 504 plan was put in place. At first, there was a learning curve as to what worked through time. Adjustments were made and grace was given.

2:16:35 Last school year, her fourth grade teachers attempted to understand the requirements. This year, the same cannot be said. The first part of the school year was a bit rough.

2:16:43 Our daughter can have a difficult time focusing on the task at hand, especially when there are constant distractions and noises in the learning environment. After a meeting with all of her teachers, there was a better understanding of her issues and things improved. Another meeting with one of her teachers individually was necessary.

2:17:03 She was not being given any grace or understanding. Her grades greatly improved thereafter. The biggest academic change occurred with the addition of a different homeroom teacher.

2:17:14 After the winter break, our daughter was making huge strides and then a new teacher came in and disregarded her. Additionally, this teacher who previously wasn’t giving her understanding was again doing the same thing, seemingly trying to reinterpret the requirements and needs within her personal disability. Until last week, her 504 plan was not being properly implemented.

2:17:33 When classroom noise and distractions are left unchecked, she will always have difficulty focusing and her grades will suffer. She has assigned group projects. When given no partner, she isn’t allowed the time to finish assignments.

2:17:39 She is left to struggle on purpose, as if she is being punished for her neuroendigraphy. Neurodivergence excuse me? Thursday, she called home in tears because she was told she wouldn’t be able to participate in the fifth grade pajama dress up the following day. The reasons? Not following proper directions, struggling to keep quiet, and not finishing her work.

2:18:01 So, in other words, her disability. I’ve requested numerous meetings with the teacher. They’ve been disregarded.

2:18:09 We’ve had no communication with her aside from the unsatisfactory remark she chose to write on her daughter’s interim with no reasoning why, no request for a meeting, and no further information. There has never been a single word written to us, not even a greeting or an introduction. Then yesterday, I received an email from the same teacher we met last time, who wants to now have a group meeting to discuss her daughter’s success.

2:18:20 We already had three of those. We had a plan in place after the last meeting a few months ago and it was working. There was only one change and we’ve been helpless to address it.

2:18:41 The district, the regard we’ve experienced has been heartbreaking. Educators need to realize that add is not a willful misbehavior thank you. Thank you, Andrew.

2:18:54 Miss Gwendolyn? Hello. My name is Gwendolyn Villon and I’m in fifth grade. I have add and anxiety.

2:19:03 Last week on Thursday, reward was taken away from me, all because of my disability. The reward was dressing up in PJ’s and having popsicles. I didn’t get that because I was chatty, not focused, and not getting on the task at the right time.

2:19:19 I feel this is completely unfair. Also, a couple weeks ago, we had a two hour essay test. One of my teachers said we only have one day to finish the test.

2:19:30 I told the teacher I have a 504 plan and I get extra time. The teacher basically said I didn’t have a 504, even though I kept trying to tell her I do. Then one of my other teachers came in saying that my 504 is only for a big test and that this one was just a practice test.

2:19:39 I feel that a two hour test is a pretty big test to me. My brain works differently than kids that don’t have disabilities. It will take me a little more time to focus.

2:19:49 Thank you for your time. Diana Haynes. Miss Diana Haynes.

2:20:14 Anthony Kalushi. Skip Parrish. Good evening, board members.

2:20:46 We elected everyone up on the dais to serve our children with the best education possible so that they may succeed in their futures. But the petty squabbling, the inappropriate comments, the temper tantrums, interruptions, and conduct unbecoming grown adults needs to stop. You look and sound like a bunch of petulant children crying and screaming because you don’t get your way.

2:21:13 That is not your job here. I find it almost laughable to hear a board member talk about the firing of Doctor Mark Mullins and the finding a competent replacement as a disservice to the students because of the cost that it’s going to cost the district. Mister Mullen’s failures are played out daily in our school system by the illiteracy rate, the failure to meet grade standards, the violence, the cell phone usage in classrooms.

2:21:27 The disrespect of our teachers and administrators all rested upon his shoulders. And it’s a shame we paid him a dime to leave because we all know he should have been fired. What I find even more egregious is that the previous board’s policies and incompetence, and that of Mark Mullins, has brought on several lawsuits against the school board that is going to cost the students and the taxpayers untold millions of dollars.

2:21:55 It is sad that, Miss Jenkins, that you, sitting as a board, board member member, are a party to each and every one of these lawsuits. Your conduct as a school board member has resulted in a defamation suit being bought against you and only you. And that is abhorrent.

2:22:13 Your conduct in these meetings is also abhorrent. The words, the hate that you have spewed against your fellow board members and the one of the litigants, the plaintiffs in the steel family and the victim is not only unbecoming to you for the position you sit in, but is disgusting as a mother and a woman. Saying that that child was not a casualty as she didn’t die, teachers did is beyond disgusting.

2:22:34 Furthermore, you may want to learn to curtail your hate and your verbiage because your passwords are going to cost you dearly, as it’s going to cost the school board and the school system. I wanted to talk about the illiteracy rate and the underachievement of our students. It is an embarrassment to this system and to the county.

2:22:49 My question to the school board and every teacher principal out there is if a student cannot read or complete math at the grade level that they are in, how is it that they are being passed on to the next grade level? This rests solely on your system that you have in place. There should not be one illiterate child in our system. This is a game that has been played too long with the lives of our children.

2:23:09 Parents should not accept if your child cannot read or perform math skills for the grade level that they are in, they must be held back. This should be a non negotiable point. Pushing these children through a system should be criminal.

2:23:25 It is your job to educate, not to be numbers on a statistical graph. We can no longer push children through the system without meeting the minimum requirements to have basic life skills that are necessary to function as productive adults. We’ve all joked about the kids at McDonald’s and so forth.

2:23:45 That cannot give back change. Those are a direct product of your system that is failing. I stand before you tonight with many unanswered questions, and I’m hoping that some that I have discussed in the past will be brought up and answered.

2:23:57 I look forward to getting answers to the questions that I had regarding Johnson Junior High School. I want to know what’s being done. I want to know if the parents have been told what allegedly occurred at that school and what systems are in place to protect the students, particularly the girls and the young boys.

2:24:01 Because we all know that there is proof positive that a sexual assault occurred at that school. Discipline. I don’t even know what to say about that.

2:24:04 Kids are still being beat up in the school system. Thank you, Miss Haynes. Thank you.

2:24:17 Truly appreciate it. Anthony Colucci. Skip Parrish.

2:24:40 Katie Delaney Unduck. My name is Anthony Colucci. I’m the president of the Brevard Federation of Teachers.

2:24:58 With so many teacher and staff vacancies here in Brevard, it’s imperative that this board proactively considers how to keep teachers and staff here. Last year was the first time we had a contract in place prior to the school year. I know this helped retain many teachers because they had all the information in front of them when deciding whether or not to stay with BPS.

2:25:32 Doctor Shiller mentioned several times to this board about completing negotiations surrounding language prior to his departure. Perhaps we can even have a compensation package worked out by then as well. BFT is prepared to start the process and is awaiting a start date from Doctor Shiller.

2:26:00 The second item I’d like this board to consider tonight is that although principals have the right to terminate a first year teacher without cause, before that happens, there should be a process in place to ensure it’s warranted. This year, we’ve seen some very questionable probationary terminations by principals. One of the clearest examples occurred in a secondary school where a principal decided to terminate a first year teacher based on the accusations of a group of middle school students who were watching a pornographic video at school.

2:26:35 Okay, let’s start with the fact that these boys were looking for pornographic images of their teacher at school, and then move to the fact they were showing their principal pornography on campus. Then let’s talk about how this teacher reached out to the principal weeks prior to this and gave her a very detailed description of the language used that led her to feeling sexually harassed by these students. And were the students held accountable for this? No.

2:26:49 Instead, a teacher was terminated because the student said the inappropriate video looked like her, despite the teachers insistence otherwise. And guess what? Relying only on student statements, the district sent this video to the DoE for them to investigate because the principal and the students really thought it looked like the teacher. And surprise, surprise, within a day of our lawyer getting the case, he determined the video was not the teacher, but a renowned adult film star with over 205 million views.

2:26:59 So, yes. You allowed a principal to terminate a teacher based on middle school boys watching pornographic materials on campus and sharing it with their principal. Fortunately, BFT saved the teacher’s career.

2:27:11 BPS cannot continue to allow principals to hastily make these decisions. Safeguards must be put in place. And let me be clear.

2:27:30 When the brevard Federation of Teachers takes action on an issue, we’ve looked into the matter and have the receipts for the facts. Thank you. Thank you.

2:27:56 Mister Colucci, skip Harris, Katie Delaney, and Gregory Ross. Good evening. So this past weekend at CPAC, Michael Knowles talked about eliminating transgenderism.

2:28:08 At the same time, in this state, we’ve had attempts and proposals to look up healthcare data from college students about seeking transgender treatment through college clinics. We’ve had discussions about looking at the periods of female student athletes to check to see are they having periods. These discussions were made just recently.

2:28:53 On top of this, we’ve got all this discussion about book banning going on. Book banning targets minorities. It targets oppressed groups, it targets LGBTQ plus community.

2:29:14 It can target disabled people. It can later move on to targeting people with any variety of issues. After we ban the books about lgbt people, are we going to go after disabled people next? Are we going to go after books about autism, about speech delays, cultural practices? Are there any cultures or maybe political movements, Mister Trent, that we don’t want to have books about in this county? In two months and three days, we will be coming up on the 90th anniversary of the rating in Germany of the Institute for the Study of Sexuality.

2:29:29 Four days after that, the famous book burning picture by the Nazis. The library of that institute, which was the largest collection of literature on transgenderism, was part of that book burning. One of the books burned was by Heinrich Heinz.

2:29:43 The book is called Alman a tragedy. And a quote from this book that was burned was where they burn books. In the end, they will burn people too.

2:29:56 Now, I mentioned last time I was here to go after Mister Trent and his illicit, disgusting comments. My mother is a Desert Storm veteran. My father, who is no longer with us, was a Vietnam veteran.

2:30:10 And he broke his back in Vietnam as a navy corpsman, patching up our marines. My grandfather served in World War two. My great uncle not only served in World War two, but he lost his leg in the battle of the bulge.

2:30:21 You look at me, Mister Trent, you coward. You. Videos that got approved, where were the other bids? Was that the best deal? Do we know? I don’t know.

2:30:28 I know that people have asked for those bids and they haven’t been given them. That’s not okay. That’s not the transparency we’re looking for.

2:30:46 We are looking for transparency. We are looking for line items. We want to be able to fund our schools properly.

2:30:50 And if we’re overpaying for videos, that’s where we’re going to find the dollars and cents. To get more mental health help, to get more tutoring services, to get whatever else our kids need to be successful. Thank you.

2:30:56 Thank you. Miss Delaney. Gregory Ross Emmer.

2:31:10 Roy Beverly Marker. Good evening. School board.

2:31:22 Let’s just get something out of the way. To start with, I’m not a lawyer, but I’m quite sure pornography on school grounds is against the law. Right, mister Susan? There’s a deputy.

2:31:41 Okay, let’s be done with that then. School board. I am a classically trained scientist with a degree in biology with multiple peer reviewed scientific articles under my name.

