Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
0:00 We’ll be right back.
3:29 We’re right back.
4:01 We’ll be right back.
4:29 We’re right back.
5:59 This is one that I asked us last time to take a closer look at.
6:03 We were going to try to get some feedback of the student.
6:06 I agree.
6:07 I think that’s vague and subjective to who is making that
6:12 decision.
6:13 And also not necessary.
6:15 We’re being pretty explicit about stuff in here.
6:17 So, I don’t think we’re going to put in here, so I don’t think
6:21 we need to put in here.
6:26 So, I don’t think we need to put a very vague statement that
6:27 could possibly be implemented inequitably, depending on the
6:28 student and their body type.
6:33 We’re going to put in here, but we’re going to put in here in
6:35 the lower garments, but I think we’re going to put in here, but
6:37 I think we’re going to put in here in the lower garments, but I
6:38 think we’re going to put in here in a way that we’re going to
6:40 put in here in the lower garments, but I think we’re going to
6:42 put in here in a way that we’re going to put in here in the
6:43 lower garments, but I think we’re going to put in here in a way
6:45 that we’re going to put in here in a way that we’re going to put
6:47 in here in a way that we’re going to put in here in our way that
6:48 we’re going to put in here in a way that we’re going to put in
6:50 here.
6:51 especially when we’re making it pretty explicit.
6:53 That there’s some sort of input from students and parents that
6:57 they might be able to do so, but I agree with you as far as a
7:01 core.
7:02 It is. It’s inside there, but it doesn’t, you know, to make sure
7:04 that that is also including the SAC committees and stuff like
7:07 that.
7:07 But the other issue is that, you know, I think that this has
7:12 been an issue.
7:14 Like, there are some schools that are screaming that the address
7:17 code is unenforceable, so I think getting to a place where it is,
7:20 and I appreciate that.
7:21 I appreciate everybody’s collaborative efforts in making this
7:23 happen.
7:24 So with that, I think we’re good.
7:26 Anybody else?
7:27 We can move on to the next one.
7:28 We good?
7:29 All right.
7:29 Board policy 5600, student discipline.
7:33 Is there anyone else who wishes to address this item?
7:35 Anybody who wishes to address this item?
7:37 Any board discussion?
7:39 Moving on.
7:41 Next, board policy 5610, removal, out-of-school suspension,
7:45 disciplinary placement, and expulsion of students.
7:47 Anyone present who wishes to address this item?
7:53 Is there any board discussion?
7:55 All right.
7:57 Last is the board policy 8420.02, protective facial covering
8:03 during a pandemic epic and epidemic events.
8:07 Is there anyone present who wishes to address this item?
8:10 Anyone present that wishes to address this item?
8:13 Any board discussion?
8:14 Hearing none, that concludes our public hearings.
8:19 We have a couple of things that are supposed to be presented to,
8:23 but we have a lot of people here from the middle school task
8:25 force.
8:26 Can we move them up first so that they, because I see we have
8:28 some administrative staff and some other individuals.
8:31 We might want to give them a break.
8:32 Would that be appropriate or do we have to go?
8:34 Okay.
8:35 And I’m sorry that you may not be ready because I’m jumping the
8:37 gun here, but I thought that it would be appropriate for our
8:40 people to be able to get out.
8:41 It’s not that they, we’d love having you, but like Mr. Brown and
8:45 stuff, I know you guys are very important in that community.
8:47 So, Ms. Sullivan, please, you have the floor with our reimagining
8:52 middle school task force.
8:54 And while she’s getting that ready, I want to say thank you for
8:59 all of you for the time period because you guys don’t get paid
9:03 for this.
9:04 You’re trying to give input into what we’re doing.
9:06 And I really appreciate the time that you guys have put forward.
9:08 So, thank you.
9:09 Thank you, Mr. Susan, Ms. Hand, board members.
9:13 We are so excited to be here today.
9:16 We’ve been jumping out of our skin to share and talk about the
9:20 incredible work that this team has done.
9:22 And your introduction was perfect.
9:25 These are warriors that are just really committed to the process
9:29 and the time that we have spent.
9:32 Before we get started, though, I want you to picture something
9:35 in your head.
9:36 In every one of our community meetings, parent meetings, teacher
9:39 meetings, the first question we asked everybody was to describe
9:43 the typical middle school student.
9:45 And I won’t put you to task for saying the things that are
9:49 coming to mind, but it’s going to involve a whole range of
9:53 things from, like, hormones and excitability, but also shyness
9:57 and quiet, all of those things that come with this incredible
10:01 age.
10:01 And the real goal of this team was to honor that as awesomeness.
10:06 This presentation is called Middle School is Awesome for a
10:09 Reason.
10:09 And we, our fleet of middle school educators, love everything
10:14 about that child that you’re picturing.
10:17 All the differences in them, everything that they bring to the
10:20 table.
10:21 And what we want to do is use all that we know about those
10:25 adolescents as the basis of our framework.
10:28 It comes first, not after.
10:30 So middle school should be different than elementary, should be
10:34 different than high school, and should have some undergirding
10:37 structures that are emblematic of the children they serve.
10:42 I have to introduce this amazing group, and I’m going to take a
10:45 minute to introduce all of them, because most of them have been
10:48 with us for a year and a half now, every single month, doing
10:52 some real heavy lifting.
10:54 And I’m going to ask them each to stand when I introduce them.
10:57 Stephanie Booth, she began this as a middle school educator at
11:01 Jefferson, and is now the middle school AP Dean at Cocoa High
11:05 School.
11:06 So she has learned a lot in the last two years that has been
11:09 really powerful to this process.
11:11 Thank you, Stephanie.
11:12 Sherry Bowman, she’s the director in my division.
11:15 And I know you guys know Sherry.
11:17 What you may not remember is that this year, we actually restructured
11:21 to have a single director over our 11 traditional middle schools.
11:25 And Sherry’s done an incredible job bringing the principals
11:28 together for collective efforts.
11:29 Kathy Bramlett, I don’t think is here.
11:33 She represents our career and technical education department.
11:36 Dietrich Brown, many of you know Dietrich.
11:39 He doesn’t need a lot of introduction.
11:41 What you may not know is he’s the brainchild behind Homebase.
11:45 So many of you guys have talked about how important Homebase has
11:48 been to the process.
11:50 He has been there for us to really help us keep all those
11:53 special needs in mind as we work through it.
11:56 Scott Corso, principal of Delora Middle School.
12:00 And many of you guys know Scott is a passionate middle school
12:03 educator.
12:04 We stole him from California where he was San Diego’s principal
12:06 of the year.
12:07 And on their reimagining process.
12:10 So we were able to steal their work as well.
12:13 Jasmine Delauder, principal extraordinaire.
12:16 As you guys know, she did amazing work at McNair Middle School.
12:19 Raised their school grade to a B.
12:22 And is doing incredible things at Southwest Middle School right
12:26 now.
12:26 And a lot of neat structures in place there.
12:29 Christine Ferrer.
12:31 Christine is one of our exemplary sixth grade educators.
12:35 You may have recognized her from, she’s on many, many committees.
12:38 I feel like Christine and I go way back from lots of different
12:41 committees over the year.
12:43 We love having our sixth grade educators on the team.
12:45 Because you’re going to hear how this is really going to become
12:48 a six through eight footprint.
12:49 Even if the buildings are different.
12:51 Holly Ford, our Johnson Middle School media specialist.
12:55 And lots and lots of impact and insightfulness on how we support
12:59 schools in that space.
13:01 Matthew Ghent is not here with us today.
13:04 Many of you know Matthew Ghent.
13:05 He’s a coach and teacher at Central Middle School.
13:07 He has been really important.
13:09 He’s been with us since the very first meeting.
13:11 Tara Harris, our director of elementary and leading and learning.
13:15 She has also been the voice of sixth grade.
13:18 Elementary, how we work together to do great things for kids.
13:22 Vivian Jones.
13:24 Glad to see Vivian.
13:26 Vivian is one of our middle school educators.
13:28 She teaches at Madison Middle School.
13:29 Her experience is in ESE and reading.
13:33 And has also worked in sixth grade.
13:36 So she’s been really clutch on those social emotional needs of
13:39 students.
13:39 And all of those other factors.
13:41 So thank you.
13:41 Dr. Danielle McKinnon.
13:45 Our director of equity and diversity.
13:47 Obviously playing a huge role as we think about how to best
13:51 serve kids in these areas.
13:52 Thank you Dr. McKinnon.
13:54 Kathy McNutt.
13:55 Another principal extraordinaire from Hoover Middle School.
13:59 Has played a huge role in this team.
14:01 Lots of neat practices from Indy Atlantic that we’re going to
14:04 look to replicate in other schools.
14:05 You’ll hear more about that as well.
14:07 Mr. Reid I think is in here somewhere.
14:10 There’s Mr. Reid in the back.
14:12 He’s not sitting with us.
14:13 Thanks Chris.
14:16 Director of student services.
14:19 Obviously an important part of this team as well.
14:21 I want to recognize Kyle Savage.
14:23 He is one of our officers at Brevard Federation of Teachers.
14:27 He is himself a sixth grade expert.
14:31 Kyle has been tremendous on our team as well.
14:34 Jason Sherburne is one of our elementary principals.
14:37 Couldn’t leave the shop today.
14:40 But Nicole Sherburne, one of our sixth grade teachers from Creel
14:44 Elementary.
14:45 She’s been on our team and we were thankful to have that.
14:48 I’m going to leave Vanessa for last on purpose.
14:51 Regina Taylor couldn’t be here today.
14:53 She’s a counselor at Stone Middle School.
14:55 And then Mira Trine, principal at Jefferson Middle School.
14:59 And so pleased to have her as well.
15:02 I’m mentioning Vanessa Lass on purpose because Vanessa has
15:05 really been my co-leader.
15:06 She and I began this journey together, have done all the
15:10 research together,
15:11 the data together, the co-presenting together.
15:13 And in fact, she is the only reason where you’re going to see
15:17 awesome notes
15:18 and minutes and process and paperwork.
15:20 She’s the yin to my yang.
15:22 So I am very, very happy.
15:24 And I can’t underscore enough how valuable our teachers union
15:28 has been to this process
15:30 and really trying to connect the hopes and dreams of our
15:33 teachers
15:34 alongside this important district level work.
15:37 And so really thankful for their partnership through all of this.
15:40 And so what you’ll see on the next two slides is an overview of
15:45 the process.
15:46 This began in January of 2022.
15:49 And in fact, we did a little bit of legwork before then.
15:53 This is a team that was on hold due to COVID.
15:56 We’re going to be able to stop saying that soon.
15:59 But we delayed its implementation, obviously, because of some of
16:02 the challenges
16:03 that all of our educators were going through at that time.
16:06 But one of the big projects we did before January was called Proximity
16:10 Matters.
16:11 And my entire team went out and interviewed about 450 kids one-on-one
16:17 at every single school to talk about that 6th to 7th and 8th to
16:22 9th grade experience.
16:24 And we just brought in random kids, not the ones the principals
16:27 picked.
16:27 I literally got the kids as they were coming to school late.
16:30 I said, “Hey, you got to pass today.”
16:32 And so just talk to kids.
16:34 What were those common themes?
16:35 And that really began this work, our students.
16:38 And I think that’s an important thing to mention.
16:41 We launched our website, we launched a series of meetings.
16:44 Want to also underscore the fact that everything’s been in the
16:48 sunshine.
16:49 We’ve had lots of great visitors to our committee meetings on
16:53 both virtual and in-person.
16:56 Some that I just think can’t quit us.
16:58 And they’ve come to, like, more meetings even than some of our
17:01 staff.
17:01 So really great.
17:03 The most important resource for us was from the American Middle-Level
17:08 Education.
17:09 And it was a book called, “The Successful Middle School: This We
17:12 Believe.”
17:13 And this book really became kind of our guiding force in putting
17:17 together a model
17:19 for exemplary schools in Brevard.
17:21 We did lots of stakeholder feedback, students, parents, teachers,
17:25 administrators, staff, community.
17:27 You’ll see a high level of that today, not all the nuts and
17:31 bolts.
17:32 We were super lucky that the American Middle-Level Educators
17:36 Conference was in Orlando this year.
17:39 So the entire team was able to go to the conference and cull
17:42 some best practices from throughout the country.
17:45 And, again, really putting the whole puzzle together from
17:48 stakeholders to research to all of that work.
17:51 And then we built our framework.
17:55 Now, it took a little turn, because we had an original timeline,
17:59 but due to some changes,
18:01 we felt it was really appropriate to put our recommendations in
18:04 a Phase 1 or Phase 2, given a new superintendent.
18:07 We didn’t want to spring on some real financial difficulties
18:11 that might be necessary,
18:13 and we thought it was really important to separate out things
18:15 that we thought would be more appropriate
18:17 once a new superintendent comes on board.
18:19 And you’ll see some of those differences in a minute.
18:23 And so the understanding our why.
18:25 I’m going to give you a very high-level data overview, just to
18:30 kind of get a feel for some of the conversations that we had.
18:34 When we did our meetings, we would do a meeting on just parent
18:37 survey, on teacher survey, on student information,
18:41 looking at different data indicators, real deep dives in every
18:45 one of those, giving you top-level today some things that I
18:49 found were interesting.
18:50 But, again, picture those middle schoolers.
18:53 That should be in the back of your head for every conversation.
18:56 How do we honor their oddities, their curiosities, their hopes
19:02 and dreams, and that weird space that they’re in?
19:08 So discipline, so this is a snapshot taken like last week, and
19:13 this represents this school year, and the tall pillars are 7th,
19:20 8th, and 9th grade.
19:21 And I think you’re going to be super pleased, because a lot of
19:26 what you hear today is going to tie in to some of that great
19:30 information we’ve received in just doing that deep dive in
19:34 discipline in general.
19:35 So I think these two things can march out very well together.
19:39 9th grade is really also a middle school thing, right?
19:44 So we think about 6th to 7th, we think about 8th through 9th,
19:48 and how we’re preparing students for expectations.
19:51 But we are certainly concerned, of course, and this impacts
19:54 teachers, this impacts strategies and programming, when you have
19:58 to think about discipline alongside it.
20:03 So Vanessa gathered this information for us, and I think it
20:07 speaks for itself, so I’m going to just kind of give you a
20:10 second to pause on it.
20:12 And, you know, when we think about attribution for this data, it’s
20:17 kind of tough, right?
20:18 Is it the kids change that much?
20:21 Is it that middle school educators look at discipline different
20:25 than 6th grade educators, right?
20:27 All of these things are part of what we’re trying to uncover.
20:33 What can we do to prevent that spike?
20:35 So in some cases, it might be consistency in the 6th grade,
20:40 right?
20:41 What’s tolerated, what’s acceptable, what’s okay?
20:44 In some cases, it’s going to be structures in 7th grade that
20:49 anticipate everything we know about middle schoolers, right?
20:52 And how we use that knowledge to create our strategies and our
20:57 rulemaking in the schools to address some of those things that
21:02 we know.
21:02 But we had to put it on the table because that’s part of what we’re
21:05 trying to tackle.
21:06 We looked at some student achievement data, and what you will
21:15 see is 6th, 7th, and 8th side-by-side and Brevard to the state.
21:22 And so when you look at ELA and math both, we’ve said it a
21:26 million times, our 6th graders are crushing it.
21:30 They are highest performing group of students in the district,
21:34 and that’s why every time the different discussions come up, we’re
21:39 like, yeah, but they’re doing really great.
21:41 And so I really admire our 6th grade educators for that level of
21:46 focus.
21:47 And so then you’re seeing 7th grade performance and 8th grade
21:51 performance.
21:52 And in 7th and 8th grade math, I brought in algebra and geometry
21:58 as well for both the district and the state.
22:02 Normally, our 8th grade number doesn’t include it.
22:05 We calculated that in both as well.
22:07 And you can see that 8th grade math is a concern.
22:11 And Ms. Bowman will tell you that it has been – oh, I lost her.
22:15 It has been – she would tell you, I promise.
22:18 And the middle school principals will tell you it’s been our
22:21 number one focus this year.
22:23 It’s really keying in.
22:24 We just did some really great work on using data, using progress
22:27 monitoring to improve 8th grade math scores.
22:30 It’s been our observation.
22:32 It’s – the principals are all shaking their head because they’re
22:35 tired of me talking about 8th grade math.
22:37 So – but it’s something we need to keep working on to improve
22:40 for our students.
22:41 Our students deserve to have the very best results, and our
22:45 teachers, I know, are really motivated to help those kids.
22:49 So this is an interesting graph, and it’s kind of messy, but I’ll
22:55 give you the short version of it.
22:58 So we looked at actual student grades, meaning the grades the
23:02 student earned in the class.
23:05 And ELA and math are particularly interesting.
23:09 So let’s look at ELA first semester, the very first stack of
23:14 data.
23:15 That grade 6 data, the blue, is the average GPA for 6th grade
23:20 students in the first semester of math.
23:24 And then – the first semester of ELA, and then you see grade 7.
23:27 And what do you see as one of the highest trends in terms of GPA?
23:33 Eighth grade, right?
23:36 So it doesn’t feel right.
23:38 It feels a little strange when we’re looking at the other data.
23:41 One is based on testing.
23:44 The other is based on performance in the class alongside the
23:46 teachers.
23:47 And so one of the things that you’re going to see as a
23:50 recommendation for continued study next year is grading.
23:55 You know, tackling sort of the question on grading, how we
23:58 calculate grades.
23:59 Are they measuring the most important standards in the unit?
24:05 Why are they so dissimilar, right?
24:07 So this information just really highlights the need for us to
24:12 look at grading and how that works.
24:14 And then in math, I guess it’s good news that their math grade
24:19 in eighth grade is lower because it’s representative of the data.
24:22 But obviously, again, we’ve still got to look at instruction
24:25 that is impacting that in our targeted instruction.
24:30 We’ve got this data in a lot of other different ways.
24:33 If you’re interested, I’m more than happy to send a fat packet
24:36 of analysis.
24:37 Just left some of the details out of this presentation today.
24:41 And then we looked at our student survey data.
24:47 And we were lucky we have survey 23 right now.
24:51 And, you know, these are the gut punch.
24:55 When we hear from the voices of our students that, in my opinion,
24:58 are the most important voices, this is where there’s a lot of
25:02 tears.
25:03 Our principals, when I go visit them and I say, how’s their
25:06 survey?
25:07 And they’re like, okay, well, I cried.
25:08 And then the next day I cried again.
25:10 And then I rallied the team on how we can support our kids
25:13 better.
25:14 And some of the questions that you see here are just a sample
25:17 from the survey, but the, do you feel an important part of your
25:21 school?
25:22 Only about a quarter of our students.
25:24 And we felt for sixth graders that was particularly important
25:30 because as a middle school person, I would surmise they felt
25:34 king of the hill.
25:35 They felt the most important.
25:38 And as a secondary person, I would have guessed that the sixth
25:40 grade would be higher than the other grades and they weren’t.
25:44 However, we’ve talked about it a lot.
25:47 And we’ve talked about a lot of strategies to increase the
25:51 identity of sixth grade to feel more like they get special
25:56 things.
25:57 You’ll hear things like intramurals and other activities and
26:01 branding and common language that matches seventh and eighth
26:05 grade.
26:05 So they really do feel extra special in that elementary setting.
26:10 So you’ll see some of those strategies down the road.
26:12 One of the other interesting patterns that, well, we’ve seen
26:16 every year with our Youth Truth Survey.
26:19 And again, going side by side with our discipline discussion.
26:23 Students are identifying how disruptive students are.
26:29 And that’s some pretty high level thinking from our kids.
26:32 So when you see a question, do students behave in class, only 19%
26:37 of our sixth grade students felt positive about that.
26:42 So only 19% said agree or strongly agree.
26:46 So the students are aware of it and they are frustrated by it.
26:52 They’re frustrated by it.
26:53 But time and time again, and you’ll see it in the next slide,
26:58 they recognize how hard their teachers are working for that and
27:03 how respectful teachers are of kids.
27:05 So again, I think that’s an interesting contrast.
27:07 And those of you that have seen multiple years of that data, it’s
27:11 a pattern that we’ve seen before.
27:13 In terms of relevant instruction, does what you learn in class
27:18 help you in life?
27:19 22%.
27:21 And the one that I think as moms and dads and as educators, you
27:26 want kids to really enjoy going to school.
27:29 And in our sixth grade population, only a third felt that kind
27:32 of positivity around it.
27:34 Or a third on that day.
27:36 But does the teacher help you and have you keep trying?
27:39 A much higher response.
27:41 Which is particularly awesome because we know from an abundance
27:45 of research that teacher expectation is a single big driver of
27:50 student outcomes.
27:52 We’ve done some work around opportunity myth and some other
27:54 resources.
27:55 We know how important teacher expectations are.
27:58 So the kids are recognizing that their teachers have high
28:01 expectations for them.
28:03 When we go to our middle, so the questions are slightly
28:06 different, which is why I couldn’t mess them together.
28:10 But again, I feel part of my school’s community.
28:14 That was the one question that every presentation we did, we
28:18 shared that number.
28:20 When we did our community meetings, when we did our parent
28:22 meetings, we wanted everybody to realize this is a metric I want
28:26 to target.
28:28 I think it’s very important for kids to feel a part of their
28:30 school community.
28:31 Again, you see a higher response on adults, their perspective,
28:35 middle school kids’ perspectives on how students are treated by
28:41 the adults versus how students treat the adults.
28:45 I mean, from the mouths of babes, right?
28:47 And so, again, I really applaud our fleet of teachers because it’s
28:53 visible even to the kids that the teachers really do care about
28:58 that learning environment and care about protecting them.
29:02 Again, in terms of relevancy, you’ll see what I learn in class
29:06 helps me outside of school, and I enjoy school most of the time.
29:10 So, again, I’m going to go back to another metric that we
29:13 measure annually to see how that number is changing.
29:16 A couple others I wanted to add from the seventh and eighth
29:19 grade, you know, those middle school, there’s more questions.
29:22 Again, feeling part of school community.
29:25 The next one is a new one.
29:27 We added questions around project-based learning this year just
29:31 to try to get an idea of what kids say.
29:35 And this question had, by teacher speaking, by reading, and huge
29:40 results of kids saying, I learn best by hands-on projects.
29:44 And so, that’s going to really inform us when we talk about
29:47 professional development and curriculum building, because they
29:52 also said they experience that less than other strategies and
29:55 approaches.
29:56 So, using this as we talk about those items as well.
30:00 Are teachers connecting with your life outside of school?
30:04 And, again, a very high response on how many of your teachers
30:07 believe that you can get a good grade if you try.
30:10 And we do know that’s important.
30:12 So, there’s a lot of good stuff to work with here, and to really
30:16 tackle some of the struggles our kids are feeling in school on a
30:19 day-to-day basis.
30:20 I just want to pause there, because we’ve got a couple of meaty
30:24 chunks.
30:24 Any questions on anything so far?
30:27 Okay.
30:32 So, hot off the press is our Insight Teacher Admin Survey.
30:36 And I pulled three items that I thought were super interesting
30:41 for this conversation.
30:43 And when you look at the bars, I took school year 19, pre-COVID
30:48 year, and then last year, school year 22, and then we have this
30:53 year’s data in already.
30:55 And so, the first chunk we’re very excited about, because a year
31:00 ago, we sat in this room, and one of our metrics for the
31:03 challenge in middle school was how many more teachers in middle
31:07 school wanted to quit than in other grade bands, right?
31:10 So, it was a dramatic difference from middle school educators
31:14 versus high school versus elementary.
31:16 And look at the decline in that number.
31:20 That was, that was like a bit of encouragement that we needed,
31:23 that this year, we went from 11% teachers saying it was going to
31:28 be their last year to 6%.
31:29 And I checked it like five times, just to make sure I wasn’t
31:33 looking at the numbers wrong.
31:36 But then, my soul was crushed, and we saw a decline in teachers
31:41 responding to, my school is a good place to teach and learn.
31:44 And that’s one of those questions on the teacher survey that I
31:49 measure for multiple years.
31:52 You guys know I have a gigantic spreadsheet, and we monitor that
31:55 question, because we think it’s so important.
31:59 That a teacher feels good about their school in terms of
32:02 workforce, but also for kids’ learning.
32:05 And so, that is going to become a very new, you know, another
32:09 metric for us to keep targeting, looking school by school, and
32:13 reading the comments.
32:14 We have thousands of comments to go through, and so we’re going
32:18 to deep dive into that.
32:19 The other thing that I think is very powerful is that last
32:23 cluster.
32:25 And so, one of the questions on this survey is administrators
32:29 put average of time spent in different areas.
32:33 And you’ll see in 2019, principals reported 8% of their time on
32:39 reactive school discipline, right?
32:43 Meaning, the situation happened, and you’re dealing with it, as
32:46 opposed to these structures prevent discipline.
32:50 Stayed 8% in school year 22, which was pretty amazing pre-COVID,
32:56 after COVID, jumped up to 19% this year.
33:00 And those are the results from our middle school principals.
33:03 Imagine the deans, those are pretty high bars, as you can
33:06 imagine, but these are our principals having to spend that much
33:09 more time on discipline than they had in the past.
33:13 So you’ll see, again, why these conversations are super well
33:15 aligned to the other discussions that we’re having.
33:18 We looked at a lot of qualitative student feedback, as well.
33:25 And so, this is just three comments from thousands.
33:29 We read thousands and thousands of student feedback on their
33:33 school’s greatest strength.
33:36 And from the mouths of babes, right?
33:38 These are middle schoolers talking about thinking critically,
33:42 the classes they take.
33:44 And, again, these are direct quotes.
33:46 And what a student is recognizing in how their teachers treat
33:52 other kids, how they’re handled when they’ve had a bad day,
33:57 whatever it is the kids notice.
34:00 So, when I looked at all of the comments on what is your school’s
34:03 greatest strength, most interestingly, the kids themselves
34:07 reflect on the challenges in the course.
34:12 More often than not, they cited the academic work as the school’s
34:16 greatest strength.
34:18 Again, you may not have predicted that, right?
34:21 You may have thought, well, PE is great.
34:23 Well, they say that, too, in a little bit.
34:24 So, that’s coming, too.
34:26 So, these, again, are just a couple of thousands and thousands
34:29 of survey responses that we’ve culled.
34:31 Mr. Corso and the middle school principals, and actually, really,
34:36 everybody from the team, we wanted to go back and get a little
34:40 bit more information from our middle schoolers.
34:42 This is this year data specifically about the reimagining
34:46 process.
34:47 And we got about 1,300 responses, and I’m really thankful to our
34:51 sixth-grade schools as well.
34:52 We captured some feeder bands to just try to get what do the
34:57 kids think.
