Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
16:30 Not only was she elected as the lieutenant governor for girl state for Florida this year, but another student from Brevard was elected governor. So from Brevard as governor, we have Anjani Sharma from West Shore junior senior high. And the lieutenant governor was Emily Chu from Edgewood junior senior high. So congratulations to those ladies for winning those elections for girls date this year.
16:56 Thank you, Miss Campbell. Okay, I will go next. I want to give a shout out to some of our staff here at the district.
17:04 So sue, her team has done an amazing job. They are doing all kinds of updates. We get weekly emails of pictures of really just vamping up our facilities to make them beautiful and ready for our students to come back to school next year.
17:15 So I want to give a shout out to your team, sue, because you guys are doing an amazing job. I am excited to walk the hallways and the classrooms and see all these renovations that you guys have done in person. So we appreciate you tremendously.
17:27 And I also want to give a shout out. Right now is really a cool time because we get to see community come around our students and our schools in a way that is a little unique. When it’s back to school, we get to see a ton of different events that happen, whether it’s backpack give outs.
17:39 There’s an individual in the north end of the county and I’m going to embarrass her and say her name. So Miss Edna Wilson, she does a shoe drive, but it’s a little different. So she doesn’t collect shoes to just hand out to kids.
17:50 She creates an event. She has created an event in the past several years where children and families are able to come and pick out a pair of brand new shoes at a shoe store. And this may seem like a foreign concept to some people because we’re used to doing that, but not every child gets that ability to go pick out the shoes that they want for school.
18:06 That’s a big deal. And having been raised by a single parent, I understand that. So I want to give a shout out to Miss Edna and say thank you so much for recognizing a need in the community and then giving them this opportunity for families to just come and experience something that they may not get to experience otherwise and to all the other organizations out there that are gearing up for the backpack drives and the other events that are happening.
18:27 So it’s a lot of fun. I would encourage all of our community, get out, get involved, do something with one of those events because you will have an amazing time. That’s all I have.
18:35 Thank you, Mister Trent. All right, again, I’ll take this time to have a shout out to the teachers. First off, you know, they’re not all just sitting around.
18:46 This is a time where they kind of tweak their profession, the curriculum that they are trying to perfect and never will. Right. But being a reflective teacher myself, this is a time where they look back, they make some changes in the incoming year, the incoming months here, it’s almost over.
19:05 But enjoy your time, take some time for yourself. But I know you’re going to come in with your batteries recharged, a shout out to the admin who are not taking that time off. This is a time when they really put in the effort to make it look like they know that they’re doing everything correctly in the beginning of the year, but it’s the hours they’re putting in now.
19:27 So thank you for doing what you’re doing out there in those schools, to the custodial staff that’s making the schools look as great as they are. When that open, when the doors open up again, this is when they’re putting in the time. But a lot of that direction comes from here.
19:42 Like you had said with Suhan and her group that is putting the plans out there for them to make the schools look as great as they are. So we’re down to a few weeks. Enjoy your time off.
19:56 We’re really looking forward to this coming year. Thank you for what you’re doing and enjoy the rest of the summer. Thank you.
20:06 Mister Trent did want to take a second and say thank you to everybody who came here today. We have some guests that are going to be speaking about the veterans project that we have moving forward. There’s a lot of our media assistants that are in the back, specialists that are in the back.
20:20 Thank you for coming. We really appreciate your, your dedication to our school system and then also a lot of our individuals that are here for various purposes along with advocating for the new hires that we have coming on. So I always want to say thank you to the people who have taken the time out of their regular day to come forward.
20:35 I also wanted to say thank you to the economic Development Council about two weeks ago, had a meeting and it was one of these things where it was just kind of the stars were aligning. We’ve been talking about putting our veterans project together with the various veterans agencies over the last couple of months. Right.
20:49 And we’ve talked about how to do it. Suhan put together the whole process and everything like that. And I got an email, I called up the EDC and said, hey, we’re going to be doing this.
20:56 And they said, well, we’re having a coordination meeting with veterans groups, federal policy, everything else in two weeks. Would you like to be there? So I went there, and they had individuals from the federal government. They had.
21:07 Let me get this straight, Kathleen Ferguson and Tyron Judd from the Roosevelt group, which is a huge lobbying coordinating group for the Department of Defense, many elected officials. And we were all sitting there, and one of the things that we did was laid out, started talking about some of the needs as far as the community with their veterans organizations, to tie the community to the veterans organizations. And when we started, when I said, hey, guys, just hang on just a second.
21:29 We have a meeting on the 11th that will be talking about some of this stuff, they were so excited that they said, look, we’re throwing everything that we have behind you guys. And what they want to try to do is put together a pilot program in Brevard for a lot of the things that we’re going to be initiating, because it’s something that the Department of Defense, Defense has been calling for for a while. So I wanted to say thank you to the Economic Development Council for coordinating that.
21:49 And then a week later, we had the honor to meet with the EDC, also with Boeing, l three, Harris Grumman, Lockheed Martin, all of the major defense contractors, along with some others, and talk about our CTE strategy and how we can, with career and technical, not only give the jobs to the children, but then also how can we create opportunities where students can go learn firsthand? And I’ll tell you, I wanted to say, like, everybody that was inside the meeting came to it because of some of the ideas that we have talked about and just saying, hey, we’re willing to look into this space. We have the new hb one coming up. We have all of these other things to become more competitive.
22:29 It gives us some more levity. And what ended up happening is that they were so excited. And I wanted to give Doctor Rendell a huge shout out because, because as we were sitting there talking to these huge defense industry contractors, everything that they were asking him a question on and he responded to was right synced with what they were talking about and what they needed.
22:49 And there was a couple of things that he talked about moving forward with, like, hey, maybe the opportunity that we offer kids to work during the day who can qualify and then go to school at night. And there’s some other things that he was looking at doing where a lot of the defense contractors like, wow. And he said some other innovative things that I think are going to come out in the second meeting.
23:09 And I just wanted to say thank you to Doctor Rendell for spearheading that effort and doing an amazing job with all of our defense industry. And I’m looking forward to that next meeting because I think out of that, even Rachel Rutledge, we had the former commissioner of education on career and technical in there and he was saying, there’s $12 million here, there’s $20 million here. Let me help you coordinate those dollars so that we can bring down some money for Brevard.
23:32 And that’s the first time we’ve kind of taken that global initiative with them. So I was just really excited. So I wanted to say thank you, Doctor Rendell, and thank you to the economic development council.
23:41 And that’s all I have. And I’m going to introduce our veteran staff in a little bit. Doctor Randell, what do you have? Thank you, mister chair.
23:47 Just want to give a big shout out to Brevard Virtual School. We recently learned that Brevard virtual school, our very own virtual school, was named the top, the best virtual school in the state of Florida. What? So congratulations to Heather Price and the Brevard virtual team.
24:09 So I would like to ask Heather Price and assistant principal Clarissa Kirk to come up to the podium, talk a little bit about Brevard virtual, one of our best kept secrets and how students can become a part of our school district virtually. Thank you so much, Doctor Rendell, members of the board. Brevard virtual School has been a.
24:31 Oh, thank you. Brevard Virtual School. Although became very popular during COVID we have actually just completed our 12th year.
24:40 We are very proud of the community that we have created for our students and staff. We are a welcoming and supportive environment for our students. And you might not know this, but we serve over 5000 students every year.
24:52 We have about 250 full time students. We serve another almost 200 home education students. And then we have about 4500 students that are taking our classes and labs throughout the district.
25:03 We work with every school in the district. We help students to accelerate, to remediate, to enrich their learning with things that they might not be able to get in their current schools. We also help them with flexibility for students who are involved in all sorts of different activities on campus or kids who really just want to take full advantage of everything that they have available to them on campus.
25:27 But seven periods a day is just not enough and so they will take eight classes or nine classes in a year. I am so proud of our faculty our students and our parents and of course my assistant principal, Clarissa Kirk. Together we have just refined our program over this last twelve years to be just like Doctor Rendell said, one of the best kept secrets in Brevard.
25:49 And I think Miss Campbell, she’s joined us for quite a few of our graduation ceremonies. And we really, truly have just an amazing environment for students and staff. And I invite you to come out and visit us at Clear Lake anytime or to join us at graduation.
26:04 It truly is a heartwarming and activity and you just get to learn so much about our students. So thank you very much for the recognition. And here’s our word, in case you like to board members.
26:19 They brought their trophy. They got a trophy for being the top virtual school in the state of Florida. So I didn’t know if we could get a picture real quick.
26:25 Can I say that that trophy is just not big enough for them? Like, we should go, let’s go get a bigger one. Let’s call them back and be like, look, this thing is big. It’s the whole state of Florida, right? Like when we win state championships, they’re this big.
26:38 When you’re the best virtual, that’s a big deal. We got to get that. And I’m also proud to say that we have actually won this twice now.
26:45 And we’re the only district so far that has been honored twice. So it should be twice as big as the original. It should be at least as tall as the two of us.
26:53 I just want to add, I just want to add a personal shout out. My kids, I like literally have two of them in there right now because they’re trying to get ahead and get to do band and jazz band and all the things, right driver’s ed. All my kids going through driver’s ed, through Brevard virtual.
27:09 So I just had to shout out. Cause a lot of times people get confused. Well, what’s the difference between Brevard virtual and Florida virtual? Well, brevard virtual is better.
27:14 Clearly award winning. So I encourage people to take advantage of that opportunity for all the reasons that you stated. And if you wanna come see how it works, ask me.
27:24 I’ll be happy to tell you. Cause like we’re elbow deep in the Campbell house right now. Awesome in the summertime, so.
27:30 But I appreciate you guys so much and all your teachers, so responsive all the time. You guys do great work. Thank you.
27:35 Yeah. Our part time or flex program does operate twelve months out of the year. We have about 1000 enrollments going actively right now.
27:41 And our full time or 1600. She watches. She manages the summer program.
27:46 It’s about a thousand. And our full time program is still open for applications. We have online info sessions.
27:52 We had one last night. We have one I think Saturday. So if anybody is interested, visit our website and we’d be happy to have you.
27:59 Miss Price, I wanted to say many people don’t understand what you went through during the global pandemic of trying to put together. Literally, like, we’re like, okay, we got to create a virtual school, expand all of our opportunities, hire people. Like, that was the most daunting undertaking that you and our administrative staff took over and you did it flawlessly.
28:19 Thank you. And you’re now winning awards for, for how great we are. And I just wanted to take a second.
28:24 It was our biggest crutch during the pandemic. Thank you very much. And you came through with flying colors.
28:29 You did an amazing job. And I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart because you made us look good and you made the district look good and you’ve done a stellar job. So thank you.
28:38 Thank you, thank you. And I would just be remiss if I didn’t say it was my full team that helped with that. I would be there on a Saturday at 09:00 a.
28:56 m. And then I’m looking at cars coming in the parking lot and there’s twelve teachers just coming, volunteering, saying, what can we do? That was a time where we got together and came together in Brevard. Thank you so much.
29:32 Let’s take a picture with this little thing and then we’ll order something. Right? One, two, three. Here we go.
29:59 Every smile, eyes open. Congratulations. Good job, Mr. So much.
30:10 Miss Campbell, are you making a mess over there? You’re twisting. It’s childproof. I think it’ll be okay if you leave it there.
30:16 I don’t even know why the thing’s there. All right, thank you, mister chair. I’m done.
30:23 All right, let’s keep going. Just get my notes together here. I have notes everywhere.
30:27 All right. That brings us to the adoption of the agenda. Doctor Rendell.
30:44 Now we’ll do them after because that’s part of this thing. Go ahead, Doctor Rendell. On this morning’s agenda, we have six administrative staff recommendations, 14 consent items, three action items, two information items, and two board member reports.
31:28 Changes to the agenda since released to the public include the addition of ASICs Veteran Agency program coordination f 14 advertisement of the fiscal year 24 proposed budget h 25 board discussion to authorize superintendent payment for costs of redistricting in twenty twenty three, k thirty one, FSBA advocacy committee representative and k 32, the school board health challenge. Also the deletion of an item superintendent board communication and revisions to a eight administrative staff recommendations and f 16 support staff recommendations. Do I hear a motion move to approve? Second.
31:42 Is there any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. All those opposed? All right. Doctor Rendell, would you please let us know about the administrative staff recommendations.
31:49 Thank you Mister Susan. Members of the board, there are six items for your consideration. Do I hear a motion move to approve? Second.
31:55 Is there any discussion? Hearing? None. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye.
32:01 Any opposed say nay. Motion passes. Doctor Vendel, you go and then I’ll do the veterans after you.
32:05 Sure. Thank you mister chair and the board members. It’s a great day for brevard public schools.
32:15 We’ve promoted some people to some very key positions. So we’re going to recognize some of them today and give them an opportunity to speak first. Not here with us, but Tara Harris who.
32:32 Doctor Tara Harris who’s currently a director in elementary leading and learning is going to be the new director of. Excuse me, the new assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction. Doctor Harris is actually at a math conference learning about changes to the math curriculum and how we can better support our students.
32:43 So she’s not here today and we’ll make sure she’s here at a future meeting so we can recognize her. But she’s going to be taking over that curriculum position. Assistant Superintendent, curriculum instruction here with us today.
32:54 I want to congratulate James Ramer who’s being reclassed from the position of principal at Merritt Island High School to chief of schools. It’s a new county position. So congratulations Mister Ramer.
33:21 Why don’t you come up and say if you would, I’d like to take a moment to obviously thank members of the school board, Doctor Rendell, for this tremendous humbling opportunity and for entrusting me in this new position and new role and responsibility for the district. My family was unable to be with me today. They are actually on vacation.
33:31 Ohio. I came back a little bit early, but they are watching from my parents house so I want to thank them for all their support. Obviously my wife holding down the fort, the principal job takes you away from the home quite a bit.
33:50 So holding down the fort with the kids and then my oldest, Hanley, Hadley and Mally for all their support and always wanting to embed themselves within the Merritt island culture and being a part of the school. So thank you to them and my parents up north. Thank you guys for everything and for watching from Ohio.
34:08 So it was a good vacation, but I came back a little early. I do have some members of the Mustang family, so I want to thank Merritt Island High School, our community, students first and foremost, and our staff. It was absolute privilege to serve the Merritt island high School community.
34:29 To serve, like I said, our students, our staff. A very bittersweet opportunity as I leave a place that I called home for five years and fell in love with, to truly a special place to work, a special place to live, and a special place to serve. So I want to thank them for taking time out of their summer to be here today and also for any of my staff watching, any of my community members.
34:40 It’s an absolute honor. I do look forward to the challenges and the experiences that await here at the board office in the chief of schools role. But thank you guys so much for this opportunity.
