Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
0:00 Thank you.
6:08 Good afternoon.
6:08 The December 12, 2023 work session is now in order.
6:12 Thank you.
6:51 Board members, thank you for having me. I’m here to discuss,
6:54 like you said, the school year 25,
6:55 26, 24, 25, 25, 26 calendar. I’m sorry. First one I, so I gave
7:02 you guys all packets of each.
7:04 The first one is obviously this year’s calendar for reference.
7:08 That’s 23, 24. Then we’re going to
7:12 look at, there’s, we had a committee look at this. There was
7:16 community members, all stakeholders,
7:19 teachers, administrators, full gamut of, of stakeholders that
7:25 came up with this. And so
7:27 I’m gonna present what they, their findings and their
7:29 recommendations to you guys for your approval.
7:31 Okay. All right. So the first one for proposed 24, 25 calendar
7:36 is best identified as having a full
7:40 Thanksgiving week off, a full Thanksgiving week break. Comes
7:45 with some positives of having that,
7:48 right? The majority of stakeholders in our, in our surveys that
7:51 went out to the community,
7:52 which I also have posted online. I know that the public was, was
7:56 wanting to see the results of that.
7:58 So we did post those results. Yes. The majority of stakeholders,
8:02 like 59% stated that having the full
8:05 week off at Thanksgiving was very important to them. An
8:08 additional 22% of the respondents said that it was
8:10 somewhat important to them. Another positive is it allows for
8:15 two additional days of testing in May
8:17 for the end of the year testing. And as you guys know, every day
8:21 is important in May to allow schools and
8:23 students enough time to compete all the required testing. Some
8:26 of the negatives of having a full
8:29 Thanksgiving week off is it requires us to move the end of the
8:35 first semester into the first part of the year,
8:38 right? So we come back from, we come back from Christmas break
8:42 and we still learn the first semester.
8:44 That’s, that’s, that’s, that can be a challenge.
8:47 One day was identified as being helpful. If we only had one day
8:53 back, right? Cause secondary schools,
8:55 they, they can do their schedule changes at that time. Kids are
8:58 going to find out where they’re going
8:59 for the second semester, where, you know, where, what billing I’m
9:02 in for this, then that and the other.
9:03 So one day is good. Two days is a lot of downtime and missed
9:07 opportunities, I feel.
9:08 School year, another negative of going a full week of
9:16 Thanksgiving is it pushes us to come back
9:19 after Memorial Day. We’ll be coming back two days after Memorial
9:23 Day break.
9:23 That was a concern. One, that was a concern for the stakeholders
9:30 as well as they didn’t want to come
9:31 back after Memorial Day and does not allow for any other student
9:35 teacher holidays as well.
9:36 We’re kind of handcuffed with that. One of the issues is state
9:40 statutes does not allow us to start
9:42 school until August 10th, right? And so for the next two years,
9:46 August 10th falls on a weekend.
9:49 So we’re, we’re kind of, we’re kind of handcuffed to where we
9:52 can, where we can start. So for 2024,
9:56 2025, our first day we can start is a Monday. That’s August 12th.
10:00 Okay.
10:00 Another issue that that can come up with, with the Thanksgiving
10:08 and probably
10:09 something we need to consider is hurricane makeup days.
10:15 It’s kind of inevitable the way things have been lately. We, we
10:20 very well may run into some hurricanes
10:23 on the 24, 25 school year, and we’d be limited on our
10:27 opportunities to do those
10:30 school makeup days. Okay. So that’s Thanksgiving week.
10:38 With the next calendar is proposal for 24, 25 with a shortened
10:42 Thanksgiving day break.
10:43 You can see that it’s only the 11, 24, excuse me, 11, 27, 28th
10:49 and 29th off.
10:50 So it’d be the three days off instead of the full five days.
10:54 Once again, we can only start August 12th is the earliest we can
10:59 start.
10:59 It does allow, if we do, if we shorten that, we, we can finish
11:05 before or the Christmas break.
11:08 So when we come back after the new year, we start fresh, the new
11:10 semester.
11:10 It does allow us all the negatives or flip the positives with
11:14 this one, right? Like,
11:15 so I have more days for hurricane days on this schedule.
11:19 I will tell you that the majority of stakeholders did want the
11:26 school to be completed by prior to
11:29 Memorial Day. We can do that with this schedule. Some of the
11:34 negatives is it doesn’t align with the
11:36 majority of the stakeholders who identified wanting the full
11:39 week off, right? So the majority of our
11:40 stakeholders wanted the full week off. With this calendar,
11:43 obviously it doesn’t meet that
11:46 that ask. It’s also difficult for schools to schedule and
11:50 complete all testing requirements in May
11:53 because we’re not coming back at the end of after Memorial Day
11:56 weekend. So again, that crunch at the
11:58 end of the school year trying to get all our school testing in
12:01 that’s required can be a challenge.
12:03 We are researching some alternatives such as the possibility of
12:10 a four-day school work week for
12:14 students. These are just researching. We’re not saying anything.
12:18 I’m just saying we’re looking at all
12:20 these possibilities. Maybe even looking to year-round school
12:24 options, reduce the number of early release
12:27 days, or extending the length of student day. All these are
12:30 options of things we’re looking at,
12:32 but not really presenting to the board right now. Okay, so that’s
12:35 for 24-25. It’s pretty much the same thing
12:39 for 25-26. The negatives are still the negatives. The positives
12:42 are still the positives. We can either
12:44 take a full week of Thanksgiving break off or not. Again, with
12:48 the school date not starting until
12:51 25-26 until the 11th. Again, that’s the first day. Again, we’re
12:57 just kind of handcuffed on what we can
12:59 do there. Okay. Now, going forward, it should push into Monday.
13:04 We can start on the 10th like we’re
13:06 supposed to, but that’s kind of my presentation. Okay. Are you
13:11 looking for board feedback from us on which
13:14 direction we would like to head? Yes. I gave you two options.
13:19 Which one would you like me to pursue?
13:20 The 24-25 having a full Thanksgiving off or 24-25 with a
13:25 shortened Thanksgiving break? Okay.
13:29 Yeah. We have to present a calendar for 24-25 to the board for
13:37 approval. We actually have to submit a
13:39 board approved calendar to the state as well. These are two
13:42 calendar options that the calendar committee
13:45 came up with. Two options for 24-25. We’re looking for
13:50 discussion and feedback from the board, kind of a
13:52 consensus which one of these to bring back to the board for
13:56 approval or whether you want us to make any
13:58 further changes. Okay. Thank you. Does anybody want to jump in
14:03 as far as discussion? Yeah. I’ve got a couple
14:09 of things just for on these specific calendars and then
14:11 everybody’s done with that. I just have some
14:13 general comments I’d like to make for us to think about moving
14:16 forward. Okay. As far as these options,
14:19 just what I’m hearing most of all is in line with what the
14:24 survey says. Thanksgiving is more important
14:26 than anything else. As far as attendance for our principals,
14:30 there’s very low attendance for students
14:32 and for staff and now that we’ve been doing it for three years
14:36 that it’s really going to be difficult
14:38 to reverse course. So I prefer, you know, my direction for my
14:42 one-fifth of the vote would be
14:44 that we pursue the calendar where we get the full Thanksgiving
14:47 break. I know we have some families
14:49 that are and there’s been interest in the past about, you know,
14:52 let’s get done before Memorial Day, but some years it’s just not
14:54 possible. And I’d rather us come down and do those two days
14:57 after the end of the school year than to shorten the
15:00 Thanksgiving break or to make, you know, depending on the
15:02 modifications. So I prefer the full Thanksgiving week for both
15:07 years.
15:10 I did want to make one suggestion in the 25-26 calendar, which I
15:20 know is just tentative, right? We hold that out there,
15:23 but we just kind of work around that and then we vote again on
15:26 it next year to make it permanent.
15:28 But we have that random holiday in April. That, again, an
15:33 attendance issue and I want to just double check it.
15:36 But Good Friday for that year in 2026
15:41 actually falls earlier in April, on April 3rd. So my suggestion
15:46 would be to change that student teacher
15:48 holiday that’s on the 24th of April, which I know is that random
15:51 day we put in just to kind of make the, you know,
15:54 day’s work. And that we move that to April the 3rd.
15:59 Okay.
15:59 So that we can kind of, kind of kill two birds with one stone.
16:03 We can get that day and we put it on a
16:05 traditionally low attendance day. I don’t know how many years it’s
16:08 been since we’ve had to go to
16:09 school on Good Friday. But it, if we, when we did, it was low
16:12 attendance. So that would be my one,
16:15 my suggestions on these calendars.
16:17 Thank you, Ms. Campbell. Anybody else?
16:21 Yeah, it’s my turn.
16:22 Go ahead.
16:23 Thank you. Thank you so much, Ms. Campbell, for making a lot of
16:29 the points that I had.
16:30 The other question that I was going to have is, is that we look
16:33 across this and we’re trying to
16:34 squeeze in the year. But part of what we’re looking at is, is
16:37 these early release days on Fridays,
16:40 right? And some of the issue that I’m looking at is, is that we,
16:43 we put these in when we were in
16:44 a district, we put these in, in the idea that we would be moving
16:47 forward with giving the opportunity
16:49 there. But there’s been some innovative ways of looking into
16:51 four period day, four period, four day
16:55 work weeks and all kinds of stuff. I really know that we’re kind
16:58 of under the gun to make a decision
17:00 right now and earth shattering changes and all that stuff. But I
17:03 do know that,
17:04 I think that we have to look at an innovative way to move some
17:07 of those early release days off
17:09 in the future, not so much right now, but in the future, just to
17:12 try to get to a possibly a different
17:13 look. I know that there’s a lot of people that love those early
17:17 release days. But I do know that,
17:20 in some cases, there may be an opportunity to move those around
17:23 to accommodate to some other things
17:25 and have some discussions wrapped around it. So I’m in favor of
17:28 exactly what Ms. Campbell was mentioning.
17:30 And I think that that’s in line with, with what the district’s
17:34 looking at as far as, as far as
17:36 the popularity of it. But the bottom line is, is that when I
17:39 look across my main thing that I had,
17:42 some of those, when I’m looking at it, some of the issues that I
17:45 have is those early release days
17:46 every single Friday. And it’s not consistent with a lot of the
17:49 districts in the state. It’s,
17:51 you know what I mean, something I think we can look at. And
17:54 maybe we can be in the more innovative
17:56 about it, give the teachers the time that they need, but at the
17:59 same time, have full work days too.
18:01 You know what I mean? So that’s all. Yeah, there, there, there
18:04 would be some
18:04 discussions required for in order that. Oh, I know, I know, we
18:09 got to go through,
18:10 and I’m not saying get rid of the early release days altogether
18:13 and everything else. I’m just saying,
18:14 I think there’s an innovative way to where we can have an entire
18:17 day’s work and have the time off
18:19 that’s deserved and stuff like that. So that’s all, but I’m, I’m
18:22 in favor of exactly like what Ms.