34:58 And as you can see, pretty good spread of students.
35:00 And so, they were able to choose what was the most important
35:05 characteristic.
35:08 And they could choose more than one, which is why they don’t add
35:12 up to 100.
35:13 But look at the top.
35:15 The top is about how teachers make them feel.
35:19 And it’s something that we are going to spend a lot of time in
35:23 on professional development and the importance of just somebody
35:27 really feeling valued.
35:28 Many of you guys have heard our sort of secondary leading and
35:31 learning mantra.
35:32 It’s about people feeling known, valued, and inspired.
35:37 And you have kids that are essentially saying those words, maybe
35:41 not using my words.
35:42 That I just want to feel like they know me, they value me, I
35:45 feel good.
35:45 They’re excited to see me.
35:47 We’ve talked a lot about those welcoming environments.
35:49 But also interesting to me was school safety.
35:52 The kids were keying in on how important that is to them.
35:57 And, you know, and as questions come up, I’m going to, they’re
36:01 all here if you have questions that are ground level, right?
36:04 Because I think one thing, and I’m sometimes wrong, right?
36:07 I’m sometimes wrong on, even though I think I understand the
36:10 principals, they know their schools, the teachers, the
36:13 counselors.
36:13 These are the real experts.
36:15 I’m just the coordinator.
36:16 Access to counselors.
36:19 And then, again, challenging curriculum.
36:21 These were literally the top five responses from our kids.
36:26 What would you add to middle school?
36:27 So we asked that question.
36:28 I told you, I told you, Mr. Susan, you’d be happy in a second.
36:31 So these were, they could write it in.
36:34 So Mr. Corso and the team kind of culled those responses.
36:38 Football and sports, football kind of came up in particular,
36:41 right?
36:42 For all of you guys.
36:43 They specifically named football over and over and over again.
36:47 Can I, can I, real quick?
36:49 Fine.
36:49 This wasn’t going to slide.
36:52 This was the only one I have so much written down.
36:54 I promise you I was a good boy.
36:55 No, please, of course, I’m kidding.
36:56 Here’s what we do.
36:57 Just so you know, many of the sports programs, rec leagues, are
37:00 starting to cost an exorbitant amount of money.
37:02 So some of our kids are left out.
37:04 They have no avenue for some of these things.
37:06 And that’s directly what I think this supplants.
37:10 Plus, so I know that there’s some kids out there that are in low
37:13 socioeconomic places that have no ride and no money to get to
37:16 these.
37:17 When we provide these for our kids, it’s also our commitment to
37:20 our kids.
37:20 And that’s, you know, I get goosebumps right now, but that’s
37:23 what truly when I see what’s going on out there.
37:26 So I applaud you guys for bringing up football, because that is
37:29 a large chunk of many of the students that follow in that rule.
37:33 So thank you.
37:34 That’s all.
37:34 I just wanted to kind of join in.
37:35 And it came up authentically.
37:37 Again, the data is the data.
37:38 Yeah, I didn’t say anything.
37:38 The response is the response.
37:40 We did not put these words in their mouths.
37:42 Better food, you know, poor Kevin.
37:45 Just electives in general, you know, I’m not going to break the
37:50 news to them on access to phone.
37:53 But typical things that you would expect kids in middle school.
37:58 Like, what are those things that they want to have?
38:01 So then we asked our kids, what would you change?
38:05 And the coolest thing of ever was the number one answer was
38:10 nothing.
38:11 The number one answer from all the kids was nothing.
38:15 Second to that, you’ll see the bell schedule.
38:20 It does induce a lot of stress.
38:23 And we’ll talk a little bit more about that at the end of the
38:26 presentation.
38:27 And sorry, Sue, appearance came up relatively.
38:31 But Ms. Hand and I have had a lot of conversations on prioritizing
38:34 our middles.
38:35 The late dismissal is tough.
38:38 That 4.30 timeline is super difficult for kids.
38:40 And, you know, transportation.
38:44 So nothing that, as an organization, we haven’t tackled.
38:48 But again, when 12- and 13-year-olds are saying it, it underscores
38:52 its importance, right?
38:53 It gives us that triangulation of data telling us that we need
38:57 to key in on these things.
38:58 Favorite thing about their school, people and friends, right?
39:04 Again, they want it to be a place where they can learn how to be
39:07 social, learn how to create friend groups.
39:09 But look what’s next.
39:11 The second highest response was teachers.
39:16 And again, really elevating the field of teaching for middle
39:20 school students.
39:22 That’s going to be part of our goal, right?
39:24 Like, how do we continue to let those teachers feel valued?
39:28 How do we support them differently than we support middle and
39:31 high school teachers?
39:34 I laugh that they didn’t like lunch, but lunch was their
39:36 favorite thing.
39:37 I’m guessing lunchtime.
39:39 And then you’ll see PE, but then literally naming math and art.
39:44 I thought, again, that’s kind of cool to see that from kids.
39:47 That’s the principal filling that portion out.
39:49 I’m sorry?
39:49 The principals are filling those out.
39:51 I like the food.
39:53 So I had an opportunity for lots of teacher meetings.
39:59 So in the fall, I did five professional development sessions
40:03 specifically for middle school educators
40:06 to come and get caught up.
40:07 And then I did a series of Zooms with our sixth grade teachers,
40:11 which was super fun.
40:13 I was like a fish out of water, but they were amazing and gave
40:15 us a lot of cool feedback.
40:17 So I’m going to let you take a look at some of the things that
40:20 came up in our discussions.
40:22 I can’t help but laugh at the first one in organization.
40:26 I remember being in that classroom at Vieira High with a room
40:29 full of teachers.
40:30 And a teacher said, you know, I’m a split between a Walmart greeter
40:33 and Border Patrol.
40:34 And that just never left me, right?
40:38 Because we do supervision, but with joy in our heart, right?
40:42 That’s a skill.
40:43 That’s a gift.
40:43 It’s a talent.
40:44 You’ll see a lot of discussions on homerooms, activities, clubs
40:48 and activities.
40:50 School-based time for that programming was a constant theme that
40:54 came up, is how can we create
40:57 our structure to do more school-based activities within the
41:00 school day?
41:01 And we have lots of different drafts and plans to look at.
41:05 You’ll see that over and over and over again, the idea of more
41:09 clubs and opportunities for
41:11 kids, purposeful tutoring, collaboration with the community, not
41:17 a lot of surprises.
41:18 Again, very thankful to our sixth grade teachers and our middle
41:21 school teachers that joined us
41:22 in this discussion.
41:25 We had parent feedback in a lot of different ways as well.
41:28 We did four community meetings in each of the areas that parents
41:33 came out to.
41:34 And Sherry did a magical job of tracking all those comments.
41:38 We have lots more than the ones that you’re going to see, but
41:40 these are some highlight ones.
41:42 We also had an online survey and got about 150 respondents from
41:46 there as well.
41:47 And our parents are certainly interested in more CTE programming
41:51 in middle school.
41:52 And of course, our CTE team is super happy about that.
41:55 We’ve got something cool working out actually for Johnson.
41:59 But we’re looking at those feeder patterns and looking at how we
42:02 can mimic some of those
42:04 experiences in middle school.
42:05 Again, the schedule came up a lot.
42:08 The transition from sixth grade where you have maybe one, two
42:13 teachers, and then boom, you’re
42:16 in seventh grade, seven different teachers, not necessarily
42:20 cooperation between the teachers,
42:22 different deadlines, different rules, and seven different
42:25 teachers contacting parents.
42:26 That’s a lot.
42:27 It’s overwhelming.
42:28 Our parents talked about special programming, right?
42:33 So in this first example, it was specifically about the Eagles,
42:37 but we heard it over and over
42:38 again.
42:39 I like that there’s something for my child.
42:41 They’re either acceleration or remediation needs or both or
42:46 music needs or whatever it is.
42:48 There was something where each child could find their people and
42:51 find the support they needed.
42:53 So again, you see a lot on electives and programming.
42:57 And so all of this led us to the idea of what do we stand for in
43:04 BPS as middle school educators?
43:06 What is going to be?
43:08 This is what every child in Brevard should experience in middle
43:14 school.
43:15 Yes, there’s going to be some specialties.
43:17 Yes, there’s going to be some different things.
43:20 But every child should have a baseline of amazing experiences
43:24 from teachers who love that grade
43:26 band.
43:26 And so in that, we adopted the no, it depends.
43:31 And those are the two words that I don’t even know the right way
43:34 to say that.
43:36 That became the unspoken words that we never wanted to say.
43:39 And let me give you some examples.
43:41 We had a room full of teachers.
43:43 We had a room full of parents.
43:44 And we’d hear these awesome practices.
43:46 Well, at my school, we blah, blah, blah, blah.
43:48 So if you went to that school, you had that experience.
43:52 And then, oh, well, I do this with kids in my class.
43:56 So if you had that teacher, you had that experience.
43:59 I’m going to use Kathy McNutt as my, she’s my constant example.
44:02 They do incredible service learning programming at Hoover.
44:06 And so if you went to Hoover, you got service learning.
44:11 And so it depended on the teacher or the school, the experiences
44:17 you had.
44:18 Now, we still love like those individualized approaches, but
44:22 there should be a baseline taking
44:24 all the knowledge we know about middle school developments,
44:27 middle school kids, their awesomeness,
44:29 and what’s good for all kids, not dependent on their school or
44:34 teacher.
44:35 That as an organization, these are the best practices that our
44:39 teachers are telling us,
44:41 our parents are telling us, our kids are telling us, our
44:43 national organization is telling us,
44:45 an abundance of research is telling us, why should that depend
44:49 on the teacher or the school?
44:53 And so I’m going to take you through some additional work on our
44:57 webpage and certainly encourage any parents
45:00 that might be chiming in with us today to log on.
45:04 You can get to our webpage from all of the links on the main one
45:07 from parents and students and teachers.
45:10 And I’m going to show you a little bit more of what we did and
45:14 what we thought about.
45:15 And so right there, you’ll see a stakeholder feedback.
45:19 We check that all the time.
45:21 I just checked it again last week and look for feedback from our
45:25 community on what they want us to hear.
45:28 You will see the community meetings we held.
45:31 We did a south area, a beach side, a central, and a north area
45:36 meeting.
45:36 We had lots of participation from our sixth grade community, so
45:40 I was especially excited about that
45:42 because this is really about that next step.
45:45 And here you’ll see the framework, and this is very important.
45:49 This is where we said these are going to be the overarching
45:52 principles that we’re going to consider.
45:55 So the essential attributes of being responsive, challenging,
45:59 empowering, equitable, and engaging.
46:02 And I want you to key in on that responsiveness.
46:06 And that goes back to what our original thoughts were.
46:09 Picture that middle school kid and using the distinctive nature
46:14 and identity of kids that are in that grade band
46:17 as the foundation which all decisions about school are made.
46:21 And I’ll give you just kind of a really easy example.
46:25 Ms. Han and I, we talk a lot about, you know, renovating the
46:28 classrooms in that space.
46:30 And every single time it comes up, I talk about flexible, right?
46:34 I talk about kids being able to get up, move around, new
46:37 configurations,
46:38 it not always being in a static manner because who pictures a
46:42 middle schooler in that way?
46:43 In fact, Ms. Jones’ classroom, we bought high tops, low tops,
46:48 circle tables,
46:49 just things that are more accessible and more organic to the
46:53 child.
46:54 I’ve bought, I don’t know if you know, they sell desk chairs
46:56 that rock.
46:57 I bought a bunch of those, right?
46:59 Because the kids need that.
47:01 And so taking all the knowledge we have about kids in that age
47:04 band
47:04 and applying it to furniture and curriculum and support and
47:10 guidance counselors
47:11 and everything that we know in that space.
47:13 If you look to the right, these are the areas we’re trying to
47:17 cluster our strategies around.
47:19 What makes for a strong culture and community?
47:22 How do we address curriculum, instruction, and assessment?
47:25 And what are those organizational things?
47:27 One of the things we talk with the principals about all the time
47:30 is the importance of systems.
47:31 How are you creating systems to withstand changes in different
47:36 kids and different programming?
47:40 You’ll see a little bit more on our members there and those that
47:44 served with us before.
47:45 This is our meeting schedule.
47:47 And if you looked up to the top, under meeting agendas and
47:51 minutes,
47:52 you’ll see every single agenda and everything we discussed at
47:56 every one of those meetings
47:57 to kind of see the chronology of how we got to where we were.
48:02 So again, super transparent.
48:04 And then same thing.
48:06 What did our community say to us at those meetings?
48:08 So if you go into community voices and we went to South Area,
48:13 you’ll see the responses the parents gave.
48:16 So we’ve tried to make it super transparent, public for everyone,
48:21 opportunity for people to catch up and see what we’re thinking
48:25 of.
48:25 And then I believe all of this will come together as we lean
48:29 into our recommendations.
48:31 If I do this right.
48:36 Okay.
48:37 All right.
48:38 Before we get into the recommendations, my second pause for any
48:41 questions.
48:42 Phase one.
48:42 Here we go.
48:43 All right.
48:45 We’re rocking and rolling.
48:47 All right.
48:47 We’re saving them for the end.
48:48 So, okay.
48:49 I’m writing mine down.
48:51 So, so phase one are recommendations that we believe can be
48:56 implemented in school year 24,
48:58 meaning this August.
48:59 And I say it with confidence because, like, for example,
49:04 Ms. Bowman’s been meeting with all the middle school principals
49:07 all year.
49:07 This is, this is a back and forth between principals, between
49:11 school leaders.
49:12 Some of them, I might be a little hopeful, but I can be hopeful
49:17 in this first presentation.
49:21 So recommendation number one, and everybody felt strongly about
49:24 this, especially our sixth-grade
49:26 friends, that we wanted professional development for middle
49:29 school educators.
49:31 And so that includes our sixth-grade teachers.
49:34 So it all hinges on youth mental health first aid, Chris Reid.
49:39 No pressure.
49:40 Assuming we can cross that hurdle before August, we hope to have
49:44 a middle school conference in
49:46 August that brings together our sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade
49:50 teachers together, talking
49:52 about all of these strategies, best practices, teacher
49:55 presenters, of course, you guys know,
49:57 always use teacher presenters.
49:58 These guys would all run expert sessions and really strengthen
50:02 that six, seven, and eight footprint.
50:05 We think we can do it.
50:07 We’re also really excited about micro-credentialing.
50:12 And so the idea that being a middle school educator requires
50:16 some additional skills in your toolkit,
50:19 and having opportunities for teachers to complete maybe on, like,
50:24 the young adolescent brain, right?
50:27 And then they would earn a micro-credential from completing an
50:31 online course.
50:32 Again, we feel it’s doable.
50:35 Right?
50:36 Yeah.
50:37 Focus.
50:41 So, funny, focus has been a hot topic of conversation.
50:44 We spent a lot of time at one of our meetings talking about sort
50:48 of the unharnessed power of focus
50:52 to connect student, parent, teacher, and admin to academic
50:57 history, information,
50:58 understanding a student’s accommodations, disability needs.
51:04 And so we’re going to ask our friends in ET to prioritize middle
51:09 school.
51:10 And community outreach, getting parents involved, because it’s
51:14 such a change going from that one or two teachers in a school
51:17 you’ve been at years.
51:18 We really think focus utilization can help bridge it.
51:21 And our parent focus accounts in middle school is not great.
51:30 And so just some public outreach and some training around that.
51:33 Government community relations, they’ve already kind of jumped
51:35 on board with this, supporting branding, promotion, middle
51:38 school identity, to include that sixth grade.
51:42 So, for example, we may have common banners in a feeder in that
51:46 sixth grade classroom, in that seventh grade classroom, in that
51:50 eighth grade classroom that connects the kids to middle school
51:54 culture, expectations, grading, all of those things.
51:57 And, of course, we know we’re right in the middle of our middle
52:00 school videos, which we’re really excited about having those
52:02 promotional items.
52:03 And again, parents are nervous.
52:05 One of the things that came across at all of our parent meetings
52:09 was like the fear of the unknown.
52:11 And so the more we can do to eliminate the unknown, because we
52:17 don’t want to be a secret, the hopefully we can minimize those
52:20 fears.
52:21 Felt very strongly about on-campus transition, and this was one
52:28 of those, it depends.
52:31 So in a room, I would say about 50, 60 percent of our schools
52:35 had a structured transition program, meaning inviting all the
52:39 sixth graders to campus and putting programs in place.
52:44 Last year, you saw a lot more of them, because we were already
52:46 on this journey, of whether it was a Saturday, an evening on a
52:50 school day,
52:51 that kids had a chance to come to campus and learn about a lot
52:55 of the issues that worry them.
52:57 Again, demystify the unknown, we thought was really important,
53:01 and really connecting elementary schools to that process.
53:04 So we want to make it a requirement for all 16 of our schools.
53:09 You will sometimes hear 16 and you will hear 11, 16 includes our
53:14 7-12s, 11 is our traditional middles, because those 7-12s do
53:19 have some unique issues that we
53:21 we have to handle a little bit differently in there.
53:25 We also want to recommend additional summer hours.
53:29 So some things that we learned is the conversations that should
53:33 be happening in the summer about whether it’s a student’s IEP, a
53:38 student that’s been in a custody issue, or, hey, I got the
53:42 secret sauce on this child, you need to know it.
53:45 But the collaboration is minimal because in our elementary
53:48 schools right now, they have no summer hours for their guidance
53:51 counselors, and we have minimal in secondary.
53:55 Right now we have a little bit more because of ESSER, so we
53:58 think it’s really important to look at, and I’ll be submitting
54:01 budget requests, don’t you worry, look at the need to have some
54:05 of those elementary specialists available in the summer to
54:09 collaborate with our secondary, to help minimize those bridges.
54:13 So I remember when I got the middle school, I got a call from a
54:16 sixth grade, hey, this one has these issues.
54:19 I was able to meet with her, and we bonded, and she just was one
54:23 of the happiest students on campus because we were able to put
54:26 things in place ahead of time.
54:29 Class meetings and parent outreach, we talked about this a lot,
54:34 is it realistic to do this in the first two weeks of school?
54:38 We believe it’s essential.
54:40 We believe, again, think about those discipline issues that
54:43 arise, those communication issues that arise, that our high
54:47 schools all do class meetings, meaning they bring the ninth
54:50 grade together, the eighth grade, the tenth grade together.
54:52 So our middle schools weren’t necessarily doing that, it depended,
54:56 and so we want everybody to, within the first two weeks of
54:59 school, get in front of the parents and in front of the students,
55:03 again, to demystify some of the issues.
55:06 Team teaching must be prioritized, I know some of you are long-term
55:12 educators, I was a middle school educator, and team teaching, I
55:17 wouldn’t be here today, if it were not for the team of teachers
55:22 surrounding me, and helping me be successful as a first, second,
55:26 and third year teacher.
55:27 And, in fact, an assistant principal at O’Galley High School was
55:31 my team teacher 29 years ago, and so it’s great for kids, it’s
55:35 great for parents, but boy, is it great for staff.
55:39 It creates many schools within a school where these four
55:42 teachers share this group of students, and they are able to plan
55:47 together, do parent meetings together, you know, combine on
55:51 curriculum and other topics together.
55:54 And it’s kind of gone by the wayside, so we’re going to bring
55:58 that back, but it also is important for our elementary schools.
56:03 We want to see our elementary schools, and thank you, Tara, and
56:06 she can answer any questions if they come up about what this
56:09 looks like in elementary school.
56:11 They did a lot of work on kind of doing a mini version of some
56:14 of those things that we like to see in seventh grade to get kids,
56:17 again, ready for that environment.
56:20 So, again, cross-team planning, you know, hey, in my team we do
56:25 math tests on Friday, we do science on Thursday.
56:29 Things like that make a really big difference for kids and
56:32 families going into kind of the craziness of middle school.
56:35 In terms of our students with disabilities, support facilitation
56:42 model allows students to be in a tier one instructional
56:46 environment, which is very important for their academic
56:49 development.
56:50 But yet those teachers have an ESC specialist in the room with
56:54 them, helping them support IEP goals.
56:58 And, of course, our love of home base and what a perfect match
57:02 that is for students who are, picture this, you know, a student
57:07 in middle school with emotional disabilities and is also a
57:11 middle schooler, right?
57:13 So it’s like the perfect confluence of challenges that we want
57:16 to help kids get through.
57:18 And so what we want – and I said prioritize because not all
57:22 schools through attrition and through natural things will get to
57:26 100% next year.
57:28 But I think most of the principals are all really adjusting
57:31 their schedules already.
57:33 Co-curricular and extracurricular activities – very, very
57:37 important.
57:38 And one of the interesting places we landed at was sixth grade.
57:41 Again, think about those low results on being valued at the
57:45 school interaction.
57:47 So we like to see the first expansion of intramurals be for
57:50 sixth graders.
57:52 Basketball is a great topic for kids to be able to be on a team,
57:57 get all the benefits of that, the activity of it, the identity
58:01 that comes with the representing level,
58:02 representing their schools.
58:04 And in fact, it was one of our community members who attended
58:07 one of our In the Sunshine meetings where he was like,
58:10 you know, have you thought about expanding it in sixth grade?
58:12 And we’re like, that is really the right answer.
58:15 So talked a lot about that.
58:17 Again, something kids could earn going into sixth grade and not
58:19 feeling like the undesirables of an elementary school.
58:24 And so looking at additional clubs, of course, and additional
58:28 programming.
58:29 Lunch, boy.
58:31 So middle school lunch is a special thing.
58:34 And if you don’t know what I mean, please volunteer for lunch
58:37 duty at a middle school.
58:39 It is like the perfect storm of just humor, love, funniness, and
58:44 like popcorn behavior, right?
58:47 It’s whack-a-mole.
58:48 That’s what it is.
58:49 Oh, we don’t whack them.
58:50 So don’t fret.
58:51 I shouldn’t say that.
58:52 But it’s akin to playing whack-a-mole and kind of jumping around
58:55 and targeting issues.
58:57 We want schools to be very intentional and very deliberate.
59:00 We have a lot of discipline issues that occur in the lunchroom
59:04 that we believe with good deliberate planning can prevent it.
59:08 But kids need positive social time.
59:11 They just need it in a structured way.
59:13 So they need to be able to get out.
59:15 They finally saw their buddy.
59:16 Middle school boys, I hate to say it, like jump up and like to
59:19 hit the ceilings.
59:21 And so, like, do they have a chance to jump up and not get hollered
59:24 at?
59:25 And sort of all those things that come with that.
59:28 We want to say, how can we allow that energy to happen in a
59:31 structured way?
59:33 Should we look at separating seventh from eighth grade in the
59:36 cafeteria?
59:37 Is that a really good way to do it?
59:39 And in our 7/12, does it make sense to have our middle school’s
59:44 lunch differently?
59:46 Something we’re really – this is the thing I’m most excited
59:49 about.
59:50 They just entertain me.
59:52 So think about student government in our high schools.
59:56 And, you know, a lot of the research we read was about purposeful
1:00:00 education, student engagement,
1:00:03 student advocacy, student have an impact.
1:00:05 And we thought about middle school student congress.
1:00:07 Kind of our other version of it.
1:00:10 And each school provides an opportunity for kids to have a role
1:00:14 in governance.
1:00:15 So let’s say they’re going to change their middle school lunch
1:00:18 plan.
1:00:19 Mr. Corso would bring in his student congress and they would
1:00:23 debate it.
1:00:23 They would talk about it and they would advocate for some things.
1:00:26 So our sixth grade classes would select two representatives
1:00:29 every nine weeks.
1:00:31 Again, we don’t want it to just be the obvious kids.
1:00:34 We want a variety of kids because we want to rotate kids through
1:00:38 student congress.
1:00:40 I happened to be on a Zoom with an elementary principal the
1:00:42 other day and I brought this up.
1:00:44 And I ran into her last week and she’s like, I just started that.
1:00:47 That was a good idea.
1:00:48 I had to change something and I made a little congress to do it.
1:00:51 They become part of the advisory group.
1:00:53 Seventh and eighth grade will have homeroom like spaces.
1:00:57 We haven’t technically called it homeroom yet, but we’re getting
1:00:59 there.
1:01:00 And select again representatives to meet with the principal.
1:01:03 And then I would like to hold district regional events.
1:01:08 So, Mr. Susan, I think you’ve been to D2 where the high schools
1:01:10 come together.
1:01:11 It would be something like that before our middle school
1:01:13 congress.
1:01:14 And I said regional events because of busing, distance,
1:01:17 transportation,
1:01:18 but have like a south area middle school congress, a north area
1:01:20 middle school congress.
1:01:22 We’re bringing in those leaders from sixth and seventh and
1:01:25 eighth grade.
1:01:26 We’re very excited about it.
1:01:29 We would ask the high school D2 students to coordinate the
1:01:31 events and do some activities,
1:01:33 which we think would be great for them as well.
1:01:36 And again, being active in their community.
1:01:39 A plan for transitions is very, very important.
1:01:44 We would require it.
1:01:46 Again, transitions, when we look at discipline referrals, we can
1:01:49 look at them by location.
1:01:51 So, I sit with the principal and we pull it up.
1:01:53 We say, okay, are your incidents happening mostly in the
1:01:55 classroom
1:01:56 or are they happening in common areas?
1:01:59 If they’re in the classroom, then it might be professional
1:02:01 development,
1:02:02 admin getting in those classrooms more, common sequence.
1:02:06 If in the hallways, it’s probably an admin problem.
1:02:08 I say that lovingly.
1:02:10 In terms of we need to change our supervision patterns,
1:02:13 we need to change how kids walk through these corridors, right?
1:02:16 It’s a structural problem.
1:02:18 So, we’re going to ask them all to develop a plan for those
1:02:21 transitions.
1:02:22 I have to say post-COVID, those one-way hallways were dreamy.
1:02:27 And so, things were so smooth when we implemented a lot of those.
1:02:31 It’s a great strategy to hang on to.
1:02:34 Tears, we’re interested in campus monitors.
1:02:40 And so, let me, bear with me.
1:02:43 So, remember the discipline discussions we’ve been having.
1:02:46 Think about the other ones.
1:02:47 We have to think of solutions that make sense in this hiring
1:02:53 climate and financial climate.
1:02:56 Campus monitors are a great solution for that.
1:02:59 Right now, we have campus monitors at each of our high schools
1:03:02 only.
1:03:03 They’re the first ones to respond to a critical incident.
1:03:06 They’re the first ones to go get a student from a class.
1:03:08 They’re monitoring the hallways the entire time.
1:03:13 And they are typically community members who are attached to the
1:03:16 school and absolutely want to do that work.
1:03:20 We added campus monitors this year to Cocoa Beach, West Shore,
1:03:24 and Edgewood.
1:03:25 All of them hired somebody in one day.