2:31:57 As such, I believe in the power of science, data, and logic. One of the fundamental steps of the scientific method, literally the first step, is to observe. As a scientist, it is my nature to observe, and as such, I want to pass on to the board what I have observed about this school board and its members.

2:31:57 I’ve observed school board members who do not seem to understand science, data, or statistics, the very foundations of our society. I’ve observed school board members who don’t grasp the difference between association correlation and causation. I have observed school board members who don’t grasp the idea of root causes to issues.

2:32:33 I have observed school board members who do not understand public health measures. I have observed school board members who believe that masks cause seizures. I have observed school board members routinely interface with people who are actively suing the district.

2:32:39 I have observed school board members publicly lie about their words, actions and intents. I have observed school board members who cannot look a transgender speaker in the face during public comments. I’ve observed school board members who can’t claim the lgbtQ.

2:33:08 Lgbtq people or who claim that lgbtq people are mentally ill. I have observed school board members who do not seem to understand the school district budget or how discretionary funding works. I have observed school board members who terminate qualified personnel for political reasons.

2:33:17 I have observed school board members who do not understand Robert’s rules of order. I have observed board members who fail to see that their conservatism is actually extremism. I have observed school board members who do not understand the implications of their decisions.

2:33:48 I have observed. This school board denied the reality of our discipline problems lies in understaffing of ESE and IAS. I have observed this school board deny the reality of the two decades of defunding of education by our state legislature.

2:34:02 I have observed school board members who do not exhibit empathy, but instead exhibit apathy or hatred. I have observed school board members who do not understand the definitions or the purpose of diversity, equity, equality, and inclusion. And last but not least, I have observed, week after week after week, certain school board members put politics ahead of students.

2:34:18 Brevard county citizen and Brevard county students deserve better. Please do better. Thank you very much, Miss Beverly Marker, Shane McCallally, and Roxanna Tobel.

2:34:29 Hi, I’m Emma Roy, and I’m here as a mother of a student attending a Brevard school in the public education school system. Exceptional ESE students have rights. Federal protections under individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

2:35:31 HB one vouchers hinder ESE students. Any expansion severely undermines the public education. HB one is the wolf at the door.

2:35:57 My concerns are how can we teach inclusion yet remove books about inclusive inclusivity? How can we demand literacy while banning books while we are distracted on the restroom, a six year old used rather than the six year old with the gun? How can we educate without access to the truth? The truth is that no one yet has turned into a penguin. From reading books about a penguin to the thousands of LGBTQ students who attend Brevard, I want to say, you are seen, you are loved, and many people here are peacefully fighting extremism in every form. You don’t protect one group of students by eradicating the existence of any other student minority outside, other than non profits, private for profit, non public using vouchers, in other words, private schools.

2:36:23 Using HB one vouchers reduces funding, mentioned as key in today’s presentation. I don’t impose my values on books to other parents. And horrified by the overreach of education legislation not being driven by taxpayers needs, starting a conversation with discipline is the back of the process, as is enforcing punishment like the 14 student expulsions.

2:36:42 Are we catching interventions and opportunities to teach coping and self regulation skills? Is the foreseeable side will give a person centered approach. Children do well when they can. If they can’t, how can we bridge the gap? The employee award winner speaker who spoke first, said a major daily goal is promoting inclusive inclusivity.

2:37:10 I’m glad the teachers nailed this and keep education student needs driven, whereas discipline is reactive. I don’t think you understand that discipline is the end of the process. It’s when everything else has failed, and I feel our ESE students are being failed across Florida.

2:37:26 I think the first thing is, before calling law enforcement or support therapists or anything else, the first question when there’s a call placed about discipline is, does that ESE student have a plan, and what’s the plan being followed, and what does that education plan say about de escalation? Thank you, Miss Marker. Shane McClully. Roxanne Cable.

2:37:49 Samantha Curvin. My name is Beverly Marker. I’m a retired attorney.

2:38:29 I find it disturbing that this school board and the governor of this state violates the First Amendment. When we’re banning books, many of which are classics that have been read and discussed in the schoolrooms for decades. That’s highly inappropriate.

2:38:54 When we’re censoring language so that the teachers don’t even know for sure what questions they can answer or how. That’s a problem. When we’re limiting how we teach black history, that only leads to perpetuating the racism that we still have in our country when we have a governor who is targeting school board members and other districts.

2:39:11 Don’t think just because you might not be targeted that it’s okay. I believe that as school board members, you should be supporting your peers. That’s nothing more than respecting our election process, other election officials and the public that voted for them.

2:39:26 We’re a democratic republic. When on a local and state level, we start eroding that process, we have a problem. A problem that could lead to places that we don’t want to go.

2:39:36 It can be your neck the next time you think you’re safe right now because most of you agree with Ron DeSantis policies. That’s not always going to be the case. Oh, yeah, shake your head, Mister Tran.

2:39:54 Of course we know you do. You don’t even belong on this school board. We all heard your criminal history.

2:40:06 Hopefully, if it had come out earlier, you wouldn’t have been elected. Surely decent citizens, honest citizens, don’t support you sitting in that seat. And lastly, please call.

2:40:32 Quiet down. Let her finish. And lastly, for this board to allow one of the early speakers to call someone on the board a liar is just wrong.

2:40:41 Don’t you have any respect for your fellow board member? Where is your decency? It obviously doesn’t align with your peer on the board. All right, thank you. Next up, next up is Shane McKelley.

2:40:55 Roxane Coble. Samantha Kirby, please. Good evening.

2:41:27 My first school board meeting. I’m Roxy Koble, and I’m living in district four. I can only speak to Viera High school, but I’m sure this can be said for lots of schools in the district.

2:41:55 What’s more distracting than electronic devices needing to use the restroom? But either they’re locked, broken, two buildings away full of people who are doing things other than using the bathroom, or your teacher won’t let you go during class. Last summer, I moved to Brevard county after serving over 20 years on active duty as an aircraft weapons loader. None of that service in Florida, because I wanted my kids to be in a great school district.

2:42:19 The school my kids came from out of state was in the top poorest schools in that state, but their bathrooms were usable. Every district has issues, but usable bathrooms should not be one of them. You brag about hemophilia and bleeding Disorder Awareness month, which is great, but fix the restrooms for these kids who are probably heavily bleeding and can’t walk half a mile to take care of their needs.

2:42:35 Employ people who fix bathrooms and make sure they’re in good working order for the thousands of people in the schools. There are many things teens worry about in high school, probably in junior high and in elementary, too, but worrying about where or when they can go to the bathroom shouldn’t even be on that list. I emailed Lucian Melendez on January 24, so I started at the lowest level.

2:42:45 He told me to have my student ask staff which bathroom is open, and that is not a fix. It should be very embarrassing for the board that a grown adult has to come to comment on bathrooms during school board meeting. This is what needs to be fixed.

2:43:00 Not banning electronic devices in classrooms. You guys look so disinterested up there. Are you actually absorbing these important concerns that all these people.

2:43:04 People brought tonight? Also, don’t ban books and pay your bus drivers more. Thank you. Thank you.

2:43:07 Samantha Kervin. Rebecca McClelly. That was Samantha.

2:43:19 Shane McClaren. Shane McClarley. I’m sorry.

2:43:31 Go ahead, bud. Hi. I am a brevard student, and I. I don’t really like most of you, specifically you.

2:43:39 It’s probably a bad thing to ban books. I know that you over there, a few of you there, some of there want to deny this, but a large amount of these books aren’t pornographic. We need to look at what books are being banned.

2:43:47 They’re disproportionately by queer or black authors. That’s something that you can’t deny. They’re disproportionately about black history.

2:44:02 Queer history, or just queer people in general. They. Sorry, the pornographic thing is really bugging me.

2:44:09 Yeah, no, yeah, no, specifically, there was a book band which was about two male penguins who gotta have, like, a little. Yeah, baby penguin in the zoo. I think there was, like, a point in which they held hands.

2:44:12 That isn’t exactly hardcore pornography, I guess, you know, hand holding. Famously known as the. As an allegory for the missionary position.

2:44:20 As the hands. I don’t fucking. What are you.

2:44:23 What are you on? Sir, please address me as the school board chair. Don’t address the crowd. Okay, cool.

2:44:29 Hey, Matt. Susan. Screw you.

2:44:48 Die in a pit. Bye. All right, next up, samaritan.

2:44:53 Samantha Kirby, Rebecca McLelan, and then Pamela Castellano. And I would love to do that, but the sheriff’s told me, so. There you go.

2:45:13 So let’s just talk about it another time. Here we go. Go ahead.

2:45:24 Hello. So, I guess it’s pick on Matt Susan today. So I would love to start out that I don’t think you’re very well equipped with the clock dealing with, because I don’t know if it’s been addressed, but you kind of.

2:45:42 You’re not really great at, like, starting it on time. I. Earlier today, during the meeting, there was someone. I do not remember.

2:45:51 It was towards the beginning, though, that I think it went on for about, like, a minute and a half before you started the clock. And I’ve observed this throughout every meeting I’ve gone to. But then you have the people, and it’s funny because you do it once.

2:46:12 The people always, like, criticize you. Then you start the clock. I’m not saying it’s biased, but I’m saying it’s bias.

2:46:26 So, also, I like to start off with the behavior that you displayed during the workshop. That says earlier, not only being rude, very rude to miss Campbell, Miss Jenkins, like, normally, usual. I guess it’s been like that.

2:46:41 Um, but you also were rude to our superintendent, a guy you appointed. May I remind you, you asked for him. Yeah.

2:47:03 You were very rude in judging his memory. But, like, it’s just. Don’t do that rude constantly.

2:47:09 You also said stuff under your breath, which is not great and can come off across as disrespectful. That isn’t the best look for someone as the chairperson, but personal opinion, I guess, even if it’s fact. Yeah, I guess it’s all.

2:47:19 I would love to address that from earlier, what people were talking about. I also have ADHD, believe it or not. Yes.

2:47:33 I also have dyslexia, so I have a IEP about stuff. You can’t not follow that. Legally, that will become a federal issue.

2:47:57 You can’t not follow that. That’s not legal. Yeah.

2:48:21 And I have dyslexia, so I am so sorry, but I can’t control if I’m illiterate because I can’t learn to read the way the school system is taught, because it is not in the phonics system, which is how I was able to learn to read and the ability to learn to read. Thank you very much. Next up, Rebecca McClellan, Pamela Castellano.

2:48:37 Crystal Cayze. Good evening. First of all, I’d like to start off by commending doctor Schiller for all the work that he is doing to try to set this ship straight.

2:49:01 Straight. He came in probably not really aware of all the dynamics and he is doing a yeoman’s job. And so for many of us, we appreciate what you’re trying to do.

2:50:04 I would like to thank this board for adjusting the policy that allows direct interaction with school board members, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak directly to some of you. I will not be as animated as some before me. Miss Wright, today I was watching the workshop where you stated that your view on books is extreme.