34:57 And I look forward to serving our great district in a different platform, but with the same excitement, passion, and purpose. Thank you, guys. Awesome.
35:11 So next, we are promoting from within. At Viera High School, we were promoting Heather legate, who’s currently serving as the assistant principal for curriculum, to the position of principal of Viera High School. So congratulations to Heather.
35:21 I’d like to give her a chance to come up and speak. First, I want to say thanks to the board and doctor Wendell for you guys having the confidence in me to entrust me with VR high school. I want to continue on the great work that’s been done there by former principal Sarah Robinson and, you know, build on that strong foundation and then Mike Alba before her, you know, so I’ve got big shoes to fill, and I’m excited about the opportunity.
35:58 I want to say thanks to my husband and my kids for supporting me at home and understanding of all those long hours that we pull in the administrative office. And they’ve always been there for me. My kids couldn’t be here today, but Jaden, Daisy, and Vinny are all watching online, so I wanted to say thank you to them.
36:15 A big shout out to them. And I’ve got so many people here that are supporting me, that have mentored me or just supported me along the way, been my biggest cheerleaders and believed in me. From Jeremy Salman, who’s the one that encouraged me to go into administration and came out of retirement today to come and be here.
36:21 It’s a big deal for him, too. It’s a sacrifice. It’s probably a good fishing day.
36:35 So I want to say thank you to to him for that. And then Jenny Gonzalez and Sarah Robinson for giving me all the opportunities they gave me as my principal previous years. And then the directors and doctor Sullivan gave me all my opportunities up until this point.
36:55 And I want to say thank you to them as well. So I just want to say to the Viera community that I’m very excited to serve that community and I look forward to continuing to work with the community. Thanks so much.
37:16 So again, not here today, but I want to make sure the Madison Middle school community is not left out. So we are recommending appointment for Madison Middle School the position of principal to Travis Diesel. Travis Diesel is a native of North Brevard, so Travis Diesel’s being recommended to principal at Madison Middle School.
37:32 So I know if the Madison Middle school community is watching, they’re excited to welcome Travis back home. Here in the audience, though, we do have a couple more promotions. I want to recognize Julie Rita, who’s being promoted to the position of assistant principal at Gardendale Separate day School.
37:46 So Julie, come on up and thank you for taking on that special challenge at Gardendale Separate Day School. First of all, I would like to thank doctor Rendell and the school board for this opportunity. I’d also like to thank Mike Alba and Pam Depert and Misty Bland and the rest of the district administrative team for having me and considering me.
38:02 I’d also like to thank Danielle Pooley for trusting in me to come alongside her at Gardendale. I would also like to thank my current amazing principal, Mister Hickey at Harmony High School. He has given me wonderful leadership opportunities over the last four years as his dean.
38:46 I would also like to thank Amanda Yonts, one of my AP’s at Harmonina High School, not just for her friendship, but supporting me and guiding me in my role and my other assistant principals, Laura Ramsey, Dustin Keaton and Hank Hoyle. I’d also like to thank Vicki Hickey for trusting in me when she hired me at astronaut High School in 2014 and asking me what my goals and aspirations were and helping foster that along the way. Finally, I’d like to thank my husband, my family, my friends for the continual encouragement, positive hugs, texts, phone calls, that you got this.
38:50 Make it happen when I needed it. Resilience pays off. And thank you very much.
39:03 I’m super excited. Congratulations, Julia. It takes a special person to take on that challenge at Gardendale separate day.
39:16 So we’re really thankful for you that you’re doing that. Not an administrator, but somebody important to announce for the board. We do have a new board secretary or officially administrative assistant to the school board.
39:24 And that’s Lena Farnham. She’s over there. So congratulations.
39:28 That’s it, mister chair. I’m done. Thank you, doctor Rendell.
39:43 Number five. That’s Lena. No, it’s number five, Roxanne.
39:47 Okay. Sorry. So I wanted to take a second.
40:18 We have been, over the last six months, been working on, on a five to six months, a series of initiatives inside of the community that are going to engage our community groups to tie into the school district to enhance many of our different offerings and give us opportunities. Today we’re bringing forward our veterans groups because there’s a massive need in that area. The goal of the conference committee that we’re going to be formed in September is to establish stronger connections with the Department of Defense agencies and programs.
40:42 Increased participation in defense programs, scholarships related to StEM leadership opportunities, increased retention and recruitment coordination between Brevard public schools and the Department of Defense. Improved processes and procedures for incoming veteran families who relocate to Brevard. Increased programs to recruiting for the Department of Defense and establishing a task force that meets to evaluate and implement changes and improvements in these areas.
41:17 Multiple local veteran military support and advocacy groups provide several opportunities and avenues to help meet these objectives. This meeting between all of the minds of the veteran community, Department of Defense, NASA and everybody else is to connect all of the brevard veteran entities together to collaborate and set initial discussion topics where at a later date, entities will come together in September to discuss, but are not limited to the items that I’m about to say. So when we talk about coordinating bps and defense industry programs, we’re talking about cyberpatriot, stellar explorers, boys and girls, states Joe Foss speaking Institute.
41:41 Many of these are programs that are given to us from the Department of Defense, that have volunteers, have federal dollars to support, have organizations that run their competitions and everything else. So our goal is to, during this meeting is to, in September, is to tie those with a coordinator for each one of them and show our school districts what they can do. So that’s part of it.
41:53 The other one is assessing and improving processes for addressing family military needs. When they are moving to Brevard county and enrolling in BPS, we do a stellar job. One of our schools right up the road is an amazing quest elementary.
42:09 We have a lot of veterans that come in and I don’t think I had a meeting that veterans meeting with the EDC. I don’t think that there’s many of the families that are out there in the Department of Defense that are retiring that know how good of a job we do. So that coordination of that, some of these are on us to improve.
42:30 Some of these are on the Department of Defense to improve as part of the initiative. The next one is coordinating BPS employment offers with the Department of Defense personnel on current spouses of employees and retiring veterans and their spouses. So we have veterans that are retiring into the community or work in the community, and what happens is their spouses, whether male or female, generally are teachers.
42:59 And what we need to do is get to the promotion item of, hey, advertising out there when you’re retiring from the Department of Defense or if you’re coming to Patrick Air Force Base ahead of time, knowing that if you have a spouse, we have job opportunities and getting that to them. So the coordination between the Department of Defense and us as far as HR is a great concern connection because many of our spouses, whether they’re male or female, of the actual veterans are teachers. It’s a common theme.
43:20 So that’ll be helpful for us. Coordinating the expansion of JROTC programs, advertising homeschool opportunities, stronger DoD coordination on field trips and opportunities, evaluating facility and staffing needs for expansion or existing JROTC programs. We have some ROTC programs that want to expand, but because of the facilities or the need for or an extra instructor, they’ve been limited.
43:25 Right. So we want to try to evaluate what are the needs of those and if there’s an opportunity to expand them. Great.
43:36 In some cases we have some that aren’t completely full. So we should have homeschool organizations and groups that are able to take advantage of being a part of our ROTC programs in our schools. We do have that through Ogalley.
43:58 There are some homeschool students, but we want to try to expand that. The other component is that the veteran museum certificate of achievement. This is brought up between Liberty Bell Museum, the Canaveral National Cemetery, the Tycho Warbird Museum and others said we would really like to have student participation inside of our museums to show what we have as far as many of the offerings.
44:18 And so what they did was they said they’d like to put together a certificate that says if child goes and is registered at each one of them, that they get a certificate for going to all of those. And I think that that would be a great opportunity for them. And that may also lead us to look at grabbing other museums because there’s some other ones that on another type of certificate for our students for like history clubs and stuff like that.
44:44 And then the other one is to establish a task force with Department of Defense and Veterans Organization for coordination of all listed above. So, the component that we want to talk about is establishing a task force, and that came directly from the Roosevelt group and some of the federal guys, as they said, look, you guys have every component. Well, to making what we would consider a very strong pilot project and bring revenue and resources to it.
45:07 So what they would like to do is talk about creating a task force with all of these components that have the deliverables, and then bringing the federal government and some of our local people inside of it. And many of you don’t, if you don’t know, we have the Patrick Air Force Base, we have the 45th Space Wing, we have NASA, we have a lot of these local, you know what I mean, veterans organizations and bases and everything else that are here. It’s a great opportunity.
45:26 So, with that, I wanted to kind of overview what’s happening. The idea is that we come together in September with our staff and each one of the entities from each one of the things I explained here, they’re going to put together a list of deliverables, and they’re going to work on it, and it’s our commitment to our veteran community. So, with that, I have Mister Dwyer.
45:49 He’s a a retired major general from the United States Air Force, and he’s here to talk a little bit about what is coordinating. He will be one of the ones that kind of coordinates and pulls everybody together, and he wants to talk about how that works. And then also I have Captain Don Weaver, who has put together the largest veteran speaking project in the southeast United States.
45:59 Did we beat the nation yet, Mister Weaver? And we’re number one in the nation. And this is amazing. I wanted to just give them two, a couple of minutes to discuss it, and then we off to September.
46:12 So, Mister Dwyer, and oh, by the way, his wife Tammy, who sits on our ICOC, is here. I just found that out this morning. And she is kind of the brains behind Mister Dwyer.
46:27 I have to give her that plug, and she will probably be the one that puts a lot of the STEM programs together. So, Mister Dwyer, so, good morning, all school board. It’s a pleasure to be here this morning.
46:35 I’m retired major general, Air Force. I retired a little over 35 years. Dwyer Dennis Dennis is the last name.
46:58 So Tammy Dennis and Dwyer Dennis. But anyways, just wanted to talk real quickly, because Matt mentioned the Department of Defense, but also, this is more than just when you use the word department of Defense, it sounds a lot like a, you know, like a big federal program. And there are federal opportunities, you know, opportunities through the Department of Defense.
47:23 But there’s also a lot of local organizations, and I think we know. I, for example, I was previously, up until last year, the local AFA, Air Force and Space Force association president here in the local area. And we in the AFA, if you don’t know, does things like cyber Patriot, which is a competitive program, teaching cyber skills, coding and so forth.
47:47 And that’s a national, international level through the AFA. And some of the schools here in the local, in our local school district have cyber patriot teams and have, we also have another program called Stellar Explorers that gives opportunities to learn about space orbits and so forth, which obviously on the space coast seems to make a lot of sense. Right.
48:15 And, but, you know, so I just mentioned, too, but there’s a lot of different veteran groups, VFW, MOA, all these different organizations here in the area that all have these opportunities. And with some of these opportunities, another one I’ll talk about, Miss Jenkins mentioned recognition for. What was it, Miss Allen, that one that the technology and engineering and she run teacher of the year.
48:42 Right. Was it state level? But each of those organizations, these veteran groups, have teacher of the year programs, many of them. And with that dollars associated last year, Bill Ellison over at Golly High, he won for AFA, both the local chapter level and he won state level.
48:51 And this year he’s been put in at AFA national level. That’s an AFA national is over 100,000 members. Okay? So that’s a really big deal.
49:01 And it’s sponsored by Rolls Royce. And there’s a lot of dollars that come with that type of opportunity. And the dollars translates into opportunities for our kids.
49:15 And so that is really powerful. For example, veteran group helped Air Force Technology Application center. That’s over on Patrick Space Force base here.
49:35 They held during, during the COVID during the pandemic, they held online workshops, STEM workshops for teachers and so, and students. And, you know, they had some good participation, but it could be bigger. And a lot of it’s just because of not knowing.
49:59 Right. Not knowing about it. And so an organization like this, a task force, I would call it almost like a consortium of these organizations coming together and working to lay out the different opportunities and coordinating that because the school district can’t, each one of us knock on the door and say, hey, I need, I need you to give me nominees for teacher of the year.
50:31 Then they have to go out and get it for that. And then the other organization comes and knocks on door hey, we have a teacher of the year program. So if we can do a little bit of coordination up front and then marry that with the opportunities that the Department of Defense has formally in place and are looking to expand, then that will give us a great avenue for dollars, opportunities, and frankly, recognition too for our local school district and opportunities for our children.
50:44 So anyways, thank you for their opportunity to speak a little bit on that this morning. And thank you for the opportunity to work on this effort. Yes, thank you.
51:04 Thank you, Mister Dennis, Mister Weaver, if you can say some kind words. Just so everybody knows, Mister Weaver is also the. He was the, I don’t know if you call it the president, CFO of the Veterans Memorial center and was a huge, huge advocate for bringing that organization and that building and everything here and everything wrapped around.
51:09 Many of its services are there. He oversees as a part of that. And I think you’re.
51:26 There’s another incoming president or something like that, but he oversees at the veterans Memorial center. Although they have representatives from all of the vfws, the american legions, it’s kind of a coordinating center point for all for the county. So I wanted to give you the floor, Mister Weaver, and thank you, madam.
51:33 Thank you everybody. First of all, I have to say, we all come from the projects of our education. I went to elementary school in Melbourne.
51:40 My wife graduated from Cocoa Beach High School. So we had good roots. Our dads were in the space program.
51:55 So we grew up California, here, all over the place. Spent 40 years as a career in the foreign service for the state Department, but always knew we’d come back here. Been back ten years full time, and indeed chairman of the Borl Ride Veterans Council.
52:06 I’ve had a chance to talk to the school board over those ten years, four or five times. Always had great support. You have to remember that 72,000 veterans live in Brevard county.
52:30 That is the greatest number of percentage of veterans to the population of any county in the country, except one in Texas, where there are eight bases in the square. Anyway, the bottom line is that’s a resource. And so about eight years ago, I got together a group that’s been 15 to 20, consistently evolving over time of volunteers from all the branches of service.
52:50 We even got a space force of retiree. Well, not retiree, no retirees yet from the space force, but we got so that they go to school and as best we can. One year we had 6200 students in 29 schools.
53:15 We have had a total of 22,000 students at all grade levels in Brevard county since we started and we’re hoping for the best year ever. I’m leaving the report card with the school board with extra copies to help us spread the word. During COVID we worked with the school district to produce 19 visual 30 minutes presentations.
53:30 Everything from the constitution to world War two to the Medal of Honor. And I did one on the global war on terror. So we put those out and they are seen, we hope, in social studies, the history and other classes.
53:37 We hope a lot. We don’t want them to replace the presence of a veteran though. So help me get the word to the teachers.
54:05 Let’s have veterans as well, because the students can learn a lot about what veterans have done by that effort. The other thing I wanted to mention as we get ready for this interesting concept that I hope will enthusiastically come together in September or begin to come together, we have the resources like no other in Brevard county. Not only is the vets back to class.