18:23 Campbell said. Go ahead. My other comments are around that topic.
18:26 So when, when y’all get done,
18:27 I want to circle back to that. Perfect. Great. All right. So, uh,
18:32 I echo a lot of the same,
18:34 I think early release days could answer a lot of our concerns or
18:40 issues.
18:43 where I differ is as a teacher and finishing after Memorial day,
18:48 we talk about wasted days and Thanksgiving
18:50 week. Those are absolutely wasted days. If we come back after
18:54 Memorial day, uh, and imagine putting
18:56 semester exams on those days after that, uh, weekend it’s so I’ve
19:01 lived it. I’ve, I’ve taught it. Um,
19:04 much rather be at school Monday, Tuesday of the, uh, of the
19:08 Thanksgiving week. I, I would prefer to,
19:10 if we could do both have the full week and be done by, um, uh,
19:14 Memorial day. So I, I, I, I think that
19:17 would be, if you’re talking about researching things and, and,
19:20 and finding some time, that would really
19:22 be, uh, uh, uh, the home run. Uh, I’d be curious if you, how you
19:26 ask the questions of which one did you
19:28 ask first, you know, uh, uh, the, the, the week at Thanksgiving
19:32 sounds great. Um, but maybe that’s
19:35 the first question that was asked if it was, do you want to be
19:37 done by Memorial day? I think that
19:39 that may have as, as, as popular response as having the full
19:42 week off. Sure. Um, some of the things that
19:46 I would like for us to research is, uh, maybe some e-learning
19:49 days. Um, we talked about, um, uh, hurricane
19:52 days and, and, and how many of those hurricane days have we set
19:56 up and it wound up being just a
19:58 precaution and, and kids are sitting home and very good weather.
20:02 Um, but, uh, there are states,
20:04 are there, there are states that have incorporated e-learning
20:07 days since COVID and they’ve, uh,
20:09 they’ve utilized them for snow days, for example. Right. Um, so
20:12 if we can, if we can do something like
20:14 that, I think that’s, that’s, that’s something for us to look at
20:17 and it could save us some time on the,
20:19 on the schedule and the calendar, um, all for looking at turning
20:23 everything on its ear, uh, of, of,
20:26 making good use of our teachers times, uh, our students and
20:31 parents times also. And I’m sure we’re
20:33 going to have a discussion on that later. So, you got a little
20:36 bit of work ahead of us there. Rajna.
20:38 Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Trent. Um, so one of the things I want
20:43 to ask you,
20:44 when we were looking at this calendar, I think I discovered this
20:46 last year when we had hurricanes,
20:48 um, we don’t have a uniform bell schedule. Is that accurate?
20:52 That is accurate. Okay. I think it
20:54 would be very wise for the district to look into a uniform bell
20:57 schedule. Cause I, I believe what I
21:00 heard when the hurricane day happened was that a lot of that
21:03 makeup time was driven by just a handful
21:05 of schools because of their different bell schedule than other
21:08 schools. Is that accurate? Yeah. So I can
21:11 explain that basically the requirement is instructional minutes,
21:14 right? We always talk about 180 school days
21:17 and that kind of thing. And it really doesn’t have anything to
21:19 do with days. It has to do with
21:20 instructional minutes. And that’s why, so there’s been some side
21:23 conversations about early release days
21:26 because we lose 75 minutes of instruction every Friday, every
21:29 Friday, early release day,
21:30 we lose 75 minutes of instruction. So, you know, one of the ways
21:34 we made up hurricane days this year was to
21:37 eliminate some of those Friday early release days. We gathered
21:40 back that instructional time.
21:42 Because again, it’s not about days. It’s about minutes. So some
21:44 of our secondary schools have
21:47 different bell schedules than other secondary schools. Some have
21:50 four minute passing times because they’re
21:52 small campuses. Some have five minute passing times because they’re
21:55 larger campuses with larger enrollments.
21:57 Some have three lunches, um, to not get into the weeds, but when
22:02 you’re trying to feed 2000 students,
22:04 it’s kind of hard to do two lunches, a thousand each, you know,
22:09 our cafeterias may not be big enough.
22:10 We don’t have seating areas. So you split that into maybe three
22:13 lunches or four lunches in order to have
22:15 teachers get a 30 minute duty-free lunch. You have to expand
22:19 extend that period, whatever period’s married up to
22:21 lunch. So there are reasons for having, you know, not having
22:25 uniform bell schedules. It’s the
22:27 variety of the campuses we have as far as size and practices and
22:31 things like that. Could we uniform
22:33 that we could go to maybe a uniform minimum for class periods
22:39 like every school has to have at least 48 minutes
22:42 every day, you know, something like that. And we have done that
22:45 in the past.
22:46 So the schools who have a four minute passing, maybe they do 49
22:50 minutes or something like that.
22:52 You know, and so when we start out the year, we do check
22:54 everybody’s bell schedule to make sure that
22:56 you’re going to have enough minutes, whether it’s, you know, you
22:59 have 48 or you have 49 or you have a
23:01 four minute passing or whatever. But um, most of those campuses,
23:06 they’re maximizing the instructional time
23:09 that they can get. It’s just some of those things like having
23:12 three lunches or four lunches because of
23:14 how they, how big they are. You know, that impacts things. Like
23:18 when you’re a school that only has two
23:20 lunches, it’s kind of easier to squeeze those 30 minute duty
23:23 free lunches in without expanding the
23:25 period that’s assigned to the lunch. But once you go to three
23:28 lunches, now you got to build in more time.
23:30 Okay. So if you expand that period, then you decrease time in
23:34 the other periods. We also have a couple
23:37 schools who have power hour, you know, or anchor hour, and so
23:41 that impacts the school day.
23:43 Edgewood and West Shore actually have a longer school day than
23:46 the other high schools.
23:47 So there could be, you know, a discussion about maybe lengthening
23:51 the school day. So you
23:52 can guarantee that every school has 49 minutes or something like
23:55 that.
23:55 There are other districts that are doing that because of the
23:59 late start date.
24:00 Because of the August 10th falling on a weekend, there are some
24:05 districts that are lengthening their
24:06 high school schedule, lengthening the day of the high school
24:09 schedules to ensure that they have
24:11 the minutes they need. Because again, it’s about minutes, it’s
24:14 not necessarily about days.
24:15 So, you know, we can look at a uniform bell schedule or maybe a
24:20 minimum period.
24:21 Like every period’s got to be at least 48 minutes or something
24:23 like that.
24:23 Okay. I would be curious, I think it would be smart for the
24:26 board to know which of the schools,
24:27 what the bell schedule looks like for each of the schools,
24:29 because I don’t know that.
24:30 And I think we all should know that so we can identify which
24:33 schools it was that we were really
24:34 running into an issue that so we have to address them case by
24:37 case, then we know, okay, this is the
24:39 school that needs a couple minutes extra here and there. For me
24:43 at non negotiable on the Thanksgiving
24:45 week, I think that that is very, very important for families to
24:48 have that. And in a perfect world,
24:52 I want to not not be in school, excuse me, school past Memorial
24:56 Day. The reality is a lot of those days,
24:59 we know what happens at the end of school, right? They become
25:02 parties, they become, you know, during
25:04 the winter, it’s hey, we’re gonna watch 100 movies. And those
25:06 are all great things. It’s great. But we
25:08 also see an increase in absences. So I just think it’s smart for
25:11 us to use our time as wisely as we can.
25:13 So you have to work the magic. And I guess Miss Jenkins is here
25:16 now. So she may want to want to
25:18 chime in on this. We’re discussing the two different calendars.
25:20 And I don’t know if you want to
25:22 jump into the next topic or if you know, she got stuck in
25:26 traffic. So
25:27 I had spoken to Dr. Randell about this earlier today, I don’t I
25:32 truly don’t really have a preference.
25:33 I feel like it’s always a double edged sword when we’re having
25:36 this conversation.
25:38 I think families would be really irritated if we took away
25:40 Thanksgiving break after they had it.
25:42 So my gut is to lean towards the other option. But I don’t I don’t
25:45 feel strongly in either way.
25:47 Okay. All right. So um, you
25:53 Campbell had signified that you wanted to circle back and
25:57 discuss this again. Okay, not necessarily. I
26:01 mean, the Thanksgiving, I think we’ve we’ve kind of got that.
26:04 Yeah, I think we got our marching orders
26:05 for 2425 and 2526. I just because we’ve been talking about
26:10 creative other solutions,
26:11 I just wanted to throw I have been doing some some other
26:13 research into other counties, and I’m wasn’t
26:17 quite done. But I wanted to take a look at the six counties that
26:20 are closest to us in size. I did look
26:23 at the three that were just bigger than us and three that were
26:25 just smaller than us. And then the five
26:28 surrounding counties, which three of those are the same. The
26:30 ones that you know, touch a seminal doesn’t,
26:32 but it’s real close. So I added in orange and Indian River,
26:35 Indian River is the one that I just couldn’t
26:37 get a hold of. But I was taking a look at do they do early
26:39 release? What is their school day look like?
26:41 Because when I’ve looked at solutions in other times, especially
26:44 when we talk about hurricane
26:46 days, we always talk about how what we have to do to make up the
26:49 minutes and everything.
26:50 You know, there are a lot of school districts that have longer
26:55 school days than we do.
26:57 And some of them have similar length of school days. But they
27:02 don’t do early release every week,
27:05 or they don’t do early release at all. So I did want to touch on
27:08 one thing before I jump into this,
27:09 because it’s not too long, but I just want to take a few minutes
27:11 to this. But on the uniform bell schedule,
27:13 because of second to all those things that Dr. Randell was
27:16 saying, every school is so unique.
27:19 And also that with the planning times and everything, but they
27:23 that one, I would rather allow the schools
27:26 to continue to have the flexibility just because of all of the
27:29 differences we have between our schools.
27:31 So when we talk about moving forward, but here are some things
27:33 that I found. So Pasco,
27:36 which is the next district just larger than us has their
27:39 elementary school hours are six,
27:42 they have six hour and 10 minute days, six hour and 20 minute
27:45 days for their secondary,
27:46 which is shorter than us. We are just for it to start with our
27:49 with Brevard, we have six and a half
27:51 hour days for elementary in general, except for the few
27:53 exceptions, we’re doing power hour and things,
27:55 six hour and 45 minute days for middle school and high school.
27:58 And so Pasco has shorter days,
28:00 but they only do four early release days, they release four
28:03 times a year,
28:04 two hours, and it’s just for professional development. Pinellas
28:08 has a little bit shorter days than us,
28:11 they have six hour and 10 minutes for elementary, six and a half
28:14 hours for middle and high school,
28:15 they stopped doing early release days six to seven years ago, so
28:18 they’re getting all those minutes
28:21 that way. Lee County, these are the ones that are just bigger
28:25 than us, also has a little bit shorter
28:26 days, they have six hour and 15 minute elementary days, six and
28:29 a half hour high school days,
28:30 they also only do four early release days per year, and that’s
28:35 for PD. Osceola, so the ones that are just
28:39 smaller than us, Osceola has all of theirs elementary, middle
28:42 and high are almost seven hours long,
28:44 six hours and 55 minutes for all three grade bands. They do have
28:49 early release every Wednesday,
28:51 except for four through the year, they have non-early release
28:54 Wednesdays, and their early release is only
28:57 one hour. So they do that every week, but they have a longer day.