2:50:14 And I agree that books do have a way of eliciting some amount of passion. But I would like to know that if any of you could actually show any instance where a book on a shelf has actually caused a child harm, did the opt out option go away? Can you be sure that media specialists and teachers are suddenly ignorant of their own collections and unable to decide what books were good before COVID Now suddenly, did COVID cause some sort of porn problem or, I don’t know, did it turn teachers into groomers? I don’t understand the concept of allowing up to 30 days to read only parts of a book when it’s actually illegal and they have to read the whole book tells me that maybe the people that you chose to be a reviewer, maybe they’re not the best one for the job if it takes them 30 days to read books. Whereas there are people who actually have devoted their life’s work to books.

2:50:34 They have curated large collections. They’re called specialists and they are not part of the program. They are not being allowed to do this.

2:51:06 Are we now more concerned about removing a book that might go against some personal, someone’s personal opinion about it versus fighting literacy and illiteracy. Reading more books is how we do that. Obviously I’m about books and that’s what I’ve done every time I’ve been here.

2:51:11 Mister Trent, you recently stated you’re tired of hearing about problems and you shared that you would only be worrying about people who are conservative. As a family who’s been here since the fifties, I would like you to know that that was very insulting. And I am a resident of Brevard, a native of Brevard, and I did not appreciate, along with many others telling us if we didn’t like that you were only going to not serve all the people that have elected you, that you were only going to serve conservatives, that was extremely disrespectful to the people.

2:51:21 And we’re not going anywhere. Thank you, Miss Pam Castellano. Christophesy.

2:51:42 Paul Rouse. Good evening. I love public schools.

2:52:03 I’m grateful to be here to celebrate Mister Foster and the hard work that our staff and teachers do every day in the face of overwhelming opposition. Matt, everyone tonight expressed welcome to the room and the need for more involvement in your work. Yet maybe you didn’t realize that your mic was live before the meeting.

2:52:10 And everybody outside heard you refer to the people exercising their first amendment rights to express their displeasure with the direction of your board as lunatics. Mister Trent, I remember meeting you at the juneteenth celebration. And I remember that you were trying to convince me and my friends that you wanted to represent all Brevard county.

2:52:26 Parents, students, teachers and staff. And yet, you recently stated. And you keep shaking your head, but I watched the video.

2:52:37 You recently stated that any non conservative voters should look elsewhere for their education. There are 82,479 voters in your district. More than a quarter, 22,412, in fact, are registered Democrats.

2:52:50 And many nonpartisan voters do not identify as conservatives. Countywide, there are 467,402 voters. Less than half.

2:53:06 198,789. 789, in fact, are registered as Republicans. Roughly a quarter, or 130,674, are registered as democrats.

2:53:30 So rather than actually leading your entire district, much less the county, you would see each of those 130,674 voters leave our county. Is that right? And I’m not saying you’re a racist. I’m not saying you’re a hope of hope.

2:53:40 Only you know if you are. But your comments during the forum sponsored by the Republican Federation of Women, together with Matt Susan, stating that teachers were handcuffed in disciplining minority students. To your support of the sheriff standing in front of the jail and calling for tearing the skin off the ass cheeks of misbehaving students, to calling a list of victims of hate crimes mentally ill, to now dismissing an entire swath of your district.

2:53:52 Your hostility, that your continuing hostility towards any part of our community you don’t understand, is surely affecting your ability to do your job. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

2:54:13 Miss Castellano. Miss Crystal Cayze. Paul Rao and Kelly Curden.

2:54:36 Hazing Paul Rao and Kelly Curtin. Good evening, doctor Shiller and distinguished board. I would typically have a speech prepared, but I prefer to look you in the eye this evening, if that’s okay.

2:55:07 I’m here to speak with regard to the parental bill of rights and specifically the section that deals with the records of the students. Since January of this year, I have emphatically requested the authentic records of my son, Brandon Casey. And I can say his name because I’m his mom.

2:55:33 And I’ve been ignored, dismissed, denied, deflected by the principal of VR high school. Most of this board was copied on that communication. And as of February 2 and February 6 and February 8 of this year, this board has had communication with my request for records regarding Viera High school’s athletic programs, associated situations with that.

2:56:02 I’ve been here and I’ve told you about the ethics complaints that were improperly and incompletely done by Rosemary Browning. And so I’m reaching out as a parent, asking for communication, for accountability from this superintendent, Doctor Shiller, and this board. This superintendent serves at the will of this board.

2:56:17 And I am here to ask who is in charge? I’m asking this because on February 27, after having no luck at going through the chain of command with this school system, I requested a parent meeting with Doctor Shiller. He agreed. Myself and two other parents were going to have a meeting for 30 minutes with Doctor Schiller to discuss, have a frank discussion with him.

2:56:36 And for some unknown reason, someone was giving you, Doctor Shiller, lies about that communication. The content of your email, Doctor Schiller, was abrasive towards me. However, I did not mirror that.

2:56:43 I was very respectful to you in my communication by stating the facts. There is no active investigation by myself or any of the other parents concerned that we’re going to this meeting, which you canceled. You initiated the cancellation of parents that are coming to you to seek resolution.

2:57:01 I’m hearing a lot of people tonight that are having problems with communication. I see that myself. And I want to know who’s in charge.

2:57:09 Is this the Doctor Sullivan Klein show, or is this board in charge? And are you in charge, Doctor Schiller? I would like to know. Miss Casey, please don’t use staff members names. No problem.

2:57:17 Once again, who is in charge? Thank you, Miss Casey. Mister Paul Raub. Kelly Kervin.

2:57:20 Did you want to speak, Mister Schiller? No. You had mentioned you may want to. It’s up to you.

2:57:46 You don’t have to. We’ll keep moving. Go ahead, Mister Rob.

2:58:18 What are you doing? So, today in Tallahassee, very few sentences start off well that way these days. A bill was proposed to remove the Miller test from the definition of harmful to minors. The Miller test? I’m sure you all know the Supreme Court three part standard for defining what obscenity is, and not coincidentally, why I’m speaking about it.

2:58:38 Here, an important part of the book review process, which hopefully will someday mean something again. And coincidentally today, the book review process was actually discussed during the workshop this afternoon, having been kicked down the road a few weeks. And although this bill that’s been proposed, if it makes it all the way to the governor’s desk, it’s comically unconstitutional.

2:58:56 It will eventually be kicked aside by courts, which is the DeSantis way, and you can fundraise off that. But it looks like, it sounds like we may be using that window before it’s trashed to ban a wider array of books than we might have been able to before. It’s straight out of moms for Liberty’s dream journal.

2:59:05 And that came up this afternoon, and Mister Trent kind of said the quiet part out loud. He wished that the state would hurry up and remove the Miller test. Also advocating for anonymous submissions of complaints and challenges to books.

2:59:13 Also suggesting that, and this has come up before, we don’t need to review the whole book. People submitting the books. People challenging don’t need to have reviewed the whole book.

2:59:33 Submit an excerpt. That sounds nasty. The committee will just read that excerpt down the chute into the woodchipper.

2:59:44 And you know, we’ve already, having seen the redline proposal, we’re already removing the experts from the panel, anybody who knows what they’re talking about, the media specialist and so on. But as you said, this is what we want in Brevard. So who’s we? I don’t want this.

2:59:54 My family’s been here since the eighties. Not going anywhere. No one, I think, honestly wants anonymous, unaccountable, unknown people to decide for them what their children can’t read.

3:00:14 No one’s asking for that. Please let some random strangers take books away from my kid. Literally no one on earth is asking for that now.

3:00:19 A lot of people want to be the person. A lot of people really seem excited to be the person to take books away for reasons I will never comprehend. But those people didn’t sign up to serve every student with excellence as the standard.

3:00:39 You did. Thank you. Thank you, Mister Rao.

3:01:02 Kelly Kerman, who’s tall as Paul. Good evening everyone. Jean, I would like to thank you for taking my advice of talking more today.

3:01:26 You highlighted not only that you don’t understand our policies, but you also don’t understand how to ask for changes in our policies in a clear and concise way. And as much as I would like to highlight your shortfalls some more. Jean, Matthew, Susan, just so you guys know, Mister Susan became the poster child for miscommunication and dysfunction over the past two weeks.

3:01:49 It started with the release of several videos which are now private again on YouTube, one outlining the new wireless communication policy that hasn’t been passed yet. His response to my email was, and this is a quote, we all agreed with board direction to move forward with the language UC discussed from the workshop and should have the policy and a completed form at a board meeting for its next step. So once again, Mister Susan, I’ll repeat what I said in my email.

3:02:06 The public heard you loud and clear. You don’t care what the public says or what concerns are brought up since you’ve independently voted to approve it. As if that gap wasn’t enough, today we watched as you, once again, Mister Susan, overstep the bounds of your position, not only disrespecting Miss Campbell and Miss Jenkins multiple times, but you even attacked Doctor Schiller, the man you asked to apply for the position.

3:02:21 Your behavior today was unprofessional, immature, and showcased that you are not fit to lead. The irony is that people tend to get better at their jobs with time, yet you continue to get worse as the time goes on. Matt Miss Campbell, I am not your biggest fan.

3:02:34 I have watched you court extremists who wish to destroy your public education. And while I have enjoyed watching you wake up a bit, it’s frankly too late. The damage that will be done to our schools, our teachers and students will cause trauma for generations to come.

3:02:53 However. So you guys know you should be the chairperson of this board. Because even though I’m not your biggest fan, you at least read policies, showcase higher level thinking, and know the Roberts rules.

3:03:03 Doctor Schiller, I am very thankful to hear that this board is focused on equity for all students, and I am looking forward to these five members voting to approve an equity audit for burgard public schools. I have a few extra minutes. A few extra seconds.

3:03:14 There is a lot today. Calling constituents lunatics isn’t okay. Telling brevard public residents to leave is not okay.

3:03:19 You represent our students whether we like you or not, do better for them. Think about what you’re doing. I said it in my email, and it went out to all of you.

3:03:31 Three of you replied. Two of you were silent. Optics, optics, optics.

3:03:38 Half of the people in this room don’t trust the other half. And you continue to further that divide by not acting as professional adults, as you were elected to be. Thank you.

3:03:47 Thank you very much. Moving forward, that concludes public comments. We thank you for your willingness to address in this public manner.

3:04:07 We are now at the consent agenda. Doctor Schiller? Yes, sir. There are 20.

3:04:14 I’m sorry? There are 20 agenda items under this category. Thank you. Doctor Schiller, does any board member wish to pull any of the items? Seeing none, I will entertain a motion to accept the consent agenda with the.

3:04:20 With no polled items. Do I have a motion? Second. New second.

3:04:24 Is there any discussion? No. Please vote. All in favor, signify by saying aye.

3:04:32 Aye. Opposed? Gibbs. Got it passed.

3:04:51 We are now in the public hearing portion of the agenda on item g 33. Board policy zero one six, 9.1 participation at board meetings.

3:05:04 Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Okay, if the speakers that are wishing to address that item would line up behind Miss Daley, please. Miss Daley, you’re first. And when you come up since.

3:05:20 Yeah, go ahead. Ready when you are, mister. Thank you.

3:05:35 So I have a few issues with this policy. A lot of this stuff was left in here. And one of the speakers earlier mentioned about letting speakers sign up at a later time.

3:06:05 And honestly, I feel like we should. That there should be two opportunities in the beginning and the end of the meeting for people to have public comment. We’re a very large county, and it’s hard for people to get here on time.