54:35 Joe Foss Institute, the largest in the country in terms of impact, but we also have the best veterans Memorial center and museum in the state, probably the country, the state of Florida. And the county just gave us $5.2 million to build an amphitheater on top of the 6000 square foot museum, which by the way, we usually average about ten schools trips per year to go to that museum.
54:51 Buses and pulling up and field trips. We hope that will increase, but that amphitheater will give us even more visibility and opportunity to do lots of things for the for students. We veterans general knows this very well.
55:09 We veterans know if we stop serving in Moack Cape Canaveral chapter of the military officers association’s motto is never stop serving. And that’s where we feel strongly. We owe it to our country to help educate the next generation.
55:21 We don’t want everybody to join the military. Less than half of 1% of our country’s population is in the military. But we want everybody to be a good citizen and that’s a responsibility that we can help to.
55:28 Thank you very much. I’m going to leave my report card for you to distribute. Thank you so much Mister Weaver.
55:49 Thank you Mister Weaver. I wanted to finish up and I wanted to give everybody the opportunity that if they wanted to say something ahead of the initiative, I wanted to give it to you. So Miss Campbell first, General Dennis and Captain Weaver, thank you so much for your service and for your family’s sacrifice.
56:07 As an army brat myself, I very much appreciate what you’ve done and also your family support. I love how much you guys spoke about the opportunities that these things create for our students. I also want to, you know, we do have programs mandated and volunteered that we want to honor.
56:14 We recognize also the service of the people who are, who do fill our communities. As part of this conversation, we start having it. We did.
56:51 It wasn’t mentioned today, but I’d love for us to think about our skillbridge program with the Department of Defense, which, for those of you who are not aware, it’s where our folks who are still in the military in those last months before they come out can start an internship with an entity in school districts. We have that developed here for teachers if they’re interested in becoming teachers, so they can actually go ahead and come and do an internship with the school district in their last few years of enlistment, so that when, as soon as they come out, they’re automatically into a job. I had a reason.
57:03 Why I bring this up is because I had a young man reach out to me who was entering those last months, and he asked me what we had through Skillbridge. He said, that’s not a teaching position. And I checked with Mike Albon.
57:11 You have to create a program for each individual job. So if he wasn’t interested in being a teacher, we didn’t have schoolbridge for him. We could develop it.
57:27 But Mike Alba told me it took about six months for us to get that going. So as part of this conversations, if there are other job types that we have within BPS besides teaching, where someone who’s coming out might, it might be an impact. If people aren’t going to take us up on it, maybe it wouldn’t be worth it.
57:57 But if there is something specific that we can look at and partner, that would be a good program for us to launch that application process to expand on schoolbridge for our young guys who are coming out into the county, because they are, you know, many of them will come out and then just stay here because they love it so much. Right? So we want to have those opportunities available, whichever are the most impactful opportunities. I love for that skill bridge conversation to happen at the same time, since you guys are so knowledgeable and connected with our military branches, I think that would be great.
58:00 Thank you. Miss Campbell. Miss Wright.
58:08 Yeah. Thank you both gentlemen and families, for your service. Honestly, there is no greater sacrifice than being willing to lay down your life to defend our country.
58:19 And so that is a huge, huge, huge task, and I thank you. I am extremely excited about this. I always brag on the fact that we have a space force academy and we’re one of ten schools in the entire nation that has this.
58:33 And so that’s very unique. And so I’m looking forward to this forming and us figuring out ways that we can partner together and make the space coast stronger and especially bringing our veterans in. There are so many valuable lessons that you guys have that you’re able to teach our students.
58:40 So I’m looking forward to this opportunity. So thank you, Miss Jenkins. Yep.
58:47 Gentlemen, thank you for your service. And I want to thank your family as well. I’m glad we acknowledged that your wife participates on the ICOC.
58:59 Thank you for being completely invested in our school system. Words can’t say how important that is. I also appreciate you acknowledging that we are one of the highest volumes of veterans in the country.
59:12 It is very much a part of our community. It impacts every single day of our lives here. And I think that we should be a leading example of how we can coordinate with our school system to better support our veterans and better support our schools together.
59:25 So thank you so much for being here and being willing to take on that challenge and improve the already tremendous opportunities that we offer. And just one thing I want to say too. We acknowledge that we have some schools that do it really, really well.
59:55 And so I want us to take advantage of those schools who are doing it well and encourage them to have conversations with their neighboring schools within their communities. For instance, Seapark does a tremendous job, obviously, being strategically located next to the Space Force base, but in order to, you know, support the school nearby, how do you do it? What connections do you have and conversations do you have to throw those incredible events that you throw annually, kind of spread the wealth and get it to all of our kids. So thank you so much for being here.
1:00:11 I appreciate you, Mister Trump. All right, I’m going to thank both of you for your service and your continued dedication to your communities. And I look forward to, as a board, working with you, and we need you more than ever in our schools and front of our students.
1:00:33 So I look forward to you. Thank you so much. Yeah, and so I wanted to take a second, and I wanted to thank Mister Weaver before I kind of follow it up, is that not many people understand that Mister Weaver and I have been working many times in many of these veterans organizations and things that we’re doing, but the biggest one that I think we ever did was the all american flag act together.
1:00:49 And I wanted to say that never would have happened without you. And for people that don’t know what it is, it’s that our school system led the initiative out of Ogalley High School from a student to make all flags in government and government buildings to be made in the United States. And during the process of that took three years.
1:01:10 China decided that they were going to make a town called USA. So they actually had to add in there that we were going to grow and manufacture the fibers here in the United States of America as part of an amendment to it so that it wouldn’t have to go there. So we had that long ride ahead of you and Governor Scott came and signed it into law inside of our school at Viera High School.
1:01:17 And this is one of the copies that we keep in here. So I wanted to say thank you, Mister Weaver, for that commitment. And it never would have happened without your work.
1:01:27 I did want to say the meeting is going to be in September. They’re going to set expectations on each one of these. The idea is that our curriculum team will work with or our retention and recruitment team will work with them.
1:01:49 Our, you know, STEM teams will work with them. And I did talk to the tourism Development Council about working with our school district, about appropriating funds to host the competitions for ROTC for the state of Florida. So if we’re going to have these raider programs and others, let’s have them here, let’s have cyber patriot here, let’s have ROTC here.
1:01:58 Let’s start becoming the center for the state of Florida for all of these. So they already said that they’d be willing to take an application and they have funds for that specific purpose. So as long as we have those schools coming in.
1:02:12 I reached out to the head of all school boards across the state and Thomas Kennedy, and he said he is going to come here with his ROTC team and beat us. So I told him, good luck in hell. So good luck there.
1:02:22 So there’s a lot of other ones from Okaloosa to escambia to everywhere else that are excited about this. So here we go. I appreciate the time and that’s all we have for the veterans project.
1:02:25 I wanted to thank. Yep. Thank you very much.
1:02:41 And we’re gonna. Thanks, guys. We’re about to move on to the public speaking portion, but I wanted to take five minutes to allow our guests to leave because I see a very unique individual that I want to say hi to.
1:11:09 So if we can take five minutes and let our guests leave and then we’ll be right back. It we’re back. We are now on to the public comments portion of the meeting.
1:11:23 We have 13 public speakers, each of which will receive three minutes. I will call up three speakers at a time. The first three speakers are Carl Sandburg, Gina Deringe, Marcus Hockman.
1:11:37 Please come up. Carl. Can you guys hear me okay? Yes, sir.
1:11:44 Absolutely. First of all, thank you for letting me speak today. For the time to speak.
1:12:02 I feel very humbled to follow the general and the captain. I used to work with those guys in trade shows and military conferences at a defense company I worked at for 33 years. So I understand what they’ve.
1:12:07 They got a lot on their shoulders, a lot of responsibility. And my son is in the army, too. Now.
1:12:16 He signed up for eight years. He’s getting ready to get deployed in November. But I wanted to say thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
1:12:23 And thank you. Thank you. Thank you for passing the increase for the school bus drivers of Brevard County.
1:12:33 I know I speak for all of them. I was hoping that Mark Rainey would be here, but he didn’t show up. But I promised you last time on June 13, I would keep it short and sweet.
1:12:50 I did run out of time, but I sent all of you my email. But I checked this morning, and it’s working. We’ve got over 100 plus applicants for school bus drivers.
1:13:06 So it is working. And then when the captain said that there’s over 72,000 veterans in Brevard county, we can sure use some of them as drivers if they want a job. I did talk about four things.
1:13:19 I did run out of time. On the fourth one, it’s about uniforms and schools. School uniforms.
1:13:35 I think it would help with the dress code issues going on in schools. But the one thing that I did want to reiterate was student behavior, and I think that I touched on it. Workshops.
1:14:01 I think if we had workshops with teachers and school bus drivers, and I thought about it since the last board meeting, even including parents, because I think the three of us, and even maybe after school, have these workshops to talk about school, about discipline with students. That was a big issue. And I was going to comment also that the website for Brevard Public Schools is outstanding.
1:14:19 It’s very user friendly. I found it that way anyway. And the only other thing I wanted to say was that the company that I used to work for, and I won’t mention it, but they did have an annual engineering fair, and they displayed different programs and technologies, including robotics.
1:14:29 So you ought to check into those companies, too, for that. And that’s pretty much it. I’d like to do a shout out for all the supervisors and the administration staff.
1:14:35 They’re working real hard. Right now to prepare the school routes for us to start. Thank you very much.
1:14:44 Thank you, Carl. Thank you, Miss Gina Derringe. Thank you.
1:14:51 Thank you. Marcus, you’re up next. Yes, my name is Gina Derringe.
1:14:58 I’m a retired teacher from Brevard county schools. I also taught in St. Mary’s county while my husband was on active duty. Post 911.
1:14:58 I’ve taught at Merritt Island. I taught. I have to write it down.
1:15:09 I’ve taught at Bombay High School. I taught at Coco High School. I taught at heritage for four years and sponsored SGA.
1:15:16 And then I ended with Viera. It was closer to my home. As a retired teacher, it’s been my passion.
1:15:28 My grandmother was a teacher and it’s my second career. I was in marketing and advertising. We moved down to Brevard county and I couldn’t get a job working in an ad agency that was so small.
1:15:36 So I started volunteering at school, and the principal handed me paperwork one time and said, here, fill this out. So what is it for? And she said, it’s to be a sups teacher. And I said, oh, no.
1:15:46 And she said, no. You’re good with kids. You’ll do great.
1:16:04 I got my master’s degree in education and taught for 25 years. During this time, I also sponsored student government. Before COVID student government would meet with the superintendent and have monthly meetings.
1:16:27 Heritage High School had Leah Murray that went up to Tallahassee to talk about legislation to pass to have social workers at every school, and it passed. We need to get input from the stakeholders, the kids. They will be honest with you with what’s working and what’s not working.
1:16:39 Please, please start these meetings again with student governments. I’m retired. I would be more than happy to help you organize this.
1:16:58 The kids would come to our meetings and just, we would write down the issues that they’re saying in schools, and they were honest. They told you what was going on. And we also say, okay, how do we fix this? And we would have ideas and then they would go and meet with the superintendent.
1:17:21 It is a great way of figuring out what’s going on in the schools. Second thing, quickly, have you guys thought about having mentoring teachers, retired teachers go into the classroom with these new teachers that are coming on board that did not get certification, going through colleges just like I did. I was thrown into a classroom.
1:17:35 I was lucky. I knew how to communicate with people. When I taught St. Mary’s county, I was assigned a veteran teacher, a retiree that came in and did observation and gave me feedback on my instruction.
1:17:44 It was invaluable. She was great. I strongly suggest this especially for our veterans that are coming into the classroom.
1:17:57 My neighbor tried to teach and he lasted for six months. Please let me know if I can help. Thank you, Jeannie.
1:18:12 Mister Hockman, Miss Kelly Kervin and then Andrew Kemp. Good morning, board and superintendent. The reason I’m here to talk to you about is the word autonomy and associated with classroom libraries.
1:18:35 I personally have ind supportive level group and a classroom library is very important to me, but also what’s very important to me is to be able to choose my own books without sending a submission to this person, to that person. Last year I came to this board and I said, I’m having a classroom library. And I actually did it, you know, sent my books to whoever had sn.
1:18:56 Whether I got approved or disapproved, I’m not going to say be quite honest, but the point being is I had the time meeting to do so. Okay. And I should have the board and the school district be able to let me to choose what books I need to have in my classroom, especially for my support level kids, because my kids actually like this book, spin your superhero story.
1:19:08 They actually let it, actually loved it when they got to spin and I read it to them because I read about 1015 minutes a day, okay, to them during reading groups, all right? They enjoyed it. They loved it. Because we need.
1:19:29 Part of reading is you need to read to the kids, okay? So I’m not gonna. This year I’m gonna be at a new school and I don’t want to have a battle with the school district or my new administration. So I’m asking that the school district consider letting elementary school teachers honestly let us choose our school library.
1:19:37 We just send in the list to whoever hopefully eventually gets approved. I don’t want to wait two, three, four months for a list to get approved. Okay.
1:19:44 The word autonomy is extreme. That’s part of that word autonomy. You guys trusting us, letting us do what we think is right in our classroom.
1:19:54 And please remember you’re going to negotiation next week, next week with the union. And I’m not even sure if that word autonomy is in the contract, to be quite honest. I just don’t know.
1:20:10 But that is extremely valuable to some of us and to me because honestly, I’ve been here 1617 years. Every year I choose my last year I do, because it depends on what I have to go through, et cetera, et cetera. It’s not necessarily about the money, it’s about all the other stuff.
1:20:19 I love working with my kids. It’s the politics, it’s this, it’s that. It’s finding to get something like this to prove.
1:20:26 Because I have no idea when I go through my new administration, what’s gonna happen. They’re new and I want to put them through that. Because then something happens, I bite back, etc.
1:20:30 Etcetera. Because some of y’all know me. I’m the same, not going to know, you know.
1:20:47 So I have no. That’s what I’m asking for once again, is if you guys can consider letting teachers honestly just choose their own books, especially at the elementary level, and not go through the procedure where they have to get it, go to a computer program to get submitted, etc. Etcetera.
1:20:56 And we don’t know what’s going to happen. And with our media specialists and issues that they’re having, just trust us. Give us the autonomy that we need to be successful in our classroom.
1:21:08 Thank you very much. Thank you, Marcus, Miss Carvin, Mister Kemp, and then Richard Weber. Good morning.
1:21:34 Once again, the agenda shows that we are losing more teachers and staff than we are gaining. The vacancies posted online continue to grow, and 121 are readvertisements. Chairperson Matt Houston told the public in December at a press conference in front of this very building, that the changes they were making in terms of discipline, modifying the dress code, and hiring interim superintendent doctor Shiller were going to stabilize, provide public schools and make it a desirable place to work.