1:03:27 So, it wasn’t like our other challenges in hiring personnel.
1:03:32 They do immediate intervention.
1:03:34 They’ll be trained in youth mental health first aid.
1:03:37 Knowing what they do in a high school and knowing how impactful
1:03:42 they are,
1:03:43 I really think this is a great solution for some of our settings
1:03:47 that need some additional support.
1:03:49 And so, we’re going to be submitting some recommendations in
1:03:52 that space.
1:03:53 So, think about all those challenges we’ve had and how this one
1:03:57 person can really make a difference.
1:03:59 And then, our deans can focus on helping out in the classroom,
1:04:03 being in there, being more preventative,
1:04:05 and training and support, and of course, outcomes.
1:04:11 Service learning, I mentioned that briefly.
1:04:13 We think that is a great way for students to be positively
1:04:16 engaged with their community.
1:04:18 I’m going to steal Kathy up for a second because I don’t want to
1:04:22 steal her thunder and give her a second to tell you a little bit
1:04:25 about
1:04:26 the service learning class and program at Hoover so that you can
1:04:30 have in your head what we’re looking to do all over.
1:04:33 Thanks, Dr. Sullivan.
1:04:35 So, the service learning class at Hoover is really appropriate
1:04:38 for that middle school student.
1:04:40 You’ve seen the data that talks about hands-on project-based
1:04:43 learning.
1:04:44 And it’s really stemming from the kids.
1:04:47 So, it’s coming from that exploratory side of their brains, delving
1:04:50 into that curiosity where they identify
1:04:53 either a school-based project or issue that they have or
1:04:57 something within the community.
1:05:00 And then, the students work on developing an action plan,
1:05:03 executing it, seeing the results and reflecting on the project.
1:05:08 So, we’ve had students do everything from, hey, there are backpacks
1:05:12 all over the floor on the way into the media center.
1:05:15 We’re going to build these awesome carts to keep all of our backpacks
1:05:18 and personal belongings safe and have an allocated space for
1:05:22 them.
1:05:22 To meeting up with, working with the local community.
1:05:27 We’ve had a group of students who have gone to town hall
1:05:29 meetings, the Indian Atlantic town hall meetings.
1:05:32 They worked on a beautification project.
1:05:34 So, they really got their hands in the community.
1:05:37 And I think one of the major benefits is that we see with our
1:05:40 students that kids who maybe didn’t view themselves as leaders
1:05:46 or they’re looking for that role in a group.
1:05:49 They find something that they’re passionate about and we see
1:05:52 these kids rise to the top.
1:05:54 They really start to view themselves differently.
1:05:57 They’re accomplishing a task that they’re proud of.
1:06:00 And then, we have students who want to continue in.
1:06:02 It’s a semester long course.
1:06:04 Who want to continue in that course that following year because
1:06:06 they want to carry out their project on a bigger scale.
1:06:09 We also had the opportunity to take it a couple years ago, pre-COVID,
1:06:15 to a whole school-wide event where we had all of our students,
1:06:19 either on campus or off campus, at elementary schools, at
1:06:23 assisted living facilities, at Goodwill.
1:06:25 We had our day that we called Take Flight, where we went out in
1:06:29 the community for our kids to give back.
1:06:31 And it’s also an amazing opportunity for our community members
1:06:34 to see that those middle school students are awesome.
1:06:38 Aw, that’s awesome.
1:06:39 And I’m going to turn it over to Christine to tell us, what
1:06:43 would this look like in sixth grade?
1:06:45 Again, we want sixth to eighth grade to clearly be our middle
1:06:48 school.
1:06:49 In sixth grade, some of the things that I’ve done either at my
1:06:54 old school or at Endeavor now,
1:06:57 last year students started seeing a lot of the weeds.
1:07:00 You know that we have the problem with less people to do the
1:07:04 yard work, the lawn work at the schools and things like that.
1:07:07 We had had a beautification day where it was part of our service
1:07:12 learning of that month.
1:07:14 It was during generosity.
1:07:16 And we said, how can we be generous?
1:07:18 They said, let’s give our time.
1:07:19 We went out.
1:07:20 We had gloves and we had Publix bags.
1:07:22 We pulled some weeds.
1:07:23 That was just, you know, a 30 minute period.
1:07:26 This year we were noticing there was a lot of around our
1:07:29 portable.
1:07:30 We were seeing a lot of garbage from the snacks and stuff that
1:07:32 the students get.
1:07:33 They were like, we’ve got to do something about this.
1:07:36 And we said, well, what can we do?
1:07:37 We went out there.
1:07:38 We pulled and we just started picking up garbage.
1:07:40 One of my students took it a step further, asked if she could
1:07:42 have a meeting with Miss Murphy,
1:07:44 which she was able to get and said, I’d like to see a garbage
1:07:47 can out by our recess.
1:07:48 So, and that, and then when that did happen a few weeks later,
1:07:52 she came to me, she’s like, look, we got a garbage can now.
1:07:55 And it’s those little simple things that help them feel like
1:07:58 they are part of the school and part of not just always
1:08:02 complaining about something.
1:08:03 You can have some problem solution in there as well.
1:08:05 Love it.
1:08:06 Thank you.
1:08:07 Oh, sorry, sorry.
1:08:08 And again, we don’t want it to depend on if you happen to have
1:08:11 the amazing Miss Ferrer or if you happen to go to a certain
1:08:14 school.
1:08:15 We want all of our kids to have those opportunities.
1:08:18 This is really continuing the facility work that we’ve had a lot
1:08:22 of discussion on.
1:08:23 A lot of our middle schools are some of our elder buildings.
1:08:29 I don’t know the right word.
1:08:30 Aging.
1:08:31 Aging facilities.
1:08:32 And I have to say we’re in a district where our operations team,
1:08:36 whether that’s facilities, technology, they prioritize academic
1:08:42 needs first.
1:08:43 So continuing to work on what can we do in those spaces to make
1:08:47 people feel valued that we have done this work.
1:08:50 When we put in the new furniture at Madison, the reaction from
1:08:54 the kids was just incredible.
1:08:56 And so really continuing that.
1:08:58 No, no, no.
1:08:59 You’re our number one.
1:09:00 We’ve got you.
1:09:01 And so I want to quickly address some phase two recommendations.
1:09:06 And these would begin in as early as school year 25.
1:09:09 Again, knowing that we recognize the districts in transition and
1:09:14 we don’t want to overstate the priority sequencing for the board.
1:09:19 And so we definitely want to look at the schedule.
1:09:23 We want to look at is six periods better.
1:09:27 Teachers doing five out of six.
1:09:29 Are there block options that are better?
1:09:31 What are some options that make sense for what we know about
1:09:33 kids?
1:09:34 What we know about our teachers who are teaching six out of
1:09:37 seven in a middle school?
1:09:39 I would dare say is more difficult than anything else.
1:09:43 And what can we look at to do that?
1:09:46 We have lots of different analyses.
1:09:48 Sherry’s led a team with the principals and some potential
1:09:52 recommendations that we can kind of bring out at any point in
1:09:56 time.
1:09:56 But we felt like a major change like that would be appropriate
1:10:00 for when the new superintendent comes in.
1:10:03 Again, homeroom we think is important.
1:10:06 A place for Chris, what do you call that happy morning time?
1:10:10 What words did you use?
1:10:11 Smart start.
1:10:13 Thank you.
1:10:14 From our elementary friends, we learned the concept of smart
1:10:18 start.
1:10:19 Taking a few minutes every day in terms of getting sort of
1:10:22 baggage out of the way mindset.
1:10:24 Our great teachers do it now, right?
1:10:26 They give kids a moment to get settled and address any lingering
1:10:30 issues.
1:10:31 Having a smart start to the day.
1:10:33 And then obviously we want teachers to not have any burden of
1:10:37 that and bring together some curriculum writing for them.
1:10:41 We want to talk about how can we use exploratory wheel or semesters
1:10:46 or different configurations to give kids maximum exposure to
1:10:51 different programs.
1:10:53 Right?
1:10:54 Different ways and not necessarily having to have a full year
1:10:56 commitment.
1:10:57 Maybe they try music for a nine weeks or chorus for a nine weeks
1:11:01 or different things like that so they can dabble and find their
1:11:06 space.
1:11:07 And school counselor allocation.
1:11:10 This is probably the greatest problem I’m going to use.
1:11:13 Mira Trine as an example over here for Jefferson Middle School.
1:11:17 Our formula right now is up to 637 kids in a middle school, you
1:11:22 have the one counselor.
1:11:24 And that includes, they do ESC, they do MTSS, they do ESOL, they
1:11:30 do everything.
1:11:32 Up to 637 kids.
1:11:35 Miss Trine School is one that’s been coming in around 610.
1:11:40 And by the blessing of ESSER, we’ve been able to support that
1:11:44 second counselor.
1:11:46 Our elementary schools, take a look at that allocation, one to
1:11:50 750 in elementary.
1:11:52 So we recommended some modest improvements.
1:11:56 Obviously not necessarily best practices.
1:11:59 But we really think we’ve got to tackle that school counselor
1:12:02 allocation to at least improve where we’re at.
1:12:07 Not, you know, we know that ideal is another thing, but we’ve
1:12:10 really got to prove it.
1:12:12 The kids in that age band are so high need and so emotionally
1:12:17 driven.
1:12:18 And our resources are so dramatically low to where nearly all of
1:12:22 our schools, there’s only one allocation.
1:12:24 And they’re having to do so much technical work that that other
1:12:27 work gets left behind.
1:12:29 So we think that is very important.
1:12:32 And we want to continue work evaluating the exam policy and
1:12:35 overall grading expectations.
1:12:37 You saw that in those other slides.
1:12:39 So these are things, they’re not off the hook.
1:12:42 So this wasn’t their last meeting.
1:12:43 We still have more meetings scheduled.
1:12:45 But continuing really into this next year on tackling some other
1:12:50 topics.
1:12:51 And again, the team has just been joy.
1:12:54 This is them at the American Middle Level Educators Conference.
1:12:57 Being able to have the blessing of them all together, visiting
1:13:01 best practices from all over the country was just incredible.
1:13:07 I’m really proud of them.
1:13:08 And any of them or I can answer any lingering questions.
1:13:13 It’s great.
1:13:16 Thank you so much.
1:13:17 A lot to take in, but I’m going to give my fellow board members.
1:13:20 I see that Ms. Campbell has about three pages of notes over here.
1:13:23 I just wanted to give them the opportunity to speak.
1:13:26 So I usually turn this way.
1:13:28 Ms. Jenkins, did you want to go first?
1:13:30 Thank you, Dr. Sullivan and everyone involved.
1:13:39 Your slide about it depends the big X through it.
1:13:43 I really appreciate that because at a time when we are
1:13:46 continuously talking about school choice.
1:13:51 Yes, it’s wonderful that we want to give people the opportunity
1:13:55 to make choices.
1:13:56 But I’ve always argued that you shouldn’t have to make a choice.
1:14:00 You shouldn’t feel that you have to make a choice that your
1:14:03 local community school should have a standard level level of
1:14:06 opportunity and operation in order to level the place.
1:14:09 You shouldn’t have to make a choice.
1:14:11 You shouldn’t have to do that.
1:17:13 But I just want to throw it out there.
1:17:14 When you were proposing, not changing,
1:17:18 looking at schedules differently,
1:17:20 you know, one of the questions I have,
1:17:22 and of course, I didn’t get feedback
1:17:24 from every single middle school teacher
1:17:26 when this was happening.
1:17:27 But during COVID, when we had that block scheduling,
1:17:30 I felt like there was a lot of positive reactions
1:17:32 in some of our schools in terms of academic performance
1:17:35 of our students going up and then the discipline going down.
1:17:39 And so I’d be curious to see,
1:17:41 and I know you probably do
1:17:43 because you’re the data queen, the data on that.
1:17:45 And I think you probably presented to us like a year ago
1:17:47 at this point.
1:17:48 But just to take a look at that again.
1:17:49 Yeah.
1:17:50 And I would say the feedback is about as split as it can get.
1:17:54 On our survey online, we ask about that.
1:17:57 And it is a love it, hate it.
1:18:00 And people feel very strongly about loving it
1:18:02 and very strongly about hating it.
1:18:05 We feel strongly about that we need something different, right?
1:18:10 So we’re not strongly at which that different is.
1:18:13 We’re going to keep walking out.
1:18:14 We need a lot more stakeholder work just on scheduling.
1:18:18 But I don’t know if any of the principals want to comment
1:18:21 on the differences that you saw, Ms. Trine.
1:18:23 Do you want to take that one?
1:18:24 Yeah.
1:18:26 Ms. Delauder, do you want to add to that?
1:18:51 We’re looking at some hybrids.
1:18:53 Mr. Corso?
1:18:54 Yeah.
1:18:55 And talk a lot about theory, about what schedules look like.
1:18:56 We’d love to go to other schools that are doing it well and see
1:18:59 what they’re doing and how
1:19:01 they tackle different types of schedules.
1:19:04 Thank you.
1:19:05 I’m ready.
1:19:06 All right.
1:19:07 Ms. Jenkins, are you good?
1:19:09 Yeah.
1:19:10 Okay.
1:19:11 Ms. Campbell?
1:19:12 Well, first of all, I have to totally agree that middle school
1:19:14 is awesome.
1:19:15 Middle school is my jam.
1:19:17 And even though it’s been almost 19 years since I was a middle
1:19:20 school teacher, I still,
1:19:21 when I go sub, I may have a preference.
1:19:23 I may be in my, even though I only have two middle schools, I’m
1:19:25 probably in my middle
1:19:26 schools more than I am in my high schools, elementary schools.
1:19:28 Because, you know, just that’s my favorite.
1:19:32 But they are very special.
1:19:34 And the people who work.
1:19:35 I remember all the years that I did work as a middle school
1:19:38 teacher, people say, “What
1:19:39 do you do?
1:19:40 I’m a middle school teacher.”
1:19:41 Oh, God bless you.
1:19:42 Right?
1:19:43 Right.
1:19:44 If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it, you know, a hundred
1:19:45 times.
1:19:46 But this is really important work.
1:19:49 It’s really important work.
1:19:50 The data shows it to be important work.
1:19:52 We have to prioritize.
1:19:53 I’m so thankful for the work that all of you have done.
1:19:55 I know we didn’t have a room full of people applaud you, but
1:19:57 after she did the introduction
1:19:58 screen, I just wanted us to all, you know, applaud the team.
1:20:01 You know, I liken it to, like, when you have a newborn and you
1:20:04 swaddle them so they feel
1:20:06 secure, right?
1:20:07 Elementary is kind of like the swaddling.
1:20:08 And when you get them out of the swaddling, you don’t just put
1:20:10 them in the crib one day
1:20:11 completely unwrapped because then they’re flailing.
1:20:13 That’s kind of what middle school feels like.
1:20:16 And, you know, I’m in my last year of middle school as a parent,
1:20:22 but I will be sad because,
1:20:24 like I said, that’s one of my favorite schools to be a part of.
1:20:27 But having my kids going through this process, I see all these.
1:20:32 I have seen these up close with the gifted, with the kids with
1:20:37 the IEP, the ones in music,
1:20:39 the ones in sports, the ones who made it look easy, and the one
1:20:43 who’s – I hope this is
1:20:45 my last year as a middle school parent.
1:20:47 But so I just – this is really important work.
1:20:50 Thank you for using – for showing us the youth truth data.
1:20:54 There’s been a lot of conflict about youth truth data.
1:20:56 I think it was important for the community to see this is one of
1:20:58 the ways that we’re using it.
1:20:59 And it’s really important information for us to have.
1:21:02 I have a few concerns.
1:21:04 You know, we talked about more electives.
1:21:06 I, you know, I want to see the data.
1:21:09 This is heart reaction, not data reaction, because I haven’t
1:21:11 seen it.
1:21:12 But one of the things that we do for kids who make a one or a
1:21:16 two on their FSA is we put them in –
1:21:19 you guys know where I’m going with this – where you put them in
1:21:22 an intensive reading class,
1:21:22 or we put them in an instructional strategies class, and they
1:21:25 lose an elective.
1:21:26 And I can’t tell you how many times as a sub, either working as
1:21:31 a sub or as a school member filling in a sub,
1:21:33 in those types of classes, I’ve just seen the defeat and the
1:21:35 behavior issues.
1:21:36 And I can’t help but think that that is a drain on a student’s
1:21:41 motivation to be there.
1:21:43 And I know they need that.
1:21:45 They need that extra support.
1:21:47 And it’s not a downer on the teacher who teaches – teach those
1:21:50 classes.
1:21:51 But kids are losing the opportunity to be in band.
1:21:53 Sometimes PE, which that’s a worst nightmare for a kid who
1:21:56 really needs a fidget.
1:21:57 You just put them in another academic class.
1:21:59 I – as you guys are working through that, I – as a parent,
1:22:03 that – that bothers me.
1:22:06 Because the classes, like the music classes, the CTE classes,
1:22:09 those are the things that provide kids motivation for being
1:22:11 there, that sense of belonging.
1:22:12 And, of course, I was a music teacher, so I kind of have a bent
1:22:14 towards that.
1:22:15 But I will tell you another concern I have is the – about the
1:22:18 wheel idea.
1:22:19 I love the wheel idea for the kids who are out there like, you
1:22:21 know,
1:22:22 I don’t really know what I want to do.
1:22:24 But as a music teacher, I know that, you know, those – to me,
1:22:29 if the kids already know what they want to do, again, music,
1:22:32 band, art –
1:22:33 not just music, band, art, chorus, but also drama and art, those
1:22:38 kinds of things,
1:22:38 they provide such a – that sense of belonging.
1:22:42 My personal opinion, if every middle schooler was in a music
1:22:44 class,
1:22:45 they would have a different culture.
1:22:47 I’m not suggesting that.
1:22:48 But, you know, we – there is something about that.
1:22:51 So I don’t want anything that we do with the wheel ideas to take
1:22:54 away from the success
1:22:56 that students are already finding because they find that sense
1:22:58 of belonging
1:22:59 and that motivation to be in school.
1:23:00 That kind of ties together with the intensive reading concerns.
1:23:03 Typically, in those situations, there would be – let’s say I’m
1:23:07 a music teacher.
1:23:08 Mm-hmm.
1:23:09 There would be one, maybe two periods that are on a wheel.
1:23:12 Okay.
1:23:13 That are for exploratory for those seventh grade kids.
1:23:16 The rest of their classes are their traditional.
1:23:18 Yeah.
1:23:19 Right?
1:23:20 So typically what we see – we did it for a long time in this
1:23:22 district.
1:23:22 When I started as a teacher a while ago, it’s complementary to
1:23:28 the programs
1:23:29 and, in fact, creates a stronger feeder pull.
1:23:32 So it is definitely not in lieu of –
1:23:35 Right.
1:23:36 No, I hear you.
1:23:37 I hear you.
1:23:38 And it definitely – that kind of participatory class would be
1:23:40 better than –
1:23:42 Sometimes we’ll have like a – what – it’s called like a music
1:23:47 exploration class,
1:23:47 but it’s not fun.
1:23:50 I did like nine weeks of subbing in a class like that, and it
1:23:54 was not fun.
1:23:55 I’ll just leave it at that.
1:23:57 Because it’s a class that kids get stuck in.
1:23:59 You know, any class that kids get stuck in, it’s just a recipe
1:24:02 for behavior issues.
1:24:04 I just want to recognize the responsibility that so much of this
1:24:07 puts on our principles
1:24:07 because that culture point, that lies on you guys.
1:24:13 And getting the buy-in not just from the students but from the
1:24:16 staff is so important.
1:24:19 And – because you can go in there and you unilaterally make
1:24:21 changes.
1:24:22 We’re going to do this.
1:24:23 No.
1:24:24 Yeah.
1:24:25 Please don’t.
1:24:26 But I know you guys, you know, you recognize that.
1:24:29 And it takes some time for buy-in.
1:24:31 So there’s a lot of cheerleading that has to go on.
1:24:34 And I just want to recognize that weight of that responsibility
1:24:38 and to be a cheerleader.
1:24:39 Sometimes we don’t feel like a cheerleader.
1:24:42 Issue about focus.
1:24:44 Focus is so important.
1:24:45 It’s a powerful tool.
1:24:47 I will tell you as a middle school parent, one of my frustrations
1:24:51 has been every single teacher uses it a different way.
1:24:54 Yep.
1:24:55 And some use Google – so when my middle school son – I talk
1:24:59 about him more because my girls are like,
1:25:02 “Do you have homework?”
1:25:03 And they just did it.
1:25:04 I didn’t even have to ask him, right?
1:25:05 It’s just different for me.
1:25:07 But every school teacher does it differently.
1:25:09 Some use Google Classroom to find their homework.
1:25:11 Some use Focus to find their homework.
1:25:12 Some they write it on their planner to find their homework.
1:25:14 And as a parent, I’m having to say, “Look in all the places.
1:25:17 Look in all the things.”
1:25:18 And sometimes I’m still not finding it.
1:25:19 So that consistency is really important on the school side so
1:25:23 that parents can –
1:25:25 because if I really wanted to get frustrated, I’d be like, “I’m
1:25:28 just not looking at anything because I can’t find it.”
1:25:30 So that’s – I don’t want to lose – I don’t want parents to get
1:25:33 discouraged.
1:25:34 I love the campus monitor idea.
1:25:36 We’ve had that conversation before, you and I have, and I think
1:25:38 that would be really great to start it here with our middle
1:25:41 schools
1:25:42 because of the building relationships with a person – another
1:25:46 trusted person on campus to just be eyes and ears.
1:25:50 And just throwing this out there for the block schedule idea,
1:25:53 one of the places where I taught you guys to look at that in the
1:25:56 future.
1:25:57 It was an AB block, but it was a unique AB block where we had
1:26:00 what we called a constant period.
1:26:02 And so the middle period of the day, every day was the same
1:26:05 period.
1:26:06 So you really only – still only had seven classes.
1:26:08 But what it did was it created at the end of the day like a 30-minute
1:26:12 –
1:26:12 and it could be at the beginning, it could be at the end, it
1:26:13 didn’t matter –
1:26:14 but a 30-minute also – I can’t remember what we called it now
1:26:17 –
1:26:17 but where I could pull kids in for a choir rehearsal, kids could
1:26:20 go to tutoring, whatever.
1:26:22 We could use that time.
1:26:23 I don’t even know if that school district still uses anymore,
1:26:25 but it was helpful.
1:26:28 Except that constant period, I had the ISS room, so I had 90
1:26:31 minutes of ISS every day.
1:26:33 But other than that, I really enjoyed that schedule.
1:26:35 So just throwing that out there as an option.
1:26:37 Thank you.
1:26:39 Thank you, Ms. Campbell.
1:26:40 Mr. Trent.
1:26:41 Okay.
1:26:42 Well, thank you for all the work that you guys have been putting
1:26:47 in.
1:26:48 Wow.
1:26:49 I don’t envy your job on this, but I’m glad you stepped forward.
1:26:54 You’re the experts.
1:26:55 You’re the ones that are out there.
1:26:57 So – and thank you for putting it together, Dr. Sullivan, and
1:27:00 presenting it to us.
1:27:02 I’ve been through the middle school experience as a parent three
1:27:07 times – wait, four times.
1:27:10 I have five.
1:27:11 And I’m waiting to enter that with my fifth grade girl.
1:27:15 That’ll be interesting.
1:27:16 It’ll be the first girl through the middle school.
1:27:19 I think middle school starts with females and girls probably at
1:27:22 third grade compared to the boys.
1:27:25 That’s what I’m learning on the parenting end of it.
1:27:28 So – and I’ve also been through it on the teaching end of it.
1:27:32 And I have some people out there that was there.
1:27:35 It’s – and so it is, you know, I look at myself as I subbed for
1:27:40 two and a half years in the middle school,
1:27:42 even though I was teaching.
1:27:43 Oh, thank you.
1:27:44 It is definitely an experience.
1:27:47 I’m a high school teacher by trade.
1:27:49 I envy anyone who sticks it out in middle school.
1:27:54 It is a – it’s a different set of – it’s a skill set by you
1:27:57 teachers.
1:27:58 So thank you so much for doing that.
1:28:02 I – I completely – I’m just going to – we consider all day of
1:28:05 what I think could and couldn’t work.
1:28:07 But again, I just can’t wait to just keep getting the feedback
1:28:10 and – and you guys are doing it.
1:28:12 So I look forward to that.
1:28:13 On the counseling end of things, I might have missed it.
1:28:16 I think – I think it was Ms. Jenkins that mentions 250.
1:28:19 But what is – what is best practices?
1:28:21 Is there a national organization that says it needs a counselor
1:28:24 per student?
1:28:25 Is – is what –
1:28:26 There is.
1:28:27 There is a national organization we’re putting together for the
1:28:29 board information on that.
1:28:31 And around 250 is indeed the sweet spot.
1:28:36 You know, that would be incredibly difficult just in terms of
1:28:39 capacity.
1:28:40 Right.
1:28:41 And so what we sometimes look at is how can we complement the
1:28:44 guidance team
1:28:45 to where the guidance counselors that are there are better
1:28:47 supported.
1:28:48 Sometimes it’s clerical, right?
1:28:50 So – so sometimes the solution when there is not a – when
1:28:55 there’s a dearth of certified teachers is what can we do
1:28:58 differently.
1:28:59 And so we’re looking at what can we do in terms of clerical
1:29:02 support and additional support.
1:29:04 We do want to lower it a little to where a school with 600-plus
1:29:07 doesn’t have one counselor.
1:29:09 Also, what team can we provide those counselors to help with the
1:29:14 work that doesn’t require their very special talent?
1:29:17 I don’t need them at a copy machine, right?
1:29:19 Right.
1:29:20 So – so we’re looking to balance what we realistically can get.
1:29:24 We have the ability to look at the number of people in the state
1:29:27 that are certified in an area.
1:29:29 And there’s not enough certified people in the state.
1:29:33 So how do we – how do we tackle the problem instead of just
1:29:37 giving up and say what other supports can we give our counselors?
1:29:41 So we’ve got a little project team working on that right now and
1:29:44 evaluating the national standards against what we realistically
1:29:48 think we can do to help our counselors.
1:29:50 That’s good to hear.
1:29:51 I spent my last few years in the guidance area as a testing
1:29:56 coordinator.
1:29:57 And they are – and they are – they need help.
1:30:00 Yeah.
1:30:01 They’re dying.
1:30:02 They’re professional pencil pushers.
1:30:03 And they just feel – many of them are just – they feel sad
1:30:05 because you don’t become a counselor unless you’re really
1:30:10 wanting to help students.
1:30:11 And they’re just hand-tied.
1:30:13 Well, example is the counselor on the team couldn’t get away
1:30:15 today.