29:02 Seminole has about the same as us,
29:04 except for high school, they have six and a half hour elementary
29:07 days, six hours and 45 minutes for
29:09 middle, but they have seven hour high school days. They also do
29:12 early release every Wednesday,
29:14 but it’s only for one hour. Did I get that correct, Mr. DeFrame?
29:17 Okay. Volusia has longer days,
29:20 for elementary six hours and 40 minutes, middle is the same 6:45,
29:24 and then for high school seven hours.
29:26 They also do early release every week, but it’s only for one
29:29 hour. Orange has, there’s berries,
29:34 their elementaries are all six hours and 15 minutes, which is
29:37 shorter. Their elementaries
29:39 are six hours and 34 minutes. That was kind of weird, but their
29:42 high schools are seven hours. They
29:44 also have early release every Wednesday. It is only an hour for
29:47 elementary, an hour and 10 minutes for
29:49 middle and high. So, and I couldn’t get to Indian River, because
29:53 I couldn’t find it, but I didn’t see
29:57 early release for them. So I bring all that up to say, our
30:01 amount of instructional time is shorter,
30:05 when you calculate all this early release time is shorter than
30:08 what I’m doing, the quick math,
30:11 every single one of these districts. And when I started really
30:14 thinking about it was last spring,
30:16 when Dr. Cody did the presentation for us and started talking
30:19 about how Brevard used to be up
30:21 here and Brevard has fallen in the state rankings. And I asked
30:25 Dr. Rendell later on this summer, can you
30:27 have staff to go back and look when we started falling? And you
30:31 can’t prove causation, but I want to be very
30:34 clear. You can show correlation. And Brevard started to drop in
30:39 the state rankings when we started to do
30:41 early release and make, and I remember all of it, because I was
30:44 a parent through all this. I remember
30:45 when we just used to do it every randomly, and then we did it
30:48 every other Wednesday, and then we did it
30:49 every Wednesday, and then we moved it to Friday. I’ve been a
30:51 part of this district through all of that.
30:53 So I get all of that, but we have less instructional time for
30:57 our students, and that’s when we started to fall.
30:59 And we’ve had conversations about deregulation. One of the
31:02 pieces that was in the deregulation was
31:04 about recess. They asked, you know, can you, can we make it, you
31:08 know, we have to have this 100
31:09 minutes of recess. You have to do 20 minutes a day for recess,
31:12 but can you give districts flexibility?
31:14 Because what happens on our early release day, the day is an
31:16 hour and 15 minutes shorter, but the
31:18 elementary still have to squeeze in 20 minutes of recess. So
31:21 there’s some days a class may have to
31:22 choose not to do math one day, or to shorten their reading block.
31:26 And that’s, that’s really challenging,
31:29 when that’s the goal of why we’re here, is this academic, you
31:32 know, preparation, you know, to,
31:34 to push our kids to the next level. I think that we’ve, I think
31:37 we’ve sacrificed that a little bit
31:38 in what we’ve done. So I want to just make that clear, because I
31:42 have been talking, having conversations
31:44 with district staff, and trying to see what other districts are
31:48 doing. And my, my thought in all this
31:51 is, we have, we’re shortchanging our students, because they have
31:54 less instructional time. And what
31:56 happens then is, when we have a hurricane, when we have calendar
31:59 issues, then we’re strapped, because
32:02 we’re at the bare minimum. And I’m going to share something, one
32:06 thing that there’s a district, Flagler,
32:08 and I saw an article last week, you may have seen in the Pineapple
32:12 News, there was,
32:13 they’re adding one minute per period for their high school. So
32:17 they’re making their day end,
32:18 instead of 2:40, at 2:47, which is a little odd, but that one
32:21 minute, so Flagler’s a unique situation,
32:23 they wanted to keep their full Thanksgiving off, they wanted to
32:26 end their first semester before
32:28 Christmas, and they had two, because they use five of their
32:31 schools for polling places,
32:33 they, they’re giving the kids the whole day off for the August
32:37 primary, and the whole day off for
32:39 election day in November. So in order to do that, they’re adding
32:42 for, and they’re in the same boat we
32:43 are, right, nobody can start school before the 12th next year,
32:46 they’re adding one minute per period for
32:48 high school. I, let’s, let’s put everything out there. And I,
32:51 you know, because I know the union’s
32:53 listening, um, or if they’re not listening now, they’re going to
32:55 be listening later, and this is
32:56 something that has to be bargained. I just want to be crystal
32:58 clear on this. I’m willing to look at,
33:01 me as a board member, I’m willing to be flexible, to compromise,
33:03 you know, if we do something like
33:06 other districts do, and we make our early release an hour, or 45
33:09 minutes, instead of an hour and 15
33:11 minutes, um, if we lengthen our school days from what they are
33:17 to closer to seven hours, I, I am willing
33:20 to look at all of those things, but the main focus for me is
33:24 that instructional time, because that is
33:27 the most important thing that we’re here for, and I want to make
33:31 sure that our schools have the time
33:33 they need, with all the restrictions and everything, that all
33:36 the other districts have as well. We’re not
33:38 the only district dealing with recess time. Um, everybody has
33:41 those same things put on them.
33:44 Our students need as much instructional time as they can get, so
33:48 that we can move them forward,
33:49 and they can, they can progress like they need to, and, and as a
33:52 district, our goal is to rise back
33:54 up to the top, where we used to be, and I don’t think we can do
33:57 that with our instructional time,
33:59 the way that we have it right now. Thank you.
34:02 Ms. Wright, if I can move on.
34:13 Ms. Wright, I think that in the school system also, and, and I
34:15 know that, um, Ms. Jenkins
34:18 was a speech pathologist, and I know Ms. Campbell, you’ve
34:20 covered some classrooms too and stuff.
34:21 Part of the issue that you have with the early release day is,
34:25 is that by shorting, shortening
34:26 it, your schedules get out, and the kids are kind of on a
34:28 different schedule, right?
34:30 So if you do the numbers, um, you have 32 early release days at
34:34 1.125 hours or whatever.
34:36 You run right at about 40 hours of work.
34:38 I know as an educator that it’s difficult to, to work on a
34:42 schedule based on it
34:43 being a little bit shortened because of the lunches, the,
34:46 everything just kind of throws
34:46 the kids off once a week.
34:48 But the other thing is, is that you can take those, and I think
34:50 the ultimate goal for those
34:52 teachers is, is to have a break, to have a little bit of extra
34:54 time.
34:54 If you took those 40 hours and spread them out over work days
34:58 that could be, you know what I mean,
34:59 times for off and things like that, that becomes a different
35:02 conversation.
35:03 And that’s what I was getting at.
35:04 I think the idea was to move in that direction.
35:07 We, we slowly moved it as an A district, and now it’s, hey, we’ve
35:10 got to start looking at every
35:11 nook and cranny to where we can say that we can add a little bit
35:14 there.
35:14 And taking away from the teachers is one thing, but then also
35:17 giving them a better opportunity to
35:19 teach and have the time off would be another.
35:21 The other issue that we haven’t spoke about is the idea that we
35:24 may be able to move to a six period day,
35:26 which now all of a sudden opens up a whole lot more of options
35:29 and ideas and conversations and
35:30 everything else.
35:31 So I think our school district is at that point where we can
35:34 creatively take a look at some of
35:36 the options. And I think that I’m ready to do that also. So
35:39 thank you.
35:40 Mr. Trent, do you have anything else to add?
35:42 Well, no other than, so I guess I do, when Matt brought up the,
35:50 the six period day,
35:50 which leads us to the possible going back to a 24 credits for
35:55 graduation. I think that
35:58 absolutely needs to be looked at. It’s a, it’s a different day
36:01 in, in Brevard. And again,
36:04 we need to put all that on the table.
36:06 One other suggestion I would like to, to maybe throw out there
36:11 is that the weeks that we have
36:12 a short week because of a holiday, if we pulled the early
36:15 release days there, would that help?
36:17 I’m not, I know it would help our minutes, but maybe look at
36:19 those. I don’t know how many minutes
36:20 that would get for us if we said, Hey, on a short weekday, we
36:23 are not going to have an early release day.
36:25 I will tell you the teachers have been very vocal. I’m guessing
36:30 that you guys are getting emails the
36:31 same as I am. They love their early release days. So the last
36:34 thing we want to do is upset our entire
36:36 staff over, Hey, we want to take these early release days. It’s
36:38 a fine balance. We need to make sure that
36:40 we’re honoring their request. I understand that every district
36:42 does things different. I wasn’t here when
36:44 this came about. I don’t know how it came about or why it came
36:47 about necessarily. It sounds to me
36:49 like maybe it was an offer in lieu of money kind of deal back in
36:53 the day. And so wasn’t here for it.
36:56 We have it now. It’s here. It’s in contract. And like you said,
36:58 Mr. Bufrain, this is not an easy
37:00 solution to just, Oh, we want to do this and we’re going to fix
37:02 it this way. Can we look at those?
37:05 And all of these things require negotiating with the union
37:07 because they are written into contract. So
37:09 I think you have a resounding message here of we want
37:13 Thanksgiving. I think everybody said,
37:15 we’re not taking away Thanksgiving. We would like to finish
37:18 before Memorial Day. I would like to
37:19 finish before Memorial Day. I think that was the same thing. Do
37:22 we have consensus on that?
37:23 I, it would depend on what we’re losing. Cause I mean, we, we
37:26 got to put it somewhere.
37:27 I mean, we got to put all these things somewhere. So I, at this,
37:32 with the calendars that were presented,
37:33 we can do one or we can do the other, but we can’t do both.
37:36 Correct. So both of these counter options meet the contract
37:40 requirements and the state requirements.
37:43 So, you know, you could give us direction to move forward with
37:46 one of these
37:46 with the option of maybe negotiating with the union to see if
37:49 there could be any changes to the contract
37:51 that could alleviate some of that as well, but we would, right.
37:56 We would need to go ahead
37:57 though and bring one of these to you for approval at a business
37:59 meeting. So that would be our official
38:00 calendar. The board can change the calendar at any time. You
38:04 know, so we could adopt calendar A,
38:06 which is the full week of Thanksgiving, two weeks into Memorial
38:08 Day. And if we were successful in
38:11 negotiating some changes to the contract that alleviated, you
38:14 know, that two day push into,
38:16 into May, into the end of May, then we could come back with a
38:19 revision to the calendar. I think,
38:21 you know, the one thing that we can unequivocally stay to the
38:25 community is we’re going to have a full
38:27 week off of Thanksgiving. So, you know, that is, we’re getting
38:30 that message loud and clear. And that,
38:32 you know, so that’s calendar A, or so to speak, the first one.