1:21:48 As the data continues to pour in, that just isn’t the case. And I’ve yet to hear this board communicate to the public what plan B is. When our doors open, we are less than a month away, and many of our students won’t have permanent teachers to grade them.
1:22:08 What’s worse is a lot of the schools struggling. The hardest to recruit and keep teachers are the schools where students need stability and trust the most. Speaking of communication to the community, I’d like to talk about the board recap series that is appearing on the official BPS YouTube page and looking over the standards of Ethical Conduct Policy 3210.
1:22:23 It clearly states the board members are to take reasonable precautions to ensure there’s no conflict of interest. Yet the series is appearing on the front page of chairperson Matt Susan’s reelection campaign and appears only to be filmed for his benefit. This cannot be overstated enough.
1:22:45 Brevard Public Schools does not have the budget to pay all of our teachers and staff a living wage. It cannot ensure all of our facilities are equitable across the district. That includes sports facilities, our transportation department, has to rely on buses that sometimes barely start or or don’t have functioning air conditioning, even when their students are required to have it per their IEP.
1:23:11 In my own house, the difference between my daughter Allie having a successful end to her elementary school career was the cost of a postage stamp. And when I went to our SAC meeting and asked why a letter that had no business being placed into the hands of my eleven year old wasn’t just mailed to me, I was told our school couldn’t afford the stamps. Remember that email, Miss Wright? You challenged my support because of my experience with Samantha, and I said you had no idea what happened to Allison.
1:23:21 The difference between causing her harm that will live with her for the rest of her life and a common sense practice and policy was $0.58. But back to you, Mister Susan.
1:23:48 The waste of resources on these videos, which are basically just fodder for your own political game, is also unnecessary and unethical. You’re violating your own policy. Not to mention that when I look at the average of the three videos run the numbers, these videos are reaching 3.
1:24:15 4% of the BPS viewership. That’s not enough to justify. Furthermore, if the BPS YouTube page wants to create a school board wrap up series, it should be with our new superintendent, Doctor Rendell.
1:24:45 Brevard county doesn’t need to be told Matt Susan’s opinion on how he felt school board meetings went what Brevard county needs to be told is what is happening in our schools, and that is the job of our superintendent, Doctor Rendell. Next up, Andrew Kemp, Richard Weber, Sarah Mirsky. Good morning.
1:25:10 I see a lot of people coming up here and thanking the school board to start off with, and I’ll do that as soon as I have something to thank you for. So I’m just here generally to talk about education and the fact that education is for all students, not just the convenient ones. There are statistics that for trans students, having someone in their life, one to support them, reduces the suicide rate by almost 70%.
1:25:22 And yet it’s been banned. You can’t talk about it, you’re not allowed to talk about it, and you can be reprimanded if you do. So I think the big issue is too often this school board reacts by removing instead of creating something new, real easy, just to get rid of the stuff you don’t like.
1:25:44 But there isn’t that next step of how to make it better. Because right now our education system, and I’m not saying this is all the blame of the Brevard county school board. There’s also the state of Florida and many other states in the country.
1:26:12 However, I live in Brevard county. So one of the things that is detrimental to students is that removal of content. If you walk into almost any school, there is going to be a mission and vision statement.
1:26:51 And in there somewhere, it’ll say something about critical thinkers, and it’ll say something about a. Something beyond school. And the frustration for me is that there is a lack of creative solutions to serious problems.
1:27:23 And until someone will stand up and do what’s best for students, they will not fulfill the potential that they have. And so I think there needs to be a movement in schools for critical thinking, which means teaching things that might not make people comfortable. And no, I’m not talking about sex with a kindergarten class, but to be an active and successful member of a democracy, you have to know about political things, you have to know about cultural things, you have to know about societal things.
1:27:51 And if you’re not white, you can’t talk about it. And because of that, we are going to end up having a generation of students that have not learned to think critically, much like the majority of this board. Okay, next up, Richard Weber, Sarah Mirsky and Diana Haynes.
1:28:11 Hello, I’m Rick Bieber. I’m here to address what will be discussed in the workshop regarding the proposed bylaw changes and under philosophy of the board. Trying to get on the right page here.
1:28:19 Anyway, the school board is the state constitution, as the county will provide a school board for each county. The won’t. You know, the phone isn’t working right now.
1:28:36 We’ll get it. Okay. The proposed changes to the bylaws.
1:28:56 A. A school board changed from school. The board. A school board is a legal entity for providing a system of public education within the geographic area of the state of Florida.
1:29:26 The system was created by and is governed by the state constitution and the Florida statutes. This is proposed to be changed to the state statutes. I question why this board is doing some behind the scenes things that I recognized.
1:29:32 The first meeting, I came to Boba public schools and Gene Trent and Macon Wright were sworn in, and it was asked that Doctor Mullen’s contract be scrutinized and he proffered his resignation as a consequence. That costs about after an interim director superintendent, $750,000 plus. No.
1:29:45 Okay, well, we’ll look back. Everybody will look into that. Okay.
1:30:10 This stuff concerns me. One, it was there first after they were sworn in. This had to be done behind plan, behind closed doors, and it was improper.
1:30:21 Now, the other thing about the proposed change is the board has a dual responsibility for implementing statutory requirements pertaining to the publication pertaining to public education and to the meeting of educational needs. The citizens. That wants to be.
1:30:27 That’s proposed to be changed to not needs, but desires of the citizens. And that needs and desires things was also changed later. And that’s not right.
1:30:41 That’s not excellent for every student. Thank you. Thank you, Mister Weber.
1:30:53 Next up, Sarah Mirsky, Diana Haynes and Drew Weaver. Miss Mirsky, good morning, chairman and board. I’d like to also extend a warm welcome to doctor Rendell.
1:31:13 My name is Sarah Mirsky. I’m a wife, a mother of two children in Brevard public schools. A taxpayer voter, and I do have a holistic interest in the success of Brevard Public schools.
1:31:38 Over the 4 July weekend, I saw the movie the Sound of freedom. For those that don’t know what this movie is about, it’s about agent with homeland security who goes undercover to arrest and bring pedophiles who traffic children to justice. I was listening to an interview that he gave about being asked about the materials in question in schools across the nation.
1:31:54 He said something that stopped me in my tracks and something I would like this board to consider as you make decisions on what kind of books and materials are called into question. His response was that those were the type of materials that was enough evidence to arrest and bring a pedophile to justice. That makes this no longer a discrimination issue or a political football issue for people to fight about what it does.
1:32:07 It brings clarity that this is simply about protecting children. Human trafficking is outpacing the illegal drug and arms trade. 150 billion is made every year off the backs of slaves, including millions of children who are enslaved.
1:32:14 2 million children are trafficked every year, as cited by the World Health Organization and the state Department. And it’s happening here in Brevard county. Please keep these things in mind as you plan for the upcoming school year and make curriculum decisions.
1:32:22 Thank you. Thank you, Miss Mirsky. Next up is Diana Haynes.
1:32:43 Drew Weaver, Kim manuscript. Miss Haynes. Good morning, board doctor Rendell.
1:33:16 It seems that the good citizens of Brevard county might enjoy some information regarding the man behind the curtain, so to speak. Brevard parents deserve to know what types of stereotyping and information is being collected and conducted by school board members. Unfortunately, I have received relevant open records detailing prolific emails between.
1:33:32 Between board members, BPS employees about parents who dare to contact their teachers, their principals, and respective board members pertaining to educational matters that concern the children. If you suspect any BPS board member or employee has begun collecting your emails or data or information to gather an intelligence file against you or your family, you might want to consider an open records report request. The record specialist will take your request by email or in person.
1:33:57 By filling out a form you can get. Expect to get two weeks to two months before you will actually receive the documents, and it may require multiple requests for the same information. Resolving students problems is the issue.
1:34:24 Not resolving them is an even bigger problem. No board member should be requesting like a dossier or putting together a dossier about a parent who is challenging teachers and principals and administrators when it concerns children. It is offensive and it goes against the very position that you all hold regarding accountability.
1:34:45 I’d also like to speak for a minute about a couple other things, one being the dress code. I know that you had a committee that looked into this and so forth, but I had concerns regarding the discipline, regarding violations across the board. I looked into St. Lucie’s dress code policy and found it to be rather interesting because it was very, very concise and precise.
1:34:57 And they have a system where all of the violations are pretty much laid out and what the consequences are. And I just. I have concerns that you’re leaving it up to individual schools and principals, that this could become a bigger issue for you all, at least if you come together and you have, let’s say, lunch, detention.
1:35:03 If you do this, this or this and so forth and so on. Every school has to abide by that rules, those rules and those policies, and there’s no. No negotiating, there’s no gray areas and so forth and so on.
1:35:14 And that’s all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Haynes.
1:35:19 Mister Drew Weaver, Kim Manus and Amy Raub, please. Is Mister Drew Weaver here, please? Not seeing Mister Weaver. Miss Kim Manas.
1:35:21 I hope I’m saying it right. Okay. If you can clarify for me when you get there.
1:35:30 Absolutely. Thank you. Good morning.
1:36:03 Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. I’m Doctor Kim Mainz. I have a PhD and have been an educator at the college level and presently retired.
1:36:26 I came today to address the changes to the ESF bylaws. Sitting here, I am just amazed at all of the important topics, from buses to books and other issues that the board has to oversee. And so it is amazing to me, and I wonder why there is any time being invested in the small changes to the bylaws, specifically to sections a and B of the bylaws, starting with section b, the proposed changes in the wording from meeting educational needs to desires.
1:36:53 If we just look at the definitions of the words, need is defined as required because it is essential or very important, expressing necessity, necessity or obligation. While desire is defined as a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen. The archaic definition is to express a wish.
1:37:13 And I hope we could all agree that our educational system has an obligation to provide a very important and essential and essential elements of education and not simply wish that it works out. So I don’t understand putting time into those changes. Section a, the change that goes from a system was created by and is governed by the state constitution of Florida statutes.
1:37:36 The proposed change is the system was created by and is governed by state statutes. If you read that another way, it would be the system is created by state statutes and the system is governed by state statutes. And according to the Florida District School board’s own fact sheet, that’s not true.
1:38:01 The state constitution. According to the Florida district School board’s fact sheet, the state constitution provides that each county in Florida constitutes a school district and requires each district to be governed by a school board comprised of at least five members who serve as staggered terms. And in the article nine of the Florida Constitution, sections two, three and four.
1:38:08 And I won’t read them all for you, but all of those sections address the creation and development of the school board. So I don’t understand why you’re changing it to say that Florida statutes create a school board. And once again, I just don’t understand why any time is invested in these small changes when you have, have so many other large issues that the constituents have brought before you.
1:38:21 Thank you again for the time. Thank you, Miss Manes. Next up, Amy Raub, Paul Raub.
1:38:50 And finish it up with Katie Delaney. Miss Raub, good morning. Matthew Trent.
1:39:13 Megan. So book banning in the dark with no public comment, not a good look, do you think? I mean, doing all this stuff behind the scenes? Not good. You stack the committee with book banners, you take away the votes from the media specialists, we play along.
1:39:42 And now you’ve taken public comment and the votes of the committee. What are you doing? What are you doing? So I guess this is what happens when you push back against fascists. You’re cowards.
1:39:57 Criticism is not a threat. You want to shut me up on social media? You want to call the sheriff on me because of a TikTok? I’ll stop when you stop. With the fascism, with the book burning, with the whitewashing of history, with the sex suppression, with the segregation of bathrooms, with the being anti expert.
1:40:01 When you stop, I’ll stop. I’ve done harder things than this. What are you doing with your power? Really, what are you doing with this power? You wanted? Do good.
1:40:24 Do good. Okay. Thank you.
1:40:31 Miss Raub, Mister Raub, Miss Delaney are up next. So Amy mentioned power. You do have power.
1:40:58 You do have authority, obviously. I mean, this is school districts, a huge undertaking. Lot of responsibility.
1:41:21 But I would like to think that being on the school board shouldn’t feel like power. That if being on the school board feels like you’re exercising power, you’re maybe doing it wrong or in it for the wrong reasons. I mean, your motto here to serve every student you know, as a school board, as leaders, you should be here to elevate everyone, every student.
1:41:43 To enable every student and the teachers and the bus drivers and the facilities and the administration to clear obstacles from their path. Whether that’s things that are making it difficult to teach, difficult to learn, difficult to get their jobs done, to foster a workable and livable environment for those students, for the staff. Instead, we see teachers fleeing in record numbers.
1:42:02 We see students who color slightly outside the lines, being made to feel uncomfortable and shut down. And I should apologize to people who from last time, I was all excited that I thought the cat ears nonsense had been removed from the address code. And it turned out that was a mistake.
1:42:15 And a sane version had accidentally slipped into the redline draft. Can you fix that? And now the cat ears nonsense is back in and we’re back to ruling by urban legend. And then we get to.
1:42:33 A lot of people have talked about this, but I’m going to talk about it too. The audio from that recent work session that wasn’t filmed where talking about if my people. If my people were behaving like this, I’d get them off.
1:42:40 If my people were attacking. Well, you know, your people were calling me groomer for leaving high school books on a high school shelf and I didn’t hear a peep. Or if someone’s wife who’s not on the committee wasn’t behaving properly, then they’re not going to be on my committee.
1:43:06 Get over yourself. It is not your committee. You know that.
1:43:19 And, well, we can remove a book because we don’t like the COVID was almost a direct quote. Well, at that point, why pretend? Why even have the committee? Why even make a feint at pretending to care about the content, the rules, at anything other than, well, you know, a very vocal and susceptible to urban legends minority wants a book gone. So we’re going to do literally everything.
1:43:34 I don’t know how much more you could craft a process for moms, for, for liberty to get their way with books just going into the fire and I’ve run out of time once again. All right, thank you. Thank you, Mister Rao.
1:43:56 Miss Katie Delaney, please. Sorry I’m short. Good morning.
1:44:25 I just wanted to thank Doctor Rendell for the changes that you’ve been making in the district. I think that they’re going to be awesome and I’m just really encouraged by your new system and everything great that you’re going to bring to the district. I just wanted to say a few things about Mister Ramer.
1:44:51 I had the pleasure of meeting him as I was doing some work with some of the committees that were at Merritt Island High School. And what I saw from that principal was incredible. Not only did he create a culture in his school that all the teachers love to work there, I mean, the school spirit there is incredible.
1:45:09 But the thing that impressed me the most was he had this thing that he called the war room and it was a giant whiteboard with all these kids that were struggling. And under these kids were strategies that he had that we’re going to help these kids achieve. And I was just so blown away by that.
1:45:38 He knew every one of those kids. He knew their circumstances, he knew everything about them. And he was passionate and dedicated to helping those kids achieve their goals and get them to a place where they needed to be educationally.