1:30:16 So –
1:30:17 Yeah.
1:30:18 Right.
1:30:19 That’s a living example.
1:30:20 Yeah.
1:30:21 And just like we have bus drivers and teachers and IAs that are
1:30:24 looking for other avenues because
1:30:26 they’re not able to do the things that they’re hired to do.
1:30:29 Counselors are doing the same things.
1:30:30 Yeah.
1:30:31 And they are – they are leaving.
1:30:33 And we need their help.
1:30:35 So –
1:30:36 Yeah.
1:30:37 Through one of our grants, we piloted guidance IAs, particularly
1:30:42 MTSS IAs.
1:30:43 We’ve got them at 10 elementary schools and one high school
1:30:46 right now to actually support the guidance team on data
1:30:49 gathering and all those related services.
1:30:52 And – and – those that have them know that they’ve become an
1:30:57 invaluable member of the team.
1:31:00 And we can train them in skills to take some of those like logistical
1:31:04 things off the counselors.
1:31:06 Go ahead.
1:31:07 Thank you so much for that.
1:31:08 And I’ll – I’ll be the big campus monitor support person.
1:31:12 It – it is – they have done amazing things.
1:31:16 I’ve – I’ve spent some time at Cocoa Beach and – and – and we
1:31:18 have a campus monitor there.
1:31:20 And I – I can’t imagine not having a campus without one.
1:31:24 So we have – we’ve – we’ve – we’ve used him to the fullest
1:31:28 and I – I can – I can see the advantages there.
1:31:31 So again, thank you everyone that is on that team and we look
1:31:34 forward to implementing some of these recommendations.
1:31:38 Thank you.
1:31:39 Mr. Wright.
1:31:40 All right.
1:31:41 I am so glad that we’re having this conversation right now about
1:31:44 reimagining middle schools.
1:31:46 Because honestly, when I think of this idea that we expect every
1:31:49 student to arrive at school at the same time, learn the same
1:31:52 things.
1:31:53 You know, we test in the same way.
1:31:55 And all of our students aren’t going to be the same thing in
1:31:57 life.
1:31:58 And so this idea of reimagining middle schools, I think, is very
1:32:01 appropriate right now, especially in light of legislation that’s
1:32:04 changing that’s going to give more choices to parents.
1:32:06 So I’m excited about this opportunity.
1:32:08 I think this is a really good opportunity for us to do some
1:32:10 amazing things.
1:32:11 Thank you to this team.
1:32:12 You guys are rock stars.
1:32:13 So we appreciate you tremendously.
1:32:15 There’s a few things that I wrote notes here for and I just –
1:32:17 some of them are questions.
1:32:19 Some of them are just things that I want to kind of talk about.
1:32:22 Ms. Campbell, I think, referred to focus.
1:32:25 Focus is one of those things that, like she said, is used so
1:32:28 differently.
1:32:29 I think it would be very beneficial if we looked at maybe even
1:32:32 having a focus representative come in and maybe walk us through.
1:32:35 How to tap into all the potential that focus has.
1:32:39 Even from the discipline aspect of things, because I have heard
1:32:43 that there are certain things that focus can grab and maybe help
1:32:47 us track a little better when it comes to discipline as well.
1:32:49 So I think if we had a uniform standard that we expected from
1:32:52 our schools, that would help parents.
1:32:55 I am one of those parents, like you, that has had different
1:32:57 experiences depending on which child it is, which teacher it is,
1:33:00 when it comes to focus.
1:33:01 And so that would be beneficial.
1:33:04 One of the other things – I love the idea of these teaching
1:33:07 teams.
1:33:08 And I actually – when I go to my schools, I see the benefit of
1:33:10 this.
1:33:11 And this is tremendous to have a team that you kind of – you’re
1:33:14 there together.
1:33:16 You’re in the trenches together.
1:33:17 And you guys are finding solutions to the problems you have.
1:33:20 One of the things that I just hope that we as a district make
1:33:23 sure we do is we keep our teams together.
1:33:25 We don’t want to break up a team that’s working and doing a good
1:33:27 job because some of our teams have been together for a long time.
1:33:29 And so we want to make sure that we keep them where they’re at
1:33:31 and they’re thriving.
1:33:33 The service learning.
1:33:34 I wanted to ask – I think it was Miss Kathy, right, from Hoover.
1:33:38 Does every one of the kids take a service learning class or just
1:33:42 an elective that they participate in?
1:33:44 Yeah, absolutely.
1:34:00 I love this idea because, honestly, I think that really gets buy-in
1:34:03 from the children to be able to say,
1:34:04 “Hey, this is my school.
1:34:05 This is my community.
1:34:06 I have a voice here.
1:34:07 I have a part and a role to play.”
1:34:09 And so I love, love, love that.
1:34:11 I love the campus monitors.
1:34:12 I think that’s something that we definitely need to put in place.
1:34:14 One of the common things I hear is that our hot spots, our issue
1:34:17 areas are our bathrooms.
1:34:19 That’s like a constant every school.
1:34:21 And now it’s even happening in an elementary level, which is odd
1:34:24 that they have bathrooms in their pods.
1:34:26 But it’s still – it’s an area that needs constant monitoring.
1:34:29 So campus monitors are tremendous there.
1:34:31 I’m a huge advocate for that.
1:34:32 I like the block scheduling.
1:34:34 And I know this is one of those 50/50, you love it or you hate
1:34:37 it.
1:34:38 But I think one of the hard things that we see for kids coming
1:34:41 from elementary school is that they’ve spent years and years and
1:34:44 years in the same school, right?
1:34:45 So they know the staff.
1:34:46 They know their librarian.
1:34:47 They know their front desk clerk.
1:34:48 They know their nurse.
1:34:49 They know these people.
1:34:50 And their familiar faces.
1:34:52 But now they go into a middle school and they’re changing class
1:34:54 periods.
1:34:55 It’s a whole new – you know, now you have a bunch of schools
1:34:57 coming together.
1:34:58 So you don’t know everybody that’s there.
1:34:59 So I think the block scheduling gives some stability to the fact
1:35:02 that there’s more time in that class with those educators.
1:35:06 I like the block scheduling mentality.
1:35:08 I think it’s a good transition, especially if they’re going from
1:35:10 not necessarily changing classes.
1:35:12 I know they sort of do in fifth and sixth grade.
1:35:15 It’s a little different at each school.
1:35:16 But I think it gives a good transition into high school.
1:35:19 So it’s something I think we should look at exploring.
1:35:22 And I just thank you guys.
1:35:23 You guys are doing amazing work.
1:35:25 And middle school is – it is a specialty by all means.
1:35:28 And that’s really when kids are really deciding which path they’re
1:35:30 going to take.
1:35:31 And they’re trying to figure out who they are.
1:35:33 So it truly is a calling.
1:35:34 And I’m grateful to you guys for being invested there.
1:35:37 It’s amazing that we have so many great people in Brevard County.
1:35:39 So thank you for all you do.
1:35:41 One of the things about – one of the things about being chair
1:35:45 is by the time you get to go,
1:35:47 everybody’s already talked about everything.
1:35:48 Are you not going to say anything?
1:35:50 No, no.
1:35:51 I have to speak.
1:35:52 So anyways, I just wanted to say thank you for everything that
1:35:56 you guys do.
1:35:57 I really appreciate it.
1:35:59 There was a time period when I kept – I heard you guys were
1:36:01 meeting.
1:36:02 And I kept trying to go meet with you guys and say, look, this
1:36:04 is what we need to do, right?
1:36:06 And I get told by everybody, you can’t go in there.
1:36:08 You can’t.
1:36:09 So I’ve been waiting.
1:36:10 Of course you can.
1:36:11 No, no, no, no.
1:36:12 Because I have a tendency to just start like throwing stuff
1:36:14 around and everything else.
1:36:15 So I was told to just wait.
1:36:16 And I’ve been waiting for this moment.
1:36:18 And I can’t be happier.
1:36:19 What you guys have put forward literally, like I am so excited.
1:36:22 There may not be another as excited moment inside of school
1:36:25 board as I am right now with you guys.
1:36:27 Because of all the student congress, service learning, block
1:36:30 scheduling.
1:36:31 I mean, these were all things that I did when I was teaching.
1:36:33 And I know them very well.
1:36:34 And I know how much they impact students.
1:36:36 So I wanted to say thank you.
1:36:37 There was one thing as I was waiting as you were going like 24,
1:36:40 25.
1:36:41 I was waiting.
1:36:42 When is football going to be showing up on this thing?
1:36:44 I said, wait, wait, wait.
1:36:46 So I had said that you had said that there’s like sort of a
1:36:48 supplement, like we got to look at athletics from a larger
1:36:52 perspective of feeding and all that other stuff.
1:36:54 So just out of ideas.
1:36:55 Yeah.
1:36:56 Is it possible that we could do something in 25?
1:36:58 Yeah.
1:36:59 I want my daughter to be a kicker.
1:37:00 That’s why.
1:37:01 So one of the – we had hoped last year to be our trial year for
1:37:04 the other intramurals.
1:37:06 Yeah.
1:37:07 So volleyball and soccer.
1:37:08 Supply chain, logistical woes.
1:37:11 So the principals, one of the things they sort of universally
1:37:14 felt was like give us a minute.
1:37:16 Let’s see how this works and let’s see where the demand is next.
1:37:20 So for school year 24, I didn’t have it on the slide, honestly,
1:37:23 because it’s operational.
1:37:25 Yeah.
1:37:26 We’re ready to go.
1:37:27 I think Ms. Vega has been at the warehouse getting the equipment
1:37:30 shipped.
1:37:31 So our number one priority is adding that and then seeing what
1:37:36 that garners.
1:37:38 And then looking at, again, our sixth grade.
1:37:40 Sure.
1:37:41 I really – I can’t emphasize it enough for the elementary
1:37:44 representatives on the team.
1:37:46 We are doing parallel work to really create an identity in that
1:37:50 almost like – and, you know,
1:37:52 when we talked about branding, when you walk into this hallway,
1:37:55 it looks different, the signs are different,
1:37:57 that it is part of, you know, you’re entering middle school, and
1:38:00 we want to add it there too.
1:38:01 So absolutely on the table.
1:38:04 I happen, you know, to know someone over athletics right now.
1:38:08 And so we will definitely look it out.
1:38:11 We just have to be careful because capacity of our schools as
1:38:13 well.
1:38:14 We want to be super mindful.
1:38:16 You don’t have fields at the middle school either.
1:38:18 So it’s kind of difficult.
1:38:19 I get it.
1:38:21 But I was just –
1:38:22 We have soccer fields.
1:38:23 Yeah.
1:38:24 I got more activities for sure.
1:38:25 And then do you have a volleyball program at Jefferson?
1:38:30 There was a couple of volleyball programs that came up this year.
1:38:34 I had just gotten a slew of requests that they play each other
1:38:38 in some kind of a, like, thing at the end of the year.
1:38:41 Is that something we can pull off?
1:38:43 You know, we have our basketball where boys and girls are
1:38:46 cheering in the fall.
1:38:47 And then we have our back programs that are driving here in the
1:38:49 spring.
1:38:50 And the plan was to have volleyball and soccer.
1:38:53 We never got the equipment.
1:38:54 So some schools – it depends.
1:38:56 It’s often that they have the soccer equipment.
1:38:59 Some schools have some volleyball nets, so they try to do
1:39:01 volleyball.
1:39:02 But I don’t think we really gave it the –
1:39:05 Yeah.
1:39:06 The –
1:39:06 No, it’s understandable.
1:39:07 I just –
1:39:08 Next year, if we have all that, we’ll have a definite winter
1:39:11 volleyball and soccer interviewer program.
1:39:13 And maybe we can do, like, a – at the end, you can do, like, a
1:39:16 neighboring school where you play them.
1:39:18 Or you can do, like, a tournament at the end.
1:39:20 And we have some, you know, inter-school –
1:39:23 They –
1:39:24 They’re talking right now.
1:39:26 Their season is ending, like, right now.
1:39:28 Exactly.
1:39:29 And track’s getting – somebody – basketball’s getting ready to
1:39:31 start.
1:39:32 Track ends in two weeks.
1:39:34 Volleyball.
1:39:35 Volleyball is ending.
1:39:36 Yeah.
1:39:37 So some schools have it, and they’re requesting to play each
1:39:39 other.
1:39:40 But they’re requesting right now to play each other.
1:39:42 Yeah.
1:39:43 Can we pull this off, Dr. Sullivan?
1:39:44 I know nothing of these words you speak.
1:39:47 But, like you said, it’s been about a week since athletics has
1:39:51 been under me.
1:39:53 But I can certainly find out.
1:39:55 Let’s –
1:39:56 I think, again, our – we were picturing tournament style, like,
1:39:59 at the end.
1:40:00 And, like, an all-day kind of Saturday tournament style, which
1:40:03 would decrease the burden on transportation and other resources.
1:40:07 I don’t know if you want me to ask if other schools are doing it.
1:40:10 Because I don’t know if we want that answer.
1:40:12 So –
1:40:13 I’ll just – I’ll give them with you.
1:40:14 I’ll show you the ones that want, too.
1:40:15 Absolutely.
1:40:16 Maybe we can pull something together.
1:40:17 Yeah.
1:40:18 I did want to tell everybody that this is a unique factor that
1:40:20 not many people talk about.
1:40:21 But all of our school board members actually have children that
1:40:23 are inside of the schools.
1:40:24 And that’s the first time in Brevard County history, as far as
1:40:27 school board members, that you do.
1:40:30 So you have a unique good opportunity that we know kind of what’s
1:40:32 going on.
1:40:33 And the bad one that we have, you know what I mean, our kids
1:40:35 inside the schools.
1:40:36 So I wanted to tell you from the bottom of our heart that that
1:40:39 comes from a good place.
1:40:41 I do the hands-on projects that they spoke to.
1:40:44 So I had an opportunity when I was approached in 2006 to bring
1:40:48 on – it was FCATs.
1:40:51 And they had some kids that were really bad at FCAT.
1:40:53 And there was a math piece.
1:40:55 I can’t remember what it was.
1:40:56 It was in like ninth or tenth grade.
1:40:58 And the spinner at the time asked me, he says, can you put
1:41:00 together a hands-on project?
1:41:01 Teach these kids as a mentor and stuff like that.
1:41:03 So I looked up in Japan where they do these project-based
1:41:05 learning where they just literally will throw together like a
1:41:09 tribuche is what I used.
1:41:11 And they just throw the wood out there.
1:41:12 And the kids build it and all that stuff.
1:41:13 And then we launched potato or pumpkins out at the baseball
1:41:16 field.
1:41:17 And literally the kids – the whole process of learning how to
1:41:20 do that and everything else, these kids became geniuses, scored
1:41:23 fives on the FCATs at the time.
1:41:25 And it was just one of those things that these kids were level
1:41:27 ones, but because they got that hands-on.
1:41:29 So I really applaud you going in that direction because I know
1:41:32 how much that means.
1:41:33 The other thing is the block scheduling.
1:41:35 I couldn’t agree with you more.
1:41:36 I actually taught block at Space Coast.
1:41:38 Here’s my experience.
1:41:40 Block scheduling as a roaming teacher with 39 kids teaching
1:41:44 American history for an hour and a half in somebody else’s
1:41:47 classroom.
1:41:48 And it was the best class in the world.
1:41:49 I still talk to those kids every day.
1:41:50 And as long as you know how to engage it and you’re given the
1:41:53 proper procedures of how to do that, it’s very successful.
1:41:56 And I applaud you, Ms. Wright, for talking about the transition
1:42:00 from elementary to middle school and having that as part of that.
1:42:04 I know that my other daughter, when she was in Fairfax, Virginia,
1:42:08 she was on a multi-block scheduling.
1:42:10 So some classes like science where they have the lab were
1:42:13 available to be on block, whereas other ones that you may not
1:42:16 want to.
1:42:17 So those might be some opportunities to give us some great
1:42:19 things.
1:42:20 I think that that’s awesome.
1:42:21 But I do want to say as the other 50%, it was tough in the
1:42:25 beginning, but I was able to get through it because I had some
1:42:27 great mentor teachers.
1:42:29 And I think that that was something to look at, and I wanted to
1:42:32 reemphasize that.
1:42:33 Service learning, I also taught that.
1:42:34 It was a dump class.
1:42:35 So we got all the kids that literally had nowhere else to go
1:42:38 that were discipline issues.
1:42:40 Spinner put them in one room, and then he made me teach the
1:42:42 class in my first year, right?
1:42:44 So here I was with this service learning class trying to engage
1:42:46 them all.
1:42:47 And what ended up happening is they became the best service
1:42:50 learners.
1:42:51 So when you had said that you moved away from that higher tier
1:42:53 of individuals to allowing the other kids,
1:42:56 some of these kids from the bottom of their heart would love to
1:42:59 give even though they don’t have the GPAs.
1:43:01 And what ends up happening is you watch what they do is astronomically
1:43:06 past what you would normally see out of some of the other
1:43:07 children.
1:43:08 So I wanted to say if there’s anything in that realm of allowing
1:43:10 those students to do that, that’s a great thing.
1:43:13 And thank you so much for that.
1:43:15 Let me just do this.
1:43:17 I have all of these written.
1:43:19 I was so excited to move through this thing.
1:43:21 I honestly couldn’t stop.
1:43:23 But I did just want to say I’m literally so excited about what
1:43:26 you guys are doing.
1:43:27 The Congress and the, you know, service learning.
1:43:31 The Congress, we have model student senate that every year they
1:43:33 come here and they compete.
1:43:35 Like I was one of those instructors when I was doing it.
1:43:37 I would love that when you guys put this together next year to
1:43:39 have the students come here.
1:43:41 Because I would love them to feel a part of our governing system
1:43:44 too.
1:43:45 And some other things, but I would love to see that kind of
1:43:47 stuff.
1:43:48 So applaud everything you guys are doing.
1:43:51 Thank you very much.
1:43:52 Can I go to some of the meetings now?
1:43:54 Because you guys actually have like a plan.
1:43:56 We actually have a plan now.
1:43:57 So I can’t like interrupt it.
1:43:58 Anyone’s welcome.
1:43:59 And I have to say to the participants that have from the
1:44:02 community from just have just popped in on our meetings.
1:44:06 They’ve been invaluable.
1:44:07 So we really appreciate that.
1:44:08 I do have to take this chance to make one last plug.
1:44:11 On May 1st, we’re going to roll out our summer enrichment
1:44:15 programs.
1:44:16 And they are plentiful and just amazing.
1:44:21 The ones in our middle schools will serve incoming seventh
1:44:24 graders.
1:44:25 So it’s a great opportunity for the students to get to know the
1:44:28 campus.
1:44:29 We are doing everything from lifeguarding to scuba diving to
1:44:33 ceramics to –
1:44:34 We’re running comprehensive STEM program.
1:44:37 Yeah, we’ve got it all.
1:44:38 Like getting their licenses, scuba diving?
1:44:40 Correct.
1:44:41 They would actually get their official license.
1:44:42 Where are we doing this at?
1:44:43 Rockledge.
1:44:44 Rockledge High Mid-Z.
1:44:45 At the pool?
1:44:46 Yes, in the pool.
1:44:47 Our swim coach there is an Olympian.
1:44:49 She’s pretty amazing.
1:44:50 So she’s running programs all summer long.
1:44:53 From the north area, we’re running middle school STEM immersive
1:44:57 programs.
1:44:58 That include field trips to the Space Center, Orlando Science
1:45:02 Center, Mosey Science Center.
1:45:04 And we’re running them out of Madison, Cocoa, Stone, and
1:45:09 Southwest.
1:45:10 Just extensive programming all free to our families.
1:45:16 And so we really hope that our families take advantage of it
1:45:19 again.
1:45:20 Students can learn to play guitar.
1:45:21 Just anything that you can imagine, our amazing teachers are
1:45:25 offering.
1:45:26 We’re offering our first – our amazing teacher at Southwest is
1:45:30 teaching students sort of layman auto mechanics, oil changes,
1:45:34 all that kind of stuff.
1:45:35 So on May 1st, the sign up will be out.
1:45:39 And so just really encourage our community, especially in this
1:45:43 space for our sixth graders to take programs in seventh grade.
1:45:46 Our four STEM classes are actually going to have rising sixth,
1:45:48 seventh, and eighth graders.
1:45:50 So lots of opportunities there.
1:45:51 Busings included.
1:45:52 Foods including.
1:45:53 All kinds of stuff.
1:45:54 Awesome.
1:45:55 So it’s coming soon.
1:45:56 I just have to say, you and the team have squeezed everything.
1:46:02 last dollar out of this Esser money yes we have such great ways
1:46:06 and we continue
1:46:07 to be creatively squeezing every last penny and so great job on
1:46:11 this team but
1:46:12 also the Esser team because every pretty great team yes it was a
1:46:16 blessing to have
1:46:17 it but you guys are using in some strategic ways and I very much
1:46:20 and we’re
1:46:20 doing middle school musical theater one at Cocoa Beach and one
1:46:24 at Melbourne and
1:46:26 those are rising young ones too so lots of cool stuff coming my
1:46:29 daughter’s
1:46:30 actually going from 6th to 7th grade this year I have one going
1:46:33 lots of
1:46:34 opportunities they’re all coming so May 1st we’ll be working
1:46:38 with government
1:46:38 community relations to blast out all the registration links yeah
1:46:42 I’m laughing
1:46:43 right now because I’m looking over at Russ and he had said that
1:46:45 he wanted to
1:46:46 put like a press release out about what we’re doing right now
1:46:49 and I’m trying to
1:46:49 figure out how the heck he’s gonna do that in the short like
1:46:52 what do you do
1:46:53 like 400 words because there’s so much stuff here that it’s
1:46:56 gonna be incredible
1:46:57 so I’m really excited yeah thank you all very much thank you for
1:47:01 your time I have
1:47:01 one more thing I need to say yeah I I will punch myself if I
1:47:05 forget to say this and I
1:47:06 apologize it’s ridiculous that I forgot to bring this up but I
1:47:09 didn’t flip the
1:47:10 page one of the things that I care so passionately about and it
1:47:17 was it’s on the
1:47:18 presentation but I just I feel the need to make the pitch and I
1:47:21 know that mr.
1:47:22 brown is on the team so we’ve got the best of the best when it
1:47:25 comes to this but
1:47:26 one of the areas that I am deeply concerned about is our ESC
1:47:30 students our
1:47:31 students on IEPs and 504s how drastically different their
1:47:34 experiences and their
1:47:35 support is when they go from elementary school to middle school
1:47:39 it is wildly
1:47:41 different and for some of our students with significant needs it’s
1:47:44 borderline
1:47:45 deficient and so I know that that’s something we’re considering
1:47:50 you were
1:47:50 talking about it in the presentation but I hope that we continue
1:47:52 to make that a
1:47:53 priority and a focus for our students as well as focusing on the
1:47:57 families and
1:47:58 having them understand that transition of what their students
1:48:01 and what they can
1:48:02 expect their students are going to get when they get into middle
1:48:04 school because
1:48:05 some of them don’t understand that there is a significant
1:48:08 difference there and so
1:48:10 thank you sorry thank you dr. Sullivan I a couple of the board
1:48:16 members have said that
1:48:17 they don’t mind to keep going but I was going to give the
1:48:19 opportunity for us to
1:48:20 take a five-minute break if you needed to if you guys are okay
1:48:22 we can keep moving
1:48:24 let’s go let’s roll okay thank you everybody for coming thank
1:48:30 you so much for
1:48:31 your dedication we really appreciate it now moving back that
1:48:35 concludes the the
1:48:37 reimagining task force update the next topic is transportation
1:48:41 incentive proposal
1:48:43 are we ready for that is dr. Miller proposing this what’s he
1:48:49 doing
1:48:50 and I just want to say I appreciate the additional time for what
1:48:57 your guests and feel like we’ve come to a very good place and so
1:48:57 what’s now on your agenda for discussion today is in summary we’re
1:48:57 looking at a $25 of a run for hearing that your students
1:48:57 come to the first round we’re looking to go to the first round
1:49:04 we’re looking for $25 for all drivers
1:49:04 coming to double back for any other routes after the first round
1:49:10 we’re looking for $25 for all drivers having to double back for
1:49:14 any other routes after the first round we’re looking for $25 for
1:49:18 all drivers having to double back for any other routes we’re
1:49:24 looking for
1:49:24 we’re looking for $25 for all drivers having to double back for
1:49:31 all drivers having to double back for all drivers
1:49:31 and we are proposing an incentive of $2,500 for mechanics,
1:49:36 performance, and this entire package can be covered through ESSEN,
1:49:42 so, and Stanley mentioned the good work done by the test team,
1:49:45 and we can cover the test team reports about the relevant team,
1:49:49 this has really been a cost-functional project, and we can have
1:49:53 almost every cabinet member with the test team, and we can learn
1:49:57 to ignore it and talk about how to execute this project.
1:50:01 So, if they’re comfortable, if they’re using the issue, if you
1:50:06 might be full of this, if you haven’t on the phone, you might be
1:50:09 able to act upon, at least that if it’s started in our system,
1:50:14 our goal is to be receiving those drivers taking out additional
1:50:18 routes for tomorrow, they would send that in there, if it’s
1:50:22 going to be in the future, is that sort of a thing that we need
1:50:27 to go there?
1:50:30 Perfect explanation, I would ask if the board would, we can
1:50:33 discuss this now, or we can wait until tonight when everybody’s
1:50:36 there and a lot of the bus drivers are going to be there and
1:50:39 stuff like that, so whatever you guys want to do.
1:50:42 I would suggest that we talk about it now and go ahead and give
1:50:45 our direction, and we can talk about it tonight, too, but I mean,
1:50:48 she’s asking for us direction so we can put it on the agenda.
1:50:51 I was saying we could give direction, but the deep dive
1:50:53 discussion and the, you know what I mean, those kind of
1:50:55 conversations we might be able to do tonight, but, all right, so
1:50:58 Ms. Campbell, go ahead.
1:50:59 Thank you, I appreciate this, I think I’m, this is one of those
1:51:03 situations where I’m glad we had ESSER because reading the
1:51:05 documents that you sent us today or yesterday, it looks like we
1:51:08 didn’t have as much in the kitty as we thought we did, and so I
1:51:13 appreciate that we found a way, the staff found a way, not we,
1:51:17 as a district we found a way to make it happen.
1:51:19 Just to clarify, so I know you guys have been in contact with
1:51:23 the 1010 union, so this is not something that has to be right,
1:51:27 but we can just, because they’ve already given their approval,
1:51:30 we can move it on through.
1:51:31 Okay, okay, so that, because otherwise we can’t get it done by
1:51:36 April 28th if we have to do it in a more complicated way, so I
1:51:40 appreciate that.