3:06:20 The county does it this way for their county commission meetings. Another thing was, there’s, in the policy, it talks about not being able to hold up posters or above your head or above your shoulders. And a lot of this stuff was, let’s be honest, a power trip by our unelected board member that we got rid of.

3:06:38 And, you know, it also says in there that we can’t have flags on sticks. So that means, like those little flags that people would hold if they, you know, say, agree with something, they can’t bring those in here. So there’s just a lot of stuff in the.

3:06:51 This policy all around. It just really needs to be reworked. And I hope that this comes back, comes back for reworking at a later time because I’m sure it’s going to get passed tonight, but I think there’s still work to do.

3:07:07 Thank you. Thank you. Next up, good evening, chairman and board.

3:07:16 My name is Sarah Mirsky. I’m a wife, mother of two children in Brevard public schools, stakeholder, taxpayer, voter, and I live in district two for school board. But most importantly, I have a holistic interest in the success of this school district and community.

3:07:35 I want to welcome Doctor Shiller to our district. And I’m impressed with your vast experience you have, especially with Chicago public schools. Since my child attended CPS.

3:07:53 Tonight I will be speaking on the public input policy, not only to bring my complaints before the board, but to offer suggestions that I hope become solutions as you craft and revise your public input policy. The newest version of your public input policy should include anyone being able to sign up and speak during the meeting. At any time.

3:08:12 A table set up in the back with public speaking cards and pens to be filled out should suffice. Then the person who wishes to speak can hand the card to your clerk to be handed to the chairman. Or if the board is uncomfortable with a member of the public handing things to the clerk, they can hand it to a deputy to hand it to the clerk.

3:08:32 If the public speaking time on agenda items has passed, let the person speak at the end of the meeting to address the board. Also allow people to electronically sign up to speak. And Seminole county, you can email the clerk directly and they will let you know if they need more information on your public speaking form and confirm electronically that you are signed up to speak.

3:08:51 Participants should be able to sign up to speak to each agenda item on the agenda. The Brevard Public School board has very packed agendas, especially in the meetings that led up to the general election. Also, please open up the room to accommodate more people to be in your meeting, like in the summer of 2021.

3:08:57 I understand in recent years, people have disrupted meetings and were disrespectful to the board. At the same time, the bias from the dais was palpable. However, the board members hold the seats of power in this government body, and we must treat each other with respect and respect that this is a parliamentary meeting with Robert’s rules of order.

3:09:03 These are very simple solutions that do not need to be complicated. Thank you for your time and consideration. Have a good evening.

3:09:24 Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next.

3:09:30 Well, most of what I was going to say has already been said, but I’ll reiterate some of it. You previously had a speaker up here who spoke about the time factor. The working parent, the parent with kids and events cannot make these meetings and have the ability to speak before you because the cut off time is just before 530.

3:10:06 And if, you know, if someone works till 05:00 p.m. Like most of the world does, they’re not going to make it here in time.

3:10:24 So I think you need to accommodate these people, and there are several different ways you can, as Miss Mirsky stated, allowing up until the point of public comment time to submit cards, having them in the back of the room the other possibility is maybe starting the meetings at 06:00 p.m. Instead of 05:30 p.

3:10:35 m. That gives people additional time to get here. You are locking out and censoring a large group of concerned individuals that have not only the right, but the need to come before you and voice their opinions, their complaints, whatever issues they happen to have.

3:11:04 So I wish you would please relook at this policy and try to make the accommodations for people. I am so grateful you are allowing public comment to come in the beginning of the meeting. Maybe the individuals that come later on you can put at the end of the meeting in order to give them the same opportunity to speak before you.

3:11:17 Thank you. Thank you very much, Miss Casey. Once again, good evening, Doctor Schiller and distinguished board.

3:11:55 I, too, agree that accommodations must be made for speakers, regardless of their viewpoint, so that they may be heard in this community. And therefore, I’m in support of changes to that whereby speakers would have additional time to submit their card so that they would be able to work their full day and then be heard by you. And whether or not action is taken on their commentary is completely up to you.

3:12:09 However, in the actual policy under e, it says, this is the business meeting of the board. As such, all statements shall be directed to the presiding officer. No person may address or question board members individually.

3:12:15 Staff members shall not be expected to answer questions from the audience unless called upon by the presiding officer or the superintendent. And I’m a little confused by this because at the beginning of the meeting, did you all not vote, vote to exclude staff members names being called? Am I misunderstanding that? I’m asking that question because in certain instances, with viewpoint discrimination, you allow staff members names to be called out in praise, but yet not in criticism. Now, there is precedence, with lawsuits being won.

3:12:56 And you can look this up if you want to, in the education system of America. So you’re not allowed to discriminate based on praise or criticism. Either the staff member’s names may be spoken or they’re not to be spoken.

3:13:03 It’s not. You don’t get to choose whether it’s praise or criticism. I’m sure you understand what I’m saying here.

3:13:12 So if we’re going to have these festivities at the beginning of board meetings, where you’re acknowledging the wonderful work that that occurs in this county, and yes, this is an exceptional education system in this county, then you also must accept those staff members names being said when there is criticism. That way, there is transparency, and you are not favoring one versus the other, which is also called viewpoint discrimination. So I’m asking for you to consider that when people have things they need to say which warrant them stating a name like coach Brock Doty, Coach Robert Doty, that they’re able to.

3:13:24 Miss Casey, I ask you not to speak the names of the staff. So I appreciate it if we would not do that. Thank you for proving my point.

3:13:53 Good night. Thank you. Hi.

3:14:22 I just want to make a quick point about this, something you may not have thought about. There’s other issues that touch this policy. One of them is your COVID policy.

3:14:26 As you know, last year I was arrested because I wanted to come in and speak and I refused to wear a mask after the state law had been passed that there was no mask mandate. But the board, the pass board had said we’re still going to have a mask mandate regardless. As it stands right now, the case is still in court.

3:14:53 But in your COVID policy it touches on can somebody come in and speak? So I think you have to, you have to go back and you have to talk about that because it’s in there. And if something should arise again, you’re going to have these issues and the state actually has not. There’s no case law to support.

3:15:04 Can somebody do it or can somebody can’t or can’t they? So I just want to make that, put that out there to you guys because I don’t want you to have another headache. I don’t want to have another headache. And when people talk about the slippery slope of what you can and can’t do, that slippery slope has already passed people you well beyond it unless you guys back it up and make it right.

3:15:22 So I just want to say that. Thank you. Thank you, ma’am.

3:15:26 Next up, please be reminded that we’re supposed to speak to the actual policy that’s at hand. So thank you very much. Go ahead, ma’am.

3:15:36 And Mister Susan, as you mentioned, speak to the actual policy. So perhaps, I don’t know, maybe I’m a little bit out of line here, but I’m here to make a correction of fact to what was just said to you. When Miss Crisp was arrested last year, I was two people in line behind her.

3:15:49 Yeah. Can we talk about. It’s the participation board meetings.

3:15:53 If you can speak directly to that policy, that’d be great. Okay, thanks. So the policy of the face mask then, which is what she brought up, it’s not.

3:16:07 If we can speak to the. I was here to correct very erroneous information that Miss crisp presents. Yeah, and I appreciate that.

3:16:28 But we’re not here to. We’re too. To talk to the participation at the board meeting.

3:16:42 Thank you very much. Is there anybody else that wishes to speak on this item? I do hearing none. Do I hear a motion? Is there any discussion? Yes, please go ahead.

3:16:57 So there was a lot of comments that I don’t know if people have read the new version of this policy. So under letter C, all attendees must register their intention to participate in the public portion of the meeting upon their arrival at the meeting by completing a speaker’s form at the entry of the meeting hall. There’s a lot of words in between.

3:17:07 The signup period for all public comments, agenda and non agenda will close at the start of the public comment period. It’s not at the beginning of the. Of the board meeting that is in this revision and this policy.

3:17:24 Also, there was comments about the sign holding and it being implicated as a direction of our former board chairwoman. That is not truthful. That was implemented by our security and Brevard County Sheriff’s office.

3:17:32 For them to be able to scan the room when we were packed with people within here, they needed to be able to see. You cannot believe that. If you don’t want to, that’s fine.

3:17:41 So I just wanted to clarify that before we vote. Okay. Any other discussion? I think Miss Jenkins hit on the things that I, you know, I understand sometimes when people, we have the public forum, not everybody actually read the policy before we get to this part, but those we did.

3:17:51 You know, several people talk about sign up time. We made that change. Certainly, somebody went even beyond and said we should sign up all the way, I guess, to the end of the meeting.

3:18:09 You know, everybody can have an idea. We are definitely meeting. We already were meeting the law, but it’s up to the board to make the changes that we wanted to.

3:18:32 We’ve made these changes, and I think they’re good. I will just reiterate the posters. It’s not a stick, but a poll, so you can ask the share major Neal, what a poll is supposed to stick.

3:18:36 But that was specifically talking about blocking cameras, because people who are watching from home, if people are holding up signs, that’s why the sign has to stay at a certain level. If they’re holding them up, then the cameras cannot see. And then there was also, for security reasons, the polls specifically came from district security.

3:18:41 But, you know, I. We have changed it so many times, and we can continue to change it, but I think we have a good policy that we’ve come to agreement. I hope the public will take a look at that, and I think our instructions will change from the chair now that we have these changes. So it’ll be clear every time we won’t have to do the additional vote at the beginning of the public comment.

3:18:50 Timing. That should be easier. That’s all.

3:19:10 Thank you very much. Any other discussion? Nope. All in favor, signify by saying aye.

3:19:24 Aye. All opposed? Order passes. We are now at public hearing portion of the agenda on item G 34, board policy 9130, public complaints.

3:19:40 Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anybody present who wishes to address this item? With no other people speaking, do I hear a motion? Move to approve? Second. Any discussion? No discussion. Signify by saying aye.

3:20:04 All in favor? All opposed? Passes. We are now at the public hearing portion of the agenda on item G 35, public policy 31 21 20.11, preference for veterans in employment.

3:20:14 Is there anyone present that wishes to speak on this item? Is there anyone present that wishes to speak on this item? Do I hear a motion? Move to approve? Second. Is there any discussion? Please vote. All in favor, signify by saying aye.

3:20:32 Aye. All opposed, policy passes. We are now at the public hearing portion of the agenda item G 35, board policy 7440.

3:20:42 03, use of small unmanned aircraft systems in school settings. Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Do I hear a motion? Approve. Second.

3:20:59 Is there any discussion? Hearing. None. All in favor, signify by saying aye.

3:21:05 All opposed? Policy passes. We are now on the public hearing portion of the agenda item on g 37, board policy 9800, charter schools. Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Okay, thanks.

3:21:08 I just want to address this real quick. I think I spoke about this a couple of weeks ago. One of my concerns is this is going from a one page policy to a 25 page policy.

3:21:22 I understand you guys are trying to align it with the state law, but I just have some concerns as a citizen. One is that if there’s not proper notice, given, charters contracts with charter schools will automatically renew. That’s a problem.

3:21:35 There’s no other industry that I’m aware of where that’s the norm. Right. If you fail to give notice, fair enough.