1:45:44 And I am just so grateful and excited that he’s going to be our new chief of schools. Because if we can bring that across the district, student achievement is just going to, is just going to skyrocket. Somebody that’s going to stand there and, you know, pick out all these kids that really need the most help and really focus on those kids and their struggles and what they need to achieve.
1:45:53 It’s just going to be life changing. And so I just wanted to give him recognition. And thank you Doctor Endell, for your leadership.
1:46:04 Thank you. Thank you, Miss Delaney. That concludes our public comments.
1:46:12 We thank you for your willingness to address us in this public manner. Are we good to continue or does anybody need a break? Good on this end? Good over here. All right, we’re now onto the consent agenda.
1:46:30 Doctor Rendell. Thank you, mister chair. There are 14 items under this category.
1:46:36 Thank you, Doctor Rendell. Does any board member wish to pull any of these items? Seeing none, I will entertain a motion to accept the consent items with the exception of those polled for discussion, if applicable, move to approve. Second, is there any discussion? Seeing none.
1:46:56 All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? Passes.
1:47:09 Fine. Zero. Doctor Earndell, will you please let us know about the item under the action portion of today’s agenda? Yes, the first item is H 25 board discussion to authorize the superintendent payment for cost of redistricting in 2023.
1:47:18 Do I hear a motion? There’s not really. I’m going to object to calling a motion right now because this looks like a discussion. So it’s for the authorization.
1:47:29 So there is going to be. Need to be. Well, then we probably need to have the motion after we have the discussion so we know what the heck we’re talking about, Mister Susan.
1:47:36 So you don’t know what this item is about? I’m reading the description. I can take a guess from what I’ve read on social media and phone conversations I’ve had, but what the item actually says is board discussed. Yeah, usually.
1:47:44 So let’s have the discussion first and then you can call for a motion once we know what we’re talking about. No, usually. Usually we have a move to approve.
1:47:55 We have a second and then we have discussion. But that’s when we know what we’re voting on, Mister Susan. So I think I would like to know what we, what we’re exactly talking about.
1:48:08 I think we should have the discussion. Yeah, I’ll explain this and then I’m going to move for an approval in a second so we can get into discussion. We had this discussion last time when we were speaking about the board redistricting.
1:48:21 At the last meeting. I had said that we were going to bring this up at this time. We are all very aware of the fact that because we did not redistrict back in 2021, there’s an incurred cost based upon us redistricting.
1:48:30 Now that incurred cost goes to the superintendent or the supervisor of elections. The supervisor of elections. Instead of incurring a cost for us, I wanted to have a discussion wrapped around us paying our portion of that, and that’s what that is.
1:48:41 I mean, I don’t think there’s any confusion there. So I think that that’s a good one. I don’t want to have discussion about the item prior to us moving to approve because that’s it.
1:48:48 So we can discuss more about the item when we get moving. So I’d like to move to approve. Well, again, before anybody moves to approve it says payment.
1:49:01 There’s no, there’s no, there’s no dollar amount. There’s no how. That’s part of the discussion.
1:49:17 I’m going to argue with you a little bit more, Mister Susan, on this and that. I can go back and pull up our minutes from the last time it was mentioned. Actually, it was mentioned, I believe, by Miss Jenkins, who was challenging you on it.
1:49:29 This is the first time we’ve actually had this conversation about this out in the open. And I’ll go back and look at our minutes to make sure I’m not incorrect. But I think in this particular item, I appreciate that it’s under the action agenda, because if we’re going to take a vote, that’s where it needs to be and not in discussion.
1:49:50 But we need to have the discussion so we know what exactly we’re talking about first. If you can get a motion in a second, sure, fine, that’s whatever. But I would like to hear more details about what you’re talking about.
1:50:04 What amount? Because if we’re going to have a vote, I think we need to agree on what we’re willing to do as a board. If we’re willing to give this money, what are we talking about? I don’t think I’m unreasonable in my request. Miss Wright, can I interject? So, the item that we are voting on is we are voting to discuss, to authorize the superintendent’s payment for costs.
1:50:13 So with Mister Susan’s motion to approve that in a second, then that opens up the discussion. We’re not voting to approve the superintendent’s authorization. We’re voting to approve the motion to discuss it.
1:50:31 Is that correct? And then after. Yes, and then give him the authorization to go negotiate whatever that price is. Separate motion, wouldn’t it though? No, this is.
1:50:50 This is to allow him to authorize the superintendent for payment of cost for do redistricting in 2023. So we can, what with the part of the discussion is to allow him, because we don’t have a total amount yet, to go ahead and authorize, to pay for whatever the difference is from the suit, from the special supervisor of elections. Okay.
1:50:58 And Mister Gibbs, can you just clarify, just because the way that this is written is a little funky, so I understand what you’re saying as far as this goes, and I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. The agenda does not have an emotion attached to it. So that’s why he’s asking for a motion to authorize the superintendent to pay the supervisor of election costs.
1:51:17 Okay. All right. And because again, I know there’s discussion around this, I think it needs to be clarified out there in the public’s eye.
1:51:20 So I have been very clear since this was brought up to begin with, that this should have been dealt with before this board ever came here. I don’t feel like this is anyone’s expense, aside from the school districts, because it was punted down the line and now we’re facing it. So I’m in favor of him making the decision.
1:51:31 If you can just second so we can go. Okay. Thank you.
1:51:42 So, as we’re open for discussion, I just wanted to say I had this conversation with Paul. It was either Monday or Tuesday of last week. We had a bunch of people who were all away on vacation.
1:52:13 It was posted to the agenda item Wednesday. If there was any questions, I would hope in the future that you would ask those ahead of time. I would have been more than happy to answer anything ahead of time.
1:52:27 Plus, I had given through Paul, who it was his recommendation to have it written this way and move forward based upon the fact that we, due to the fact that these charges are going to be coming, that we’re going to need to authorize the superintendent to allow him to pay for the cost of the redistricting. So with that, here’s I can kind of lay it out, but I think I’ll let you guys go first since I kind of gave an opportunity to speak to it. Would you like to say anything, Miss Kimball? I would actually like to be last or next.
1:52:50 Sure, Miss Jenkins. So I hear you. When you say that you would appreciate us asking the questions ahead of time, except we follow Sunshine Law, I know that’s really difficult, so we can’t do that.
1:53:02 Mister Susan, you stated on this board, and stated it numerous times, that you had several conversations with the supervisor of elections as well as with Commissioner Tobiah. However, when you got a public records request about it, you repeatedly stated about the conversations. You repeatedly stated about the redistricting process.
1:53:17 Your official response was that there were no records of communications. So either you lied on the dais about having those communications, or you’re lying about the communications not existing. They both can’t be true.
1:53:38 That doesn’t make any sense. In the conversations you stated you had, but there’s no records of. You also repeatedly stated that the district is not under any obligation, statutorily or otherwise, to pay for any expense that the SOE office may incur for redistricting.
1:54:21 You also stated that we should choose to do so. If we did, it would be out of the goodness of our hearts. So my question is, if we have no obligation to pay for something, and if the SOE’s office supposedly, as you said, has reserves to pay for this very thing, according to you and your non existent conversations with the SOE.
1:54:45 Why is it wise, necessary, or even sane for us to accept the money from the county commission that we don’t need for an expense that isn’t ours? And since the source of the county commission’s money is for ARP funds, it will open us up to unnecessary ethical scrutiny for spending those funds. Especially because the funds are coming from a county commissioner who is running for the supervisor of elections, who has a very public, ongoing dispute with the funding of that very office as we speak. So instead of giving $30,000 directly to the supervisor of elections office, the county commission is voting today to give it to us.
1:55:07 I don’t understand that process. Maybe it’s out of the goodness of their hearts. So my question is, why are you bringing this to us if we have no legal obligation to do it? Miss Campbell asked to go last.
1:55:20 Mister Trent, as long as, like you said, Doctor Rendell is going to discuss how much it’s going to cost for us to go through this process. He’s going to bring it back, and I believe these discussions will start over again. They’ll never start if we don’t give him the right to start those discussions.
1:55:31 So I have no further questions on that. It seems like this is where we would start in order to eventually have an end. So, again, I will put it on the record.
1:55:43 I am in favor of the school board incurring this cost, because it is a school board expense. I don’t think that the county commissioner should be involved in this. This is something that should have been done two years ago and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
1:56:00 So it’s a little bit like beating your head against the wall. I am in favor of letting him make the decision there and move forward with this, but this needs to be a school board expense. It doesn’t need to involve county commission.
1:56:16 Miss Campbell? Yeah. I don’t want you to think that because I didn’t contact you to ask questions about this, that I didn’t do my homework, because I’ve done a lot of homework over the last couple of days just to make sure. And when I do have a question about something on the agenda, I go to where we’re supposed to go, which is the superintendent.
1:56:27 And I did reach out to him, and even as of late as yesterday, he did not have an amount or really? Because this was your agenda item, not his agenda item as to what exactly this conversation was going to be about. So it’s not really fair to throw him under the bus in this. I want to address a couple of things.
1:56:44 First of all, something Miss Jenkins said. Whatever Mister Susan did or did not say in the past, the supervisor election actually doesn’t have reserves. So that’s, that was a misfeed.
1:56:55 He’s not going to have reserves to pay for this and whatever. As far as the county commission, I hear you. I don’t actually think it sounds to me like an allowable experience under the american rescue plan, but that’s their issue across the street to deal with their attorney as to what’s legal.
1:57:13 I just have to go back and I will try to be as brief as possible, but it keeps being mentioned. It should have been done two years ago. It should have been done two years ago.
1:57:25 So we talk about why the supervisor of elections, by the way, the amount, I have an amount, it’s roughly 63. $64,000 is the total cost. The reason why the cost is so high is because of the number of voter that we disrupted, because we chose to align with the county commission.
1:57:36 My estimate was 80,000 voters. The supervisor elections had about 100,000 voters. So they’re having to send out 80 to 100,000 voter id cards, new voter id cards, because we made a drastic change rather than a small change.
1:57:49 So that 64,000 is based on the number of cards they have to print and the cost of mailing. No, it will wasn’t in their budget, so they are going to have to find a way to pay for it. And so that is true.
1:57:59 But as far as why the cost, it is true. We did not get it done in 2021 when the county commission did. Is it all our fault? The truth is it’s not.
1:58:12 It is not all our fault. School boards are not allowed to do any redistricting in even numbered years. The legislature, on the other hand, they had all the way.
1:58:28 They didn’t even get theirs done until late spring and didn’t get theirs finalized until. Until pretty late, until almost qualifying week, which was really tough on the people who are running for state house and state senate. So that’s not our fault.
1:58:55 It’s not our fault that this is one of the statutes, that school boards have different rules than everybody else. Otherwise we could have gone into 2022 and finished hours the same time as the legislature did and they were redrawing the lines for Congress as well. We could have had that same time.
1:59:10 I will also go back to now listen, I have kicked myself several times in the last few months. Why didn’t we go ahead and do it? Why didn’t we go ahead and do it? Mister Stewson was the only one at the time in 2021, and the records will show that if you want to go back and watch the videos, he was the only one on the board at the time who wanted to align us with the county commission. And out of deference to Mister Susan, out of deference to Mister Susan, the board at the time said, and listen, I’m kicking myself for doing that because we didn’t have the majority to go this way.
1:59:36 We said, we’ll wait and we’ll wait and see what the county commissioners do. It was not our fault that the census data did not come out until August of 2021, which only gave us four months to get it done. It was our fault that we did not go ahead and move.
1:59:46 But again, we did that out of deference to Mister Susan, who wanted, wanted us to wait and line up with the county commission. And if we had gone that way, we decided, once they decided again, just to give you the history, again, they did not decide until November how they were going to redraw the lines and what decisions they were going to make. If we had gone with Mister Seusson’s suggestion that we line up with them, which I remember saying specifically multiple times, I’m not going to blindly say yes to whatever the county commission does, not knowing what they’re going to do.
2:00:05 That’s not right. We give our authority to them. What would have happened at the time is we would have redrawn the lines very similar to, you know, we would to what they are now.
2:00:25 And I’ve tried really hard not to make this about me personally, but it would have made it where I couldn’t have even run in 2022. That is the dog gone honest truth. Now, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say it wasn’t about politics, but I would not have been able to run in 2022 as it stands right now, I’m not going to be able to run into 2026 again.
2:00:46 I’m not making it about me, but about the position. But I do have to say this because it was a big deal then. It should have been a big deal to redraw the lines, to cut out people who are currently on the board, so much so that other counties, we talk about other counties and how many of them, the school boards and this and the county commission lines are the same.
2:00:51 I’ll give you Pasco, for example. Pasco school board and county commissioner has been aligned for, for many years. In that year, when they redrew the lines, the county commission decided to redraw the lines so that one of their school board members was pushed out of her district and the school board decided to unhitch from the county commissioners because that wasn’t the right thing to do.
2:01:01 We did not do that. And so we caught ourselves and we got our, we waited for the county commissioner. They made their decision in November.
2:01:21 We had a very short amount of time, so we didn’t do that. And then again, because of the state statutes that says we can’t do it in an, except for an odd numbered years, we couldn’t. We had to punt it to 2023.
2:01:34 Fast forward to now. One of the reasons, again, why it’s going to be $64,000 is because this board decided to not spend 50,000 on a consultant and to make small changes, which we could have only moved a couple of thousand voters to satisfy the requirements of the law. And then we could have paid.
2:01:41 The supervisor would have still had money to pay. They would have still had cards to send out, but not 80 to 100,000 cards. A couple thousand cards to send out would have been a much smaller bill, more palatable for him, more palatable for us.
2:01:52 But we didn’t want to spend the $50,000 on the consultant. We didn’t want to do small changes. We decided as a board to make large changes.
2:02:17 And so now the supervisor of elections has a large bill. So I will take my part. My part was that we didn’t just plow forward in the middle of mass scores with the governor, either.
2:02:51 We didn’t go ahead and just plow forward in 2021 and just get it done then. I am absolutely, have been kicking myself for several months about that, but it’s done, and now it’s this board’s responsibility. Part of it is on this board, the size of the bill, because this board decided to make huge changes in the school board districts and not just small changes, which was the only thing that was required.
2:03:04 So all that being said, and I had to give all that background, sorry you had to sit through it again, but all that being said, I do not want to put the supervisor elections in a tough spot. I watched their last meeting of the county commissioners and how they’re grilling all their constitutional officers, and I also got an education yesterday talking to one of our county commissioners in what the county charter cap means for them and how their budget can only grow 3% every year, and that puts them in a tough funding spot as well. I recognize that they are going to be voting tonight.