1:51:41 No, I am in support of the plan that you guys have created, and
1:51:45 I appreciate it very much.
1:51:46 Ms. Jenkins.
1:51:48 Yeah, I’m not going to spend too much time on this, Ms. Campbell
1:51:51 basically asked what I was going to ask, making sure that 1010
1:51:54 was a part of this, and, you know, when this is articulated
1:51:57 tonight, I think it would be helpful to make that very clear
1:51:59 that those conversations were had.
1:52:02 Mr. Trent, no need to take any extra time.
1:52:06 Good.
1:52:06 We’re good.
1:52:07 Thank you for all the work on that.
1:52:08 Ms. Wright.
1:52:10 All right, I am wearing, I don’t know if you can see these or
1:52:14 not, but I am wearing bus driver earrings today.
1:52:18 They have buses on them.
1:52:19 I just want to say thank you to this team, because let me tell
1:52:22 you, since January, when Mr. Wilson and I started our tours, boy,
1:52:25 did we just start them, right?
1:52:27 I’m like, this was a, I didn’t know we were getting into when we
1:52:30 started this, but we started going and looking at these depots
1:52:33 and talking to our drivers and our staff, and it was very
1:52:36 apparent something had to be done, and it had to be done
1:52:38 immediately, and here we are in April.
1:52:40 I mean, this is, I guess, immediate in government timeline terms,
1:52:44 but I just want to thank you guys for the support on this one.
1:52:48 This one will be a huge win.
1:52:49 I think our drivers will be very appreciative.
1:52:52 This is a thank you for them picking up where we needed them,
1:52:55 and they stepped in, and they went above and beyond, and the
1:52:58 same thing with our mechanics.
1:52:59 So we need to make sure that the people that we have in place
1:53:02 understand that we appreciate them, that we see you working
1:53:05 these double backs, these triple backs, working the extra hours,
1:53:08 and we appreciate you guys tremendously.
1:53:11 So I am very excited about this.
1:53:12 That’s all I’ll say.
1:53:13 I’m wearing these bus driver earrings in hopes that this gets
1:53:16 across tonight.
1:53:17 Yeah, and I’ll speak some more tonight about it, but one of the
1:53:20 things I agree, concur, moving forward, something to think about
1:53:24 since scheduling is a thing.
1:53:25 I think this is massive, what we’re doing here.
1:53:28 This is going to be a huge opportunity, and a lot of the credit
1:53:31 goes to some of the board members here and everything else, but
1:53:34 Dr. Miller, if it’s okay with you, I may want to come up and
1:53:37 cheer the bus drivers on tomorrow morning.
1:53:40 I may go to one of these places, you know what I mean, we can
1:53:43 kind of divide it up if we have the scheduling, but it would be
1:53:45 nice for us to send this message out.
1:53:48 Bruin files the, you know what I mean, the press release, and
1:53:51 then we show up and say thank you, because I think that what you’ve
1:53:54 gone through and what you’re continuing to go through is
1:53:56 absolutely beyond what you ever thought you would do,
1:54:00 and I think that this is all on your backs, and I wanted to say
1:54:04 thank you.
1:54:05 So, you know, we’ll try to do something like that, but I think
1:54:08 you got your direction, and we’re ready to go.
1:54:10 Okay, Ms. Wright, you had something to say.
1:54:12 Go ahead.
1:54:12 I know you’re excited about this.
1:54:13 I got a whole thing for you later on tonight.
1:54:15 I know.
1:54:15 I want to say one more thing.
1:54:16 This is a temporary fix to a problem that is not going away.
1:54:19 I don’t think that we will see the shortage of bus drivers be
1:54:23 resolved until we take our minimum pay rate, our starting pay
1:54:26 rate, up significantly.
1:54:27 So I’m just putting that on the record board.
1:54:29 Be aware of it.
1:54:30 That’s something that we’re going to have to make sure we
1:54:32 allocate appropriately for, because when I look around the state,
1:54:35 Brevard County is pretty low in their hourly rate.
1:54:38 And I was looking at that as a conversation from Ms. Han is that
1:54:41 we may want to have those conversations prior to people leaving
1:54:44 so that they know that we appreciate them before they go,
1:54:46 and that message goes out that this is what you will be getting.
1:54:49 Go ahead.
1:54:50 Just to highlight, too, that this proposal takes us from January
1:54:54 to the end of our school year.
1:54:56 This is not next year’s proposal, so we’re going to need to talk
1:54:59 about that as part of the budget development.
1:55:01 So, yes, thank you for bringing that up.
1:55:03 That’s awesome.
1:55:04 So, without any more further discussion on the transportation
1:55:07 initiative, thank you, Dr. Miller, for coming today.
1:55:10 I appreciate it.
1:55:11 The next one we have is conscious discipline proposal.
1:55:14 I think we have our esteemed former principal of Ralph Williams.
1:55:19 So, come on up, ma’am.
1:55:20 And Endeavor.
1:55:22 Endeavor.
1:55:23 And Endeavor.
1:55:24 Endeavor.
1:55:29 I remember when you decided to move to Endeavor and the heck
1:55:32 that I dealt with inside my school,
1:55:34 inside that Vieira East community, which we’ll hear a couple
1:55:36 from them later on tonight over this middle school thing.
1:55:39 But, like, you were like, I thought, it was like my first year
1:55:42 and he was like the greatest, dude, we can’t leave him, he’s so
1:55:46 amazing.
1:55:46 Like, I was like, who is this guy?
1:55:48 Anyways, go ahead.
1:55:50 Okay, thank you Ms. Hand and members of the board for this
1:56:02 chance to share some important information about the work we’ve
1:56:07 been doing in conscious discipline.
1:56:09 My name is Chris Reed, I’m one of the directors in student
1:56:12 services and I get to share the great work that we’ve done over
1:56:14 the last couple of years.
1:56:15 I bring with me Kathleen Erdman, who’s been my sidekick in this
1:56:19 adventure here, that’s been assisting me in this important work.
1:56:22 And this information hopefully is to help you be armed with
1:56:25 information for the proposal that we’re looking to move forward
1:56:28 with at the board meeting tonight for the 225 people to attend
1:56:34 an academy this summer, June 5th through June 8th.
1:56:37 So first I want to share a little timeline of our initiative
1:56:41 with conscious discipline and it started before I was on this
1:56:45 team back in 2019, the 19-20 school year and a team was put
1:56:50 together due to a grant being awarded and that team started to
1:56:53 think about what could this look like and what should this look
1:56:56 like across our county at an elementary level, a middle school
1:57:00 level or potentially a high school level.
1:57:01 It was decided to focus on that pre K through two world but then
1:57:06 that wonderful thing called COVID kind of set in when we made
1:57:08 some marching orders and had some action plans.
1:57:10 So the great plans of 19-20 turned into a shift and we were not
1:57:15 allowed to deliver live professional development in that year
1:57:19 2021 and what we did with the vendor is asked that they provide
1:57:24 us some video PDs.
1:57:25 Video PDs and those video PDs being a principal that lived
1:57:29 through those videos were not the best alternative but it was
1:57:34 the only alternative that we had.
1:57:37 We did the best work that we could do with them but it did leave
1:57:40 what I would say and a lot of my peers a bad taste in their
1:57:43 mouth.
1:57:44 It was a painful process to go through the videos although they
1:57:48 were very accurate but they were lacking that engagement that
1:57:52 you need from that charismatic teacher, that educator, that
1:57:55 great training that you would have.
1:57:57 So the 19-20 year we did the best that we could or the 20-21
1:58:01 year we did the best that we could but I myself came to Chris
1:58:04 Moore at the time’s office and sat down as a principal and said
1:58:07 I need to talk to you about this process right now.
1:58:09 And I delivered her I gave her some real feedback I said this is
1:58:12 what’s working this is what’s not working these are some
1:58:15 suggested changes to make.
1:58:16 And lo and behold I joined this team and 21-22 partway through
1:58:20 that school year and I got the opportunity to lead this
1:58:23 initiative.
1:58:24 One thing that we shifted in that 21-20 school year is we
1:58:29 shifted from the virtual presentation of information to the in-person.
1:58:35 So we recruited or got recruited volunteers for what we describe
1:58:41 as eight anchor schools.
1:58:43 And that 21-22 school year we provided eight anchor sites with
1:58:48 some intensive training and coaching live and in-person.
1:58:52 And we started to see a dramatic shift.
1:58:54 Now I also got to be one of those lucky principals because I weaseled
1:58:58 my way onto that eight person committee and got to see firsthand
1:59:01 the benefits of that training.
1:59:03 As that evolved we grew and we decided to hold a summer
1:59:06 institute last year the first one that we had ever held.
1:59:10 And we held it for I believe it was 150 participants and it was
1:59:14 a seven day institute in the month of June.
1:59:16 It was highly participated and engaging and we invited seven new
1:59:20 schools or six at the time which became seven to join us for
1:59:24 that summer work.
1:59:25 This summer work that I’m proposing tonight is a continuation of
1:59:28 that work.
1:59:29 So 21-22 we invited now we’re up to 13 anchor sites.
1:59:34 We move on to the 22-23 school year and we begin that work again.
1:59:39 We now have what we will refer to our phase one schools those
1:59:42 that are just starting and we have phase two schools.
1:59:45 Phase two schools are receiving a more in-depth level of
1:59:49 coaching and training than phase one as you warm up to those
1:59:52 concepts and ideas.
1:59:54 And again I have been part of that team on the frustrated videos
2:00:00 to the receiving that firsthand coaching to now helping plan the
2:00:05 long-term implementation plan for our schools with this
2:00:09 information.
2:00:09 But it’s definitely seen a value added with with regard to
2:00:13 providing our schools with that in-person training.
2:00:16 We have continued to leave the resources out there for all
2:00:19 schools and those that are interested have seeked out the
2:00:21 information and support that we offer.
2:00:24 But we’ve moved to an intensive model for those to get some
2:00:29 firsthand in-person training is what we’ve learned has been the
2:00:33 best practice.
2:00:34 And I’ll share with you some data that that will help you
2:00:36 understand why.
2:00:37 So the first thing I want to do is share the data to show that
2:00:41 we’re moving in the right direction with this.
2:00:44 So in our strategic plan we outline that we want to try and
2:00:47 limit exclusionary factors for our students.
2:00:50 And then exclusionary factors would be suspensions both in and
2:00:53 out of school or discipline referrals where you’re removed from
2:00:56 the classroom.
2:00:57 Anytime as you’ve heard me say and when I talk to you about
2:01:00 attendance is a missed learning opportunity is a missed learning
2:01:03 opportunity.
2:01:04 If you’re absent from school you never get that chance again.
2:01:08 It’s also a missed teaching opportunity.
2:01:10 So when we miss that teaching opportunity we’re fragmented now.
2:01:13 I’ve got to catch student A up.
2:01:15 I’ve leave student B, C, and D behind because I’m having to
2:01:18 catch that student up that was absent or missing from my class
2:01:21 for that important instruction.
2:01:23 When we look at this data I needed to come up with a way to
2:01:26 compare schools receiving that intensive coaching versus schools
2:01:31 that were not.
2:01:31 So as you see on the board here in the left hand column there
2:01:34 are eight schools lifted listed on that second column.
2:01:37 We selected eight sister schools to pair them with and there was
2:01:42 only two criteria that we used.
2:01:44 One they were either title one or were not and two that they had
2:01:48 a very similar enrollment.
2:01:50 Okay those were the only two pieces that we looked at same size
2:01:53 title one or non title one.
2:01:55 I’d like to draw your attention to the columns with the arrows.
2:01:59 As I said in the strategic plan we address exclusionary factors.
2:02:03 The column under the first arrow is going to give you a
2:02:06 percentage of students that are enrolled receiving out of school
2:02:10 suspensions.
2:02:11 Okay so we took the number of out of school suspensions and
2:02:15 divided that by student enrollment to give us a percentage or a
2:02:19 ratio.
2:02:19 Kind of leveling the field based on the size of the school.
2:02:22 And when you run down that column you’ll see green would be a
2:02:26 more favorable result.
2:02:27 Orange would be a less favorable result.
2:02:29 And you can see at times some of the conscious discipline sites
2:02:33 in phase two or having a year and a half under their belt.
2:02:37 Sometimes had a more favorable result.
2:02:40 Sometimes had a less favorable result.
2:02:42 The column at the end shows office discipline referrals.
2:02:46 Okay same thing it was number of office discipline referrals
2:02:51 over student enrollment.
2:02:53 Okay so again as you look at that sometimes there was more
2:02:56 favorable results sometimes not as favorable.
2:02:58 But the idea is some of the time there were more teaching
2:03:02 opportunities and consistency for the classroom.
2:03:05 And some of the times there were not.
2:03:07 Off to the side we’ve summarized the data by averaging it
2:03:10 together.
2:03:11 And you can see here that the average students at a conscious
2:03:15 discipline anchor site in phase two.
2:03:17 Again this would be one and a half years of data.
2:03:20 Had an average out of school suspension rate of 4.04.
2:03:26 At a non-conscious discipline anchor site they had an average of
2:03:30 5.66.
2:03:31 So one could make a hypothesis that those schools engaging in
2:03:34 those activities or training are excluding students less
2:03:39 frequently.
2:03:40 Again you could look school by school we provide the averages.
2:03:43 Okay we provide the same data on the deck for you for those
2:03:46 office discipline referrals.
2:03:48 And we can see that it was a more favorable result for the
2:03:51 conscious discipline anchor sites at 13.03 comparatively to 18.03.
2:03:59 When we moved to the phase one schools there were seven
2:04:02 additional schools that were selected.
2:04:04 And we followed the same procedure because measuring data across
2:04:08 the same way is something that’s important.
2:04:11 Reminding you that these are schools that now have engaged in
2:04:14 this practice for half of a year rather than one and a half
2:04:17 years.
2:04:18 And again same columns same headers.
2:04:22 We looked at OSS and office discipline referrals again for that
2:04:26 inclusionary factor in our strategic plan.
2:04:31 What you could see here though is the results are different.
2:04:35 You can see that in an office or out of school suspensions it
2:04:39 was higher for the sites that were current anchor sites.
2:04:43 Then the existing schools and the same for discipline referrals.
2:04:47 One could hypothesize that they’re on their way.
2:04:50 One could hypothesize that they were confused and not sure what
2:04:52 direction they were going at this time.
2:04:54 But again what I would say to you is I what I have seen as a
2:04:58 principal of a school and having the chance to meet monthly with
2:05:02 each of these principals and guide them and coach them.
2:05:04 And support them is this is moving the needle in the right
2:05:09 direction.
2:05:10 And that’s working towards that that that increasing of that
2:05:13 school culture.
2:05:14 And hoping fully decreasing exclusionary factors at our schools
2:05:18 and not fragmenting our teaching opportunities.
2:05:21 So a little bit first about conscious discipline and I’m not
2:05:25 going to give you a long background.
2:05:28 But should we approve this academy I’m going to invite each of
2:05:31 you to participate at the five days.
2:05:33 But first of all what I want you to understand is conscious
2:05:36 discipline is a practice.
2:05:37 It’s not a program.
2:05:38 Okay.
2:05:39 It’s a way of thinking.
2:05:40 There’s no books.
2:05:41 There’s no worksheets.
2:05:42 There’s no activities.
2:05:43 It is a practice.
2:05:45 Okay.
2:05:46 It’s an understanding of how the brain works and how we deliver
2:05:50 that to create a school culture and family.
2:05:52 So at the top of the slide you’ll see all aspects of conscious
2:05:56 discipline focus on creating a safe connected environment for
2:05:59 children to learn and practice the skills needed for healthy
2:06:04 social emotional and academic environment development.
2:06:09 Again safe and connected is the hinge point of this process.
2:06:15 But again that healthy social emotional piece is something that
2:06:19 we need to be driving for.
2:06:20 If we take a look at the triangle you’re going to see that there’s
2:06:24 four areas.
2:06:25 Okay.
2:06:26 The first is to the brain states and some of you participated in
2:06:29 the parent academy that we held and we spent a great deal of
2:06:32 time walking you through those.
2:06:34 And I hope that when you left that parent academy you’re like
2:06:37 wow that’s common sense right.
2:06:38 That’s pretty easy.
2:06:39 Stop.
2:06:40 But really the easy things we find are sometimes the most
2:06:43 difficult to make sense of and turn into actionable items.
2:06:46 So with the brain states adults learn the three phases in
2:06:50 themselves as well as in children.
2:06:53 Okay.
2:06:54 Anyone that went to school on an educational path that one of
2:06:57 the first classes you take is psychology and you learn this
2:07:00 thing called Maslow’s hierarchy.
2:07:02 And the bottom of the pyramid is am I safe and am I fed.
2:07:05 And if those two needs aren’t met nothing else happens.
2:07:08 And so that’s the foundation of this program as well as am I in
2:07:12 a red state am I in a blue state or am I in a green state.
2:07:15 What is my current mindset as an adult or as a child.
2:07:20 When we move to that next layer the seven powers of conscious
2:07:24 adults what we’re looking for then is adults learn the seven
2:07:28 powers that allow us to see behavior as a missing skill.
2:07:32 Okay.
2:07:33 When we look at behavior as just an inconvenience that inconvenience
2:07:38 is going to repeatedly show itself again and again.
2:07:42 When we look at behavior as a teachable moment it’s a cry for
2:07:46 help for us to help arm someone with the means to handle their
2:07:49 situation differently.
2:07:51 In children they only know we refer to it as a playlist they
2:07:54 know what they’ve been explicitly taught or what’s been
2:07:57 explicitly modeled.
2:07:58 When they don’t when that’s not appropriate in a school setting
2:08:02 in a grocery store in a mall we need to explicitly reteach that.
2:08:06 So again in this area and the powers we see that as a call for
2:08:10 help or a missing skill that that child may have.
2:08:13 What we’re always striving to do in an organization or in our
2:08:17 classrooms is to have that connectedness of that that feeling of
2:08:23 that school family.
2:08:25 And at school families where we built work to build that that
2:08:29 sense of belonging.
2:08:30 So I share orientation on Wednesdays with our new staff is
2:08:34 cooperation always comes on the coattails of connections.
2:08:39 Okay.
2:08:40 So you think about who you’re most connected with in your family
2:08:43 with your friends when that phone rings you’ll do anything for
2:08:47 them.
2:08:47 Okay.
2:08:48 Versus the person that stomps their feet and wags their fingers.
2:08:51 You may be intimidated and do something you may report to that
2:08:55 individual and have to but that’s not due to that devotion or
2:08:59 that that inner desire to to to assist and to make please them.
2:09:05 We strive to make that connection with the work that we do with
2:09:09 our learnings in these trainings to help get people to see that
2:09:12 they want to cooperate.
2:09:14 Okay.
2:09:15 So again our whole life is getting people to cooperate.
2:09:18 Okay.
2:09:19 My wife wants me to cooperate by doing my tasks that I have on a
2:09:22 list.
2:09:22 Right.
2:09:23 Okay.
2:09:24 We are connected but each and everything that we do stems from a
2:09:27 relationship.
2:09:28 The last piece of consciousness when the work that we do is the
2:09:32 seven skills and the seven skills is what helps students with
2:09:35 regulation.
2:09:36 Okay.
2:09:37 We I’ve learned that I know how to handle myself in almost any
2:09:40 situation.
2:09:41 I get frustrated at times but the younger we are the less likely
2:09:44 we are to know how to handle certain situations.
2:09:47 Fight flight cry flee head down under the covers argue.
2:09:53 Those are ways that are basic instincts that we have and how to
2:09:56 handle situations.
2:09:57 We need to teach individuals how to more appropriately handle
2:10:00 situations and that’s what we do with the learnings that we do
2:10:04 with this training.
2:10:05 Over to the side.
2:10:06 I just want to point out two things that again as I’ve said it’s
2:10:10 a unique adult first child second model.
2:10:13 Okay.
2:10:14 And it increases our consciousness of how we’re feeling.
2:10:17 You’ve heard I hope before that you have the opportunity to make
2:10:20 or break a situation with how you handle that.
2:10:23 Okay.
2:10:24 If I’m frustrated I am not bringing my best version to the table
2:10:28 for our teachable moment.
2:10:30 If I’m calm I know I’m bringing my best version to that teachable
2:10:33 moment.
2:10:34 And we talked about a scenario in the parent academy if you were
2:10:38 there about a kid running out in the road.
2:10:40 You grab them.
2:10:41 You bring them close and you yell don’t ever do that again.
2:10:44 The child is panicked that you grab them and you’re trying to
2:10:47 keep them safe.
2:10:48 You were panicked they were going to have harm.
2:10:50 They’re panicked that you’re yelling at them.
2:10:52 Neither one of you are ready to handle that situation at that
2:10:56 time.
2:10:56 So again it’s a unique adult first thing where we look at the
2:10:59 brain states.
2:11:00 The last piece is we ultimately look at how we move through
2:11:03 those brain states.
2:11:04 It’s recognizing of myself when I’m not there and it’s
2:11:07 recognizing when my students are not.
2:11:10 And that’s illustrated here in this infographic.
2:11:14 We can describe this slide as an outline for training and PD
2:11:18 opportunities.
2:11:19 Training is typically divided into three brain states.
2:11:23 With corresponding powers, skills, and structures that help us
2:11:28 coach kids through these brain states.
2:11:30 So I’ve talked about these brain states and some of you have
2:11:32 seen them before.
2:11:33 Some of you haven’t.
2:11:34 So we’ll talk about them briefly.
2:11:36 There’s the red state, the blue state, and the green.
2:11:39 Red is that flight or fight mode.
2:11:41 Blue, the largest area, is that in-between phase.
2:11:45 And then green is where we’re all at our optimum problem solving.
2:11:49 When we look at safety, that’s that fight or flight mode.
2:11:53 I’m not ready to see or do or talk at all.
2:11:56 In that blue state, I’m ready to talk but it’s usually not in a
2:11:59 way that you’re happy about when I respond.
2:12:02 But in that green state, that’s optimum.
2:12:06 We spend again the majority of our time in that blue state.
2:12:09 When we look at the powers and the skills in that second column,
2:12:13 we can see that this is how we start to see conflict differently.
2:12:17 And see skills help us respond to behavior differently.
2:12:20 Again, it’s a very simple idea.
2:12:22 But we find that when we explicitly teach these practices, the
2:12:26 light bulb goes off.
2:12:28 I can’t tell you how many teachers have waved a book in front of
2:12:31 me and said, I wish I had this when I was raising my kids.
2:12:34 I would be so much better, right?
2:12:35 I wish I had this when I was a first-year teacher.
2:12:37 I’d be so much better.
2:12:39 But if we take a look at this infographic again, we take a look
2:12:42 at that safety line.
2:12:43 We see a power is attention and the skill is assertiveness.
2:12:48 Off to the side, we can see some of the strategies.
2:12:51 What you focus on, you get more of, okay?
2:12:54 That is a very important concept that we a lot of times don’t.
2:12:57 We focus on what we don’t want very much so most of the time,
2:13:01 okay?
2:13:02 What we do want is what we want to make sure is being heard and
2:13:05 seen on a regular basis.
2:13:07 We want to set limits respectfully and teach modeling in an
2:13:11 assertive voice.
2:13:12 Not a dominating voice and not a timid voice either.
2:13:16 So don’t take it from me.
2:13:21 There’s some stats here that I have for you.
2:13:23 Conscious Discipline is an evidence-based trauma-informed
2:13:26 approach.
2:13:27 It’s recognized by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
2:13:29 Administration.
2:13:30 Also, the National Registry evidence-based programs and
2:13:34 practices.
2:13:35 Currently, Conscious Discipline is implemented in many counties
2:13:38 that are on the slide for you to see.
2:13:41 We were recently reached out to by the Patrick Space Force Base
2:13:45 for consideration for them to find out how to access some of the
2:13:49 training and supports for some of their childcare centers.
2:13:51 So they’re hearing the work that we’re doing and there’s some
2:13:55 interest and desire.
2:13:56 Child Trends, the nation’s most respected source of research and
2:14:00 data on children, would like to pilot Conscious Discipline
2:14:03 implementation and an outcome tool in 22-23.
2:14:07 And some other highlights, as I mentioned, in 2022, we had 150
2:14:12 participants at our Summer Institute for seven days.
2:14:16 It was over Father’s Day and a Saturday and a Sunday too.
2:14:19 That was a commitment.
2:14:20 We’ve had the two parent academies.
2:14:22 And the most exciting thing that we put together this year was
2:14:26 one of the e-courses.
2:14:28 And to our surprise, 132 people from elementary, middle, high
2:14:33 school, charter, all signed up for our course.
2:14:37 And that’s due to the excitement and the interest that they had.
2:14:40 And those aren’t just our anchor sites.
2:14:42 Those are people that are seeking this information from some
2:14:45 people that have that expertise.
2:14:47 So that was an indicator that we are moving in the right
2:14:51 direction and people are out there talking about the work that
2:14:55 we’re getting done.
2:14:56 As I mentioned, we’ve got phase two schools.
2:14:58 We’ve got phase one schools.
2:14:59 Phase two schools are in their second year of in-person coaching.
2:15:04 They’re listed on the left-hand side.
2:15:06 Phase one schools are listed on the right-hand side.
2:15:09 Phase one schools have had one year of intensive coaching and
2:15:12 training.
2:15:13 And I believe that all of your schools are represented and I’m
2:15:16 hopeful that you have had the chance to see some of the results
2:15:21 of the coaching and training at some of your schools.
2:15:26 Mr. Susan, we made you, you know, famous in our presentation
2:15:29 here.
2:15:29 I don’t know if you remember reading a book at one of our exemplar
2:15:33 classes at the amazing Sable Elementary.
2:15:36 Sable Elementary is one of our year two anchor sites.
2:15:39 This was actually one of the classroom teachers that is
2:15:42 receiving the coaching directly from our vendor and support from
2:15:46 our team on our monthly meetings and through Ms. Erdman.
2:15:50 What I hope you can remember is how that school family felt in
2:15:55 that classroom, that there was that sense of respect, that sense
2:15:58 of belonging, that sense of supporting one another in that room.
2:16:02 A picture speaks a million words, but a video would tell even
2:16:05 more, but I don’t have that video for you to see today.
2:16:08 But some things that you would see in this classroom that day,
2:16:12 Mr. Susan and team, that I would like to point out is one thing
2:16:15 that you’d see here on the side that I’ll elaborate on in a
2:16:17 minute is what we call a wish well board.
2:16:20 When students are missing from class for whatever reason that is,
2:16:23 the students wish that individual well, not knowing why they’re
2:16:26 not there, we begin teaching the skill of empathy to students.