3:21:40 Then you have a 30 day extension. Right? Whatever it takes. But that.

3:21:51 That’s. I can’t think of any other business that automatically renews a contract because you failed to give notice about whether you’re going to renew the contract or not. So that’s my biggest concern.

3:22:01 Miss Campbell, I think I sent a couple other small things to you, but to me, that’s something that needs to be thought about and addressed. Not aware of the state law that you guys are trying to align it to. I’ll be honest with you.

3:22:10 So maybe that’s in there, but it’s a concern as a taxpayer. It’s definitely a concern. Thank you.

3:22:20 Thank you, sir. Anybody else wish to address this item with? Nobody else to address. Do I hear a motion? Second.

3:22:25 Is there any discussion? Just briefly. Mister Ossa addressed a question. There was an email I didn’t reply to, but I did address it in our last meeting.

3:22:35 That was all the things that are in this policy, the changes that we made directly come from statute. And there are things that actually we’re already were doing and having to do. We just didn’t have them in policy.

3:22:49 So now our policy matches our practice, which matches the state law. So sorry, didn’t get that clarification too soon. Thank you.

3:22:55 Any other discussion? Hearing? None. Please vote. All signify by saying aye.

3:23:12 In favor? Opposed? Policy passes. We are now at the public hearing portion of the agenda item on g 37. Board policy 5121, controlled open enrollment.

3:23:21 Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item? Do I hear a motion? Move to approve. Second. Is there any discussion? Hearing? None.

3:23:30 Please vote. All in favor, signify by saying aye. All opposed? Policy passes.

3:23:41 Doctor Shiller, would you please let us know about the items under the action portion of today’s agenda? Yes. Tonight’s item is h 39, the procurement solicitations that are being recommended. Do I hear a motion? Second.

3:24:28 Is there any discussion? Hearing? None. Please vote. All in favor, signify by saying aye.

3:24:52 All opposed? Thank you. We are now at board member reports. The first topic is parental involvement at schools.

3:25:15 I had spoken to doctor Schiller. I think there’s somebody that may come up and speak to this item. Parental involvement in schools.

3:25:30 There we go. Good evening. This is basically on policy 8475, which is a visitor is on campus.

3:25:39 I’m going to read a portion of the policy. A visitor is an individual that comes on campus for personal reasons and is not providing any service for the classroom or the school district as a whole. Visitors must sign in and undergo a sexual predator check, receive a visitors badge, and be accompanied to the appropriate location by staff members or the principal’s designee.

3:26:03 Visitors will not be left alone with students and are to be supervised by staff members at all times while on campus. My friend has just joined us from the back, and I think he’s going to join us up here. Major Neil and I have had numerous conversations concerning expanding.

3:26:08 I know the biggest concern was expanding lunch, I think. Yeah. And if I may speak while Mister Neal comes in, there’s just other times where like at like one of the elementary schools, my daughter went for speech one day, right.

3:26:30 And they have like all the parents waiting outside while their children are being evaluated for 20 minutes. But there’s a big open courtyard that’s inside of there. Right.

3:26:41 So there’s just, there’s a couple of little things that I thought we had identified the barriers because of security and all those other things, but I think we had a solution. So, Mister Neal, if you wanted to come forward and talk about that, I think the issue that many of us have is that they have to be accompanied, but if they go in and register as a volunteer, then they’re perfectly fine to be on campus. Go ahead.

3:26:47 Go ahead. Miss Klein first. Yes, I know, I know.

3:26:57 Hi, board. So yeah, we did have some conversation about this, and we had to take some things into, you know, take a look at our current policy that you guys currently have when it relates to visitors. And then when you look at the current environment and the way we run our drills and the way we run our general emergency procedures, we have to think about those as well.

3:27:11 So BPs put together a parent resource guide that went out some time ago, and it discusses if a parent is there and Joel happens or an emergency. They’re in it. Okay.

3:27:21 They don’t get escorted out of the boat building. They’re in it. So we have to take those things into consideration.

3:27:30 And like Miss Klein was saying, when they come checking in school, they’re going to have to be escorted to and from the cafeteria. I’ll stay in my lane. That’s a staff issue.

3:27:54 That has nothing to do with me. That’s something that you guys are collectively going to have to figure out how you accomplish that. And one of the questions came up, well, could you have an approved volunteer do that? But here’s the problem.

3:28:03 It violates your own policy. You’d have to change policy if you want to go down that road. So if you had those that are volunteering at the school, you could escort visitors back and forth.

3:28:19 Currently under your own policy, you can’t even do that. So you have some personnel issues you got to figure out first to get these parents back at the cafeterias. Like I said, I’ll stay in my lane.

3:28:39 When it comes to space and cafeterias, that’s not what I’m here for. But we get into the safety side and the drill side, that’s where parents have got to realize that we can’t compromise the safety of the school. If an actual emergency occurs, they have to go into lockdown with staff, with those students, or even if it’s a drill, they’re not going to be escorted out of the building.

3:28:57 We’re all in this thing together. So those are considerations that have to be taken into as we move back towards no, and I appreciate that. I don’t think anybody disagrees.

3:29:19 I think the way that this policy was written was it becomes a slippery slope if you just have a volunteer that’s escorting people and stuff like that. But there is an avenue. The avenue is that if an individual sets up, goes through the background checks, becomes a volunteer, then they don’t have to have staff with them.

3:29:27 So it’s a way for us to promote our volunteers is to say, hey, if you do want to have lunch with your kid, if you do want to promote working with the schools, if you want to do those things, you can register as a volunteer, you can become there, and then that gives you the security pass past having to be transported, and then. But in the event that you’re there, you definitely have to. If it goes to lockdown, you’d have to do.

3:29:44 It would certainly lessen that. Right, mister Susan, more people got actually background checking became approved volunteers. Now you’re never gonna get everybody, so you still got to figure out that component, right? Yeah, I think, and for me, and I’m not speaking to a lot, and this is just me, and I brought this up as a topic because many of my schools are having an issue.

3:29:52 I have parents that just don’t understand and you know what I mean? So I wanted to kind of get some direction from where you guys wanted to be and moving forward. But under the current policy, the way that it works right now is that we can allow them to register as volunteers and then they can go in and if they want to, the hope is, is that while they’re working with their kid, they can say, hey, you know what? I can give an hour and I can help out the media specialist I can do over here. And that might be a positive way.

3:29:57 So that’s what I was thinking was a definite fit. We don’t have to work the policy, but I brought it up as a discussion item for everybody else. So that was where my head was.

3:30:00 I would entertain the thought that we would go out and tell everybody that they can register, but I wanted to hear from you guys what you think. If there’s any discussion at all. I have a question just for clarification purposes, but prior to COVID, parents were allowed to go in and go have lunch with their child and.

3:30:03 And there was no. No adult that had to be there. They were eating in a cafeteria.

3:30:06 Okay. They were in the cafeteria. So that’s what I mean.

3:30:16 And that was okay. That was not okay is what you’re saying. That was a mistake.

3:30:33 We should not have been doing it that way. Majority. Okay.

3:30:45 Fair enough. Well, I think. I think the clarification is needed because people don’t understand.

3:31:00 And I didn’t understand until I ended up that, hey, this was wrong and we shouldn’t have been doing it this way. So moving forward, we’re going to do it the correct way. So I just wanted clarification on that.

3:31:09 Thank you. Is okay. I’m sorry, Campbell, did you want to speak to this? Seemed like I heard you when we had a conversation sometime in the past year about allowing people who are fingerprinted volunteers to come eat lunch with their kids.

3:31:21 The hesitation I have about that, it’s not a complete stop sign. The hesitation I have about that is then we kind of create a situation. I’m not sure if that’s completely fair.

3:31:44 You know, it helps with the security, because then we know the people who are in a campus we should know, at least as far as the background check will tell us. Yeah, I mean, they certainly don’t have to go through that. Then.

3:32:03 You have to figure out, staffing wise, how you get them from that front office to the cafeteria. From the cafeteria back. You can’t have people wandering around the school.

3:32:11 Well, and the other hesitation I had was in the policy that Miss Klein just read to us. It talked about when you’re on campus to eat lunch with your kid, you’re not really there as a volunteer. You’re there as a visitor.

3:32:16 So we’re going to, our policy talks about visitors, and when somebody comes on as a visitor, they fall under the visitor rules, which is you have to be supervised. You have to be there for a specific purpose and all of that. And so now we’re just saying, well, they’re volunteering to eat lunch with their kid.

3:32:26 It’s kind of backwards, I think. I mean, I’d like to find. I’d like to find a way, you know, and I. And, you know, I. I have certainly had the opportunity in the past to eat lunch with my kids, but it was supervised, you know? You know, I don’t know that there.

3:32:36 We have a perfect solution because security is just a thing that we have to think about now more than we ever have, you know, like, in the past. But I don’t. I don’t know.

3:32:49 I mean, if we. If we get there, I just. I don’t like the idea.

3:33:07 Just I. And we can. Again, it’s not a stop sign, but I don’t like the idea of kind of working our way around our own policy. I think that we have a current policy.

3:33:18 If a parent wants to go in, volunteer their time, have lunch with their kid, or vice versa, or whatever it is, they can do so by signing up as a volunteer. If we want to change that policy, we do. But under the current guidelines, they can do that.

3:33:37 Correct. And currently, what we have in place is, in elementary, principals select a day where they can manage. We have several issues.

3:34:04 It is space in the cafeteria, separate from other students because you can’t commingle. So you can’t say, I’m gonna. I’m going, and I’m gonna take my child and you, and we’re both gonna eat together.

3:34:40 You can’t do that. So what we have in place is you have a day that you can come in. Most of the schools use sign up genius or something like that to sign up.

3:34:45 They have so many spaces. And I know some schools have a variety of staff that they could expand that from just one day. Others are more limited in their staff because of the number of parents who come in, because it takes the office clerk.

3:34:54 And remember, in elementary, we have one who have to stop and sign up every parent. So if you’re at a school of 700 students and you have 150 parents coming in, that’s one person checking all those because we get in. Major Neal’s would get upset with us if we didn’t check everyone through, and so that.

3:35:11 And then supervising the ones who aren’t registered, walking them to the cafeteria, someone there supervising, and then walking them back to the office to check out. And I don’t think the general public understands all the complications with today’s laws and all that when it comes to constitutional contractors, the Jessica Lunsford act and how many people we process, I can tell you we’re approaching 10,000 people. We process this year along through that office to kind of give you an idea of numbers to make sure that they can be around everybody’s children.

3:35:19 So volunteers, visitors who are parents. Look, I eat with my kids. I get it.

3:35:28 I get the argument. We’re in a different age in time. You know, we got to get these parents back in, but we got to make it fit within the constraints of the law and the constraints of your own policies.

3:35:37 Yeah, and I think those are great points. So, for the parents who can’t sign up as volunteers because for whatever reason, they have a designated day that somebody would be there to be able to transport. But in the event that they want to be able to, I think its current policy allows them to do it.

3:35:56 So if they get a volunteer badge, they can go on campus, and they can volunteer, they can have lunch. They can do what they. You know what I mean by.

3:36:03 By direction from the schools, the issue is, is that prior to COVID, we were able to have our parents eat. Right. So we’re trying to find a way, like you said, to get around it.