2:03:33 Whatever they do across the street. That is their decision, considering what a tough spot we are putting him in for all those reasons, which, again, I am going to refuse to allow this board to continue to say it is our fault. It is not all our fault.
2:03:45 All those reasons why it said it is a combination of factors, and some of it does rely on this board. As far as the size, I’m going to say that again, I am willing to authorize the superintendent, and I’ve already briefly had this conversation with him, to put out half of the cost because it sounds like across the street there will they have a way to find the other half, whatever. Again, their attorneys decide whatever is legal for them to do with their american rescue plan funds.
2:03:56 But half, I think we can find half. They told us back in April they could find $50,000 for us to pay for the consultant. So if they could find 50,000, not that it’s easy, because we have lots of initiatives.
2:04:07 We want to pay our bus drivers more, which we’ve already committed to. And we’ve had a whole line of employees line up last board meeting and say, what about us? We want to do better by them. And we’re going to get our budget presentation in the next couple of hours.
2:04:25 That’s going to show we’re not going to have a lot hot left of. So we are not in a great financial position to be throwing out this money and that money. And no, Miss Jenkins, I don’t believe it is our responsibility to pay for it.
2:04:36 But considering all the factors that I’ve just said, and again, I don’t want to stick the supervisor of elections with having to make difficult choices on what he’s going to cut so that he can cover these costs. I am willing to authorize the superintendent to put out half of the cost of the mailing. All right.
2:05:03 Thank you. So a couple of things that I’d like to point out. There were some allegations of impropriety by one of our school board members, and I’d like to address that.
2:05:27 The first one is, is that I received two personal public records requests for all communications between myself and John Tobiah, who’s the county commissioner, and myself and the supervisor of elections, Tim Timbonik. And the first one, the one with timbabonic, based upon the date range that it was returned, no responsive documents. The second one with John Tobiah, I have not had a chance to respond to yet.
2:05:45 So I’d like to clarify the fact that there’s some false allegations that were made. The other component of it is that we have a argument over this reserve that was a portion of me misspeaking because I thought that the constitutional officers had their own budget, which they are given a budget by the county commission. And I’d like to explain this a little bit clearer.
2:06:06 So he has a budget based on what he thinks that he will make to this year. If he has to change that, he has to go back to the county commission. Now, sometimes if there’s a little bit of something here or there, he has enough of a flex inside of, of his budget, but something apparently this large, he would have to go back to the county commission.
2:06:28 The county commission would then have to allocate funds back to him to appropriate and do it. So that was the process, according to the supervisor of elections, that they would have to go through. It has been brought up that, let me just try to run through a couple of these in 2021 to bring some clarification.
2:06:53 The first initial conversation I had mentioned was, let’s redistrict. Now. Before the county commission piece came, I was pushing to have the redistricting done to where we would go through the normal process and go through those, but I was pushed back on by the current board and said, hey, this isn’t something that we are willing to entertain because it’s getting later in the end of the year.
2:07:15 So when that came up and the county started moving, I said, listen, there’s an opportunity for us to mirror the county commission and have theirs and we won’t have to do anything. So my initial argument was, hey, let’s redistrict after there was no movement by the board for that. My second initial argument was to bring up, hey, let’s move towards the county commission, whatever they come up with, because that would inline us and we would not have to pay the cost.
2:07:32 I think one of the things that we need to appropriately talk about is that the, the cost of the consultant, the cost on our staff. If you guys remember, the county commission put together what was, I think, a 300 page document, multiple meetings. They had community come in and everything else, which gave them the opportunity to engage and everything else with their districts.
2:07:47 That took staff a ton of time. This option is not only fiscally less money and fiscally responsible, but it also has support from them having all of the basically redrawing of lines based on public comment and everything else. So it makes sense to do it this way.
2:07:59 That’s the only reason any kind of impropriety, conversations wrapped around political areas or anything like that is just not true. The original intent came before the two individuals on the board were here and it had nothing to do with anything else. And I promise you that from the bottom of my heart.
2:08:08 The other component that we mentioned is the, that it was brought up, the fact that the supervisor would have to pay. We would have to pay. There’s county commissions.
2:08:14 This has nothing to do with the county commission. What the county commission does over at the county commission is up to them. If they want to, like you said, allocate the funds to offset it.
2:08:41 I appreciate that. If they don’t, then it’s on us. We decided not to redistrict in 2021.
2:09:10 The county, who’s under the same exact redistricting rules, decided to move forward and completed it in the time that they were supposed to in 2021, under the same guise that they had, under the same rules, under the same everything. We decided not to. So now we’re redistricting in 2023 and we’re being, we have, this is the least cost, most effective option to move forward.
2:09:28 The other thing is, is that when I was talking, talking to Mister Tim Bobonic, the issue is that he said that he had communicated with our staff and he was trying to get us to redistrict because he said it’s more appropriate to do it now. And then what ended up happening is we sent him back saying that we were going to redistrict in 2023. So the facts of what my intent was, I’ve stated the facts of this misconstrued of information coming from one of our board members has been then restated.
2:09:53 I would argue that this is the less cost and the most fiscally responsible and transparent to our voters, because now they have the same district school board member that they have for county commission. So with that, if there’s anybody else that wishes to speak again, I will open up the topic. Mister Trump? Yeah.
2:10:03 Did you want to go? No, no, go. Yeah, I’d like to just go again on for our board not to be accused of, you know, making decisions that’s just going to cost the district money. First and foremost, I would like to assume we want to do good as one of our speakers asked us to do as a board.
2:10:18 I think that in this case, this is what we’re doing for our voters of brevard just coming off an election. I saw the confusion out there. So first and foremost, we want to do good.
2:10:29 And I thought that’s what we did with redistricting. As far as costs, I think Mister chair, you just mentioned, I think it’s cost effective. And when I was talking to the consulting group, the number $50,000 minimum came up.
2:10:41 They could not give me a figure. They said between 50 and $100,000 to conduct this. On top of that, when they finished, we would still have some of the same costs that we’re incurring.
2:11:11 But to even have that come into play would be wrong. Again, we want to do what’s right for the voters of Brevard and to remove that confusion. So when, you know, when you’re in district two, you’re in district two.
2:11:30 That was first and foremost on our minds, and I believe we were able to achieve it, and it isn’t. I just want to make sure that we know, and it’s on record, that in our decisions, again, cost is important, but doing what’s right for the residents of Brevard is first and foremost. And I think we took plenty of opportunity to do the research, to talk to the consulting group.
2:11:35 And, you know, I’d be curious as to how much, if somebody here knows, I don’t, how much the county commission spent on their consulting firm when going through redistricting. So, again, we owe nothing but everything to the voters of Brevard. And I think we did that in this instance.
2:11:51 Thank you. Miss Jenkins. You were wanting to speak? Yep.
2:12:07 So I just want to remind you that my requests are also public record. And the date range was from the beginning of March until present day. It’s a very, very wide date range.
2:12:23 While we were having all these discussions, and you mentioned multiple times having conversations with those individuals, Mister Tobiah’s office responded in hours. You’ve had it for 35 days. So talk about transparency.
2:12:39 I’m open and honest, and it’s a public record. Here’s what I’m uncomfortable with. I’m uncomfortable with this being thrown on the agenda the way it was thrown on, because, quite frankly, I don’t know why we’re voting on a board discussion when we have a board discussion section on the agenda.
2:12:58 So that makes no sense to me. And I appreciate you, Miss Kimball, being very specific about what you’re comfortable with and what you would approve. But I’m going to just address something that’s wildly inappropriate, in my opinion, because what the county commission is voting on specifically.
2:13:08 Specifically is the board approval to transfer $32,072.36 to district three ARPA funds to brevard public schools, to us, not to the supervisor of elections. I’m not comfortable with that.
2:13:21 I think it’s an inappropriate use of their ARPA funds. And sure, they can make whatever decision they want, but we can make the decision whether or not we’re going to accept. Accept that money.
2:13:31 I’m not comfortable with that. It doesn’t say that it’s going to the supervisor of elections. And this item, as we’ve stated before, and Miss Campbell stated, there’s no dollar amount on here.
2:13:36 Our superintendent didn’t know the dollar amount. Again, not his fault, but yet the county commission has a very specific down to the cent dollar amount on their item today. But we don’t.
2:13:43 For the public. That doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s inappropriate.
2:13:58 I’m not comfortable with it. I’m not clear. And when you keep saying, you know, whatever the county commission does, it’s up to them.
2:14:12 I would agree with you, except you communicated with one of the county commissioners to make this happen in the first place before this decision was being made. So it’s not up to them. It sounds like it was up to the two of you, and it’s inappropriate.
2:14:37 And it’s inappropriate that they’re magically on the agendas on the same day. It’s wrong. So I’m not comfortable approving doing anything but paying for the whole thing, because I believe it is our responsibility.
2:14:51 I know it’s not statutorily required, but I think it’s our responsibility to do it because we made a decision to be here, and I think it’s wildly inappropriate for us to accept ARPA funds from the county commission to pay for this. Miss Campbell, Miss Wright’s vice chair. You can go.
2:15:07 My position hasn’t changed, but I appreciate what you have to say about being willing to do the whole thing. It’s different things to say. I haven’t asked for the meeting.
2:15:12 Doctor Mandel, can we find $32,000? I think so. We’re asking him, can we find 64? That’s a little tougher. But I just, you know, I appreciate the comments of my board members, everybody sharing their opinion, but we have to remember that it’s our opinions that what we did was best for voters.
2:15:22 It’s our opinions that we did what was right. We did what we wanted. You know, we balanced.
2:15:45 You know, one of the policies that was challenged today was about educational needs and desires. And I actually think that’s not about change, because there’s sometimes everybody comes up every meeting, they share their desires, desires, desires. It’s not always needs.
2:15:58 We have to decide, like, that rest of that policy that we’re gonna be looking at later today says we have to balance it all. But in the end, it’s our decision. In the end, it was our decision, but I don’t think it was clear this is what’s right, because there were other arguments made by the other side of that vote that was, it’s best for our communities to have the balance that we had previously.
2:16:08 And so it’s your opinion and you’re welcome to it, but let’s not put it out like, like we did what’s right, and it was a right and wrong decision. I don’t believe at all that it was right or wrong decision, because there’s multiple ways that it could be done. And I would just, I just want to challenge again the $50,000.
2:16:16 I actually, it was $57,000. It was very specifically presented to us because I looked it back up yesterday from the consultant in the presentation. So that wasn’t a, could be a hundred thousand.
2:16:34 They gave us two figures. It was 57,000, or the other amount, it was like 70,000, depending on how many meetings we had. And so we had options.
2:16:42 And again, you know, we could have actually been spending around the same amount of money. We could have spent $57,000 on the consultant and then maybe around $10,000 to mail out a couple thousand voters registration cards. Instead, we decided not to do that, to make the drastic change, and now we’re going to be looking at paying 64,000.
2:16:57 So 63. $64,000. So it’s, you know, to say, it’s just frustrating, because back then, one of the arguments was, we’re being fiscally conservative.
2:17:19 Well, now we’re going to spend the exact same amount of money. So that’s what’s frustrating to me was we could have done it either way. And again, I’m going to go back to, it’s not right or wrong, it’s just the way we wanted to do it, and to vote the majority of the board, which they have absolutely the right to do.
2:17:30 The majority of the board. And so, you know, again, my opinion is still that, you know, we chip in, but, and then, you know, if the supervisor, however they want to do it, if the board wants to also make a motion that we don’t accept ARPA funds, I’m fine with that, too. But, you know, that’s my opinion on what we contribute.
2:17:41 It still stands, Mister Wright. Okay, going back to the motion that’s on the floor right now, this board needs to make a decision. We need to get back on track with what we’re doing here as far as the business of the board.
2:17:51 And so we need to decide, are we going to give him the authority to go forward with this. Again, guys, this is statutorily required. This is not a conspiracy.
2:18:01 Like, we have to stay within a certain percentage of voters across the board, and we’re outside of that right now. So that is why this is happening. It is not an option for us to do this.
2:18:16 This is not something that’s political. Miss Campbell, I know you’ve said multiple times that you don’t feel like it’s about you, and I understand why you might feel like it is about you, but it is not about you. This is 100% what we have to do.
2:18:24 And when you talk to most voters and you ask them, hey, guys, which district are you in for your school board versus your county commissioner, most people don’t realize that they could potentially have two different ones. So, again, back to this. The consultant fee we would still have incurred.
2:18:38 There’s an unknown there. So we knew what the consultant fee fee was going to be. We did not know what the results were going to be to come back and say, hey, it’s going to impact this many voters.
2:18:47 So there’s absolutely no way for us to say that we would have saved more money or been exactly the same. All we know is $57,000 for the consultant fee, and it sounds like now we know, $64,000 for the supervisor of elections. Those are the two known numbers at this point that we have.
2:18:50 Otherwise, they’re all hypothetical. Again, I believe that this is a cost that the school board should incur, because this is. This is ours, guys.
2:19:05 This is. This isn’t the county commissioners. It’s ours.
2:19:23 So I am in favor of approving the school board incurring that cost and not involving the county commissioner with this. That’s what my recommendation would be. Okay.
2:19:36 There seems to be, before I get into this, a majority to move forward with what we’re talking about, giving you the statutory, giving you the authority to go negotiate and everything else. I’ll have some comments here at the end, but I’m hearing what I heard. I’m hearing.
2:19:57 So we’re going to allow you to go over and figure out and start negotiating the cost of what this is. I think there’s enough. Did I hear that you guys are okay with allowing him to.
2:20:21 The idea here today was going to be that I said that he is allocated up to $70,000 to. In the event that they say it’s going to be 65, he would have the authority to cut the check. Basically, if there’s not that, and you would rather it come back to the board, once it’s been negotiated, we can do that, too.
2:20:37 But I’d like to kind of get that cleared up before I speak here. Can you guys, I am in favor of allowing him that when they give us a total amount, whether it’s 36 or 64, because I think we take the responsibility of doing this, because we didn’t in 2021, allowing him to do that. And I don’t think that if for some reason it’s above the 70,000, then we should have it come back to us.
2:20:50 But all indications are that it’s under that. So I’m okay with doing that. But I wanted to hear from you guys real quick, if you feel like that is a, you know, if that’s supported, to do that with that way, or if you want the total to come back and have more discussion about what we’re discussing here.
2:20:55 So, Miss Campbell, you had indicated that you wanted to. You were okay with the 64? No, actually, I indicated half, but I heard a full amount. A full amount? Half, Jenkins.
2:21:03 Full. You know, that’s what I heard. Far as that, I don’t.
2:21:14 I think we just made a decision today. Unless it’s ridiculously over 64,000, I don’t actually want to talk about this ever again. Okay.