2:16:30 Behind Mr. Susan on the wall up here in the corner is a
2:16:34 commitment board.
2:16:35 Every day the students in this commit, make a commitment to
2:16:37 excellence.
2:16:38 They determine this is what I’m going to be best at today based
2:16:42 on tomorrow or based on what my teacher’s expectations are.
2:16:46 At the back at this desk is what we call a safe place.
2:16:49 A safe place is a place to go after we’ve trained students about
2:16:53 their emotions that they can go to deescalate themselves.
2:16:56 It’s not a timeout because we want to make sure they know how to
2:16:59 use that space, how to recognize their feelings.
2:17:02 We want to help them deregulate themselves before they make some
2:17:07 poor choices.
2:17:08 And again, part of that practice is that talk of those brain
2:17:11 states first and arming kids with those powers and those skills.
2:17:15 Some examples of some of the things that we learn and we put to
2:17:20 practice in some of our schools.
2:17:22 First of all, for safety would be what we refer to as a safekeeper
2:17:26 ritual.
2:17:27 We have those for both the staff and for the students.
2:17:30 On the left is an example at Creel of a safekeeper ritual where
2:17:34 all individuals commit to keeping all the students and staff
2:17:37 safe at the school.
2:17:39 In the middle, again, referring back to that Maslow’s hierarchy,
2:17:42 the first step in learning is feeling safe.
2:17:45 All of our students each day make that commitment to being safe.
2:17:48 You can hear things like my job is to keep you safe.
2:17:51 Your job is to help keep us safe in our classrooms.
2:17:54 Again, if we’re not safe, whether that be truly physically safe
2:17:59 or being fed safe or being safe to take academic risks, we’re
2:18:04 not going to leave that bottom rung of that triangle.
2:18:07 So it’s an important piece that, again, sounds so simple, but
2:18:11 has a very, very compounding effect throughout a student’s day.
2:18:16 And the far right, we’ve got an example of a safe place in a
2:18:19 kindergarten classroom.
2:18:20 You can see that this, again, would be where our kid could go if
2:18:24 they were feeling emotionally charged in a place to go regulate
2:18:28 their emotions.
2:18:29 Again, they wouldn’t go there as a timeout.
2:18:30 They would go there because they’ve learned how to do that.
2:18:33 So you can see what’s referred to as some feeling buddies.
2:18:36 There’s some language that the kids can learn.
2:18:38 I feel mad.
2:18:39 I’m going to use the timer to deregulate so I can reengage with
2:18:45 the class.
2:18:46 Okay.
2:18:47 We teach kids how to run through some of these practices and it’s
2:18:50 ways that they’ve never been armed with these tools to help
2:18:53 regulate themselves.
2:18:54 Okay.
2:18:55 All our kids have that instinctive actions.
2:18:58 It’s our job to help them with home to teach them those skills
2:19:02 that they need to regulate their emotions.
2:19:05 Otherwise, other ways we keep people safe.
2:19:08 For years, we’ve been running the PBIS model where we talk about
2:19:12 school-wide structures and routines and expectations and we post
2:19:16 them all around the school on posters.
2:19:17 But we never thought, you know, there’s three or four grade
2:19:20 levels in every elementary school that can’t read yet,
2:19:22 potentially, right?
2:19:23 Okay, let’s put some pictures to that.
2:19:26 Yeah, a picture speaks a thousand words.
2:19:28 See it, hear it, do it.
2:19:29 Okay.
2:19:30 So again, it’s a way of helping us just open our eyes a little
2:19:34 wider and say we need to do a better job of communicating what
2:19:37 those expectations are.
2:19:38 One of my favorites are these two where the students make a
2:19:42 commitment each day.
2:19:43 The middle being a commitment board, an intermediate.
2:19:47 Across the top, it says care.
2:19:49 It says cooperate, active learner, respect and responsible and
2:19:53 encouraging.
2:19:54 Every day a kid takes their little picture and determines what
2:19:57 they’re going to commit to be better at that day or they’re
2:20:01 going to be excellent at that day.
2:20:02 In the near the bottom, it has I did it so they can celebrate
2:20:05 that they were successful in what they planned for in the
2:20:08 morning.
2:20:09 This is super powerful in the younger grades because planning
2:20:13 time later is something that’s not a real strong concept in
2:20:17 those five and six year olds yet.
2:20:19 So you can see it’s more appropriate on the right.
2:20:22 On the right, we’ve got walking feet, cleaning up, helpful hands
2:20:26 and showing respect.
2:20:27 And again, you can see every kid in this classroom has made some
2:20:32 sort of commitment for excellence that day based on their
2:20:37 classroom expectations.
2:20:39 Again, greetings are an important part.
2:20:41 We talk about class meetings.
2:20:43 Dr. Sullivan was talking about them with the Brain Start Smart.
2:20:46 It’s an important piece of the day.
2:20:48 Not everyone understands the importance of that.
2:20:50 And so we train them of importance and arm them with tools to do
2:20:53 that.
2:20:53 So we’ve got different ways to greet in the morning.
2:20:56 There’s tons of different ways to do this.
2:20:58 This being one.
2:20:59 A kindness tree.
2:21:01 Everyone deserves to be talked to about their accomplishments
2:21:04 and being proud of what they’re doing.
2:21:06 This is a celebration in your classroom.
2:21:09 Again, helping feel that power of empathy.
2:21:12 I know every day when I come to work and I feel successful.
2:21:15 I feel good about, you know, I want to do that again, right?
2:21:17 I got to raise the bar.
2:21:18 Like I got to do better than yesterday.
2:21:20 Well, same thing with kids.
2:21:21 So we give them jobs, right?
2:21:23 We help them feel part of the team, help them feel part of the
2:21:25 process.
2:21:26 Again, it’s a very simple thing that has a very strong effect.
2:21:30 And if we don’t have a combination of these things in place,
2:21:33 we aren’t developing that school culture as much as we need to
2:21:37 be.
2:21:37 And we find that these skills and these learnings help classroom
2:21:42 teachers
2:21:42 with tons of experience and with minimal experience,
2:21:45 create that stronger classroom culture and expectations.
2:21:48 As I already shared with you, we’ve got the wish well routine
2:21:51 where we develop empathy in kids for those that are missed.
2:21:54 Again, when you return, we missed you yesterday, Chris.
2:21:57 This is what we learned.
2:21:58 I’m here to help you get back on track.
2:22:01 Conflict resolution is a very difficult skill.
2:22:05 In our trainings over time and after we’ve armed teachers
2:22:10 and students with the necessary skills to talk about their
2:22:14 feelings,
2:22:15 we teach them strategies to roll back time
2:22:17 and talk about how they would handle a situation differently.
2:22:20 And there’s a board that they can stand on
2:22:22 and walk through the problem solving process with an adult
2:22:26 in the early stages and then on their own once they’ve mastered
2:22:29 that skill.
2:22:30 But just imagine a group of students in a room, in a school, in
2:22:34 a building,
2:22:35 in a district that are all armed with these problem solving
2:22:38 school skills
2:22:39 that help them pause before they make a bad decision
2:22:42 or recognize that they’re about to make a bad decision and they
2:22:45 need to regulate,
2:22:46 but then solve and address that problem later.
2:22:50 As well as we do this in our faculty meetings.
2:22:53 For time, I didn’t do that with you today to regulate us.
2:22:56 You’ve had a lot of content today.
2:22:58 We could have done, you know, an opportunity to unite and
2:23:01 connect,
2:23:01 but I chose for that to save that for a later day and time with
2:23:06 you.
2:23:07 I’ve mentioned a couple of times that brain start smart.
2:23:10 It’s a super important piece of every day.
2:23:12 As Dr. Sullivan shared that we’re looking to grow that piece in
2:23:15 the middle schools as well.
2:23:16 There’s four aspects of a strong brain start smart.
2:23:20 The first is uniting together, coming together as a team.
2:23:23 Okay.
2:23:24 The second is disengaging stress to ensure that no matter what
2:23:28 happened on the walk to school,
2:23:30 the ride to school, the dinner table last night, that we are at
2:23:34 our optimal state.
2:23:35 The third wave of that is connection.
2:23:38 Connecting with my group so that I can bring the best to all of
2:23:41 you and then a commitment.
2:23:43 I like to think of this and it took me a while to make this
2:23:45 connection.
2:23:46 But you think about a sports team.
2:23:48 You think about you come onto the field or the court or you’re
2:23:51 leaving the bench again with the team.
2:23:53 The one thing you always do before a game is put your hands
2:23:56 together as you huddle up.
2:23:57 That idea is to unite together to increase that energy.
2:24:00 That idea is to increase your intention and to commit to that.
2:24:04 Team working together to win.
2:24:07 This is no different than what you’re doing in a classroom each
2:24:10 and every day.
2:24:11 But making sure that you have that strongest start possible.
2:24:14 I’ve got a short video.
2:24:18 It’s about 15 seconds.
2:24:19 I hope we can hear it.
2:24:20 But it’s an example of a brain start smart where a group of
2:24:24 students do a commitment together.
2:24:26 Now in this instance, it’s a class commitment.
2:24:29 And there’s some power behind that whole crew whole class united
2:24:33 commitment of understanding those rules and expectations.
2:24:37 And so this classroom repeats this each and every day.
2:24:41 What you’ll see in some of our sites is they’ll get on the intercom.
2:24:44 They’ll get on the news.
2:24:45 They have school wide commitments that they make each and every
2:24:48 day.
2:24:48 So I would challenge you to go out into your schools and see
2:24:51 what some of those are.
2:24:52 And I’d be happy to advise you on some of those sites that you
2:24:55 can see some of those whole schools.
2:24:57 Hopefully my video works and you can hear it here.
2:25:00 This is a class at Discovery Elementary.
2:25:03 Own our own learning.
2:25:12 Own our own actions.
2:25:14 Be responsible for me.
2:25:17 Respect others.
2:25:19 And be an active learner.
2:25:22 Volume wasn’t that great.
2:25:29 Sorry, I apologize.
2:25:30 But again, they were uniting together.
2:25:32 And you could see the hand gestures.
2:25:34 You could see the movement.
2:25:35 You could see the sense of all of them together.
2:25:37 Understanding what was expected for them.
2:25:39 And she wished them for a positive start to their day that day.
2:25:43 So again, there’s the power of making sure we repeat that
2:25:46 message and practice it.
2:25:50 So again, you’ve heard from me.
2:25:52 I’ve given you some data.
2:25:53 I’ve given you some organizations.
2:25:56 But here is some insight data from some of our teachers.
2:25:59 And I’ll spotlight only two.
2:26:00 You have the slide.
2:26:01 In more awareness to the role we play.
2:26:03 More successful management of behavior.
2:26:06 Increased class and learning time for all students.
2:26:10 Again, back to where I started with those.
2:26:12 Our strategic plan is trying to limit those exclusionary factors.
2:26:17 And again, I won’t read you the other quotes.
2:26:20 But I see you have them on your screen.
2:26:21 And have the opportunity to reflect on those at another time.
2:26:27 So looking at the budget for 23-24 or 22-23.
2:26:31 If we look at the second column there under the 22-23.
2:26:36 You will see that the request later tonight for the training for
2:26:41 the 225 individuals to participate is going to be at a tune of $225,000.
2:26:48 That funding source has been secured by Title IV dollars and has
2:26:52 already been approved and would just be waiting for your
2:26:55 approval if you would give that.
2:26:58 And then the summer pay to pay the individuals to participate in
2:27:02 that will be from ESSER funding.
2:27:04 We would hope to continue our journey later.
2:27:07 But the first initiative is to secure our summer training so we
2:27:12 can wind out one year and wind up for potentially another year
2:27:15 moving forward.
2:27:16 We’ve put together an eight year plan but I didn’t think that I
2:27:20 should entertain you with an eight year plan today when we have
2:27:23 initiative for now.
2:27:24 But the idea is that we try and keep schools on a three year
2:27:27 cycle.
2:27:28 Phase one, phase two, phase three.
2:27:30 And each year along that journey continue to bring new schools
2:27:34 on.
2:27:34 I’ve worked with leading and learning and we’ve already selected
2:27:38 the next eight schools.
2:27:39 I’ve not informed them of that until we determine that we’re
2:27:42 going to move forward with this initiative.
2:27:45 And with that, I open things up to all of you.
2:27:50 Thank you for that presentation.
2:27:52 Do I have any board participation in conversation?
2:27:55 I do.
2:27:56 I have some questions.
2:27:57 Ms. Campbell, Ms. Jenkins.
2:27:58 All right.
2:27:59 Ms. Wright.
2:28:00 I got my buzzer hit.
2:28:01 Okay.
2:28:02 A couple of quick questions.
2:28:03 I participated in the parent Academy.
2:28:05 I was one of those parents.
2:28:06 Great.
2:28:07 I wanted to know what was the overall participation that you saw
2:28:10 from the district on parents?
2:28:11 How many parents participated in this Academy?
2:28:13 So that first one that you attended, Ms. Wright was very low,
2:28:17 including I was absent as well.
2:28:20 During the hurt near at, was it near at or during the hurricane?
2:28:25 It was minimal.
2:28:26 I believe there were three parents there, four parents maybe.
2:28:28 There was more staff than parents that day.
2:28:30 Yes.
2:28:31 And on the second event, I didn’t get a count, but we had way
2:28:34 more than that.
2:28:35 There was, I would say, 30, 35 individuals that were here that
2:28:39 night for that parent Academy.
2:28:40 Okay.
2:28:41 One of the other things, and I mean, I’m going to – you’re
2:28:44 going to have to forgive my frankness
2:28:45 with you on this, because I will be completely – I’m going to
2:28:47 be transparent on where I stand
2:28:49 on this.
2:28:50 I think the concept behind this is a really great concept.
2:28:52 I was challenged with reading the easy to love, difficult to
2:28:55 discipline.
2:28:56 Right.
2:28:57 So really diving into this conscious discipline.
2:28:59 What is this?
2:29:00 And really what I see this is, is more of an initiative from a
2:29:04 parent’s perspective on how
2:29:05 a parent is going to handle disciplining their child.
2:29:08 Now, while I see that this could be beneficial in our classrooms,
2:29:11 because I have actually heard the raving
2:29:12 reviews of some of the teachers who are great salespeople for
2:29:16 this program.
2:29:17 So what my concern is, is the reality of what does this look
2:29:21 like in the classroom on stopping
2:29:23 and really – what are you going to do when you have 20 kids in
2:29:27 the class and you have
2:29:28 one child who you need to calm down from a red brain and get
2:29:31 them to a green brain?
2:29:32 And what does that look like?
2:29:34 And how do we implement that?
2:29:35 So those are my concerns for this program.
2:29:38 The idea is great.
2:29:41 I just – I don’t know that it works.
2:29:44 And then I think the data is reflecting that it doesn’t work all
2:29:47 the time.
2:29:48 It does sometimes, but not all the time.
2:29:49 And we really can’t figure out why.
2:29:51 So with those things in mind, I think it’s a great idea.
2:29:55 But I just would like to see some solid guaranteed successes out
2:29:58 of this.
2:29:59 And yes, it’s moving the needle very, very finely.
2:30:02 But when I look at the overall budget, is there anything else
2:30:05 that’s comparable that maybe
2:30:06 we could look at that would do or achieve the same result that
2:30:09 we’re hoping to achieve?
2:30:11 I mean, there’s always going to be another something.
2:30:14 The question is, do you want to go through that initiative
2:30:17 fatigue or do you want to stay
2:30:18 the course of something and commit to it?
2:30:20 So that would be the first thing I would say to you is that if
2:30:24 you were to speak to those
2:30:25 principals, they would say, I don’t know that I have another
2:30:27 initiative in me to continue.
2:30:28 I don’t know that I can shift left, shift right.
2:30:31 This has been my constant.
2:30:33 And it’s I’m seeing that needle moving.
2:30:35 I would say to you with regard to the discipline is I’ve said
2:30:39 the word discipline multiple times
2:30:40 when I’ve said conscious discipline, but never did I reference
2:30:44 consequencing a kid or providing discipline.
2:30:46 That is not what this is about.
2:30:47 This is about setting up structures, routines, establishing that
2:30:51 school family and recognizing
2:30:53 when I’m not at my best that I need to make sure that I, as the
2:30:58 adult, check myself before I handle could, could wreck that
2:31:03 situation.
2:31:03 And also help model that for my students so that they could
2:31:07 start to see that it’s, it’s a process that takes time.
2:31:10 And so again, the classroom is that optimal time in place and
2:31:14 that the classroom isn’t always that time in place.
2:31:17 But what we do then is when we know that it’s not working for
2:31:20 Chris, right, we start to identify what skills isn’t Chris armed
2:31:25 with?
2:31:25 What skills do I need to explicitly teach Chris?
2:31:28 What skills can I connect Chris with, with his mentor, with his
2:31:31 guidance counselor, with his social worker?
2:31:33 What skills at that parent teacher conference can I talk about?
2:31:36 So we have a universal language together that we can bridge
2:31:39 school to home.
2:31:40 So again, back to the discipline, it’s about teaching you what’s
2:31:44 appropriate and how to conduct yourself through activities to
2:31:48 give you that sense of belonging.
2:31:50 Again, that united that, that, that I don’t want to let you down.
2:31:54 Yeah.
2:31:55 And I, I, my mic turns off.
2:31:57 Okay.
2:31:58 I, I can understand and respect that.
2:31:59 How does this play into like our PBIS schools?
2:32:01 Cause that is something that we currently have.
2:32:03 Sure.
2:32:04 So we, we have PBIS and I, I oversee that program as well.
2:32:08 And as a PBIS school, PBIS and conscious discipline do go hand
2:32:12 in hand.
2:32:13 PBIS will, PBIS will take you so far and depending on your
2:32:16 environment, that may be far enough.
2:32:19 PBIS gives you many of the structures needed for a strong tier
2:32:24 one program and it gets you started.
2:32:27 And I would encourage all schools to start there that before
2:32:31 they begin on this journey, this first starts to provide all the
2:32:36 pieces after that.
2:32:37 PBIS is a process where you set clear expectations.
2:32:40 You come up with procedures to monitor those.
2:32:42 You reward them.
2:32:43 You come up with plans to mentor for them.
2:32:46 Sounding very similar, right?
2:32:47 In some ways and shapes and forms.
2:32:49 We are seeing different results in those two programs right now.
2:32:54 PBIS versus conscious discipline with regard to some of that
2:32:58 disciplinary data.
2:32:59 So PBIS would stay in place.
2:33:02 Is that what you’re saying?
2:33:03 Yes.
2:33:04 We would continue it down both journey.
2:33:05 Again, both are important.
2:33:06 I, I would say that that was starting on that PBIS journey is
2:33:10 the building blocks of helping arm our administrators and our
2:33:15 teachers with the first layer, the first step of, of giving
2:33:20 clear expectations and communication.
2:33:21 It is not enough for that second and third step.
2:33:22 And I say that as a principle of a building that relaunched PBIS
2:33:30 at a school committed to everyone to retraining.
2:33:35 And then there was not enough after that.
2:33:38 So we had to bring on other tools to, to, to add to, and it just,
2:33:43 it has us.
2:33:44 It’s a great start and it, it procedurized things for a time,
2:33:48 but you have to grow out of that.
2:33:50 And that has kind of a ceiling that at least in my opinion, and
2:33:54 what I’m seeing in the data from our sites that are identifying
2:33:57 that as a, as a PBIS site.
2:33:59 Okay.
2:34:00 Thank you.
2:34:01 Thank you, Ms. Wright.
2:34:02 Is there anybody else that wishes to speak on this?
2:34:04 Ms. Campbell.
2:34:05 Yeah.
2:34:06 Thank you, Mr. Reid.
2:34:07 Excuse me.
2:34:08 You know, this is an important conversation for us to have
2:34:11 because we’ve been having the conversations about discipline and,
2:34:14 you know, I just, just to, just to clarify.
2:34:19 You know, when we talk about when you, this is about behavior
2:34:23 regulation, behavior self-regulation.
2:34:26 And not, because there, you know, when I, we talk about that
2:34:30 data up in the early slides, this does, this, the, the goal of
2:34:34 this program, the results of this program is not that students
2:34:38 are committing the same behaviors, but at this school, they’re
2:34:41 not being disciplined.
2:34:41 That is not what this is about.
2:34:42 These are, these are, these numbers are about, there’s less
2:34:46 behaviors to have to deal with.
2:34:48 Correct.
2:34:49 Which is, which is our goal.
2:34:50 Right?
2:34:51 Not always.
2:34:52 Right.
2:34:53 Not, not always.
2:34:54 But, you know, we’re pretty early in.
2:34:55 You know, I, I, and one of the things I was thinking about this
2:34:59 data is, I mean, it looks like there’s some good starting points
2:35:03 in some places, but what, even though you guys did a good job of
2:35:05 trying to match up, I was like, okay, these are pretty close and
2:35:08 whatever.
2:35:08 It really can’t account for some other things, some other
2:35:13 challenges such as teacher turnover and lack of staffing that we
2:35:17 had.
2:35:18 So this data can’t, some of these schools might have been more
2:35:21 successful if they hadn’t had eight to 15 teacher openings.
2:35:25 So, you know, I, I hate to judge a school based on this data
2:35:28 because, you know, some of them just, that was just a challenge
2:35:32 that it doesn’t matter.
2:35:33 You can be the best PBIS conscious discipline school in the
2:35:36 district and you were going to have some challenges there
2:35:38 because you had, you know, revolving door of, of teachers in
2:35:41 certain classrooms.
2:35:42 So I, I went to the teacher, one of the low attended parent
2:35:49 academies, appreciated it actually, even though I’ll, you know,
2:35:53 like I said, I’m almost done with middle school with my last
2:35:55 child, but really picked up some things that helped with my
2:35:58 child that needs some help with self regulation.
2:36:00 I’m like, ooh, I probably need to go through it again because I
2:36:03 forgot how to get from one brain to the other brain.
2:36:05 Maybe you can share your book with me when we get done.
2:36:07 I’ve seen the kindness tree at one of my schools.
2:36:10 Love that idea.
2:36:11 We’re recognizing things that get to the heart of the matter.
2:36:14 I, I strongly think that I, I appreciate your invitation that we
2:36:18 were challenged before previously and, and, uh, last year, I
2:36:21 think sometime to visit some of these schools that are in phase
2:36:24 two.
2:36:24 So we can get in those classrooms and see the difference of, you
2:36:28 know, just the creating the structure.
2:36:31 It’s creating a structure, which is a tool that our teachers
2:36:34 really need, especially so many coming into teaching without the
2:36:38 experience with coming in from other fields, you know, just
2:36:41 creating that structure that is a school-wide structure.
2:36:43 So if you have a situation like what you described, um, where,
2:36:47 Ms. Wright, where, you know, you have a kid who’s melting down,
2:36:51 someone steps in or, or it’s maybe they’re not in the classroom.
2:36:54 Maybe it’s in the cafeteria, maybe you’re on the playground,
2:36:57 someone else in that building is speaking the same language or
2:37:00 using the same vocabulary as the teacher who trained that child
2:37:03 because they’re, the whole school’s on the same page.
2:37:06 And that gets a little challenging when you’ve got experienced
2:37:09 teachers who kind of have this method and new teachers who don’t
2:37:12 have a method at all and you’re, you know, you’re trying to get
2:37:14 everybody on the same page.
2:37:15 So that, that’s one thing that’s powerful, um, about something
2:37:18 like this.
2:37:19 Um, but we need to get in there and I, I need to, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve
2:37:22 now obviously visited my schools, but I want to get in some of
2:37:24 these, uh, recommended classrooms too so I can see it more
2:37:26 closely.
2:37:27 I, I appreciate what you said, um, Chris, about initiative
2:37:30 fatigue.
2:37:31 I just have to remind this board.
2:37:34 Over the last two years, we’ve had brand new reading curriculum
2:37:38 and instructional materials.
2:37:40 We’ve had brand new math curriculum and instructional materials.
2:37:45 And we’ve had an addition to this new technology initiatives.
2:37:50 We’ve had to switch over to focus, which was a good switch, but
2:37:53 it was just more to add on, um, in addition to just the other
2:37:57 challenges that we have.
2:37:58 And I remember as when I first got on the board, one of my very
2:38:02 first meetings with Jane Klein talking about initiative fatigue
2:38:05 was we went from, uh, I can’t even remember all that.
2:38:08 Yeah, I max, I, not I max, but I station and Moby max.
2:38:14 That’s what it was.
2:38:15 Moby max, I station.
2:38:16 Now we’re doing I ready.
2:38:17 Why do we keep doing these new things?
2:38:18 And it, and our teachers were really feeling it because we’re
2:38:21 changing things every year.
2:38:23 So I, I think that we need to continue on with this and with
2:38:27 this structure, you know, we’ve got something that people are
2:38:32 buying into that we’re seeing some success at the classroom
2:38:35 level.
2:38:35 Even if all the data doesn’t show exactly where we’d like to be.
2:38:38 We, in this world of instant gratification, we want to see the
2:38:41 numbers.
2:38:41 We want to see the percentages.
2:38:42 We want to see them now.
2:38:43 I don’t care if it’s been a year and a half.
2:38:44 You need to prove to me that it works.
2:38:45 I don’t think we’re there yet to say that it’s not working.
2:38:48 And again, when we’re, we’re so focused on the discipline issues,
2:38:52 I, we’re going to have to deal with things on the back end of
2:38:55 how do we deal with things.
2:38:56 We are dealing with that of when the behaviors happen, can we
2:38:59 deal with them better?
2:39:00 But ultimately it’s, it’s more important to not have those
2:39:04 behaviors to begin with because we have good structures in place
2:39:08 that are keeping our kids focused on the right kind of behaviors,
2:39:11 the right kind of actions so that we don’t have to deal with
2:39:15 them on the back end.
2:39:16 So, you know, I don’t want to send more kids to the ALCs.
2:39:22 I want them, I mean, I, that’s in an ideal world, we just stop
2:39:25 having to do that because everybody starts behaving.
2:39:28 We’re not in an ideal world, but if we can do some things to get
2:39:32 kids to stop and think.
2:39:33 To me, that’s what this is about.
2:39:35 Stop and think.
2:39:36 And give them the tools and the vocabulary so that everybody’s
2:39:39 on the same page and getting them to stop and think.
2:39:42 And that empathy because, you know, when I talk to even my own
2:39:45 child who struggled with some of these things, you know, they
2:39:49 don’t, frequently don’t think about how my behavior affects
2:39:55 someone else.
2:39:56 We are living in a world of adults who cannot figure out how
2:40:00 their behavior affects someone else.
2:40:02 So now we’ve got this that’s intentionally focusing students on
2:40:08 how does my behavior, not just affect me, but how does it affect
2:40:11 the whole class?