38:36 And so that’s probably the one we’d work off
38:38 of. And if there’s no way to make any changes to that, then that’s
38:41 the calendar we’ll present to you.
38:43 And, you know, if there are, then we still could present that to
38:47 you and get it approved. But if
38:48 there are changes later, you know, I hear discussion suggestion
38:52 about shortening the early release
38:54 time, you know, so maybe we can gain enough minutes back to
38:58 share it, shave off one of those days. Or,
39:01 you know, one of the things that Pasco County’s doing, for
39:06 example, is they’re increasing their
39:08 instructional minutes for the high schools, and shaving off a
39:13 couple of days of instruction. And
39:15 so they’re not doing 180 days, they’re doing 178 days. And those
39:20 two extra days, so to speak,
39:22 in the teacher calendar, because the students aren’t there, but
39:25 the teachers are, they’re giving
39:26 those as PD and work days. So, you know, that’s something we
39:29 could talk about with the union,
39:30 is if we were to give up the Friday early release days, I think
39:33 that’s where Mr. Susan was going,
39:34 you might be able to give it back to them in full planning days.
39:38 That’s what, yeah.
39:38 You know, so we can have those conversations. The fire drill
39:45 right now is we need to kind of have
39:47 a calendar that we can put up, you know, for approval. And it
39:50 sounds like the first version
39:51 of the calendar is what we go with for now.
39:53 For me, it would be, if it’s A or B, it absolutely would be A.
39:57 Right, we got four out of five, so.
40:00 All right.
40:02 So we’re done with the discussion in regards to the calendar.
40:06 I think so.
40:07 I want to ask Mr. Gibbs, so this, just real fast for clarifying
40:10 purposes,
40:11 I have on here a discussion topic that kind of coincides with
40:15 the calendar, and so I’m just
40:16 wondering, would it make sense to have this conversation now
40:18 rather than circling back
40:19 to calendar after? Is there a pay?
40:21 Yeah, that’s fine.
40:22 Okay. All right. So, board, at the last, I think it was a
40:26 workshop, yeah, November, I had
40:28 mentioned to each of you this idea of year-round school and
40:32 asked each of you to go out and start
40:34 talking to your principals, start talking to teachers, parents,
40:37 poll whoever you can on what
40:39 their thoughts and their feelings are, or even experiences with
40:42 year-round school.
40:43 And so, I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to launch first on
40:47 this one, which is probably a
40:48 little different on why I think this is a good solution, and
40:51 then open it up for discussion,
40:54 and then we’ll move from there. So, I will, full disclosure, I
40:57 am a product of year-round school
40:59 within Brevard County Public Schools. So, when I went to school,
41:01 elementary school here, Challenger
41:03 7 was a year-round school, and I have nothing but wonderful
41:05 things to say about it.
41:06 A lot of people, when you say year-round school, they say, what
41:09 does that look like? What is that?
41:10 And really, it equates to the same amount of time in school, you’re
41:15 just not taking that huge
41:16 break during the summer. So, you’re spreading out those weeks
41:19 other times in the year.
41:22 Where I think this is extremely beneficial for our district is
41:24 that, well, there’s multiple
41:26 reasons on why I’ll sell it. The first one being is that teacher
41:29 burnout is real, right?
41:31 Teachers need a break. I think that this is a way that they
41:33 would say, hey, you know what?
41:35 We’re almost at a break. We can get there, and they will
41:38 appreciate it. You can talk to any
41:40 teacher who’s ever taught in a year-round school, and they all
41:42 love it. They ask me to bring it back
41:44 all the time, my Challenger 7 teachers. You know, our summer
41:47 slide that we see, so where our teachers,
41:50 our students are lacking and teachers are spending, you know,
41:53 the first month trying to catch them back
41:55 up because they haven’t been in school. They’ve been sleeping in,
41:56 they’ve been playing video games,
41:58 playing with their friends. So, teachers are scrambling and
42:01 spending an exorbitant amount of
42:02 time to catch them back up from the previous year’s learning.
42:05 Another benefit that I think it poses to
42:08 families is that it spreads the expense of child care out. So,
42:11 if you have to pay for child care in
42:13 one big chunk, two and a half months versus spreading it out
42:15 over the year, that’s beneficial.
42:18 That helps families. It also would give our district the ability
42:22 to run intervention sessions,
42:23 possibly during those breaks, whenever the kids are out of
42:25 school. So, if you had students that were
42:27 struggling, we could use those weeks when they’re not in school
42:30 and offer some type of tutoring in
42:32 our schools still using our facilities. I know this conversation
42:35 is one that’s a big conversation.
42:37 It requires many departments. I know it requires our facilities.
42:40 I’m sure Ms. Hannah, I don’t know
42:41 where she’s at if she’s in here, but she might be having her eye
42:43 twitch right now because I know she
42:44 does a lot of her construction during the summer months whenever
42:47 there’s that big break. It permits
42:49 families the ability to travel other times during the year as
42:51 well. So, you’re not strapped to just
42:53 vacationing during the summer when everybody else is and it’s
42:56 more expensive or in the winter. Same
42:58 scenario. You know, I think it’s a unique opportunity. I think
43:02 it could be something that sets Brevard
43:05 apart from other districts and I think it’s something that we
43:08 should really take a deep dive on exploring,
43:11 especially when we’re talking about the calendar struggles we
43:13 have. If we were looking at a year-round
43:15 model, we could use some time there where we weren’t so strapped
43:19 on minutes. We could say,
43:21 oh, a day here or we’re going to, you know, it would help us. It
43:23 would give us a lot more flexibility.
43:25 So, that is all I’m going to say and then I’m going to open it
43:28 up for discussion and see what
43:30 the rest of the board thinks. Does anybody want to go first?
43:33 I know that this is just like a conversational discussion, but
43:40 and I know that there’s an option on the table through the state
43:45 that’s different than
43:46 every single school doing year-round right now, but because we’re
43:49 having the conversation,
43:50 I’m just going to kind of put it out there. So, one of my hesitations
43:53 is that it’s often
43:55 proposed or theorized that year-round schooling has significant
44:00 benefits to academic success.
44:03 But it’s hard to say that because there’s not a lot of data out
44:07 there to actually prove that
44:08 correlation other than the summer slide effect because there’s
44:12 still those breaks in between.
44:14 And so when you look at the other states that traditionally are
44:17 doing that, there’s no correlation
44:19 between their school’s performance versus other states that aren’t
44:23 doing it. But there’s other reasons
44:26 that someone might want to do it. But I have a lot of hesitations
44:29 and I’m just going to throw them out
44:31 there. So, obviously, this would impact the community overall.
44:34 And when you talk about aftercare and daycare,
44:37 you’re going to impact those businesses that provide those
44:40 services. You’re going to impact the recreation
44:42 departments that provide services during some of those breaks
44:44 and after school breaks.
44:47 And at some point, so I guess I’m going to talk about this
44:52 overall as if we did it across a district,
44:55 like for secondary and elementary. Originally, when I was
44:58 thinking about this, I was looking at the
45:00 proposition through the administration right now, which is only
45:02 elementary.
45:04 So, just overall, I’m going to make a statement of doing them
45:06 completely different from one another
45:08 is just like a disaster for families if secondary schools are
45:10 running on a different calendar than
45:12 elementary. So, I’m going to speak as if they’re all running at
45:14 the same time.
45:15 What this really impacts is families in low-income areas. It’s
45:22 difficult enough to find affordable
45:23 daycare. And then in order to find affordable daycare that you
45:26 don’t need consistently is even more
45:29 difficult. So, that’s going to be a challenge for certain
45:32 communities as well, again, as those
45:34 facilities themselves. Organizationally, this is going to be
45:37 difficult. It’s going to be a totally
45:39 different payroll burden, a whole new pay structure. Again,
45:42 originally, when I was thinking about having
45:44 this conversation, I thought the proposal was going to be
45:46 elementary, year-round, secondary not. So,
45:49 that could change depending on what it is. Some of those hourly
45:53 employees would not, or some of the salary
45:55 employees too, would not necessarily be 10-month employees
45:57 anymore. They’d be 12-month employees.
45:59 So, I don’t know if that would impact changing job descriptions
46:01 as well. Transportation management
46:05 and upkeep with those, food and nutrition services. And then, of
46:09 course, the significant increase
46:11 of costs over the summer when we’re running AC and electric
46:13 bills and all of that stuff.
46:19 Again, if the proposition is to at some point have elementary
46:23 running and secondary not on the same
46:26 calendar, we’re going to have an issue with our staff members
46:29 who work in secondary schools who have
46:31 elementary age students because now all of a sudden they’re not
46:34 going to have the same schedule as
46:36 their child anymore. And then they’re going to have to find daycare
46:38 and find costs for that as well.
46:39 So, that’s going to be difficult. Speaking from a staff
46:42 perspective too,
46:45 a significant portion of our staff work second jobs consistently
46:49 over the summer just to supplement
46:50 their income. So, taking that away from them could very much
46:54 impact their overall household budget
46:57 that they can’t recover from and may force them to genuinely
47:00 leave this profession. I don’t remember
47:03 this statistic. I feel like it was a year or two ago when BFT
47:06 had presented it, but just for teachers,
47:09 I want to say it was like 50% of our teachers or 40% of our
47:11 teachers were working second jobs,
47:14 typically over the summer, but also after school. So, just
47:16 something to think about.
47:18 When we look at our ESE students too, it’s not necessarily
47:23 beneficial for them to have more
47:25 transitions throughout the school year. So, those little breaks
47:28 in between that might be
47:29 less impactful to a gen ed student are actually going to be
47:34 significantly impactful to many of our
47:35 ESE students because it’s causing more transitions within their
47:39 educational environment. So, it’s something
47:41 that we need to consider and also for those families. Most daycares
47:46 and aftercare facilities don’t always
47:50 offer services for those students and/or it’s very difficult to
47:53 get services for those students in a
47:54 quality affordable daycare. So, those families are going to
47:58 significantly struggle when it comes to
48:00 repetitive breaks throughout the year versus a program that they
48:03 can get their student into.
48:04 I also would like to understand going forward if this is
48:08 something we do decide. Our ESE students who
48:11 have extended school year services, how exactly is that
48:14 implemented in a year-round structure?
48:16 Our ESE students who have extended school year services are
48:25 traditionally filled by our own staff
48:28 because they’re willing to take on another three weeks or so of
48:32 working in the summer. I don’t know
48:35 if they’re going to feel that same way if they’re working year-round.
48:37 I don’t know if we’re going to
48:38 have that volunteer base that we traditionally have. They’re
48:41 getting paid, but you know what I mean?