3:36:17 And when I read the policy, I went through it, and we talked about it. I said, there is a way. So if you can’t, if you don’t want to sign up as a volunteer, then wait for the proper process that they have.

3:36:48 Otherwise, sign up as a volunteer and go. And what I would say is, is that we should send out some sort of communications that explains that, because right now, we get shelled. Like, why is it that I can’t get to my kid and have lunch? So what we say is, listen, per majority Stoneman act of 2018, this is the law.

3:37:30 Here are the two avenues to go. We have this designated by school, and then if you want to sign up to be a volunteer, then you won’t have that restriction. That’s it.

3:37:39 And then we’re done, and then we can move on. It’s current policy. One of the other things that, when Brian and I met last week, we talked about is we have to make certain our principals are going through.

3:37:48 What are the responsibilities of being a visitor on campus, and what are the responsibilities of being a volunteer on campus? What are your expectations? If there’s a drill, all those things need to be communicated clearly from the school to the parents, so they understand. This is the why. And I really believe that coming from a principal to the parent is a better connect than coming from the district office.

3:37:53 So I really, you know, I will be glad to help craft a message for our principals, but I believe that communication, that connection, that is a parent principal connection that needs to be made, and the understanding of why when you’re on school to do volunteer work, it is planned, it is purposeful, and there’s an end result. You’re helping a teacher or whatever it may be on a field trip, but we need to clearly identify what the expectations are and putting code voticide, too. You got to remember as these years have passed now and how the laws have just keep evolving with all this.

3:38:09 And you guys, back to as a board, as a district under 1006.07, you are responsible for the safety of that campus. And that is all inclusive.

3:38:32 That includes your visitors, your volunteers, everything. If you don’t think it, sit there and list those line items. But that is what they’re talking about, is that responsibility.

3:38:41 You got to figure out. So, yeah, they were there post COVID. You know, some of these rules applied.

3:39:02 But as things have advanced and the laws have continued to evolve, this has gotten harder. So I think that I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think what we’re saying is that on one regard, we’re saying, well, we don’t want people to eat with their kids unless they’re supervised.

3:39:28 But if the reason for that is a state law, but if they become volunteers, then they do not, by state law, have to to register and they can go eat with their kids. That, to me, is way that it’s in policy, it’s a way to do it. Where I start to have a problem is that before COVID our parents ate with our kids, they literally did.

3:39:41 And now there’s a law in place that inhibits that. But there shouldn’t be a reason why we do. And if there’s an opportunity for them to go eat with their children, then they can.

3:39:46 I don’t see they can legally go through it. I don’t understand why, what the issue is, and maybe I’m missing something. Okay, can we get back to an order where we don’t respond after every time somebody makes a comment? I think it’s really critical, because clearly, I have to say this every single time we talk about this topic, and even my own fellow board members are not listening.

3:40:03 This was not put in place because of COVID This was put in place because of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. So, Major Neal, can you please clarify and explain? I know there was a lot of things put in place because of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. When it comes to this situation, what is the biggest barrier as to why our schools, who, yes, may have been allowing parents on campus, probably shouldn’t have, and they weren’t following the protocol in policy.

3:40:09 So what was that major change with Marjorie Stoneman Douglas? Well, first of all, you get a member, and I reference 1006.07, right. It says you, as the board, use the district, have to maintain the safety and security of your district, of your schools.

3:40:15 Right. So we can get in all kinds of avenues. If you look at the Jessica Lunsford Act.

3:40:22 I just want to reference that real quick, which requires non instructional contractors to go through this process, okay, of being fingerprinted. Level two, background checked. What the law says if they have that, they can be around kids, okay? But what it also says is if they are being supervised by.

3:40:31 By a staff member or a badge contractor. Okay, that’s okay, too. Line of sight.

3:40:36 So that’s where you get back. Now I’m coming back to visitors. There is no law in the state of Florida that governs visitors.

3:40:42 Remember we had that conversation before going about others. But it all draws back to you as a district. Get to define that policy.

3:40:49 But I think we can all sit here and agree that nobody would want anyone to be around. The children that have not been vetted, haven’t gone through the separate or predator check or background check. Right.

3:40:57 That’s what this is about. Use a district to set those parameters. Okay.

3:41:11 But your current policy doesn’t allow that under the visitor policy. Okay. It does say they have to be supervised.

3:41:18 And I think you would agree to that. That’s what you would want. So, yes, some of that does come from Marjorie Stoneman, Miss Jenkins.

3:41:41 But there’s a lot of other things that were in place. And now you put them all together and that’s where you’re at today. Thank you.

3:41:56 Just, you know, I hear what you’re saying, but, you know, one of the things I just wanted to correct, because you said something about register, even if they’re fingerprinted, volunteer, they’re still going to have to go through, the clerk is still going to have to check them in. They’re going to have to print a yellow badge. They’ll have to do that every time.

3:42:14 Everybody who walks in the door to come past the front desk has to. Except for. No, we do.

3:42:37 Right. Well, I mean, it has to drop their driver’s license and wait for a yellow sticker and all of that. So it’s still, even if we say volunteers, it may not be as many as it used to be, but I. So I would just suggest, because every school is also in a different position, not only are some of them larger and having to deal with the space issues, not all schools are staffed at the same.

3:42:56 One of the things that we did when we talked about this, I think last fall when we came up with a solution, every school find the one day. Now let’s, maybe if we feel like we can open up. But I would like to leave that to the discretion of the principal with the direction that.

3:43:08 Hey, open it up. More as you can. But you know the needs of your school, you know the facilities of your school, you know your staffing situation, you know, because every time we take somebody, you know, to do checking in of 100 parents, dentists, we’re taking them off the task on something else.

3:43:30 So if we can leave that up to discretion of their principals to make that call as to how it’s going to work best in their schools. And if we want to say, okay, if they are fingerprinted volunteers, then they don’t have to be walked back, you know, that’s, that’s fine. I think one of the benefits of this, if we did have them be volunteers, is that we’re going to see our volunteer base increase and you might see some more parents that are seeing the need inside of the school and say, hey, I’m going to go and serve in that library.

3:43:51 I’m going to go help that teacher for a little while. And honestly, I’m in favor of doing whatever we can to help get parents back into our schools that are background screen and checked, because number one, those are their children. Number two, we need their help desperately and I think it could benefit all the way around.

3:44:10 I can’t see a disadvantage to it. I understand the logistics ends of things, of, hey, this could be a problem as far as staffing goes, but I think we can, can work through that with a volunteer program. I think you can almost make that a solution to this problem.

3:44:27 And I think, I’m sorry, go ahead. No, I was going to say to piggyback on what Megan was saying, if we made this an effort at registration, even a table that talked about, want to eat lunch with your kid, prove me wrong. No, just come over to my table and the process is, oh, I. I need to become a volunteer.

3:44:42 And I guarantee you we’ll find some ias out of those volunteers. We’ll have some people that want to spend more time and actually turn it into helping all of us out. But early on, with communication from the district, this is how you want to have lunch with your child and then have it during registration, have a big push.

3:44:50 I think that would be great. To be honest with you guys, there’s a feeling out there that I’ve felt, and I’ve talked to many of the parents about, that the schools are just not inclusive anymore, that there’s no way to be a part of it. And our volunteer base inside of our schools has not been where it is.

3:44:54 So I thought this was an opportunity to try to promote that and we can move from there. I would say the issue that some parents, and the reason, one of the reasons I did this is there are only certain days that parents can actually get off. So like, if it’s a Tuesday or a Monday, the only day they can do it and the school only does it on a Wednesday.

3:45:00 So I think this is an avenue, like you can sign up as a volunteer, talk to them, say, this is it, and then work it out. And we get by with the laws and everything else. So is there, are you saying you would send communications to say, hey, principals, can you communicate this kind of stuff? And we can tell them about the laws and everything else.

3:45:06 And you get in lockdown. Great time to plug volunteers. And then I think that’s part of our driving, our volunteerism that Doctor Schiller has coming.

3:45:10 So I think it’s all a good thing. So we’re good. Thank you, guys.

3:45:31 I appreciate it. Thank you. Next policy is the COVID policies.

3:45:46 We had a situation where we were trying to identify. Yes, sir, Doctor Shiller. I’m sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt.

3:46:13 No, no, it’s okay. Let me speak to that to expedite matters. When you’re ready, sir.

3:46:21 Yeah, go ahead, sir. What we’ve looked at is the policy that is on record under 24 ten, which was last revised December 13, 2022. And there’s very little here I could read it.

3:46:33 COVID prohibitions. Neither board nor any board agent or employee may 1 impose a COVID vaccination mandate, as you know. And two, prohibit a student from attending schools and prohibit a student from being on school property.

3:46:36 Substitute restrictions of disparate treatment based on exposure. Then there’s nothing else that follows. And I guess, you know, we’ve looked over the state rule and the letter that has been here to contact dear parent or guardian, and I would just ask for guidance as to where we would go, please.

3:46:48 It’s a really good point because that’s where you’re right. So when I reviewed it, I said, where? It’s in the admin procedure somewhere. We have nurses.

3:46:58 Okay. And my daughter was a perfect example of it that she went and said she had a stomach ache. And the nurse said, well, per the policies of the board, you have to go get a COVID test before you come back because you’re submitting COVID policies.

3:47:03 Yeah. So it’s out there somewhere and it’s not. Yeah.

3:47:17 Yeah. I’ve gotten two emails about that same situation for a child that had diarrhea and they were sent home for COVID. So that’s and so these administrative procedures, Doctor Schiller, are somewhere.

3:47:28 And I don’t know if it’s just like the nurses still putting like. So, okay. So I’m going to look at the procedures.

3:47:40 I thought we had looked at that. I could be very wrong. You know, sometimes there’s a.

3:47:50 Well, Doctor Schiller, I think we can probably say that that’s not per the law, which is you just say it goes against our policy. So maybe there’s a way for you to just communicate out that says, I don’t see any procedures here. Right.

3:47:57 I think it came from the Department of Health. I’m sorry? I think it came from the Department of Health because our clinic people are employees of the Department of Health, contracted with us. Doctor Webley is over there.

3:48:00 Are you. But we. Yeah, we do have that letter that, you know, is what been the guidance in the district.

3:48:18 But we don’t have an administrative procedure. I just double checked. So if it’s coming from some other agency, let us try to track that down.

3:48:24 No, that’s great. And I just need the guidance of what we’re trying to do. And so, like I said, I was a little surprised when we saw this.

3:48:43 That was like three months ago. Yeah. Okay.

3:48:55 And I’m trying to see what else I could do to advise the board to address this satisfactorily. I will just say the only. I brought it up, I don’t know, a couple meetings ago, I was just asking for us, I mean, if that’s still going on and people are asking for COVID tests to come, you know, we’ve got a lot of other things going on right now, like flu and things like that.

3:49:04 And by the way, I’m just gonna take this moment to plug. I don’t know if anybody’s even still watching the live stream anymore. But I have been.

3:49:15 There are lots of things going on. And if your kids are throwing up and they’re sick and they have a fever that you can’t keep down without, irofin, please keep them at home, because we don’t. This is a crucial time of year and we don’t need things going around keeping kids from the classroom spreading.