2:40:12 We just had a conversation about that youth truth data.
2:40:15 You know, how, one of the items was students disrupting class.
2:40:21 Can we, can we get a hold of that so that that’s not happening
2:40:25 and students don’t fear what’s going on in their classroom?
2:40:30 They don’t fear other students, but they’re starting to be
2:40:32 empathetic.
2:40:33 They’re starting to realize, oh, my behavior doesn’t just affect
2:40:36 me.
2:40:36 It affects the people around me.
2:40:37 And I just messed up the class.
2:40:38 But yet there’s room for grace.
2:40:40 I see grace in this.
2:40:41 I see, you know, places for second chances and learning and reteaching,
2:40:45 all those things.
2:40:46 It could be this.
2:40:47 It could be something else.
2:40:48 But this is where we’re already, this is, I think we need to
2:40:51 stay on this horse and ride it.
2:40:53 And, and, and to, I always hate, I think the word fidelity is
2:40:57 overused, but you come up with another word that means same
2:41:01 thing, but with fidelity, get it done with fidelity, especially
2:41:04 in these schools that are struggling so much.
2:41:06 And, and see where we go from here.
2:41:11 Can I add something?
2:41:12 Yeah.
2:41:13 What is, can you tell me again, what does ODR mean?
2:41:16 Office discipline referral.
2:41:18 Okay.
2:41:19 Thank you.
2:41:20 Sorry.
2:41:21 Thank you, Chris.
2:41:24 I would agree.
2:41:25 I think that the underlying thing that you may not be aware of
2:41:28 is, is that we’re going to discuss it later on, but there’s a
2:41:31 push by the board to start putting together the true metrics on
2:41:35 whether things are or are not going to be valuable enough to
2:41:39 continue those processes.
2:41:40 I know as an individual that conscious discipline follows a lot
2:41:44 of the other teachings as a former teacher, that there’s a lot
2:41:47 of stuff that you do just naturally as a good teacher inside of
2:41:50 this, right?
2:41:50 Like those are some of the actions.
2:41:51 Yeah.
2:41:52 So I didn’t want you to misunderstand like some of the stuff
2:41:55 that we were having a conversation about.
2:41:57 I think the move is, is we have X amount of dollars.
2:42:00 What are the metrics that show that it works?
2:42:02 If that’s there, then you know what I mean?
2:42:04 And that’s where I think our board is going to end up going with
2:42:06 the budgetary process.
2:42:07 So, um, oh, you, oh, I’m so sorry.
2:42:10 I cut off you guys.
2:42:11 Oh, I’m so sorry.
2:42:12 Ms. Jenkins.
2:42:13 Go ahead.
2:42:13 I’m sorry.
2:42:14 I apologize.
2:42:15 Gene, go ahead.
2:42:16 So sorry.
2:42:17 I didn’t know anybody else was going.
2:42:21 I looked at you too.
2:42:22 You don’t always have to be last.
2:42:23 Yes.
2:42:24 Um, but I’m sure you will be on this one too, but that’s fine.
2:42:27 So, uh, again, thanks for putting this together.
2:42:29 Um, I’m going to be similar to what Ms. Wright said is, you know,
2:42:33 we’re going to be frank.
2:42:34 It’s nothing personal and those numbers are very subjective.
2:42:38 If that was a sales pitch, I would probably said, leave those
2:42:42 out.
2:42:42 Um, because, uh, one would, has the right to say those, uh, that,
2:42:47 that clientele is not the same between the two schools.
2:42:49 And this is where school leadership matters.
2:42:52 Uh, I’ve been in these schools and, and I see where it’s working
2:42:55 and where it’s not.
2:42:56 And, and school leadership is crucial.
2:42:59 Um, and I think that leads to a lot of issues in schools period.
2:43:04 If we are admitting that we have to pay, um, basically to, to
2:43:09 teach individuals how to be quality teachers.
2:43:13 I mean, we do have to admit then our universities, universities
2:43:17 as a whole are not preparing teachers to teach in, in the
2:43:20 classroom.
2:43:21 Um, and that’s just, that’s just a fact.
2:43:24 I, I heard, um, and nothing Ms. Campbell’s when you said that
2:43:28 new, new teachers have no, no plan at all.
2:43:32 I, I, I couldn’t read my writing.
2:43:35 No method.
2:43:36 You said no method.
2:43:37 And this has nothing to do with you, but they do these new
2:43:40 teachers.
2:43:41 We, we do have methods and they, they should have really good
2:43:45 methods coming out of our universities and what they’re being,
2:43:48 what they’re being paid to be taught.
2:43:49 You know, they called it apprenticeships, but I call it student
2:43:52 teaching.
2:43:52 That’s where you do develop your methods.
2:43:54 Um, and they should have the state of the art methods right
2:43:57 there.
2:43:57 Um, but in the state of Florida, we have alternative
2:44:00 certification to teaching.
2:44:02 This is not a knock at any of our teachers that are coming out
2:44:06 of professions that have no clue on the teaching aspect.
2:44:09 So here we are paying for them to, to learn a method.
2:44:13 Um, it’s, it is frustrating, uh, to, when I look at dollars
2:44:20 because I’m responsible to people that are going to be emailing
2:44:25 me and calling me about spending money on teaching teachers how
2:44:29 to teach.
2:44:29 And is that a job that we’re supposed to be doing?
2:44:32 Is it, we mentioned, is this really about parenting?
2:44:34 Um, but you know, our, it’s hard enough that, I mean, I can see
2:44:38 the emails coming down.
2:44:39 Our kids can’t read and this is what we’re focusing on.
2:44:41 Um, those are questions that we have to answer and hopefully we
2:44:44 can say we can walk and chew gum and we are worrying about them
2:44:48 not being able to read or do math at a certain age.
2:44:50 But this is an awful lot of money, um, with very little data
2:44:55 backing that up.
2:44:56 I do understand.
2:44:57 Do we start another initiative?
2:44:59 That’s one thing teachers say, okay, every two years we go to
2:45:01 something new and it’s really the same thing.
2:45:03 Yeah.
2:45:04 It’s a very expensive throat on the wall and see what sticks,
2:45:06 however.
2:45:07 Uh, and this is where we’re at all over again.
2:45:11 Um, so I don’t, I don’t want to repeat what some of you have
2:45:15 already thrown out there, but, um, you know, when I see.
2:45:19 Uh, programs that talk a lot about safe spaces in classrooms.
2:45:24 There’s a lot of issues, um, I, I, I see with that when we, when
2:45:29 we need to be teaching.
2:45:31 Uh, so there’s, there’s only so much time we have in a, in a
2:45:34 class day.
2:45:34 And if we’re spending a lot of it on developing that culture,
2:45:37 this is when, when we really need to be teaching those kids how
2:45:42 to read.
2:45:44 And that’s the bottom line.
2:45:45 And I know you’re doing your job and it’s all from the heart and
2:45:47 it’s all good.
2:45:48 But again, when you see the cost of this over the amount of
2:45:51 years, this is just one more step and one more phase.
2:45:54 Well, you know, I, I just hope, and I’m assuming it’s going to
2:45:56 go forward.
2:45:57 Uh, but I just hope moving forward, you hear this and we can
2:46:01 really see that this is working, that we measure it.
2:46:04 And just because now we’re in year two, because now you’re
2:46:07 saying we were in year one, so we really need year two.
2:46:10 I hope it’s not just, we’re in year two, we really need year
2:46:13 three.
2:46:13 We need to be able to measure it and be willing to say, this
2:46:16 really isn’t making a difference.
2:46:19 Yeah.
2:46:20 I, I, my crystal ball is working only halfway and that’s my
2:46:22 prediction for you.
2:46:23 Yeah.
2:46:24 But again, these are real conversations and I, I’m sure we’ll
2:46:28 get hit back from it that we, we’re not supporting things, but
2:46:30 these are concerns.
2:46:31 And, and I think we’ll, uh, I’m going to end it right there, but
2:46:34 I do appreciate all of what you’re putting forth.
2:46:36 If I could just add to that, I would say as a leader, I had two,
2:46:39 a saying that I said to all of my staff all the time, and it is,
2:46:43 you don’t have to be bad to get better.
2:46:45 And the best leaders of the buildings are the best coaches.
2:46:49 And if you aren’t coaching people, they aren’t growing.
2:46:51 You’re stuck where you are.
2:46:52 So the best leaders of the people I mentor, the people that I’ve
2:46:56 trained, be a good coach.
2:46:58 And this is giving them those skills to be a good coach.
2:47:01 Thank you, Chris.
2:47:02 Ms. Jenkins.
2:47:03 I appreciate that you went back, Mr. Trent, because I recognize
2:47:12 that how many of our teachers, and we had that presentation by
2:47:15 Dr. Green just a few weeks ago.
2:47:16 How many of our teachers are not coming out of college prep
2:47:20 programs of teacher academies?
2:47:22 Um, and that trend is going to continue because colleges are
2:47:25 actually shutting down their programs because so few, few
2:47:29 peoples are, uh, pupils.
2:47:30 People are going into education programs.
2:47:34 So that is only, that trend is only going to increase, not
2:47:36 decrease.
2:47:37 We’re recruiting teachers out of everywhere to be from subs,
2:47:41 from the military.
2:47:43 The governor’s put the military program from growing from IA.
2:47:45 Some of them are going to now be able to come into the classroom
2:47:47 without even a bachelor’s degree.
2:47:49 So, um, moving forward into one, but you know, so we, it’s
2:47:53 really important to recognize that people haven’t had classroom
2:47:57 management, uh, instruction.
2:47:59 And the other thing I would suggest is, I, I hear you, we need
2:48:02 to be teaching reading, right, but you can’t, it’s really hard
2:48:06 to teach kids to read and to do math when you can’t get them all
2:48:11 to sit and listen and be respectful.
2:48:14 When you are constantly, we talked about whack-a-mole earlier.
2:48:17 Mm-hmm.
2:48:18 If you’re constantly whack-a-mole-ing behaviors instead of
2:48:20 having the standard set.
2:48:21 And I, I, I know there’s out there, there’s talk about conscious
2:48:25 discipline and where it might come from and what it might lead
2:48:27 to.
2:48:27 And I hear you’re concerned about the safe space because it
2:48:29 sounds like other, it’s, there’s connotations in that language
2:48:32 that sometimes we get worried about.
2:48:33 Um, but this is really important that whatever we do, some kind
2:48:38 of program of this self-regulation is important because we, our
2:48:42 teachers can’t teach if they can’t get everybody focused.
2:48:46 You know, it would be in an ideal world, they all come in and
2:48:49 they sit down and we learn math and we learn science and we, and
2:48:51 then we go to PE and then we go home.
2:48:53 And, but it’s takes, it takes more nowadays to get everybody on
2:48:57 the same page and our kids are coming from all different
2:49:00 directions.
2:49:01 I would also suggest, you know, the, I went back and looked at,
2:49:04 at the agenda item for tonight.
2:49:05 We are, it’s committing for one year.
2:49:07 It’s actually, we’re, all we’re doing is committing to this
2:49:09 training.
2:49:10 We’re, we’re, the agenda item tonight is to approve for these,
2:49:14 how, how many people?
2:49:15 225.
2:49:17 225 people to go, um, to a conference.
2:49:20 And so a week long, right?
2:49:22 Five days, yes.
2:49:23 Five days.
2:49:24 Um, so we’re, we’re at, that’s a pretty long conference.
2:49:28 Um, so that’s what we’re committing to.
2:49:30 Um, I hear what you’re saying.
2:49:32 Then it’s the next year, next year, next year.
2:49:34 Right, right, right.
2:49:35 But we, but when we get to this place next year and they come
2:49:38 back to us, they decide, you
2:49:39 know, we need to keep going and they come back to us, then we
2:49:41 will have more data and we’ll
2:49:42 have longer data and we’ll have had the time to get in and see
2:49:45 how is it working on a class
2:49:46 to class, school to school, um, level.
2:49:48 Um, but I appreciate that you’re giving it to us in bits and
2:49:52 pieces because that’s probably
2:49:53 a smart idea right now.
2:49:55 Ms. Jenkins.
2:49:58 Um, I’m gonna use some of my skill sets I learned in conscious
2:50:03 discipline right now.
2:50:04 Um, I speak bluntly too.
2:50:07 And conscious discipline has been villainized, politicized,
2:50:13 criticized without an understanding
2:50:16 or willingness to understand what it is.
2:50:19 It’s not new.
2:50:20 It’s been here a really long time.
2:50:23 Um, I had the opportunity of using it when I worked for our pre-K
2:50:29 ESE itinerant department.
2:50:31 And I also had the opportunity of being exposed to it as a new
2:50:35 mom.
2:50:36 And it’s all about self-regulation.
2:50:39 It’s not about stopping negative behaviors.
2:50:43 Especially when you’re working with our little guys.
2:50:45 Three to five years old is what we were working with.
2:50:47 It’s about lessening that behavior potentially.
2:50:50 Maybe ceasing it.
2:50:51 But at least lessening it.
2:50:53 In order for that child to be able to self-regulate at some
2:50:56 point.
2:50:57 Giving them that skill set.
2:50:58 To get back to focusing on work a lot faster than they may have
2:51:02 if they didn’t have that
2:51:03 skill set.
2:51:04 It’s about modifying behavior.
2:51:06 Replacing behavior.
2:51:07 Not just simply discipline.
2:51:10 Which, I wish they would change the name.
2:51:13 Because quite frankly it doesn’t make any sense to the concept
2:51:16 of the theory behind it.
2:51:20 The belief system behind it is not just about having a
2:51:23 consequence and punishing that child.
2:51:26 It’s about talking about why you feel that way.
2:51:29 For adults to recognize that children have emotions too.
2:51:32 And they have a right to feel those emotions.
2:51:34 Identify those emotions.
2:51:35 Live through those emotions.
2:51:37 Understanding there’s consequences for those decisions and
2:51:40 emotions sometimes.
2:51:41 But giving them a safe space to feel them.
2:51:46 And figure out when it is appropriate.
2:51:48 And how to react to them.
2:51:50 I had the opportunity to be at the parent academy that probably
2:51:56 had more attendance.
2:51:57 Of brain states.
2:52:00 And I felt like it was a really healthy mix of parents and staff.
2:52:03 I was actually really happy to see staff there.
2:52:06 As much as it was geared towards parents.
2:52:09 I was happy that the staff was inquisitive enough.
2:52:12 Maybe they weren’t participating in their school yet.
2:52:14 And wanted to figure it out.
2:52:16 And hear what it was about.
2:52:17 And I appreciated that very much.
2:52:19 It’s about establishing healthy adult to child, child to adult
2:52:24 relationships.
2:52:25 And in some of our schools that is so, so critical.
2:52:28 Because they aren’t necessarily always getting that in their
2:52:31 home environments.
2:52:32 And so it’s a bigger picture than just providing that safe and
2:52:36 connected environment.
2:52:37 Because you can’t learn if you’re not safe and connected like
2:52:40 you said.
2:52:41 But we have to look at the world we’re living in right now.
2:52:43 We’re well aware that our children are struggling with mental
2:52:47 health.
2:52:48 We’re well aware that we don’t have enough social workers,
2:52:52 guidance counselors to address those needs and meet the needs of
2:52:55 those students.
2:52:55 We don’t have enough resources in the state of Florida to meet
2:52:58 the needs of pediatric mental health in the first place.
2:53:01 And so if we can at least try to arm some of our students with a
2:53:06 personal skill set to attack those challenges from a very young
2:53:11 age.
2:53:12 We’re at least giving them some kind of toolkit to take with
2:53:14 them throughout the rest of their life to get through those
2:53:17 challenges.
2:53:17 But we’re also opening the door for that relationship with an
2:53:20 adult in the building.
2:53:21 That hopefully they can connect with and communicate with.
2:53:25 You know, we just, and we’re going to be acknowledging it
2:53:28 tonight.
2:53:28 But, you know, child abuse prevention month.
2:53:31 And it’s a grim statistic and data.
2:53:36 But quite frankly, our teachers and our staff members in our
2:53:43 schools are often the ones who are making the calls about what a
2:53:46 child is experiencing in the world around them.
2:53:48 And so those connections are critical on so many different
2:53:51 levels, not just education wise.
2:53:57 So, Ms. Campbell said this too, but I’m just going to say it
2:54:01 again.
2:54:02 I mean, this is something that we just discussed in this middle
2:54:05 school presentation.
2:54:06 Our students are telling them they don’t feel connected.
2:54:09 And the kids that we have in middle school right now didn’t
2:54:15 experience conscious discipline or a mindset of PD for teachers
2:54:20 to kind of rethink the way that they’re thinking about things.
2:54:22 The question of help paying for teaching teachers how to teach
2:54:27 is just interesting to me because we do PD constantly.
2:54:31 We spend a ton of money on professional development for our
2:54:34 staff.
2:54:34 And so to not recognize the value in developing our educators in
2:54:42 the area of social emotional skills, not only for the students
2:54:47 but for themselves, I struggle with that one.
2:54:51 And I encourage people.
2:54:52 There’s a viral video right now on the internet.
2:54:55 And I don’t know.
2:54:56 I feel like everybody’s seen it at this point of a little four-year-old
2:55:00 little son and his mom.
2:55:01 And he’s talking to his mom in his bedroom about a bad choice
2:55:06 that he had made.
2:55:07 And it’s the most incredible thing in the world to watch.
2:55:10 But to me, that’s an experience of a child who was raised in an
2:55:13 environment that had the same concepts of conscious discipline.
2:55:16 Being able to identify your feelings and emotions and talk about
2:55:20 them.
2:55:20 And identifying that, yeah, I made a bad choice.
2:55:22 It wasn’t okay.
2:55:23 You know, maybe I can do better.
2:55:25 It’s the most incredible thing to watch.
2:55:27 And I encourage people to find it if they haven’t seen it yet.
2:55:29 But thank you.
2:55:30 Thank you for all that you do.
2:55:32 I hope that we continue to do those parent academies.
2:55:36 I know it’s tough to get parents in here after a long work day
2:55:40 and some parents are working.
2:55:42 But again, I was really encouraged that we had staff members
2:55:44 there too.
2:55:45 So maybe kind of rethinking the way that we’re doing it,
2:55:48 offering maybe more of an, you know, e-learning opportunity of
2:55:52 some sort.
2:55:52 All right.
2:55:54 Thank you.
2:55:55 Mr. Reid, how are the schools selected?
2:55:57 Because it seemed like a lot of mine were on there.
2:55:59 A lot of yours?
2:56:00 Yeah, it was all about you.
2:56:02 No, the first year they were, the opportunity was put out there
2:56:06 and they volunteer.
2:56:07 So that’s where the eight came in.
2:56:09 An eighth school fell off and that’s how I joined that team.
2:56:12 The following year, I went on some recruitment and said, I have
2:56:15 an opportunity for you.
2:56:16 This next round, if we move forward with that, would be, I sat
2:56:20 down with leading and learning and we select them together with
2:56:24 all of their directors.
2:56:24 I’ve yet to make those phone calls yet.
2:56:26 So there, there may be principals that don’t voluntarily come
2:56:29 into this.
2:56:30 They’re kind of selected through a process and said, hey, you
2:56:32 should do this.
2:56:33 Yeah.
2:56:34 Again, they’re not ready at that moment.
2:56:36 They currently have something that they’re launching or they’re
2:56:38 continuing and they want to continue and see that through until
2:56:41 they’re ready for that piece.
2:56:42 So again, I don’t want to demand someone to, to take that out.
2:56:45 Yeah, no, I was just, I was just curious.
2:56:47 The other thing that I, and I’ll be honest with you, like I said,
2:56:50 like these are practices that I didn’t go to an educational
2:56:53 institution.
2:56:54 I came in from the outside.
2:56:56 I was certified over three years and did a darn good job at
2:57:00 teaching.
2:57:01 And the bottom line was is that a lot of these practices, they
2:57:04 come natural and they’re taught through the process of having
2:57:07 somebody there.
2:57:08 So the, the issue is, is that a lot of the things that, that
2:57:12 when I look at this, this is the core of what a good teacher
2:57:15 does in many different ways.
2:57:17 And then there’s some other things that I truly believe the,
2:57:20 when I look at this sustainable model.
2:57:22 So if it’s going to cost $225,000 for 225 people to go to, then
2:57:26 it’s, if we’re going to do say a third or a quarter or, you know,
2:57:31 you start adding that it starts to exponentially get more and
2:57:34 more expensive.
2:57:35 So I think that one of the comments is, is that I, I agree with
2:57:39 Ms. Jenkins in many of the comments that she says about best
2:57:41 practices and stuff like that.
2:57:42 I think where the divergent from the, where I take a look at it
2:57:45 is, is over a series of time, we’re going to be expanding a
2:57:49 budget like we are now to have deliverables that we’re going to
2:57:52 look at.
2:57:53 And where I would say is, is that it gets to a certain point
2:57:56 where at some point we could actually hire our own staff to do a
2:57:59 lot of these different things.
2:58:01 And they could also do other things that are more in line with
2:58:03 some of the stuff that maybe some of the other principals may
2:58:06 want to do stuff like that.
2:58:07 You see what I mean?
2:58:08 So that’s all.
2:58:09 So looking at it from a perspective of sustainability over a
2:58:12 long period of time, it gets bigger and bigger, costs more and
2:58:15 more.
2:58:15 Are there metrics to support that?
2:58:17 And then if not, then can we do this ourselves and have it come
2:58:20 up?
2:58:20 Because we now have experts inside the building.
2:58:22 We have multiple schools as sites, stuff like that.
2:58:25 And I think that those were just some of my things.
2:58:29 You know, when we, when, when, when I was teaching, they taught
2:58:32 us about having a structure inside the class and sticking to the
2:58:35 structure.
2:58:35 Because that keeps kids engaged, right?
2:58:37 And I heard somebody say, and I may have been, Mr. Trent, that
2:58:42 like when you have to stop and do this, then all of a sudden the
2:58:45 rest of the class.
2:58:45 And I can see that happening.
2:58:46 So like if I’m dealing over here with something, then the rest
2:58:48 of the class starts going.
2:58:49 If they haven’t been trained, if there’s not engagement and
2:58:51 stuff like that.
2:58:52 So I think that there are a lot of good best practices out there
2:58:55 that people use to engage inside their classrooms.
2:58:57 This may be one of them.
2:58:58 And we just take a look at it from a metrics perspective.
2:59:00 That’s all.
2:59:01 So is everybody else good on that?
2:59:03 Ms. Hand, did you have anything to say?
2:59:05 We’re good.
2:59:06 All right.
2:59:07 Thank you very much.
2:59:08 I think it is now.
2:59:09 Yes, sir.
2:59:10 Great presentation.
2:59:11 Hey, thank you for all your, your exuberance when you’re
2:59:14 speaking and stuff like that.
2:59:15 I can tell that you really love this and that you’re, you know,
2:59:18 you’re invested in it.
2:59:19 So thank you.
2:59:20 Just like you were when you were a principal and you left me
2:59:23 with all those parents.
2:59:24 I always try and leave my mark.
2:59:26 No, I know.
2:59:27 I know.
2:59:29 All right.
2:59:30 So Ms. Hand, you have 22 minutes.
2:59:32 Would you like to, you know, and then there’s a couple other
2:59:35 things we would like to talk about,
2:59:36 but I can push my stuff to the evening.
2:59:39 What would you like to do?
2:59:40 I would like to cover the Thule agreement and the capital very
2:59:43 quickly if you don’t mind.
2:59:43 You can do it in 22 minutes.
2:59:44 Okay.
2:59:45 Yes, sir.
2:59:46 I can push the other stuff to the meeting and we can get them
2:59:48 out of here about 4:30.
2:59:48 So the floor is yours.
2:59:49 Okay.
2:59:50 You have the Thule agreement on your agenda tonight.
2:59:53 This was tabled from the previous meeting.
2:59:55 Ms. Curry had requested a 50-year lease term in order to secure
3:00:00 financing for the construction
3:00:03 improvements, the scope of which has grown quite a bit over time.
3:00:06 I met with Ms. Curry and we added some deliverables to the lease
3:00:10 agreement based on the board’s request.
3:00:13 One of those deliverables is an annual report and that will give
3:00:17 the board a kind of a summary
3:00:19 of the performance of Kyler as a community resource in terms of
3:00:23 providing classes to the community.
3:00:26 They were focusing on STEM and workforce development type of
3:00:30 work.
3:00:30 So the annual report has been added to the lease agreement.
3:00:33 We also put some construction deliverables into the lease
3:00:36 agreement and those are listed on,
3:00:38 I believe it’s page seven.
3:00:41 And those include obtaining a building permit for improvements
3:00:45 necessary to occupy the building by December 31st, 2023.
3:00:50 Starting construction of the renovations necessary to occupy by
3:00:54 July 1st, 2024.
3:00:55 And completion of those renovations by July 1st, 2025.
3:01:01 And this is included in the termination clause so that we may
3:01:05 terminate with a 90-day notice in the event
3:01:08 that those milestones are not met by Thule Community Development
3:01:12 Group.
3:01:13 Ms. Curry is here today if you have questions of her.
3:01:15 But we both agree that these are appropriate terms and hopefully
3:01:19 meet the board’s intent for the milestones.
3:01:22 Any conversations?
3:01:26 Ms. Jenkins?
3:01:27 No?
3:01:28 Okay.
3:01:29 Mr. Trent?
3:01:30 Good.
3:01:31 Ms. Wright?
3:01:32 No.
3:01:33 Thank you for being willing to amend this lease just so that we
3:01:35 have some deliverables that really help us make sure that we are,
3:01:39 you know, that the organization is doing what they’re promising
3:01:41 us that they’re going to do,
3:01:42 which I know your heart is to change the community.
3:01:44 And I think that this building will definitely do that.
3:01:47 So I’m comfortable moving forward with the amended lease.
3:01:51 Is Ms. Tule so I can direct her when I talk?
3:01:55 Where is she in the crowd?
3:01:56 She’s here.
3:01:57 Ms. Tule, how you doing?
3:01:58 I just want to say thank you for starting this initiative.
3:02:00 We fully support you in everything you’re doing.
3:02:03 I would love to come up there, say hi, see how I can help.
3:02:06 I was trying – Ms. Hands was having heart palpitations when I
3:02:10 was saying,
3:02:11 we should just get all our contractors and show up there and do
3:02:14 it for free, right?
3:02:15 Like some sort of home renovation project.
3:02:18 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
3:02:19 I know.
3:02:20 But I just want to say, you know, the lifeblood of our
3:02:22 communities are set with individuals like you that commit
3:02:26 themselves to something greater than just what they do on a
3:02:28 regular basis.
3:02:28 And I think that you are doing something amazing.