48:42 The position itself is voluntary. Another thing to consider too,
48:47 there would have to be a tremendous
48:49 heads up because we’re going to have a significant portion of
48:52 our community who have custody agreements
48:55 with their significant other, with the guardian of that child
48:59 that will absolutely have to be amended
49:01 when it comes to the breaks that those students are on. Not only
49:05 the financial burden that that would put
49:06 on some families, but just the legal burden. If it’s not a happy,
49:12 amicable custodial agreement,
49:14 that could take months. That could back up the court system that’s
49:18 already backed up. So again,
49:21 it’s something to think about because that’s a significant
49:23 portion of our students that we have to
49:24 consider.
49:30 And I guess, so I don’t know, so Ms. Wright, correct me if I’m
49:33 misspeaking for you, but I think,
49:35 I feel like you’re talking holistically here for the future, but
49:39 I do know that there’s that pilot
49:40 program on the table, which is a totally different conversation.
49:43 And one I was a little confused
49:45 about, and Dr. Rindell kind of filled me in a little bit this
49:48 morning too, so you might offer some
49:49 clarification there. I was under the impression that it was a
49:53 pilot program, only certain counties will be
49:56 accepted. And I thought it was all elementary schools in the
49:59 county. Dr. Rindell told me that it’s
50:01 probably one. So it’s a whole different conversation for me. I’m
50:08 not opposed to that,
50:08 as long as that community and school is surveyed and we feel
50:12 like it’s going to be palatable.
50:14 The one thing I hesitate to, though, is the one school we’re
50:16 considering. I’d argue it’s kind of
50:21 an interesting choice for a pilot program because we’re not
50:23 really going to be able to test whether
50:25 or not it’s increasing academic performance in a really diverse
50:29 community with diverse incomes.
50:32 It might be working there, but it’s not going to prove for us
50:37 whether or not it’s going to work in
50:39 a different area is the only thing that I’m hesitant about. But
50:42 I’m not against us asking that community
50:44 if they want to do it. But for me, if we are going to go that
50:48 route, I’m not against it, but I think it
50:50 would be smart for us to allow these pilot programs that are
50:53 going on across the state to fulfill their
50:55 four years of data. And they’re going to do a cost benefit
50:59 analysis as well before we consider proposing
51:02 like waivers or anything to change things here in Brevard. But I
51:05 have a feeling if the state’s going to
51:07 consider this, there will be annual updates on those schools. So
51:12 I don’t think it’s a bad idea to put
51:15 it on the table and watch it, but I’d be hesitant to like jump
51:18 ahead of the train.
51:19 Did you did you want me to clarify if I was talking about just
51:24 primary?
51:24 Yeah, yeah, please. Sorry. And I’m just full disclosure. Yeah,
51:27 full disclosure. Like I went into this thinking
51:30 it was going to be all elementary schools and not secondary
51:33 schools. And then I found out this morning that
51:35 it’s going to be a general discussion too. So right. Yeah, right.
51:38 Yeah. And so that it’s a great question.
51:39 So when I was in year round school, it was just elementary
51:43 school and it became a problem because
51:44 my older brother did watch me. It was, you know, he helped my
51:47 mom, my mom worked. And so that was
51:49 our household dynamic. So no, I think for it to really succeed,
51:52 it has to be district wide
51:54 for that reason. So yeah, and then the other issue, I’ll come
51:58 back and kind of talk to you or talk
52:00 about some of the things that you brought up because they’re
52:01 great points. Who would like to go to next?
52:04 Thanks. And so I knowing that we were going to have this
52:07 discussion because you mentioned last time
52:09 when we went to our FSBA conference a couple weeks ago, there
52:12 was a session on year round schools
52:14 from highlighting Charlotte. I think Mr. Susan was in that
52:17 session too. And so it was I just want to share
52:20 some of the things that they talked about. Charlotte has had two
52:25 successful year round schools
52:27 since the 90s, like 92 and 94. And then they be after that, they
52:32 adopted a policy of how a school can
52:35 become a year round school, which is they have to send out a
52:39 survey to all the stakeholders,
52:41 including the families, at least two thirds of the families have
52:44 to respond back. And out of those,
52:47 at least two thirds of the respondents have to be positive for
52:50 the change. And so they had one
52:51 that started in, I want to say 2016, 2017, about seven years ago.
52:55 So they have three.
52:57 Those three are all within the same, I want to say it’s Ponte
53:02 Verde or what, Ponte Gorda,
53:04 all within the same city limits. So what they’ve been able to do
53:07 is, yeah, that whole, well, not a feeder
53:09 chain because they’re only elementaries, but that community then
53:12 has just kind of gotten used to it.
53:13 In this, in the boundaries of this city, they are, they’re,
53:17 those schools are zoned with inside the
53:19 boundaries of that city. So that community just kind of knows
53:22 how it works. And to work with their
53:24 middle school, high schools to make that work, that mesh, now
53:27 some of it won’t, but families have
53:29 the option to choice in or choice out. What they do is they say,
53:32 you know what, our spring break is
53:33 always going to be, is always going to line up, our Christmas
53:36 break, and then the year round schools
53:38 get a little bit more, but their spring break is always going to
53:40 line up, their Christmas break is
53:41 always going to line up, and they’re always going to end school
53:44 at the same time. So some year round
53:45 schools go through June, and they start in August, go through
53:47 June, and some, they start in July,
53:50 and then go through May, so everybody gets out at the same time.
53:52 So they try to keep those aligned,
53:54 so that it’s helpful to families, and their families love it,
53:56 the ones who’ve been there. But again,
53:58 they have the option to choice in, for the families who really
54:00 want to do it, to also choice out,
54:03 and, and to do, to do other options. They were very successful
54:09 right, you know, from the beginning,
54:10 because back in the 90s when they started, there was loads of
54:14 funding for them to use there in
54:17 Charlotte, and so during those inter, intercession times, they
54:21 provided transportation. It was, it was
54:24 optional, but they had like 90 percent of their students coming
54:27 back to do intercession. They
54:28 provided meals, which is actually not too complicated, I don’t
54:31 think because of, they can use that summer
54:33 lunch spot type program that we use during COVID, and that we
54:36 use in the summer times to feel, to feed kids.
54:38 They used that, they, so they fed the kids, they provided
54:41 transportation, the teachers, they had funding
54:43 to pay the teachers to teach, and they did, so they wouldn’t, so
54:45 the kids who didn’t come wouldn’t get
54:47 behind. They did acceleration, or enrichment activities, or
54:50 catching up, right, activities. So again,
54:53 they had like 90 something percent of students coming back, but
54:56 they had the money to pay them.
54:57 Over the years, that funding decreased, and so they had to go to,
55:02 when we can get a grant,
55:04 we’ll provide transportation, but sometimes they don’t provide
55:06 transportation. They can always,
55:07 almost always do the food. We could, we don’t have enough money
55:10 to pay for a full day, so it’s just
55:11 going to be a half day, but we’ll make sure we can feed kids
55:13 breakfast and lunch. They won’t have
55:17 intercession at every school, but out of those three, because
55:19 they’re close together, they’re going to
55:21 do intercession this, this break at this school, and so they’ll
55:25 just have, and so their percentage of
55:27 students who are participating is much lower. Over the last few
55:30 years, they’ve used ESSER money to do
55:32 that, and the school, it’s been successful for those schools. So
55:36 they are, they are Title I schools,
55:38 and they are A schools, so for them it’s been successful, but
55:41 again, a lot of that success started
55:42 when they began with that, you know, being able to pay, and the
55:45 teachers wanted to work there. They
55:47 stay in those schools, so they’re positive. Here’s, you know, as
55:51 just an overall, as far as the idea of
55:53 moving the entire district to a year-round schedule. I, I’ll
55:56 just be honest, right off the bat, I am
55:59 not in favor of that. We’re, one of the things that we are very
56:02 good at, the whole entire state is good
56:04 at, Brevard has been very good for a long time, is the idea of
56:07 choice. I do like the idea of creating
56:10 that option for families. In Brevard right now, we have a year-round
56:12 school. It’s a charter school
56:14 down in Palm Bay, Royal Palm, and they, you know, the families
56:17 have the option to go there. They, they love
56:19 that school. If they didn’t love it, they would not pick that
56:20 charter school, because in the South
56:22 area, there’s certainly plenty of other options for you. But I,
56:25 but I understand, you know, the feeder
56:27 chain issue, I think it might be interesting to, to look at in
56:29 the future, because this needs lots
56:31 of community feedback. It needs lots of stakeholder feedback
56:34 from our employees, from our families,
56:36 to see how we do it. It makes sense to put it in a feeder chain,
56:41 so that you have, as much as you can,
56:43 to do elementary, middle, high, so that families can be
56:47 consistent with the calendar, that it’s in an area,
56:51 so that like that area over there in Charlotte, that the
56:53 community just understands, this is the
56:55 way we do. And those services, and the businesses, and everybody
56:58 can kind of adapt to how school in
57:01 this part of our county works. But then if there’s families who
57:04 say, I love that idea, I want to go
57:06 there, they can choice in. Or if there’s people in that
57:09 community who say, not doing this, my family,
57:12 this doesn’t work with my family, they can choice out. And we
57:14 have, we’re such a choice-friendly
57:16 district because of all of our options. They’re always going to
57:19 have a place to go if that schedule
57:21 does or does not work. So I, just as a general pattern for our
57:26 district, I’m not in favor of that,
57:28 but I like the idea of looking into doing it for a feeder chain,
57:32 maybe pilot, whatever. I haven’t
57:35 heard about the pilot program, so that’s new to me. But what,
57:38 this is also something I think we have to,
57:41 you haven’t to put a time frame on it, but it’s something we’ll
57:43 have to put out a couple years,
57:44 because our family, our community is going to have to be
57:46 prepared, at least not for next school year,
57:48 you know, to be prepared to make that huge adjustment. Once you
57:51 get into it, and the community is used to
57:54 it, I think everybody adjusts and, you know, and you can deal
57:57 with it. But, you know, it’s, it’s,
58:00 that’s a really huge conversation. And I’m always going to go
58:03 back to, I like the idea of choice,
58:05 and I want to give our families the options to, to use the model
58:08 that best fits their family.
58:10 Thank you, Ms. Campbell. Mr. Susan?
58:15 Thank you. Just want to do, I, I, I’ll be honest with everybody
58:21 in here. When I first heard about,
58:23 I was a teacher at Space Coast High School when we had the year
58:26 round schools at some of the schools in,
58:27 in Port St. John. And I didn’t know much about it, and I was
58:31 convinced it just was not a good idea,
58:33 right? So, I didn’t, I didn’t think very positively in, in the
58:36 past, but I never really did a deep dive,
58:38 nor did I have to. And I sat in on the same presentation that Ms.
58:41 Campbell sat in on,
58:42 over in, and I, and I told myself at the beginning of this, open
58:45 up the mind, let’s get going, let’s
58:47 do a lot of research. So I did. But then when I sat in that
58:49 meeting over there in FSBA, they really laid
58:52 out like a footprint of how this works, and how it can work, and
58:54 some of the positives, negatives,
58:56 and everything else. And I said, holy cow, this is a good
58:58 opportunity for, um, quite honestly,
59:02 where Ms. Jenkins was saying that it may be a problem. I find it
59:05 in a positive. And I’ll tell
59:07 you why. Um, part of the presentation, and I know that it’s kind
59:10 of something that I got to see that
59:12 other people didn’t, so I’m not going to hold others accountable.