2:21:15 Same. So I think with that, I think, Doctor Rendell, you have the authority to go over and negotiate with them, and as long as it doesn’t go over 70,000. Right.
2:21:26 We would like that. You’re going to need to ask for Paul to kind of. You’re going to need a vote.
2:21:46 You’re going to need an amendment. The motion. The motion on the table is authorize superintendent to negotiate with supervisor of elections to pay costs.
2:21:50 So let’s. I’ll make an amendment to it to allow him to go across the street to negotiate for up to $70,000 to cover the cost of our redistricting that we currently have on the table. And then also to, in the event that it’s under 70,000, have the authority to strike the check and send it over there so that we don’t have to bring it up again.
2:22:18 That’s the motion on the table. Do I get a second? I’ll second. Okay.
2:22:26 And then is there any discussion to that? I have a discussion because I want to make sure that my concern is being addressed. And how do we do that? Can we do it in this motion that, because we’re saying up to $70,000, I hear two board members making it very clear that we do not want to accept funds from the county commission and saying up to $70,000 doesn’t make that clear for me. The motion is up to 70.
2:22:43 So it’ll be up to doctor Rendell to decide whether to use those funds right now. Say that again. Sorry.
2:22:46 The motion on the table is just to authorize him up to 70,000. If we get the funds from the county and he wants to take those funds and use them as part of that 70, that would be up to him. As the motion states, the board would need a separate motion right now to say we’re rejecting county commission funds.
2:22:47 But we do have a current motion on the table. It’s fine. It’s fine.
2:22:52 Let’s do this. It is not fine. Mister Susan.
2:22:53 It is not fine. Absolutely not fine. Miss Jenkins.
2:23:01 Mister Susan. I’m still speaking. Mister Susan.
2:23:20 I’m still speaking. And I asked a question of our legal counsel, and he answered it. And now I have a follow up question.
2:23:24 If we make that motion to, do we need to close this one first or do I have to amend it? We have a motion on the table with an amendment to that motion that’s been seconded, so we need to vote on that, get that out of the way. And then if the board wants to reject county commission money, that would be a separate motion and discussion. So call the motion.
2:23:38 Okay. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye.
2:23:52 All opposed? Doctor Rendell has the opportunity to go across the street. I think that there’s an amendment to that that says that we would like to not accept. Not accept the county commission and pay the full amount.
2:23:55 I’m going to make a motion. You need a motion? I’m going to move to make a motion that we do not accept the ARPA funds from the county commission to pay for the redistricting, there’s. Okay, we can have a discussion.
2:24:05 Yep. Okay. All discussion on that item.
2:24:22 I would take other funds. I would take other funds from. From the county, and that’s fine, Miss Campbell, but that is not what is on their agenda tonight.
2:24:41 It is very clear what is on their agenda tonight. Okay, so what I’m hearing you say is that if the county wants to give the school board the money rather than the supervisor of elections, that you. That’s what the motion is.
2:24:55 So if for some reason, the wording over there is different and that this is actually. That he’s going to give the ARPA funds to the supervisor and not us, let’s just kind of. Because the fact that we’re actually voting on something that hasn’t happened, that’s in another vote is kind of crazy.
2:25:02 So I would say that the motion on the table is to allow him to go. But if they want to give us the money, that’s what it is. But if they turn around and give the money to the supervisor of elections, that’s not the motion that’s on the table.
2:25:06 The motion that she just made was to not accept the ARPA funds for the redistricting cost. Okay. Okay.
2:25:12 And it was sucking in by Miss Campbell. Yep. So that’s what’s on the.
2:25:17 On the table. So any other discussion on this item? All right, all in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye.
2:25:39 All opposed? Nay. Nay. And then.
2:25:59 Okay, so now we’re back to the original motion with a motion on the table. So now the final component is that doctor Rendell can go across the street up to $70,000. And in the event that they want to, the county commission wants to give us ARPA funds to our funding source, then we can turn around, and he can’t accept that.
2:26:07 Right. And in the event that any other anomaly happens, he can stroke the check. So let me get back to where I think we were having an issue was that there was, it had been said over the cost, and I want to kind of get into this because the cost of us doing this is between 32 and $64,000.
2:26:38 Okay. The cost, according to the consultant, was 50 or 70 without a defined line. That is a fact.
2:27:13 The other component is that there would have been costs, cost associated with the transfers or the changes, regardless. And I will tell you that our current school board seats are significantly gerrymandered through the Rockledge cocoa area. So the argument is that we would not, by saying that the changes to the actual in 2021 would, or now, if we would have gone to redistrict, would be less, is not true.
2:28:03 The other component, if you add $50 to $70,000 from the consulting, if you ask at least $20,000 from the actual redistricting cards that have to go out, and then you talk about the staff time that would have been incurred, it would have basically been inwards of $150,000, period. The fact that there’s a 300 page document across from the county when they went through it, and all of the staff time that went into to that is significantly higher with all of that action and all of that time than mirroring them. So the fiscalness of this entire policy is that it would cost less to move on what we’re doing.
2:28:19 The other component is, and I’m just not sure about this, Miss Jenkins, I would also continue to request you that in the event that you’re asking for public records from a county commissioner and a school board member to receive information on how they’re going to vote or act at the next meeting, possibly is very close to certain violations with the state. And I would just ask you, as a school board member with our board, that those kind of conversations, if there’s something inappropriate, would show afterwards, and it would be more appropriate to make those requests afterwards rather than before, because it seems like you’re trying to use it third party or an opportunity to figure out what another individual is doing. So with that, I just wanted to call a question.
2:28:23 All in favor, signify by saying aye. Sorry, what is the question? The question is the original. The motion is as amended to allow the superintendent to negotiate or pay up to 70,000 in costs and reject county commission ARPA funds.
2:28:28 Thank you. Thank you. All in favor, signify by saying aye.
2:28:34 Aye. All opposed passes 50. Thank you.
2:28:56 All right. Does anybody need a break? No, I have. Yeah.
2:29:18 The next item is procurement solutions. Do I hear a motion? Okay, we have a motion where it’s on a discussion. I currently have tabled this so that it would come up for this meeting to try to get an opportunity to go to speak to staff and move through and do some things.
2:29:30 And what I would like to do is give an explanation as to why we tabled and everything else. But I wanted to give an opportunity to anybody else that wanted to speak about this prior ahead of time. So does anybody else wish to speak about it? I’ll happily jump in there because I also had questions in regards to, of the contracts that we’re trying to put through here.
2:29:53 And I have to tell you, board, after our last meeting, I have even more pause from the response that we got from one of our vendors. And again, I don’t like a three year long contract with any company. I really don’t.
2:30:11 I think a competitive market is a good thing for us all, and we should be shopping out insurance on a regular basis to make sure that we are getting the best deal for our district. So I. There is one in here that I would like to at least modify the request for the proposal I see is in here. So the three year part of it is the part that I’m having an issue with.
2:30:25 So. So, Mister Trent, did you have anything to say that they didn’t? Okay, so here’s what it is for me, just so that we know, I reached out to and tried to get ahold of some of our staff, I spoke to procurement and solicitation about the bid. I talked to our attorney.
2:30:48 I talked to multiple sources and just said, hey, Gallagher is a good company. Like, they are arguably the largest company for public sector in the state of Florida. We’ve had a relationship with them for 20 plus years.
2:30:56 This isn’t about that. What it is is there’s some questions pertaining to the contract, some questions pertaining to some of the placements, stuff like that that I just, quite frankly, since the last meeting, because of certain circumstances, were not able to get the answers to. So what I would like to do is give the superintendent the opportunity to go negotiate a six month extension on the contract until we can get those done.
2:31:28 That way, it will place a consultant inside for us, representing us. It’s consistent with the contract that we currently have. And I’ll explain that in a second.
2:31:39 And that’ll give us an opportunity for you to get your conversations to procurement, for me to get my conversations to the individuals that are in charge of this and then be able to bring it back. And it might be that in, before the six months that we would come back with a contract or something, but it would give the our consultant the opportunity to represent us. So I would like to give the superintendent the opportunity to go negotiate with Gallagher to continue the original contract prior to the most recent one for six months so that we can talk about this.
2:31:49 That would be what I would like to recommend. And then out of respect from the board, wait until I can have the opportunity to speak to the people that are in charge of this. That’s all.
2:31:56 I have a question just in regards to this. So because we currently do not have a contract with Gallagher, it has expired at this point, we would be. It would be a new contract, correct.
2:32:03 It would come back as. Yeah, six months under the same terms as the last one is what I’m hearing. Okay.
2:32:11 And also to clarify, all of our insurances are in place. We are set on insurance every which way. So it’s.
2:32:33 We’re not at risk of losing insurance. So I just want the public to understand that. I think it’s just, again, competitive markets make us all better.
2:32:44 So I think looking at this and researching this a little deeper, when we’re not right at the 4 July, we’re would be gonna beneficial to everyone. So I’m in favor of the six months, Miss Kimmel, I’m not in favor of pulling this item for a couple reasons. One, the item was first put on the agenda two weeks before the last meeting.
2:33:01 We had the conversation after we pulled it last time. Please board, let’s get our questions answered. We’ve known now for two weeks longer, so we’ve had four weeks total to take a look at these.
2:33:36 And I, granted, we had some information that we didn’t have access to, but we’ve now had two weeks to look through all the bid committee, all the comments, all the scoring, all the reasons why they chose it. I am second. So we’ve had time to answer the questions.
2:34:05 And even though there were certain people who were out of place until very recently, the people who were negotiating this contract have been in place. We have an award winning, I’m going to remind you guys, an award winning procurement department who is very open, and we need to, if we’re concerned about the processes that they go through, it would be good to have a conversation with Christy and her team about how it works and make sure we understand because we need to be comfortable. But when the board inserts itself into the procurement process, I would need to check with Paul, and I know our previous attorney procurement was like one of her areas of expertise.
2:34:44 So I know Paul’s got resources into the dangerous waters we get into as elected officials who, to be quite honest, are more prone to influence from the outside when it comes to contracts. What dangerous waters we might be getting into when we insert ourselves too much in the contract negotiations. I also have a concern when you say you’re concerned with a three year contract, because most of our contracts are that way, and it’s going to be difficult for our departments, and I’m speaking out of turn here because I haven’t had that conversation.
2:35:00 But having approved many, many contracts over the last four and a half years, I don’t want to put that added burden on our procurement department, which might be not fiscally responsible of us because contracts are going to cost more if we can’t give them more than a year, in addition to the extra work that’s going to cause all of the departments, including procurement, to constantly, every year being renegotiating every single contract, I don’t think that’s reasonable. I don’t think it’s responsible. So I, you know, before we come up with a new creative idea to pull this once again from an agenda that’s been, it’s been on for four weeks, I’d like to hear from the superintendent what his recommendations are.
2:35:17 We’ve said before he’s the CEO. Let’s kind of not defer to him, but get his input to guide what he think we might need to do. Before we, as a board, come up with some solution that’s not even on the table right now.
2:35:29 Okay. I think I would like to clarify, Miss Campbell, if it’s okay, and you had said that we’ve had the four weeks to respond and ask questions. The individual that is in charge of this entire contract and the entire division was supposed to be on the procurement solicitation.
2:35:42 She was supposed to attend and be in the meetings and set it. She is the individual that is in charge of this for our entire district. She is the known entity, and the expert in this area was not able to do that.
2:35:46 She was not able to sit on the superintendent. She was not able to sit on the entire procurement. She was not able to sit through the negotiation for the contract, and I have not been able to get a hold of her in the process in order to do so.
2:35:59 So that’s what I was trying to speak to. So I’m sorry, I did not. Thank you for that clarification.
2:36:22 That makes a difference, and there’s a reason for it that I didn’t want to go that deep, but I did want you to understand where it comes from. I do want to tell everybody, just so everybody understands. And there was a clarification from Miss Wright.
2:36:46 All of the carriers have been placed, all of the commissions have been sent, and Gallagher has. Will receive, if they have not already. So Gallagher, who has been our consultant for 20 plus years, has received underpayment, the previous contract, all of the commissions for all of the carriers.
2:36:56 So there is, you know, for me, I would think that Gallagher would be more opportunity to come back, work for us during the six months being the fact that they’ve received the commissions, and then also so we can work out all of our questions during that time. I can get ahold of our individual that oversees that, and we can get that taken care of. That was the reason behind it.
2:37:19 But if anybody else has anything to say, and then I was going to ask Doctor Rendell his conversation. Yeah, I do. Miss Kimmel, you took the words right out of my mouth.
2:37:28 I support our award winning procurement department, and I’ve yet to hear over now to meetings any really specific concerns other than things like stuff like that. So if there is a significant concern, then the rest of the board should be aware of such significant concern that we’re having this conversation again. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
2:37:39 We do this every single board meeting. Now there’s some surprise issue with a procurement or contract. I don’t know.
2:37:56 Does make sense. Okay. Anybody else before I ask Doctor Rendell for his thoughts, board again, I’m going to tell you that it is our responsibility.
2:38:01 You are correct, Miss Campbell. It is our responsibility to look at these contracts. And I would say to every one of my board members, if you have pause at all about the contract or concerns out of respect for each other, I would hope that we would listen to that.
2:38:16 Our procurement department. I am not saying that our procurement department is not doing a phenomenal job by any means. I am not.
2:38:33 But there are, there are things, there are individuals that we should be able to speak with that we haven’t been able to speak with for different reasons. And their response when they were here, again, I would love the opportunity to speak to Gallagher. I would.
2:38:39 For somebody who’s been our insurance provider for 20 years, I feel like they should have been able to come up here and give us a slew of benefits that they have offered our district, and we didn’t get that when they came in. So I do have some questions about this. And again, the three year contract, if they were locking our insurance in for three years, by all means, right.
2:38:55 I would say that’s a great thing. But they’re not. They’re just saying they’re going to be the broker that’s going to find us insurance for the next three years.
2:39:12 So, again, it doesn’t impact our insurance coverage whatsoever. For me, this is looking at the company versus the other companies that are available in a competitive market. So that’s the only reason I’m saying I approve, or I would be in favor of giving this a little bit more time to go through.
2:39:37 And hopefully, the individual who’s in charge of this contract will be back by then. Miss Wright? So I hear you when you say, hopefully, we’d be willing to listen and pause when there’s concern, but my issue is I haven’t heard one. And last time I pushed, pushed, pushed, pushed, pushed.
2:39:42 And you finally said you were concerned that you didn’t see the other contracts, and that was something very specific. But again, I’m not hearing anything specific today from anyone, what your specific concern is. So as a fellow board member, to vote to remove something or to pause and wait, it doesn’t make sense when we’re not being given the specific concern or the pause.