3:02:32 So if there’s anything we can do to help you out, just reach out
3:02:35 to me.
3:02:35 I know how to do like plumbing and wiring and stuff like that.
3:02:38 So it may not turn out so well.
3:02:40 And Ms. Hand, again, is having heart palpitations.
3:02:42 But I just want to tell you that I am committed to you.
3:02:45 So if you need me, I’m there.
3:02:47 And I’ve been excited about this from the beginning.
3:02:49 So Ms. Hand, is that all you needed on that?
3:02:51 Yes, sir, thank you.
3:02:52 All right.
3:02:53 Next up, capital –
3:02:54 The capital allocation plan.
3:02:55 I’m going to ask Ms. Lisinski to kick us off and talk as fast as
3:02:59 I do.
3:02:59 But this is important because the tail end of this has the
3:03:02 recommended capital allocations.
3:03:04 And some of these projects are projects that I’m working on
3:03:07 right now from my facilities perspective that you’re going to
3:03:10 start to see on your board agenda.
3:03:12 So we’d like to get some feedback from the board.
3:03:15 So Ms. Lisinski.
3:03:16 Thank you.
3:03:17 So one thing that I can do is I can move forward to that portion
3:03:22 if that’s to save time.
3:03:25 And also send out the slides to you with some more explanation
3:03:30 so you can understand where we’re going here.
3:03:33 It’s you guys’ presentation however you want to do it.
3:03:35 Okay.
3:03:36 I’d like to see a little bit of overview, but if you could move
3:03:38 through that pretty quickly.
3:03:39 Sure.
3:03:40 Thank you.
3:03:41 Okay.
3:03:42 Let me –
3:03:43 So you’ve seen this slide before.
3:03:51 And where I wanted to focus today is the capital projects, the
3:03:55 yellow circle, where you can see that’s part of our funding.
3:03:59 And this slide breaks that out a little bit further.
3:04:03 You can see on the left side the capital projects about 20% of
3:04:09 all funds.
3:04:10 And then when you break out the capital funds on the chart on
3:04:14 the right, you can see how things are broken out.
3:04:17 You can see how things are broken out.
3:04:27 And we’re very, very fortunate to have the community support us
3:04:31 for this sales surtax.
3:04:33 If we didn’t have the sales surtax, you can see as we go on the
3:04:37 funding that we would have to repair facilities, buy equipment,
3:04:43 and those kind of things.
3:04:47 So capital funds, they’re unique.
3:04:49 They have unique rules.
3:04:52 You cannot move funds between these funds within the capital.
3:04:57 And some common goals are guardrails that you might want to keep
3:05:02 in mind is equipment purchased or facility projects should last
3:05:08 at least five years.
3:05:10 And it can’t be used for instructional materials or staff, custodial,
3:05:14 or grounds functions.
3:05:16 That one is a little bit odd, but you can pay for repair of the
3:05:20 equipment, so a floor scrubber or a lawnmower that you’re
3:05:31 replacing is something that you can do with capital funds.
3:05:45 I know Sue had talked last board meeting a lot about the
3:05:51 importance of infrastructure for schools.
3:05:57 The bottom line is school facilities affect health, behavior,
3:06:01 engagement, learning, and growth and achievement.
3:06:04 So we really – it is a very, very important part of the pie.
3:06:10 And again, you can see the half-cent sales surtax split out by
3:06:15 facility renewal, education technology, and security.
3:06:20 Again, we’re very, very fortunate that the voters approved the
3:06:24 six-year extension.
3:06:26 And I don’t want to speak for Sue, but I might try to say this
3:06:30 and correct me if I’m wrong.
3:06:32 The initial – the previous referendum was for things like, you
3:06:36 know, the basic blocking and tackling of roofs and HVAC and
3:06:41 those kind of things.
3:06:42 And this renewal is looking – we’re able to actually look to
3:06:48 the classrooms and labs and athletic equipment and facilities.
3:06:54 So this is, you know, around that we can really start focusing
3:07:02 in on all the things that we’ve been talking about with reimagining
3:07:07 middle school.
3:07:08 But I’ll move on.
3:07:11 This next slide, I just – the capital fund impact fees.
3:07:15 And that is, you know, one-time assessed on new residential
3:07:19 development.
3:07:20 So – and it’s meant to offset the cost, you know, because if
3:07:25 you build a new development,
3:07:26 that’s going to cost taxpayers more money for new schools,
3:07:30 additions, things like that.
3:07:33 So on the other side, you can see the uses for impact fees.
3:07:36 And then capital fund, PICO, I put this in here because it’s
3:07:45 going to come up again in a couple slides.
3:07:49 But PICO used to be, I think, in 2020 or ‘19, I believe we used
3:07:57 to – the district used to get those dollars.
3:08:00 Now the PICO goes straight to charter schools.
3:08:04 And we are a pass-through.
3:08:06 And it’s for maintenance, repair, renovation, remodeling.
3:08:13 And so now what we’re really here to talk about is the capital
3:08:18 fund tax levy.
3:08:20 You’ll hear it all kinds of different ways.
3:08:22 It’s the local property taxes that we get for capital.
3:08:30 We get 1.5 mils.
3:08:33 And the allowable expenses you can see are remodeling,
3:08:39 construction, maintenance, renovation, school buses, replacement
3:08:45 of equipment,
3:08:46 replacement of computer equipment and software, property and
3:08:50 casualty insurance.
3:08:51 And that’s going to be big because it really went up this year.
3:08:55 Motor vehicles, which includes the white fleet.
3:08:59 Payment of opening day collection.
3:09:02 I like that.
3:09:03 What that really is, is the library books of a new school.
3:09:06 So for the middle school that’s going to open up, LCI will pay
3:09:10 for those library books.
3:09:13 And also this last line is interesting to me.
3:09:20 But it says you can pay for facility maintenance with capital
3:09:23 millage, but not in a capital fund.
3:09:26 So Hillsborough included a, I’m sorry.
3:09:40 Well, one of their legislative initiatives was to change some of
3:09:47 that.
3:09:47 And what they wanted to do was just have the capital, being able
3:09:52 to fund facility maintenance within the capital.
3:09:56 Fund because now we can fund it, but we have to transfer it to
3:10:02 fund 100 and then pay it out that way.
3:10:06 So this would save a lot of different accounting and it brings
3:10:10 more clarity and you’re able to track expenses much better.
3:10:17 But the way that HB1 included the language, you can see on the
3:10:22 very bottom, it says payment of salaries and benefits
3:10:25 for employees who job duties support activities funded above.
3:10:30 So when you just read that, so I called Hillsborough to say,
3:10:35 what was your intent?
3:10:35 And the intent was just to be able to spend capital dollars for
3:10:40 the facility maintenance portion that we normally transfer over.
3:10:45 But the way that reads, it looks like you could almost pay for
3:10:50 any salary that supports anything above there.
3:10:54 So there’s, I sent out some requests and Hillsborough’s going
3:11:00 back out to have the audit general look at that and see what
3:11:04 that line means now.
3:11:05 So it’s going, it is in HB1.
3:11:12 This slide just real quick, just shows you that through these
3:11:18 capital committees, we have funded white fleet replacement over,
3:11:24 you know, for the last four years.
3:11:26 You can see last year and this year, we’re continue to robust
3:11:30 that replacement.
3:11:31 And that’s just so important.
3:11:32 We don’t want to put dangerous vehicles on the road.
3:11:35 We want people to be safe.
3:11:36 So we’re collaborating and formalizing a replacement plan for
3:11:43 the white fleet.
3:11:44 Mr. Sinskey, I just want to remind you, we have 10 minutes
3:11:48 before the 4:30.
3:11:49 Sorry.
3:11:50 Okay.
3:11:51 No, it’s okay.
3:11:52 I thought I was going fast.
3:11:53 You’re doing great.
3:11:54 I don’t know how long it is.
3:11:55 I just wanted to remind you.
3:11:56 That’s all.
3:11:57 Okay.
3:11:58 Language here.
3:11:59 And the reason that I said that PICO is important is the new
3:12:04 language that is passing.
3:12:07 The House side, they appropriated money for PICO, but they do
3:12:15 want to do this, they created this formula and so charters will
3:12:24 most likely get a portion of our LCI, which didn’t happen before.
3:12:32 So on the Senate side, they added another change and what they’re
3:12:38 saying is the seven largest school districts will pay the
3:12:44 funding for charters maintenance.
3:12:48 So more to come on that, but you can see that there’s a move to
3:12:54 share our LCI dollars with charters and that will just, you know,
3:13:00 reduce our pie.
3:13:01 And the amount of money that we can spend on, um, facility
3:13:05 maintenance, the debt schedule.
3:13:08 You can see that, um, bevards tax assessment history, and you
3:13:14 can see that amazing growth.
3:13:20 We’ve had, uh, is that our mill?
3:13:25 And then 2021 current tax assessment is the pre COVID.
3:13:30 So you can see how much, um, is that one, is that 1.5 mils or 1
3:13:39 mil?
3:13:40 Sorry.
3:13:41 Just hang on, just hang on.
3:13:43 What is that, uh, 70 million represent?
3:13:46 Out of which taxes from the…
3:13:48 Oh, no.
3:13:49 That is the, uh, the taxable values of property.
3:13:54 And we take how much of a percentage of that in order to get…
3:13:59 The 1.5 mil.
3:14:00 Yeah.
3:14:01 Okay.
3:14:02 That has gone up significantly.
3:14:06 Okay.
3:14:07 And you can see here, uh, we take 96% collection of 103 million.
3:14:15 We have to pay the debt.
3:14:18 We also transfer out maintenance transfers.
3:14:21 Like I said, the property insurance has increased tremendously.
3:14:28 And when you look at the bottom line, we have $40.9 million to
3:14:35 spread, to fund all of the capital requirements for next year
3:14:41 that are to prioritize.
3:14:42 And this next slide is the committee that, uh, we are in.
3:14:47 And I have to tell you that, you know, we look at health and
3:14:51 safety, um, support of the learning environment, upgrading
3:14:56 existing equipment, innovation, affordability.
3:14:59 Um, and we work very well together.
3:15:04 There’s times where other people are advocating for items that
3:15:10 aren’t there.
3:15:11 It’s just because we’re so passionate about it and want to do
3:15:14 the best for kids and for the district.
3:15:16 So, that said, uh, we’re gonna have…
3:15:20 I, I’m gonna take over just to…
3:15:22 You’re gonna go quick?
3:15:23 I’m gonna go quick.
3:15:24 Okay.
3:15:25 So, we have several groups of projects that are on the capital
3:15:28 list.
3:15:28 The top of the list are the educational FF&E.
3:15:32 This is our typical FF&E allocation.
3:15:35 Uh, we also work with students, or with, um, secondary on CTE
3:15:38 projects.
3:15:39 So, we include their requests.
3:15:41 So, those are kind of off the top.
3:15:43 The next off the top are school buses.
3:15:45 So, they have requested 4.5 million.
3:15:48 That’s what we included in the program.
3:15:51 And then, there’s some very small items relating to
3:15:54 transportation and, uh, um, warehouse and distribution that we
3:15:58 just leave off the top.
3:15:59 And then, uh, Mr. Cheatham and I, uh, in terms of ET and
3:16:02 facilities, we basically negotiate the rest.
3:16:05 Um, because both of us have more than one funding source for our,
3:16:09 our projects and programs.
3:16:11 Uh, he’s, uh, got ESSER funds.
3:16:14 He’s got sales surtax.
3:16:15 I’ve got sales surtax.
3:16:16 And we try to do as much as we can, uh, within the funding that
3:16:20 is available.
3:16:21 Uh, for me, I have many multi-year programs.
3:16:24 So, some of these tracks, for example, you’ll see 2.1 million in
3:16:28 the program.
3:16:29 That is the, those are the last two tracks that we are going to
3:16:32 rubberize.
3:16:33 Um, this is important because you’ll see on your board agenda
3:16:36 for April 25th, the Titusville High School track renewal.
3:16:40 And that’s really coming out of this pot of money.
3:16:43 So, would appreciate a, a head nod on that so that we can move
3:16:45 forward.
3:16:46 And we’ll advance fund that out of this year’s capital.
3:16:49 Um, but I need to make sure that it’s in next year’s capital
3:16:52 program.
3:16:53 And there’s, there’s a handful of, of things like that.
3:16:56 That’s the big one.
3:16:57 Um, you’ll also see on my list for facilities.
3:17:01 There are several programs that we are starting design with the
3:17:04 intention of moving forward with, um, the, the construction
3:17:09 project.
3:17:10 If there’s additional money available, I think Cindy has
3:17:12 estimated conservatively based on our uncertainty as to where
3:17:15 the legislature is going to land on sharing this resource with
3:17:18 charter schools.
3:17:19 So, uh, if we have additional resources available, you’ll see on
3:17:23 the list that there are priority add backs.
3:17:25 But where we are right now, we’ve balanced the project list with
3:17:29 the resources that we have available.
3:17:31 Um, you see modern classrooms in there on the ET side, on the
3:17:36 facility side, you’ll also see some, um, investment in
3:17:40 classrooms, flooring, that type of thing.
3:17:43 Uh, we’ve done a really good job on our science labs.
3:17:46 Uh, those middle school science labs, those are, um, coming to
3:17:50 you, um, at the next board meeting as well.
3:17:52 The maintenance capital funding increase that is, uh, moving
3:17:57 additional money into maintenance to support those activities.
3:18:00 We do that every year.
3:18:02 It gets pulled out of the capital renewal and I transfer it over
3:18:05 and I’d like to start budgeting it appropriately.
3:18:07 Uh, we are doing more in terms of, uh, contracted services
3:18:12 because we have to, uh, we’ve been hit with issues with, um,
3:18:16 rentals for chillers.
3:18:18 If chiller breaks, chiller breaks and we’ve got to rent chillers.
3:18:21 I’ve got no choice.
3:18:22 Um, so we’ve got that type of thing.
3:18:24 Uh, we’re doing student restroom renovations.
3:18:27 We’re investing heavily in athletics.
3:18:30 We’ve had literally no investment in athletics until the last
3:18:34 couple of years.
3:18:35 So you’re starting to see some multi-year projects to do
3:18:39 athletic renewal, uh, elementary pavilions.
3:18:41 That’s an ask that we have on the part of the elementary schools.
3:18:44 And then the one that, that I’m going to just really advocate
3:18:48 for is the little one that says basketball goal renewal.
3:18:52 You know, you heard Dr. Sullivan talking about middle school, uh,
3:18:56 basketball, elementary basketball.
3:18:58 If you have wandered around our schools, our basketball goals
3:19:02 are in just horrible condition.
3:19:04 And they want to play each other.
3:19:05 They want to play.
3:19:06 So we, I want to make those look nice.
3:19:09 And where we’ve done that at a couple of schools, it’s been very
3:19:12 impactful.
3:19:13 Um, another one you see is athletics, FF and E.
3:19:16 There’s a pretty big chunk of money there.
3:19:18 That’s not, that is for specific things that we have been
3:19:23 funding out of maintenance.
3:19:25 So, um, scoreboard renewal is probably the best example.
3:19:28 Another example is, um, goal posts where our schools call
3:19:32 maintenance and say, “Hey, our XYZ broke.”
3:19:34 Maintenance says, “That’s nice.
3:19:36 We have no money.”
3:19:37 And things don’t get fixed.
3:19:39 So we’re taking a capital approach to those types of items and
3:19:44 want to fund that a different
3:19:46 way rather than running it through the maintenance budget.
3:19:48 So we can look at our assessment and say, “These scoreboards
3:19:50 need to be fixed.
3:19:51 We’re going to get new ones.
3:19:53 This is a project, not a maintenance item.”
3:19:56 Wrestling mats inside that FF and E?
3:19:58 Um, no.
3:19:59 No.
3:20:00 They’re not.
3:20:01 We might have to talk about that.
3:20:03 And then we have a couple of projects that have come about
3:20:06 because of, um, issues at schools.
3:20:09 So a galley, um, stadium restroom is one where continually
3:20:14 having problems with the plumbing
3:20:17 when there’s an event.
3:20:18 And if you go out there, it is just, it’s just bad.
3:20:22 Let me just say that.
3:20:24 Um, satellite stadium restroom, that is a continuing problem too.
3:20:27 They have big events.
3:20:29 We believe that that is a function of inadequate design for big,
3:20:34 huge events.
3:20:35 So we’re taking a look at what we need to upgrade there.
3:20:38 Um, West shore press box.
3:20:40 That’s been a need at that school for quite some time.
3:20:42 And they have been a strong advocate and they really, they don’t
3:20:46 have other facilities.
3:20:47 So they need a press box because their scores are sitting out in
3:20:50 the rain.
3:20:51 And then we’re looking at, uh, middle school tracks in
3:20:54 cooperation with the sales surtax.
3:20:56 That is not a funded project in the capital plan, but it’s going
3:21:00 to, we’re going to try to cover that with surtax and get rolling.
3:21:02 But you might see this back at a second year, um, for middle
3:21:05 school tracks.
3:21:06 And then we also have four schools with no tracks.
3:21:09 So we want to start looking at, do we want to add tracks to
3:21:12 those schools, uh, in the future?
3:21:14 So some of these have smaller numbers because we’re just getting
3:21:19 started.
3:21:20 So that, um, concludes our presentation and happy to answer
3:21:24 questions.
3:21:25 Oh, I’m sorry.
3:21:26 Can I add one thing?
3:21:27 So this is the first round.
3:21:29 Um, so this is a recommendation to the board and you, you’re
3:21:33 more than, we’re more than willing
3:21:35 and happy to have you make recommendations, change things if you
3:21:38 like.
3:21:38 Um, but I just wanted to let you know that.
3:21:44 And it is a recommendation.
3:21:46 We’ll, we’ll come back.
3:21:47 This is just the first round, a starting point.
3:21:50 And we also know needs change and stuff breaks.
3:21:53 So, um, we’ll come back in June when we get the, the, the new
3:21:58 estimate for property values.
3:22:01 And I just want to add that.
3:22:06 Yeah.
3:22:07 And I, I would add one more thing.
3:22:08 There is a project for ESF facility renewal that you may ask me
3:22:12 about.
3:22:12 And what that is about is the flooding that occurred.
3:22:15 Uh, we are doing a drainage project at an as yet to be
3:22:19 determined cost.
3:22:20 And the other piece of that is the colonnades coming into the
3:22:22 building.
3:22:23 If you look up, uh, there’s been significant corrosion.
3:22:26 And as we’ve gotten into it, there’s some structural elements
3:22:29 that need to be addressed.
3:22:30 So that’s, that’s what that project is about.
3:22:34 Ms. Campbell.
3:22:37 No, I appreciate this.
3:22:38 I know that a lot of, um, thought goes and thank you for sharing
3:22:41 the priorities.
3:22:42 Because some of the, you know, there’s some things on here that
3:22:44 we would like to have, but safety has to come first.
3:22:47 And when we have things that are falling apart, we’re going to
3:22:49 create unsafe situations.
3:22:50 We obviously have to prioritize those.
3:22:52 Uh, I appreciate starting on the middle school tracks as a
3:22:56 middle school track mom this season at, yeah, I see those.
3:22:59 And then they got to have a, a meet at a high school and went,
3:23:02 oh, it was amazing.
3:23:05 So, uh, I appreciate that.
3:23:07 Look, I know the, the middle school coaches would appreciate
3:23:09 that.
3:23:09 Um, I just, just, you know, I always go to the things that didn’t
3:23:13 get funded or didn’t get funded fully.
3:23:15 And just, just, I know that I appreciate that you guys are
3:23:19 finding other ways and frequently we have extra capital.
3:23:22 Because we, we budget for the 96%, but frequently we always go
3:23:26 over this, but we can’t budget.
3:23:27 96.7 is the norm.
3:23:29 Right.
3:23:30 So we can add some of that back in.
3:23:31 And obviously we have to have some sales tax, which is overperformed.
3:23:33 And hopefully we’ll continue to do that.
3:23:35 Our expectations and budget.
3:23:36 Um, but I, can you talk to me about the elementary pavilions?
3:23:40 I, I see it’s, you know, priority list design only and then
3:23:43 combining with the, with the, the outdoor classrooms.
3:23:46 We’re kind of doing that together.
3:23:47 So we’re just kind of getting started on that.
3:23:50 Or is some of that in the sales or tax or I, some of it was even
3:23:55 in ESSER, I thought.
3:23:55 There was, there was one in ESSER.
3:23:57 Okay.
3:23:58 And we are starting on design.
3:24:00 I think we have three under design right now.
3:24:02 Okay.
3:24:03 And so those, those tend to end up being like $300,000 projects.
3:24:07 They’re big projects.
3:24:08 Right.
3:24:09 Um, so we’re just sticking our toe in the water on, on those.
3:24:13 Right.
3:24:14 And I love that idea.
3:24:15 Um, but at the same time, we’ve got some safety issues here that
3:24:19 have to be prioritized.
3:24:20 So, uh, but we’re, but so I, what I’m hearing you say is that we’ll
3:24:24 have the plans in place
3:24:25 so that if we have the funding, we’re ready to go at such a time.
3:24:28 That’s where we’re heading.
3:24:29 Yes.
3:24:30 Thank you.
3:24:31 I’m, I am looking at the list and, uh, and supportive of what
3:24:34 you guys have come up with
3:24:36 so far.
3:24:37 Thank you, Ms. Campbell.
3:24:38 Uh, Ms. Jenkins.
3:24:39 I’m good.
3:24:40 All right.
3:24:41 Mr. Trent.
3:24:42 I’m good.
3:24:43 That’s right.
3:24:45 Um, I think for me, uh, Cindy, if you can send out a list of the
3:24:49 budgetary, we’re getting
3:24:50 to a point where we’re starting to get this right.
3:24:53 Like we’re like, okay, because I, I immediately, when I look at
3:24:55 this, I’m like, Hey, I’m going
3:24:56 to try to talk to Sue about covering some of those athletic
3:24:59 things like the mats and stuff
3:25:00 like that.
3:25:01 See where we can look at that for the future.
3:25:02 There’s some other things I was going to talk to her about, and
3:25:04 this is good for the prompt,
3:25:05 but you and I had sat down and we had mapped out.
3:25:08 Okay.
3:25:09 We know that unlike May 9th, there’s going to be a budget that
3:25:11 comes out all that.
3:25:12 If we can put together a schedule.
3:25:14 So the board members know here’s when this is, here’s when this
3:25:17 is so that like today’s
3:25:18 meeting, we knew that this was on the agenda, but knowing like,
3:25:21 Hey, you guys might want
3:25:22 to bring some of your capital requests to Ms. Hand prior to this,
3:25:25 to make sure that there’s,
3:25:26 there’s some sort of a plan going forward.
3:25:28 So if there’s a way that you can put together, not only the
3:25:31 dates of when we’re getting stuff
3:25:33 like the budget comes out, it’s finally approved all that.
3:25:37 But then also, Tammy and I were looking at some of those
3:25:40 proposed Tuesdays and stuff like
3:25:43 that to give to you to talk about budget.
3:25:45 Sue and I were talking about that.
3:25:47 So if we can kind of tentatively put something together so that
3:25:49 the board’s prepared ahead
3:25:50 of time to go talk to the communities and stuff like that.
3:25:53 Yes, we’re absolutely doing that.
3:25:55 You will see a schedule coming out soon and we anticipate
3:25:58 numerous workshops, especially
3:25:59 as we transition to more zero based budgeting, that’s going to
3:26:02 require some conversation
3:26:04 between the board and our departments about what our priorities
3:26:08 are.
3:26:08 So Cindy’s got the process started where we’re all filling out
3:26:11 lots of forms and got some metrics
3:26:14 and we’re talking about what may or may not be eligible for millage.
3:26:18 So we’ve got that piece in the mix.
3:26:20 And so we anticipate a lot of conversations with the board
3:26:24 coming up in the next eight weeks
3:26:25 or so regarding budget.
3:26:26 Okay.
3:26:27 Perfect.
3:26:28 And then yes, we can take a look at those, be prepared for them.
3:26:33 The other thing that I was going to do is our property insurance
3:26:37 and stuff like that,
3:26:38 I think we’re in the process of going out.
3:26:40 I don’t know if we are right now or not, but we’re going out for
3:26:43 consultants and stuff like that.
3:26:44 But our property insurance and stuff like that, I think I’m
3:26:47 going to do a deep dive on because there’s
3:26:49 some extreme savings inside of there that we can use both with
3:26:53 boiler and everything else
3:26:54 that I don’t think we’ve been taking a look at because we’ve
3:26:56 been focused so much on health,
3:26:57 but there’s a lot in that property side that we can take a look
3:27:01 at.
3:27:01 So I think that you bringing that up is great and having high
3:27:04 concerns over having a major increase
3:27:06 in there with, you know, we may not be bidding that thing
3:27:09 correctly.
3:27:10 The other thing is, is that I would, Ms. Sue, I would talk about
3:27:14 those.
3:27:14 You know, there’s a couple of things that I think dynamically we
3:27:17 just look at from a perspective
3:27:18 of we’re asking schools to fund some of these things, whether it’s
3:27:23 athletics or something like that.
3:27:24 But sometimes it’s just not fair because like when I was
3:27:27 coaching wrestling, I coached at Space Coast, right?
3:27:29 We had just fundraised and got brand new mats.
3:27:31 But when we went down to Coco, they didn’t have the proper mats
3:27:35 and we were dragging them all over.
3:27:36 They would borrow our mats.
3:27:37 So just some stuff like that.
3:27:39 That’s just an example, but you know.
3:27:42 All good, Mr. Susan.
3:27:43 I think now that Dr. Sullivan has grasped athletics, we’ll be
3:27:47 looking at those needs.
3:27:48 There’s some funding in this year’s capital plan for athletic FF&E,
3:27:52 and we just need to kind of figure out
3:27:53 where all that is because there was quite a bit in ESSER, too,
3:27:55 and many schools used their ESSER funding.
3:27:57 So I want to get with Dr. Sullivan and absolutely get where you’re
3:28:00 going.
3:28:00 And then I also think there were some questions on, hey, what
3:28:04 classrooms, what pavilions, and stuff like that.
3:28:05 So when we’re going down this process, if there’s a way to say,
3:28:08 here’s where we have those three.
3:28:09 You know what I mean?
3:28:10 Kind of give them so they can get excited about the projects at
3:28:12 their schools and stuff like that.
3:28:14 Other than that, I’m good.
3:28:15 Without any further conversation, we can get out of here and go
3:28:18 get something to eat prior to 5:30.
3:28:20 We all good?
3:28:21 Good, Ms. Cindy?
3:28:22 It’s good.
3:28:23 All right.
3:28:23 Let’s rock.
3:28:52 We’ll see you next time.
3:29:22 Bye.