59:16 But in a Title I area, um, you run into
59:18 a couple of things in, in that when we talk about the summer
59:21 slide and stuff like that, those, those,
59:24 a lot of those kids could use the benefits and the support of a
59:26 year round school. And where I think it
59:29 falls short, which I did not know being somebody on the other
59:31 side, is that during those times,
59:33 those breaks, the summers, and those, those extended breaks, the
59:36 schools open up for, you know,
59:38 enriched learning in not an area that is inducive of pull out
59:41 your textbook and get moving, but rather,
59:44 let’s do, you know what I mean, some creative ways to have fun,
59:46 you know what I mean, at the zoo,
59:47 or have the, you know what I mean, different things to come in
59:49 here. And with those creative ways,
59:51 it creates a non-mental health issue with the students, and I’ll
59:54 explain why. A lot of our
59:56 students don’t feel like they have a part in the school system
59:59 because we have a lot of burnout
1:00:01 teachers that are not supporting some of the athletics, some of
1:00:03 the clubs, they’re not driving
1:00:05 some of those conversations. So we have a situation where
1:00:08 extended time over breaks in between sessions
1:00:11 would give that opportunity for some of those children to take
1:00:13 advantage of some of the things
1:00:15 inside of a school and feel very positive about doing so. I
1:00:18 think that that really hit me when I
1:00:20 was sitting there thinking that you could be a student plus it
1:00:23 helps with the daycare.
1:00:24 I understand that in some cases, you know what I mean, finding
1:00:28 the daycare and stuff like that,
1:00:29 but in the event that a parent would like their child to stay
1:00:32 and we funded it the right way and put
1:00:34 opportunities in between there for their families to take
1:00:36 advantage of some of that stuff, we would
1:00:38 actually see accelerated learning done the right way. I
1:00:41 understand that there’s this overall theory that
1:00:44 re-around schools do not academically show and that may be
1:00:48 because every single one of them have
1:00:49 not come up with what Brevard would come up with, but I do as an
1:00:53 educator see the advantages
1:00:54 of going in and actually having those breaks. A couple of things
1:00:58 that I know that this isn’t something
1:00:59 that we like are going to pull the trigger on tomorrow. So some
1:01:02 of the things that I was looking at
1:01:03 before I get into the other positives is that right now our
1:01:09 payroll for custodians and bus drivers and
1:01:11 everything is set on a certain number of payroll and also it’s
1:01:16 set, sometimes we start at the end of the
1:01:18 summer beginning of, you know what I mean? Like payroll would
1:01:21 need to be changed and in some cases if
1:01:24 there’s, you know, the same amount of days spread out over more,
1:01:27 some of those paychecks will look like
1:01:29 they’re a lot less. That’s one thing to take a look at. So the
1:01:32 payroll situation’s one. You know, you have the
1:01:35 drivers change if all of a sudden you’re having the workers
1:01:38 changing where they’re on and off and
1:01:41 everything else. That again is a payroll issue. It’s again and
1:01:43 also maintenance issues. There’s a lot of
1:01:45 other components to that piece. We would have to check in with
1:01:48 the workforce with L3, NASA, Harris,
1:01:50 all of the major work companies to say, hey, if we move to this,
1:01:54 are you prepared from your end? Because
1:01:56 they do dovetail into what we do with their days off and
1:01:59 everything else. Of course we have the union
1:02:02 negotiations. Dual enrollment might be a little bit of an issue.
1:02:06 I know we can do stuff online. It
1:02:08 gives us some opportunities. But if we start like some of the
1:02:10 others we’re talking about in a secondary
1:02:13 type situation, dual enrollment doesn’t start until they come
1:02:16 back to school. How would we deal with that?
1:02:18 Just some of those angles, right? Also the cost analysis, what I
1:02:22 think was brought up by Ms.
1:02:23 Jenkins, which is a good opportunity. We do keep the chillers
1:02:27 running a lot. But what is that cost
1:02:30 going to be? Because I would honestly believe that this is a
1:02:34 really good way to look at it. Look,
1:02:36 I looked at, as part of the calendar conversation, I looked at
1:02:39 developing nations, some of the top tier
1:02:42 nations that have education systems that are ranked above us.
1:02:45 You can argue the rankings. But they go to
1:02:47 school for like 190, 200 days. Like their kids are going to
1:02:51 school longer, right? Now, pays are better,
1:02:55 you know, conditions, you know what I mean? There’s all kinds of
1:02:57 other things. But the idea is that
1:03:00 having a longer school year is something that the top tiers,
1:03:03 Denmark, Finland, and all that have more
1:03:05 than us. So how is it that they have more days that they’re
1:03:08 going to school, but yet producing more,
1:03:11 right? So there’s opportunities there, I really think. I also
1:03:14 think that the sports is an
1:03:17 issue in finding out like, if we’re going to start in the
1:03:20 beginning of the year, how is it that they
1:03:22 stay off? And I don’t think it’s these aren’t like, hey, these
1:03:25 are red flags, these aren’t anything,
1:03:26 this is just stuff that we’re going to need to coordinate. I
1:03:28 also know that I am in favor of the
1:03:31 elementary, middle and high pipeline for exactly the same reason
1:03:35 as the parents. And you look at like
1:03:37 Merritt Island, you look at Space Coast, you look over at Port
1:03:39 St. John, those are developing
1:03:41 schools that are right there with it. But there’s an issue when
1:03:45 you run into
1:03:46 non-communities where you have some elementary schools that are
1:03:50 split,
1:03:50 there’s some in Cocoa that go to Cocoa High, and go to Rockledge,
1:03:53 that if we were going to do like
1:03:55 some sort of those pilots or do something like that, you have to
1:03:58 choose
1:03:58 those school areas that are truly feeders, right? But then the
1:04:04 other problem that you have is,
1:04:06 is that if we go back to the L3 Harris’s and everybody else, and
1:04:08 we say, hey, we’re going to
1:04:10 put this program in these areas and not the others, just stuff
1:04:13 we have to work through. You know what
1:04:14 I mean? Like, I’m telling you, when I sat through that meeting
1:04:18 at FSBA, I was like, this could work,
1:04:20 and this could be a great thing for our kids. And so my mind is,
1:04:24 is I like it, I want to move to it.
1:04:26 I just want to make sure that we look at all those things. And I
1:04:28 know we will. Some of the positives,
1:04:30 the burnout, definitely down. The three-week breaks, two-week
1:04:34 breaks, however we set it up,
1:04:37 would be that they could take the vacations that you want at the
1:04:39 times. I mean, you know as well as
1:04:41 I do that some of the times throughout the year that you go on
1:04:43 vacations, everybody else is going,
1:04:46 and it makes everywhere you go miserable, right? But if you have
1:04:48 those breaks where it’s other
1:04:50 opportunities for extended times, it works out. And then just so
1:04:53 you understand, it’s not the parents,
1:04:56 but the actual, oh, they must have heard about the early release
1:04:58 days and they came.
1:04:59 But the, but the thing is, is that if you have a family unit
1:05:08 that is able to get together,
1:05:10 take a vacation during a time that’s more affordable and have a
1:05:14 better time doing so,
1:05:15 if mental health of that is amazing, right? The travel
1:05:19 opportunities of breakdowns of off times,
1:05:23 look, you could bring in the AAU, you could bring in boys and
1:05:26 girls clubs, they would scream to have
1:05:28 the opportunity to work with our schools during those off weeks
1:05:31 inside the schools, they would send
1:05:32 staff into them. The summer slide is going to be better. The
1:05:36 mental health of the students, I feel,
1:05:39 is going to be more robust if they actually have the opportunity
1:05:41 to buy into the schools, like I said. And to be
1:05:45 honest with you, if there’s going to be opportunities for
1:05:48 teachers to work, like I was a teacher, I gave up
1:05:50 all my plannings, I taught, I coach, like I would literally go
1:05:53 seven of seven, coach, and then I would
1:05:56 go teach night school, just to get enough money so that I could
1:05:58 survive. This gives the opportunity for
1:06:00 teachers to add extra time in between those work weeks to go to
1:06:04 those extended special weekends. So,
1:06:06 I’m in favor of going forward and answering some of the
1:06:08 questions. I’m in favor of this as a whole as an
1:06:12 opportunity to try to show that we can look at it and see if it’ll
1:06:14 go. And I do think that it’ll increase
1:06:17 education and our achievement levels and also mental health and
1:06:22 other things. So, that’s kind of my
1:06:24 overview in, what was that, like 10 minutes? I know I lost you
1:06:26 guys. All right, that’s it. I’m done. Thank you.
1:06:29 Well, I got to hand it to this board. As much as I would like to
1:06:37 add something new, and I’m sure I
1:06:39 could find something between the three of you or four, that
1:06:42 might be rather difficult. Other than,
1:06:47 I do believe the whole feeder program kind of, for example, I
1:06:49 was just thinking of beach side, where
1:06:51 we have Cape Fear and Roosevelt and Cocoa Beach Junior Senior
1:06:54 High School, they all did it together,
1:06:56 kind of a, you know, as a program there. I could see that
1:07:01 working out. Student achievement is always
1:07:05 the most important for us, but experience is also as a parent,
1:07:08 and there are, it’s a big world out there
1:07:10 for us to travel other than just June and July, you know, fall
1:07:14 time and winter time, those things are
1:07:16 great experiences for kids that many of them just don’t get the
1:07:19 opportunity to experience, and we all
1:07:23 seem to think that parents sometimes run on the same schedule as
1:07:26 our students, you know. Their jobs
1:07:28 aren’t like that either, and they have opportunity to, you know,
1:07:33 go visit relatives, and, you know,
1:07:35 your education extends beyond the school day, and that could be
1:07:40 something that could be looked at. Matt
1:07:42 brought up something that I immediately thought of is those
1:07:46 communities that could utilize the schools
1:07:50 during that downtime, where kids can come back into that school,
1:07:54 and it’s not necessarily the same
1:07:56 structure as a school day, but learning can continue, and
1:08:00 experiences can continue. So I’m an open book on
1:08:05 this one, you know, I talked to Mr. Dufresne about throwing
1:08:08 everything on the table, here’s another
1:08:10 thing we can do, you know. So I look forward to that. Yeah. All
1:08:13 right, I’m going to circle back to just a
1:08:15 couple of the things, because I want to, Ms. Jenkins, you had
1:08:18 some of the same concerns I had when it
1:08:20 comes to the summer, the jobs for staff. A lot of our staff is
1:08:22 dependent on working during the summer,
1:08:24 and so I thought, oh, I don’t know if they’re going to like that
1:08:26 or not. And interestingly enough, I have
1:08:29 actually, you know, I think this would be a good thing for us to
1:08:32 pull and start asking these questions.