2:40:16 Can I speak to that? Yeah, go ahead. You did, Miss Jenkins. I think I’ve given that.
2:40:40 Given that causes is that the individual that was in charge of this is in charge of the entire department, was predisposed, was not able to be, although they were signed up for it. A part of the original procurement was also supposed to be a part of the negotiations for the contract was also supposed to be available for questions. This gives us some opportunity now to go back and make sure that everything’s in order and I would say is probably more responsible than just going ahead and agreeing to a contract where the person that’s in charge was not able to, even though they were trying to be a part of it.
2:40:48 There are other concerns that I could lay out, but I think at this point that’s enough of one that allows us to get the six month extension, allow them to do the work that they’re doing, and then have conversations about it and we don’t skip a beat. I have a question about that, though. So what I’m hearing is that there is an integral person who’s supposed to be a part of this process that wasn’t.
2:41:17 I’m asking for clarification. If this is your why, for pause and concern. I’m asking for clarification.
2:41:25 You are saying that. So if that is the case, then what are we doing to rectify that situation and make it different? She’s what? She’s just getting back, which gives us the opportunity for her to get there. My point is, what is going to happen next? What are the steps that are going to happen next? If she wasn’t part of the process already and the process is finished, how do we rectify that situation? So that’s a legitimate question.
2:41:44 Absolutely. We can’t go backwards. So someone explained to me how that can be fixed by this, by this pause, instead of just waiting.
2:42:01 What I would say in response to you, Miss Jenkins, is that when you’re asking questions to the individual, that should be the person that you’re asking the questions to, and they’re not available, which they haven’t been available until recently. That should be a red flag to try to pause on something that’s such a large contract. That’s it, Miss Jenkins, I hear you.
2:42:05 I’m not arguing that. I’m asking what are the steps? So I’m gonna ask Doctor Rendell, because this is his job and his role, if that is what happens. So what steps are we going to take to rectify that situation? Because just pausing and extending a contract six months doesn’t insert that person into the process.
2:42:14 That’s what I want to understand. Yeah. So if I could.
2:42:41 I think the board has a couple different options. Number one, you could approve the recommendation that’s before you. We would enter into three year contract.
2:43:05 So none of those questions would get answered and we wouldn’t be able to renegotiate or anything like that. You could delay it for another two weeks, have the person that was to be involved now is back, couldn’t be more involved, answer more questions for board members, provide a report for the next time we meet that would maybe make us feel more comfortable or not with going forward. Or we could start the roof, the whole process over.
2:43:49 If we. If I’m given the direction to go back to Gallagher and ask for a six month extension of the previous contract and they agree to that, then that gives us time to, you know, talk to them more about a new contract, maybe go through the whole process over, you know, it puts a broker in place for the near future, six months or whatever. It’s quite possible.
2:43:56 If we go back to them and say we want to extend the previous agreement for six months and work on a new agreement or answer the questions that are being asked, then we might be back in a month with a totally new three year contract, but not taking any action tonight. At least asking for the possibility of a six month extension gives us time to get that in place and maybe go through the procurement process over, or at least give staff time to answer questions, give board members time to ask more questions, feel more comfortable about a three year contract versus no contract at all versus a six month. Because the six month extension could then be.
2:44:00 Mister Gibbs can correct me if I’m wrong, but could be voided if we enter into a new agreement. Yes. Six month contract.
2:44:05 Yeah. The terms. The terms of the terms of the last contract did cause.
2:44:31 And this one as well. It’s on the agenda tonight. Termination with or without cause, with 30 days notice.
2:44:56 So we could easily do that. So thank you. So my clarification here was to understand, other than just talking to this person and asking them questions that bother you, how are we rectifying this situation? So by doing this, we could potentially restart a procurement process with this person being interjected and being where they’re supposed to be to have these conversations is what I’m understanding.
2:45:05 We could, if we are able to negotiate a six month extension directly, we could enter into that process right away, or we could wait till four or five months. It gives us a lot more flexibility. And that’s the clarification I wanted to hear rather than I haven’t had the opportunity to ask this person specific questions because that doesn’t make sense to me, me, how it’s going to fix the problem that is at hand, which is that they may not have been involved the entire time.
2:45:27 Thank you. Okay. So anyways, I think what I wanted to kind of say was I’m not in favor of starting the procurement process over again.
2:45:30 What I’d like to do is just offer the six month, have everybody kind of get with staff, make sure that our answers are questions and everything are responded, and then after that, allow the individuals in place to possibly renegotiate a contract with the existing carrier and then come back to us. And that may be before the six months, but the six months just gives us that opportunity. So that would be what I was trying to say.
2:45:41 It would give me the opportunity to speak to staff. We’re covered. And everything else.
2:45:50 So did you want to say something? I was just going to call a little vote. Well, I was just going to ask Paul the clarification on. Because they’re lumped together with two other procurement.
2:45:57 Yeah, we do. We do. So I’ll make an amendment to take the current procurement solicitation.
2:46:26 Give me the proper process. Paul, we should make an amendment to pull it out, then amend it based upon the new negotiations and then pass it. Right.
2:46:29 Is that how you would do it? I would probably just move to approve the procurement solicitations with the exception of 26 C and then have that be a standalone and then move to authorize the superintendent to reach out to Gallagher on 26 C to negotiate an extension based on. Perfect. So I’ll make a motion to approve the procurement solicitations, all except for 27 C or the Gallagher contract.
2:46:34 26. 26. Listen, just, guys, relax.
2:46:38 It’s the Gallagher contract. It is 236468 p. Doctor.
2:46:48 That’s the technical name for it. So the Gallagher contract. We pulled that out.
2:46:53 We approved. So I have a motion on the floor to pass the current procurement solicitations. Correct.
2:46:58 She’s got 27. I have 26. So the agenda is different.
2:47:01 It’s fine. Listen, the amendment number is 23646 p. Doctor.
2:47:07 That’s it. Second. Thank you.
2:47:22 All right. All in favor of passing the procurement solicitations? Aye. Five.
2:47:37 Okay, 50. Now go back to the origin, the amended version for the contract. I make a motion to have Doctor Rendell go into negotiations with Gallagher over a six month extension to allow him and give him the opportunity.
2:47:43 I also give him the opportunity that in the event that after we’ve had conversations and each one of us feels secure to negotiate a contract that he can bring forward to us during that six months. Do I have a second? 2nd. Okay.
2:47:50 Is there any discussion? No. No. All in favor, signify by saying aye.
2:47:57 All opposed passes 50. Good gracious. Okay, now, thank you, Paul, for getting us through there.
2:48:05 We appreciate it. Next item is H 27, department school initiated agreements. Do I hear a motion? Move to approve.
2:48:17 Second. Any discussion? Nope. All in favor, signify by saying aye.
2:48:24 All opposed passes 50. We will move on to the information agenda, which includes items for board review and may be brought back for action at a subsequent meeting. No action will be taken on these items today.
2:48:39 Today. There are two items under this category. Does any member wish to discuss any of these items? Hearing none.
2:48:49 We are now onto board member reports. Does any board member have anything that they would like to bring up? We have FSBA advocacy committee representative. Miss Campbell, you put it on there with appropriate time.
2:49:07 Thank you. So we had this in November, or actually, I think December, we finally approved it. Usually when we appoint people to different committees and things, but the.
2:49:28 At the time, we appointed because we had someone go off the board who was our representative for advocacy committee. And so at the time, in December, we appointed Mister Susan as the representative and Miss Wright as the alternate, who’s not a part of FSB anymore. So obviously, we have to fix that.
2:49:50 But the timeline for FSB is actually summer to summer. So just like we just discussed to appoint Mister Susan to now be our board of directors representative for the next two years, now we need to pick a FSBA advocacy committee representative, which would have to be from the three of us who are remaining in FSBA. So I would offer to do that.
2:50:01 Since Mister Susan is going to be our representative on the board of directors, I would be happy to be our advocate, advocacy committee representative, which is just for one year. And then we need to get that information. Once we decide if everybody is in agreement, we need to get that information to FSBA before their August 1 deadline, and we need an alternate from one of the three of us who are going to remain in FSBA.
2:50:06 So you need the. So, I mean, basically, board of directors, you need an alternate, right? We are, yeah. And then advocacy and an alternate, correct.
2:50:13 We already. We already had. On June 6, we talked and you said you wanted to be the board of directors, so I said I would be the alternate.
2:50:17 So now we need to pick this position. If everybody’s in agreement, I’ll be happy to be our advocacy representative. Get thumbs up down there.
2:50:30 But we need an alternate from the two of you. I’ll be the alternate. Yeah.
2:50:43 So. And I wanted to say that, Miss Campbell, we had spoken about this is the non technical voting item. So one of the things is that I spoke to Andrea Messina and I think that Miss Campbell would do an amazing job on the advocacy.
2:50:48 I was the former chairman for the whole thing and I know that there’s a lot of work entailed and I think you do a great job in between doing, you know what I mean, dotting the I’s and crossing the t’s. So I think that would be good. Mister Trent, you are the alternate on the advocacy committee.
2:50:56 So with that, ask Lena or Allison. Can you guys send that to FSVA? Who are. I’ll get you the phone.
2:51:20 I’ll get you the emails. The next one you had said, hey, let’s pause on that when I’m working on some stuff. Do you want to just pause? Yeah.
2:51:30 I’ll just briefly mention to the board we talked Mister Susan had brought up. He wanted to take on my challenge of let’s do a school board health challenge. But between last meeting and this meeting I was talking with Josh Adams from rock paper simple who’s working with the Space Coast Health foundation and they are about to received a grant.
2:51:46 They’re about to launch a county wide initiative and they want the school district to be involved as well. They don’t quite have the name they’re going to be deciding. I think he was meeting with them today.
2:51:59 Like a healthy mind’s healthy lives or healthy minds healthy body initiative. It’ll be a 30 day challenge and it’ll be like the challenge will come to your phone. It’ll remind you a little health challenge you can do each day and would love for the school district to jump on board with our employees.
2:52:18 But I thought we can do something in addition to that if we want to. But I’d love for us as a district to jump on board. I mentioned it to Doctor Rendell before and I thought we might be able to incorporate it once that gets out there with our school board health challenge.
2:52:36 I’m all up for competition and a scoreboard and who walked the most steps. And we can do that too, Mister Susan. But I just wanted to let you guys know I called him yesterday, said, hey, do you have more information? Is it? And he said nope, we’re still meeting today and so I’ll bring that back to you guys in a couple weeks with an update of how we can get involved in the Space Coast Health foundation and our large space.
2:53:03 But if Doctor Rendell is cool with it, we can maybe push it out to employees as well because we want everybody in the county, especially our employees, to really be taking care of themselves mentally and physically. And I think that’s great. I think being a part of that and promoting the heart foundation and everybody else is amazing.
2:53:19 I was with Mister Campbell, who was a big part of that in the last meeting, and that’s a really good opportunity. One of the things that I would like to say is that when we were talking about the challenges, I think also with that, what I was going to recommend was that we had. So we have a lot of these great initiatives through the school district, through our health care that sometimes don’t get the promoted noise that we could.
2:53:52 And I think that that would be good. Like, we have blood drives that come all the time, right? We have five ks that are promoted. We have annual, going to get an annual physical, go to get your biometrics, communicate benefits to the school staff, total steps, all of those things.
2:54:06 I would like to put together a challenge for us that is a part of the Campbell challenge, to allow us to promote those as we’re moving through and maybe get, like a point system. Now, Miss Campbell, I know that this is your baby because I, and I’m trying to step lightly here, but, like, you know, I didn’t get an annual physical last year, and I think that I would have avoided some stuff had I done that. So if we were getting a point, say, 25 points for annual physical, five points for biometrics, five points for five k, that kind of stuff, we, then we could go through the challenge.
2:54:11 We could, could have Russell Brune with communications working with us to kind of, you know what I mean, promote those. And I think that would be a nice part of it. And I’m just saying that, not that it has to be definitive because you’re not bringing forward your challenge, but I thought that those would be some good ideas.
2:54:34 That’s all. Yeah, I’m happy to push out on that. You know, I try to do that regularly for our employees.
2:54:58 You know, they’re getting emails and things, but if they see us doing it, the whole point for me and us is, one, we need to be healthy mentally and physically, too. But two, we set the example. We’re going to set the example of healthy lives, and we want our staff to be healthy and to take good use of our plan and all the many resources that we provide, but also to it is a way of promoting, look, did you know you can we have this and we have that.
2:55:20 You’ve got yoga classes and you can take advantage of these discounts and surgery plus and hinge health and all those things. When the board utilizes those things, it just brings more attention to those services that we have have for employees that don’t always read all their emails and know that they have those available to them. Doctor Rendell, you have anything? Yeah, I think a good way to get started is if this space coast health challenge gets off the ground that we jump into that.
2:55:36 That is our test pilot for a district wide program. We could put out the word about joining that to all of our employees, but that would be a good way for us to get started and see, you know, how that competition works. If there’s points, we can see who has the most points, you know, so it’ll be a little bit of competition, but it’d be a good way for us to kind of get our feet wet in something like this.
2:55:43 And then when that’s over, we could launch our own district wide thing. Speaking of blood drives, we are hosting a blood drive here this Thursday right here at ESF. So if you want to donate some blood, please come by here Thursday midday for your opportunity tonight.
2:55:51 You got anything else for us, doctor Rinda? Did we do all. Yeah, that’s the last discussion. Yeah.
2:56:19 So somebody mentioned earlier that school is coming soon. Yeah. So school actually starts a month from yesterday.
2:56:23 So we are inside of one month before school starts and we still need more people. We need more teachers, we need more teacher assistance, we need more clerical staff, more custodial staff, more bus drivers. So we have three job fairs this week, one this afternoon from three to 06:00 p.
2:56:33 m. At Bayside High School. So if you’re watching and you’re looking for some employment, head on over to Bayside High School today from three to 06:00 p.
2:56:38 m. To apply for a job. Can’t make it to Bayside this afternoon.
2:56:47 You can go to Titusville tomorrow from three to 06:00 p.m. At coquina elementary.
2:56:58 So those of you up north, you know, looking at work for Brevard Public schools job fair tomorrow, three to six at Coquina. And then Thursday right here in Melbourne, from three to 06:00 p.m. At O’Galley High School. So we still need some more employees. Three job fairs this week. If you’re interested in coming out and working for the best school district, come to one of those job fairs and we’ll put you to work. Thank you. That’s it. All right for the good? Yeah, I think we can take it 30 or an hour, one or the other. What do you guys want? I’m good with 30. How about 45 minutes in the middle 01:00 45 minutes. We’ll return at 01:00.