3:49:36 So please keep your kids at home. But what I was going to ask was that we can just rescind policy 8420.02, which is our facial covering policy from the 2020, the first COVID year.

3:49:39 We don’t need it anymore. It actually, I think it’s going. If we ever had to put it into place, it actually would break state law.

3:49:44 So I’m just asking that we repeal policy 8420.02 and get it in the process for repealing, I think. And then also.

3:49:48 So that’s another component to it. Doctor Shiller, if you feel if we could stay on the first one, that, hey, there seems to be something out there that keeps triggering people. If you can get with staff, with the direction of the board that we don’t want that to be continuing, then if you can take care of that and then like report back to us on the 28th, maybe.

3:49:51 Sure. And then. Yes, sir.

3:50:09 May I just have clarification, given that policy number? I might. Eight, four, two, 0.02.

3:50:13 Yeah. Thank you. Right.

3:50:25 It was a protective covering. Yep. Right.

3:50:40 And basically to bring to you take action to your preference was to recall it, get rid of it. And then, and then the other one was hunt down that administrative whatever is going on and tell them that it’s not per board policy and then report back that it’s done. Right.

3:51:03 Thank you. We’re good. All right.

3:51:12 All right. Next one is ESF volunteer or sub? We did, we did last week. Week, ESF sub volunteer at the schools.

3:51:49 We had said that we would like to bring it for discussion, but give the school, give Doctor Schiller and staff an opportunity to discuss it, to come back to the school board meeting. So, Doctor Schiller, did you want to speak to that at all? Yes. Yes.

3:51:55 Thank you. Staff has compiled a list of our fine folks who have made some considerable contributions by substituting and volunteering and for a variety of things. I would like to submit that to the board who we’ve just gotten it put together so that you can see how many of our staff members have given that work.

3:52:33 I still waiting for a couple of our departments. They pull that in and. But I think we will be all impressed.

3:52:45 And I think what we are saying is that we want to encourage all staff who work here at educational service center to be able to, as appropriately some people, of course, not having the certification, but there are ways in which they can assist our schools and if they have the time that they go forth to do that. Yeah, I think, to be honest with you, Doctor Shiller, if I can say it may have been miscommunicated before, there are a lot of committed people inside the school district that give a lot of time towards. Yes, they do.

3:52:55 Absolutely. That was not in any way a plug at them. This was not saying that they’re not.

3:53:06 Thank you for that. But Miss Campbell, you had something you wanted to say? I just wanted to make a request and it was probably just because this was copy and pasted from agenda to agenda. But when we spoke in the minutes that we approved tonight from the last meeting where we discussed this, that the board was in favor of opening up opportunities for people to volunteer, but because of, again, probably just a copy paste issue, what this agenda item actually says is item is up for discussion related to requiring BPS staff who are not stationed at school or so please let’s not have that anymore because again, that has to be negotiated.

3:53:30 That was not what we said last time. I’m not going to go back into the caret and stick illustration again, but we need to stop saying that. We’re talking about requiring people who work in this building to go out and sub and whatever.

3:54:10 We’re all in favor of creating opportunities so that they could be released to do that one or two days a year. But this continues to say require, and I continue to have a problem. Right.

3:54:23 We’re also exploring, and I really would appreciate any ideas that board might have of ways of recognizing perhaps at the end of the year. Excuse me. Yep.

3:54:48 You know, when people make these kinds of efforts that, you know, we need as a board to acknowledge and recognize, if that’s the direction the board wishes to go, I welcome some options, suggestions. Staff will provide that as well, if that’s what you thinking. I think what Miss Campbell said is want great, so not we would have to go into negotiations.

3:54:55 We have to do all that stuff, but providing an opportunity where the school district says, we would really love you to go volunteer at the schools. Find a way to go volunteer that avenue, promote it with a, these people went and volunteered their schools and then we have a system of some sort of a, one that we can find out who did and send them a thank you, and then maybe that school will say thank you and we can start that connection. And again, beyond volunteering in the schools, I think it could extend to field trips and other kinds of things where they would lend a hand that go beyond the school day with activities and so forth.

3:55:00 If that’s the board’s direction, or if they want to go to turn tools at the transportation department, they could go do that, too. So, yeah, let’s try to move forward in a very positive sense that we communicated as intended. Okay.

3:55:06 Is that I’ve never heard that this board saying thou shall. But as much as we’ve got good people here, and we just want to encourage and acknowledge those works and encourage others to give up their time to our students and schools and related activities, and I will be honest with everybody, there was a request that was put on there that I did do that. I’m not going to hide from it.

3:55:10 But after discussion, it makes sense to move in this direction. I don’t want to try to say that like, oh, no, I didn’t say that. No, I did.

3:55:22 And now this sounds like a better plan, so it’s absolutely right. Okay. All right.

3:55:34 Yep. So, doctor Schiller, you bring back some sort of a plan on the 28th, or did you want the 11th? 28th. Okay.

3:55:48 I love Doctor Shiller. If I say tomorrow, he’d be like, yep, it’s done. I’ll get it.

3:56:03 All right, last up, if you all remember, the last item is substitute title consideration. Doctor Schiller. Yeah, I just need a little recollection.

3:56:18 I wasn’t sure if it was a replacement or visiting teacher. Guest teacher. Let me just double check on job description and title.

3:56:23 If there’s anything like that that we need to look at. I think it’s a very nice appellation, but I do think that we just want to touch base of that. We’re good intentions with collateral damage.

3:56:33 Yeah, I think it’s a really nifty way to put a positive spin on it for sure and change the perception. But I do question, like, we have an issue because there’s statutory language and things like that. Yeah.

3:56:42 As ridiculous as that sounds, I’m just curious if they’re gonna have a problem with, we’ll do what’s best and come forward, but we do need to without having to change everywhere it says substitute in our policy. That’s it. Like, can we just change what we call them without having to change.

3:56:56 You figure it out. Least impact with a maximum appreciation. Right.

3:57:10 We’ll work on that. To spring break. Well, I mean, tags at the school that say that, you know what I mean? But I think it’s going to change the perception of children and how they’re going to receive the perception of it’ll change.

3:57:23 It’ll change the perception of children. But realistically, if we can refer to something positive like that, it could change the perception of people even wanting to do it in the first place. So.

3:57:40 But I don’t, I don’t know. We could refer to that in the school if I, you know, is that, you know, I don’t think we can do it. Today we welcome the visiting teacher or guest teacher.

3:57:57 Guest teacher. Yeah, something like that. Without, I think we can achieve our intended good purpose and maybe not run down a rabbit hole and find other unintended consequences.

3:58:19 Bring back a plan on the 28th or I have a, since this isn’t about the substitute title, but it has to do with substituting. It was something that was brought up to me recently. That was an interesting question, and I didn’t prepare anyone.

3:58:29 I’m sorry. This just hit my memory while we were talking about this, someone had a concern to me, and again, I don’t know the validity behind it because I didn’t get a chance to ask questions. But, you know, there’s different pay rates based on your educational experience or if you’re a retired teacher when it comes to substituting.

3:58:42 And someone had said to me, I was an educator for five years. I didn’t retire as an educator, and I went into a different career. And now I’m here and I want to substitute, but now I’m getting paid less than what a retired teacher would get, even though I’m an experienced teacher.

3:58:54 And so again, I haven’t asked questions and looked into it. It could have been a miscommunication. I’m not really sure how we do things, but is there something we can kind of look into? Because we have plenty of people who have left the field to raise their children and maybe want to come back and substitute, and if they’re going to get paid a little bit more because they have experience as an educator, I think they might be more tempted to do it.

3:58:57 I think it’s a great point. That is a very good point. I’ve questioned that in the years that I’ve been here, that what’s a retired teacher? I mean, they’re wonderful.

3:59:15 We get it. But honestly, if I ever made it to retirement, that’s probably the last place I’ll be. But, you know, if you’ve left for other reasons, I say that, but if you left for other reasons, again, we have a shortage.

3:59:22 So if we get them in as a substitute at a higher paying substitute maybe, or guest teacher, that may bring them back into the mix. So, yeah, I did question. You’re either a certified teacher or you’re not.

3:59:27 That should be a pay. I don’t know if that’s. There is.

3:59:39 So the breakdown is retired teacher, bachelor’s, and then, which could be in anything, I will tell you because before I got on the board, I went back into subbing. And what, what it did, it did give me a benefit to have an education degree, even if I never taught, is I didn’t have to go through the training. I had to.

3:59:44 There were some fees that I didn’t have to pay because I had an education degree. So there is a benefit. It’s great.

4:00:30 But this is more like, this was a. This was specifically a person who taught. I don’t remember, it was like five or eight years.

4:00:33 So they had experience as an educator. They just weren’t one anymore. And so I just think if there’s a way for us to maybe give that a little bit of a nudge, we should consider just a quick comment.

4:00:40 In my spare time, I’ve been putting down tickler things of why do we do what we do? And I think it’s time that perhaps, you know, there are these little things, most of which do not need to be negotiated. Those that need to be, have to be done in cooperation. I’m saying is that I think given time, we can look at some differentiations in a variety of different ways.

4:00:44 And I think what you’re addressing, there is one such prime example, and particularly when we are reliant so much upon guest teachers, is this something we could take some time and extend an olive branch to other counties and see what they’re doing. This whole idea of. Of substitutes when I came here in Florida was strange that we have so many different levels to do the same job.

4:00:58 It’s not unusual. That presentation a couple years ago. It probably needs to be updated.

4:01:03 But doctor, that he did present that to us. Thank you. And we have the budget coming up, so we can make it as part of the budget conversation.

4:01:04 Perfect. Okay. We coming back to our.

4:01:09 Are we good? This is good. So you’re going to follow up at the next board meeting with Miss Jenkins, or do you want to bring that to the budget meeting? No, I would like to first get the wall rolling, see what you have. All right, so you did reference something that had been looked at.

4:01:26 And so I’m not going to reinvent the wheel. We can have something to base upon. Is that all right? Sounds good.

4:01:30 And there’s. There’s a bunch. Yep.

4:01:42 Yep. Okay. And then, um, just make sure that we get back with Miss Jenkins on what she had asked.

4:01:59 And then, all right, we’re going to mission statement. Values and beliefs. Oh, I really hate to do this, and it was my idea, but I think if you guys type it in on the Internet, you can pull it right up.

4:02:13 It does everything. You have no idea what mine does. I just don’t even look at it.

4:02:36 Just go to another screen. She’s voting a lot. Negative.

4:02:45 I have a poster. You got a poster? Can we all go through it? All right, so with that, our organization, our mission statement is to serve every student with excellence as the standard which is behind us. Does anybody wish to change that? Keep that or what? I will entertain conversation.

4:02:48 Anybody up first? I’m for keeping it. I don’t think it says something that we don’t agree with. I think we often hear all differing opinions of the community using it.

4:02:53 Often we hear our staff using it in their buildings. And I think it’s something that the community has held onto and hoped for and challenges this board to do and the board before. And so, yeah, I mean, I don’t see anything negative about it and it’s short and sweet and to the point.

4:02:56 Anybody else have a negative on the mission statement? Okay. Although I have complained about the sign. No.