1:08:34 The ESE issue that you had brought up, that’s a valid concern. I
1:08:37 think we need to look at what does
1:08:39 that look like? Does, what do we do? Can we do something unique,
1:08:42 specific, just for our ESE department?
1:08:44 I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s a possibility. You know,
1:08:47 the custody agreements that you had brought
1:08:49 up as well, I came from a split household. So growing up, it was
1:08:52 a really great opportunity. My father lived
1:08:54 out of state. And so I was able to spend three weeks with him
1:08:57 during the year, whereas, you know,
1:08:58 normally I would have just been there for the summer and winter.
1:09:01 And I think it honestly helped us
1:09:03 cultivate a better relationship because I was able to be with
1:09:05 him so frequently rather than just
1:09:07 this couple of times a year. I think it would be very smart for
1:09:09 us to walk down the cost analysis.
1:09:11 That is very, very important. You know, I’m kind of hearing, I
1:09:15 guess, mixed things from everybody
1:09:17 up here. So it sounds like you’re maybe interested in looking at
1:09:20 just a feeder, the feeder schools,
1:09:22 and then the secondary school kind of maybe a, I don’t know, I
1:09:25 don’t want to say city,
1:09:26 because I don’t know that that would even be the correct term.
1:09:28 Well, the area that Ms. Trent brought up, Cocoa Beach, some of
1:09:33 the Merritt Island families,
1:09:34 but Mr. Seusson is right. We don’t have a lot of areas in the
1:09:37 county where there’s a chart that’s
1:09:40 in the, I can’t remember what report that Ms. Hand gives us
1:09:43 every year that has the from too,
1:09:45 but it has, it has this percentage of this school goes to this
1:09:47 middle school, this percentage.
1:09:49 There’s a few of those that are more exclusive. And I think
1:09:52 probably the wisest idea if we’re going to
1:09:54 pilot something across grade bands is to pilot that in, in those
1:09:58 places where it is more exclusive.
1:10:01 Because if you, you know, then we’re as much as possible,
1:10:05 someone choices in choices out,
1:10:07 you know, but we don’t want to, if we can take advantage of
1:10:10 those areas where it is 100% of this
1:10:12 school zoned for this middle school or zoned for this middle
1:10:15 school.
1:10:16 I think it’s a good opportunity where you’re looking at that
1:10:19 junior senior model. I mean,
1:10:20 that’s Port St. John’s a prime example too. So you’re talking
1:10:23 the three elementary schools that
1:10:24 go into Space Coast. And so it sounds very similar to what Cocoa
1:10:27 Beach has. So what I would,
1:10:30 I guess my ask now on how do we move this forward? And how do we
1:10:33 look at this in more depth? I think
1:10:34 one of the biggest questions is going to be, I need to see a
1:10:37 calendar. I need to see what this looks like
1:10:38 for my family. How are, you know, when would my kids be out of
1:10:41 school before we can even really
1:10:43 launch it out to start pulling people. So my ask would be that
1:10:47 you would allow me as the board
1:10:49 representative to work with maybe Mr. Dufresne on this calendar.
1:10:52 I’ve started kind of plugging in
1:10:54 dates on my own and doing this, but I think it would be smart
1:10:56 for us to work alongside each other.
1:10:57 So we’re not both doing the same things and spinning our wheels
1:10:59 in different directions. And then from
1:11:02 there, bring that calendar back to show you guys what, what it
1:11:06 looks like. And then we could even at
1:11:08 that point, if everyone says, hey, okay, we’re in agreement, we
1:11:11 like this. We will go ahead and
1:11:14 start pulling and asking our stakeholders because this is a big
1:11:16 conversation. I don’t want to just
1:11:18 say, hey, you know, we’re slapping this on them and year round
1:11:21 school. Now, truth be told, if I could
1:11:23 do it right now, I probably would just because I know personally
1:11:25 how beneficial this is. I know how well
1:11:28 this works for families. I think that it would be something very
1:11:31 unique to Brevard. Also, I think we
1:11:32 could use this as an attractive recruiting tool. I believe
1:11:35 teachers would say, hey, I really, really like
1:11:38 that idea. Let me, let me look at Brevard and go and teach there.
1:11:41 They have something different than
1:11:42 what my district has. So there’s a lot of benefits that, that I
1:11:45 think this poses. And honestly, looking
1:11:47 at what the state’s doing, I believe it is headed that direction.
1:11:51 Maybe, maybe I’m wrong, maybe not.
1:11:54 But I believe we’re having to think outside of the box and do
1:11:57 different things than what we’ve had to
1:11:58 do in the past. And this is a really good opportunity. So board,
1:12:01 are you in favor? Are you okay with me
1:12:03 working with Mr. Dufresne to kind of come up with the calendar
1:12:05 that I will bring back and we will discuss the calendar and what
1:12:07 that looks like?
1:12:08 And then have further discussions on, on moving forward from
1:12:11 there.
1:12:11 If I can jump in real quick.
1:12:14 First and foremost, I like I’m, I’m on board with like touching
1:12:21 and feeling the community about this
1:12:23 in like a choice feeder type of a situation. That’s way more palatable
1:12:26 to me than like an overall
1:12:27 district overhaul. I also just really genuinely believe that we
1:12:31 pulled the district that that would
1:12:32 not be a majority favor. So I think that this is more, more
1:12:37 likely to pass in a community that genuinely
1:12:40 wants it. I’m okay with that being like a starting point. I don’t
1:12:47 think it’s about starting point,
1:12:48 but I think very quickly after that though, I think it would be
1:12:52 good if each board member can send it to
1:12:54 either. Well, I don’t know if this is bringing sunshine, so I
1:12:56 don’t know if I can send it to you,
1:12:57 but maybe Dr. Rendell. Questions that would then need to be
1:13:01 answered, such as like the ESE one,
1:13:03 because you can’t do ESE different than anyone else. It has to
1:13:05 legally be the same as the jet ed
1:13:07 students. So very specific questions that we might have that
1:13:10 staff can kind of take a deep dive into,
1:13:12 even if we’re going to just do it in a small community. How
1:13:14 would these things be addressed?
1:13:16 That way they have plenty of time to kind of research and come
1:13:19 back to us and just present
1:13:20 it overall. I think that would be smart. And I, I guess I don’t
1:13:24 mean to jump ahead here,
1:13:26 but if there’s a majority of support already saying cool with
1:13:29 like, give us a general idea what a
1:13:31 calendar looks like, can we just go ahead and get started with
1:13:33 that too? Just putting those questions
1:13:35 out there for just to give them ample time to be comfortable
1:13:38 answering. Yeah, so a couple things.
1:13:40 Some of this conversation really kind of started or the thoughts
1:13:44 started by the fact that the state
1:13:46 put out a call for any district interested in piloting year
1:13:50 round school, elementary school,
1:13:52 a handful across the state. So we did indicate interest, we did
1:13:56 in, uh, enter an application.
1:13:59 So if we are granted, you know, that pilot, then we’re going to
1:14:03 have to move forward anyway,
1:14:05 with one elementary school, you know, as a pilot in a year round
1:14:09 school format. So we’re already going
1:14:11 to have to start doing some of that legwork if we were to get
1:14:14 the grant. So to prepare for the
1:14:16 possibility of getting the grant, we can already start that
1:14:18 paperwork. I mean that legwork. So we
1:14:20 can already start looking at calendars and maybe use the
1:14:22 elementary schools in,
1:14:23 in Charlotte as a model to say, this is how, you know, they did
1:14:27 it. This is how we could possibly do
1:14:29 it. I think, um, some really salient points were brought up. I
1:14:33 think ESY is definitely, you know,
1:14:35 we have to figure out how we meet the needs of those students
1:14:37 who get an extended school year as
1:14:39 guaranteed in their IEP. So does that mean that they can come to
1:14:43 the inter sessions, to the breaks? Is that
1:14:46 you know, the two week breaks at different times? Does that
1:14:49 cover that? Or does it have to be a summer?
1:14:51 Anyway, we could get those questions answered. How do we deal
1:14:55 with, um, you know, the other schools
1:14:57 that these students, families go to and stuff like that, you
1:15:00 know? So we were already kind of working
1:15:03 on it a little bit because we might get that grant, you know, or
1:15:06 get, you know, the pilot. So if we get
1:15:08 that we have to be ready to go anyway. So I think it’s fine to
1:15:12 have Mrs. Wright work with Ryan or whoever,
1:15:16 you know, elementary principals and stuff to kind of try to
1:15:19 figure some stuff out, you know?
1:15:21 So I have a follow-up question to that.
1:15:25 Because this kind of, like, tiptoeing and researching and just
1:15:28 kind of seeing, right,
1:15:30 this pilot program is only for elementary school. In order for
1:15:34 us to do it the way we’ve been
1:15:35 discussing, we’d have to have a waiver from the state, which is
1:15:38 not a guarantee.
1:15:39 Correct. So I also just genuinely don’t want to make staff do
1:15:45 this insane deep dive of a thing that
1:15:47 may not even be allowed or allowed for four years and then would
1:15:50 look very different four years from
1:15:51 now, right? Things change. So if we can just respectfully, like,
1:15:56 keep it as surface level,
1:15:59 I guess, as we can for things that may not come to fruition,
1:16:02 because it’s, I mean, it’s really
1:16:04 unlikely that we’ll get a waiver from the state next school year
1:16:07 to start secondary schools year-round.
1:16:08 I mean, we haven’t even gotten an answer about the pilot program.
1:16:12 Yeah, well, that’s the other thing, you know, whenever we were
1:16:14 going to wrap this up,
1:16:15 I wanted the public to understand this is not happening next
1:16:18 year unless we get the pilot and
1:16:21 it would be just that one elementary school. Right.
1:16:23 So, and it may not even be next year because the state
1:16:27 originally sent out the request, you know,
1:16:30 for anybody interested and the deadline to submit the
1:16:33 applications was, I think, early September or
1:16:35 mid-September. We got our application in, but then they extended
1:16:38 the deadline for another month, so
1:16:40 I’m not saying the state doesn’t always move quickly, but, you
1:16:44 know, it may not even be for
1:16:46 next year anyway, but we can start doing some of that legwork.