4:03:02 Well, never. I don’t care about that. But the.

4:03:15 The fact that we highlight the word student instead of the word every annoys me every single time. Got a whole new one coming. I know.

4:03:28 It’s got space, people on it. Good. Okay.

4:03:29 Yeah. So anybody else have any conversation about the mission statement? We’re good. Okay.

4:03:36 Organizational values, if you would like, I can read them. I think that mine would. I would like to make some recommendations, but I’ll wait for everybody else.

4:03:46 So with that Mister Gene Trent, would you like to speak to any organizational value or. Miss. Miss Megan, you’re just.

4:04:04 That’s it. Just. I’m good.

4:04:32 That’s it. Just read through them real quick and you’re good. I can come back to you.

4:04:42 Miss Kimball, did you have any that you would like to add? You’re good, Miss Jenkins. Yep, I’m good. Here we go.

4:05:07 All right. So when I read these organizational values and our operational beliefs, I guess where my struggle is is how is that actually being implemented or are these things being implemented into our district? And if they’re not, why? Or maybe we’re focused somewhere else. And so I guess that’s where my struggle is right now.

4:05:15 Because some of these things I don’t believe are being implemented into our district. And so does it belong on the organizational values or operational beliefs if it’s not being used or followed, or do we turn around and start enforcing that, or is that unattainable? These are questions I have. So which ones do you feel like are not being implemented, set high expectations and demand quality performance.

4:05:21 I think that’s a struggle right now with our achievement gaps that we’re seeing. I think that there’s. Are we inspecting for those things? I don’t know.

4:05:28 Yes, we are, but I guess that’s one that I struggle with. I think we set the high expectations, but sometimes the performance can, and I’m saying that directly from where our test results are coming in and our reading levels and our math levels and those things, that’s where I’m struggling with that. And you may not be speaking into the classroom as much as many of the other areas inside of our education system.

4:05:35 The evaluation of data, stuff like that. Yeah, good point. Is there anybody else? I think that that is something that I. I should stop.

4:05:47 Go ahead. Does anybody wish to comment on that? Yeah, I’m sorry. I hear you on that one.

4:05:59 And I, you know, even sometimes, you know, I think this has to start from the top. I think it is. This is the ideal.

4:06:07 Right? Yeah. And when we say. When I read that particular, I think we definitely need to set the height expectations for our students.

4:06:21 We can demand quality performance, but for a certain student, for a certain student, their quality performance may not be a five on the. On the test. It may not be an a for a student.

4:06:25 You know, I’ve got a kid that if he’s making a c in the language arts, right. That’s quality performance for them. So I think these are the ideals, and I also think they start from the top.

4:06:33 This is not just how we think about students. It’s how about we. How we should work together, how our staff should be working together.

4:06:43 You know, we. We take the crop in. Right, of what we’re given, and we try to do on what we can, but the expectations are still there.

4:07:12 And again, I think this is good. This is a good practice for us, just as a board, even, to see. Okay.

4:07:39 This is what we’re trying to encourage and foster in our organization. Okay. Miss Jenkins, did you.

4:08:02 Are you going? Yeah. I think it’s important when you’re looking at this, this is not an evaluation of the district. This is what you’re saying your district’s values and beliefs are.

4:08:14 So what do you want to see? What do you believe is most important? And so I don’t think that you would argue that that isn’t something that you value or want to see or expect from your school district. The point of these foundations is that this should drive the decisions of the superintendent, of the board, of the staff. It should always be something to go back to and say as a reset.

4:08:42 Are the decisions that I’m making on a day to day basis reflective of the things that we value as an organization? And so I don’t think removing that or downplaying it benefits our children. I think, I would hope that everyone up here would value high expectations and quality performance. And thank you for Miss Campbell, for getting more specific there about how quality could be different for every child.

4:08:49 But again, just kind of reframing the way you’re looking at this, as this is what you hope all day, ultimately, for every single thing to be tied to. Okay, if I could say, since we kind of went through, all of us, if I can say, Gene, have you gone yet? Because you said no, and then I was just now I was going to. And you looked at it, but now that we’re talking about it and just.

4:08:57 We are so close. You said it’s from the top. We are so close to picking our new leader and that vision for this district, I almost feel like I would really like the input.

4:09:27 Not that we’re going to ask for input from our interim superintendent, but isn’t this something that that new person should have some stake in? And that, boy, I’d hate to say, look, we’ve already set the mission for this whole district. Here you go. I would love to draw from this person, this new person experience, his values, her values, whoever’s in that seat, and said, you know what? I didn’t think about that.

4:09:45 I mean, there’s supposed to be that dynamic. We’re going to hire him. I probably want to hear them on this, kicking it down the road.

4:10:04 So I. I thank you for that. All right. I see what you’re trying to do.

4:10:10 So what I would say is three of the main areas that I did not see in our organizational values is anything to deal with honoring the parents viewpoints and things like that. I felt that that is something that is missing inside there as we talk about students and all this stuff, but we in this area of parental choice and all of those things, I felt there. I also felt like our organizational values should be to create the pipeline for future workforce.

4:10:20 I agreed. I wrote. I wrote, I think also that fostering a community connection to the leaders and individuals inside the community, like, basically creating a connection to the rest of us, which is brevard, all of the rest of our county, which is those things.

4:10:28 So when I look at this, this is great, like value, diversity, provide, positive, caring, supportive climate. We don’t have anything on parents, we don’t have anything on workforce, and we don’t have anything connecting to the community, which is where I’ve been trying to kind of push into with these parental issues and everything else. So I am not a complete wordsmith.

4:10:44 I just know these are the damn things we got to do. And so I. Darn it, I know I shouldn’t. I’m tired.

4:10:51 Listen, they’re trying to cut us out of your genes, trying to get us down and work. One of them is in there that constantly connect people to the nobility of our mission. So we have one that’s kind of weird, kind of sounds like.

4:11:04 I think those are great. I’m not sure if they, I don’t know if they go on the value side or believe side or. But those are great things to add.

4:11:13 I also appreciate Mister Trent’s idea of the superintendent kind of helping set that. But at the same time, I think Doctor Shiller was originally saying way back in January, this is for the board to set because that’ll help the superintendent know where to go. But it’s a bounce.

4:11:31 Yeah. So maybe it can be a collaborative effort. In our first meeting month with the, had we done it in January, we’re so close.

4:11:44 We’re actually closer to getting. So I’m gonna suggest that we table this conversation. Oh man, so moved.

4:11:58 I wanna jump on that too. I mean, I said that from the beginning as well. And I appreciate you bringing it back up because we’ve kind of just kept driving that we’re gonna have this conversation.

4:12:15 But I agree with you. I think, yes, we ultimately have to make the decision of the words here, but it doesn’t make sense to not sit down with a new person. First of all, what better way to create a relationship with that new person than to sit down and have that conversation with their input.

4:12:30 So I’m with that one for sure. So can we ask, before we completely table it, can we ask that the minutes will reflect that the board had conversation around adding the elements of parental, whatever you want. Family.

4:12:43 Let’s maybe I like the idea of family not, you know, family involvement, workforce something and connection to the community. Paul, you taking notes? I got it. Rental and family are two different things.

4:13:02 Yeah. So you want your parents to be honored and their opinions and their values and then you want also, you want to have family in there. But when, and we go down to where the core of where the direction of the education system is going is to honor the parents values and opinions.

4:13:34 So I think that piece needs to hone in there and then something about workforce and the other piece. But we’re coming back with it, right? Because now all of a sudden we did a 180 and redo and take a look at homework zero tolerance thing. Yeah, I know you want to get.

4:13:45 I’m okay with getting rid of that. That’s just, you know, have one more question before we all start. I see you ready to go, Doctor Schuller? I’m going to bring this up because I have brought this up faithfully at every single board meeting, I think, since I started looking into this.

4:14:07 But where are we with transportation? Well, I’m glad you asked. Yep, we are about, I’m doing right now salary comparison analysis of every district that we’ve surveyed and, and whatever. And we’ve got one or two pieces left.

4:14:49 And I’m prepared when the board sets time for us to try to pull this all together and give you your options of what to do going forward. And Doctor Shiller’s about to announce that the discipline committee is getting ready. Can I task you or ask you or can we ask for you? I am really concerned about, I have voiced this over and over and over again, making sure that our bus drivers are adequately compensated for pulling the double, triple routes that they’re pulling right now on top of all the other things.

4:15:10 And so this is one of the things I’ve been very passionate about. And I really, really, really want to make sure that this gets done. Our mechanics that are doing, you know, they are servicing a ton of our buses and our white fleet.

4:15:22 And I just, I don’t want this to just get kicked down the road and for about and whatever else. And I really want to see it get across the finish line. Those are the negotiations that I need for the board, for us to not after 12 hours at the board table but focus on so that we can as, that you can as a board understand the options.

4:15:33 I can speak with the local 1010 that has to weigh in on this and for time to make decisions should the board wish to board is do we need consensus on this? Can is we need to do that at a closed session because it has to do with bargaining. But we already gave direction that we want. So when though I, on the transportation topic, one of the things that I learned on my visit to, you know, before my ride along, I spent some time in the lounge there at south transportation and I actually, I just, people were asking me questions.

4:15:45 I asked some questions, a little survey of the group and many because we talked about, you know, what the minimum wage raising to $15 an hour, what it did and some of our veterans and I’m like, well, do you know that next year when the mill, because the millage passed, next year you’re going to be, it’s going to be differentiated based on your. And many, many, many of them had no idea. And again, it won’t fix it right now.

4:15:52 But when I say, someone said, oh, it’s over there on the board and actually walked them over to show them, if you’re 18 years, you’re gonna get $4,400 per year. And then down, down. And almost every single one of them were well over 20 years experience.

4:15:58 So I just. It’s still, you know, I communicate. Yeah, we got to continue to communicate at that out there, that starting next year, that differentiation will be there based on.

4:16:18 And that it’s already been negotiated. I’m so happy to hear that. But I guess where my concern is, what about the million plus dollars that’s falling to the bottom line that I think needs to go back into their current part of the negotiations.

4:16:36 We’ll have it in the executive session once we go. We have a meeting ahead of what we want to send to them. That would be the place.

4:16:47 And I promise you that’s going to happen, because that’s what we were talking about. Promise. Board members to the last point.

4:17:01 Board members, the last point made by Miss Wright. There was a clarifying memo today that was sent out that spoke to after having reconciling with finance, that that figure is adjusted. And so please check with that.

4:17:06 But yes, there is an expected balance, but not at that level. And I think the other thing to remember is, is that we have a lot of other dollars that will follow the bottom line that we can go after, too. So I just want to make sure we can have some fun. I have a very quick board report, if we can. Almost done. So I was selected by our president of FSBA to be one of the two school board members on the state. On the Florida School Music association. We had our first meeting this weekend, and they presented to us a survey of all the music teachers in the state of Florida, their satisfaction levels. I’m going to be sending that survey to you all in an email this week so you can take a look at it. It’s got some really nice data. And, of course, we are the best music county in the state of Florida. So that was nice. As if there’s anything else? All right, are we good? Anybody else? For the good of the board? Thank you very much. We’re done.