1:16:49 Well, and I want to put a plug in because a lot of those
1:16:52 questions, like, obviously,
1:16:53 these three schools in Charlotte are doing it, and I don’t think
1:16:55 they’re the only ones,
1:16:56 and we have a school in the county, so I’m also going to put a
1:16:58 plug in that when we start looking
1:16:59 at the calendar, we really need to look at what Royal Palm is
1:17:01 already doing because they have that
1:17:03 calendar and their K-8, so we know they’re doing it not only for
1:17:06 elementary, for middle. I’m not aware
1:17:08 of any high schools in Florida that are year-round, but it’s
1:17:10 possible that they could be,
1:17:12 so I think it would be good. I’m always a fan of not reinventing
1:17:16 the wheel for us to take a look at
1:17:18 that because I’ll tell you right now, Royal Palm, because I’ve
1:17:21 done that, if we adopted a year-round
1:17:24 schedule that was, like, different, you know, if it was district-wide,
1:17:26 it’d be one thing. It’s just
1:17:27 local, you know, to a certain school or whatever. It wouldn’t be
1:17:29 a big deal, but let’s take, I would
1:17:31 suggest you take a look at the way they do it because they’ve
1:17:33 been successful doing that for such a long
1:17:34 time. Yeah, I think that a couple of things for us, if we were
1:17:37 to go down the road of a feeder chain,
1:17:40 you know, where secondary schools are involved, and again, that’s
1:17:43 down the road, you know, if we were to do that,
1:17:46 even the schools, the three elementary schools in Charlotte
1:17:49 talked about how there were some
1:17:50 hurdles for them to overcome, such as the state assessment
1:17:55 calendar, you know, there’s only these
1:17:57 certain windows when you can do the testing, so, you know, they
1:18:01 got a jump start on PM1 because they
1:18:03 started in July, so by the time PM1 rolled around, they were
1:18:06 probably further in the curriculum than
1:18:07 traditional schools, but then by the time they get to PM3, they
1:18:11 actually were behind on days because
1:18:13 they were going to extend longer, you know, so when you get to
1:18:16 secondary, now you’re talking about AP
1:18:18 tests, you know, IB exams, you know, Cambridge, dual enrollment,
1:18:21 stuff like that, we have to try to line up.
1:18:24 So, you know, I think we can start looking at some calendars and
1:18:28 some options and just put our toe in
1:18:30 the water kind of thing, but we also need to be ready for maybe
1:18:33 an elementary pilot if we’re,
1:18:35 we get that. And the other thing too, again, I know, I don’t
1:18:38 want to jump in too deep into the water, but
1:18:40 if you are going to have a conversation about calendars in a
1:18:44 specific school in a specific area
1:18:46 to kind of just reach out to that municipality that’s there in
1:18:49 their rec departments, because
1:18:50 traditionally they’re going to support our kiddos when they’re
1:18:53 on breaks often too, just, just to kind
1:18:55 of get a feelsy with them and give them a heads up to prepare
1:18:58 and think about it, because they were
1:18:59 really good for us when it, when it came to, you know, the weird
1:19:02 anomalies that we had with COVID.
1:19:04 All right, thank you. All right, does anyone else have anything
1:19:07 else on this topic?
1:19:08 Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you. One of the things that Ms.
1:19:14 Campbell had mentioned
1:19:15 is looking at across the state at what other people are doing.
1:19:18 I wouldn’t even be against if you wanted to call some of them
1:19:21 and have them come and
1:19:22 and just have a workshop on how their best practices are
1:19:25 and what they’re running into, you know what I mean,
1:19:26 to help staff so that we don’t have to recreate the wheel.
1:19:29 It was a great point Ms. Campbell said about locally.
1:19:31 I think there might be an opportunity to look at it
1:19:34 because during the evaluation phase,
1:19:36 if we don’t hear from the people that have been doing it
1:19:38 and if we do have a bunch of examples in the state,
1:19:40 that might help, you know, just for your leadership
1:19:42 to take a look at, that’s all, as a suggestion.
1:19:45 - All right, thank you, thank you.
1:19:46 All right, we are gonna move on to the next topic
1:19:48 that is on our agenda, which is the Head Start Update.
1:19:52 - So Madam Chair, if we could take a five, 10 minute break
1:19:54 while we set up and stuff.
1:19:56 - Absolutely, we’ll call a recess and return at 3:20, all right.
1:20:22 - Thank you.
1:20:52 Thank you.
1:27:22 So it is my pleasure to turn over to Dr. Smith, our director
1:27:26 that has worked on the grant
1:27:28 compliance side of Head Start, as well as Terry Barlow, our
1:27:31 assistant director of Head Start
1:27:33 to update you on all things Head Start.
1:27:35 Thanks, okay, okay, so like Ms. Harris, okay, so like Ms. Harris
1:27:41 said, we’re going to give
1:27:45 you an update on our Head Start program.
1:27:48 As always, what we do, as always, what we do, and just as a
1:27:57 reminder, we have presented this
1:28:02 and just as a reminder, we have presented this in the previous
1:28:03 school year, but I want to update
1:28:09 you on the next one, so we’re going to do this in the next one,
1:28:17 so we’re going to do this in the next one.
1:28:23 We’re going to do this in the next one, so we’re going to do
1:28:32 this in the next one, so we’re going to do this in the next one,
1:28:38 so we’re going to do this in the next one.
1:28:38 We’re going to do this in the next one, so we’re going to do
1:28:40 this in the next one, so we’re going to do this in the next one,
1:28:43 so we’re going to do this in the next one.
1:28:45 We’re going to do this in the next one, so we’re going to do
1:28:47 this in the next one, so we’re going to do this in the next one.
1:28:50 We’re going to do this in the next one, so we’re going to do
1:28:51 this in the next one.
1:28:52 We’re going to do this in the next one.
1:30:01 This includes the quality of education services, the intentionality
1:30:08 of family and community engagement, monitoring of fiscal
1:30:13 operations, the effectiveness of our health and safety practices,
1:30:17 the focus we place on eligibility, recruitment, selection,
1:30:22 enrollment, and attendance, as well as oversight of our program
1:30:26 structure.
1:30:28 The federal review will determine if we are meeting the
1:30:30 requirements of Head Start program performance standards, as
1:30:34 well as the uniform guidance and the Head Start Act.
1:30:39 During the review, we will have multiple opportunities to
1:30:42 showcase our program strengths, program leadership.
1:30:46 Program leadership, a member of the governing body and policy
1:30:49 council will participate in interviews with the review lead.
1:30:53 These interviews are more of a conversation about our processes.
1:31:00 This monitoring event includes data tours with program
1:31:03 leadership and staff for each service area.
1:31:06 Real-time walkthrough of data and reports will help the review
1:31:10 lead understand how managers and staff conduct daily activities
1:31:14 and use data to demonstrate program compliance.
1:31:17 So, you may recall during our presentation with you in May, Dr.
1:31:26 Smith provided an overview of our five-year program goals.
1:31:30 Our program goals, and you may recall, align with the district
1:31:33 strategic plan.
1:31:35 They’re supported by measurable objectives and outcomes, and
1:31:42 they’re supported by measurable objective, excuse me, objectives.
1:31:45 The outcome and progress of objectives are reviewed and
1:31:48 adjustments are made annually or as appropriate.
1:31:52 The outcome and progress of the program goals are made.
1:32:00 The outcome and progress of the program goals are made up.
1:32:07 The outcome of the program goals are made up.
1:32:08 The outcome and progress of the program goals are made up.
1:34:02 The outcome goals are made up.
1:34:12 The outcome is made up.
1:34:14 The outcome goals are made up.
1:34:37 The outcome is made up.
1:34:38 Our ongoing monitoring tool was used to measure student growth.
1:34:41 This is a locally designed tool that is aligned to our
1:34:44 curriculum, ready to advance, as well
1:34:47 as the state standards and the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes
1:34:52 Framework.
1:34:53 Our data reveals our Head Start students made gains in all areas,
1:34:57 which include approaches
1:34:58 to learning, social development, language and communication,
1:35:03 mathematics, science, as
1:35:05 well as physical development.
1:35:10 Finally, I would like to just briefly talk with you about the
1:35:16 professional development
1:35:19 that we have been offering to our teachers for the 23-24 school
1:35:25 year.
1:35:26 Our topics have included required Head Start training,
1:35:30 curriculum training, active supervision
1:35:33 training, as well as an overview of class and strengthening
1:35:38 class dimensions.
1:35:40 Strengthening class dimensions was developed using our most
1:35:43 current data and feedback from
1:35:44 class observations to ensure the individual needs of our
1:35:47 teaching teams were addressed.
1:35:49 As a reminder, class is a tool that measures adult-child
1:35:55 interactions.
1:35:57 It’s important to note our professional development is revisited
1:36:00 throughout the year as part of our
1:36:01 practice-based coaching model, not just a one and done.
1:36:06 The PD is also individualized for our teaching teams based on
1:36:09 their coaching action plans and data and needs identified during
1:36:16 the coaching cycle.
1:36:18 Teaching in the Fast Lane was recently developed by our coaches
1:36:21 to support teachers using data from the Star Early Literacy Fast
1:36:24 Assessment to support instruction.
1:36:24 In October, our coaches presented this topic at the FLACY
1:36:30 Conference that took place in Orlando, that’s the Florida
1:36:36 Association of Educators of Young Children.
1:36:42 And then, finally, you’ve heard us talk before about the Edward
1:36:46 Ziegler Innovation Award.
1:36:48 And I’m so pleased to share with you that, in collaboration with
1:36:53 the Department of Health, our program has been nominated to
1:36:59 represent Region 4 Head Start at the national level.
1:37:03 So, not only were we selected at the state level, the day, Ms.
1:37:09 Buckmaster, on the left-hand side, she’s our health manager,
1:37:12 Robin Buckmaster, myself in the middle, and Amanda Willis, our
1:37:15 dental hygienist, we went to the Florida Head Start Association
1:37:19 to receive the nomination for this award.
1:37:22 We learned that day that we were selected out of eight states in
1:37:25 Region 4 to represent Region 4.
1:37:27 And we will be competing against 11 other regions in Head Start.
1:37:31 And that is with our on-site dental program that you all have
1:37:35 heard so much about.
1:37:37 So, that concludes my presentation.
1:37:43 If you have any questions, I’m happy to answer.
1:37:46 - Thank you so much.
1:37:47 Let me give my fellow board members an opportunity to ask any
1:37:50 questions or make any comments in regards to the presentation.
1:37:53 - I want to go first.
1:37:54 - Oh, okay.
1:37:55 - Because she always goes first.
1:37:56 - All right, Mr. Susan, go ahead.
1:37:58 - No, I just wanted to say thank you for putting what is a
1:38:01 monumental amount of information and making it into like 10
1:38:05 slides and doing an amazing job and presenting it to us.
1:38:09 You guys do so many amazing things on a regular basis.
1:38:12 We love what you guys do and appreciate you 100%.
1:38:15 And if you ever don’t feel that way, give us a ring.
1:38:17 We’ll come out there and say hi.
1:38:18 So, thank you.
1:38:19 - Thank you, Mr. Susan.
1:38:21 - Anyone else?
1:38:23 - So, congratulations on the award.
1:38:26 And I’m excited to see, I think, Brevard wins the whole thing,
1:38:29 right?
1:38:30 - Yes.
1:38:31 - And walks away with a big trophy.
1:38:33 So, and I, it’s exciting to see about that, that it’s about that
1:38:37 unique dental hygiene program that you guys worked so long and
1:38:40 hard to get, to plan and get in place, incorporate into the
1:38:44 goals and into the school.
1:38:44 So, and I have yet to go.
1:38:46 So, I, it’s always on a day.
1:38:47 I have yet to go.
1:38:48 So, please send us out the schedule when they’re going around
1:38:51 because I still want to go visit a day when they’re doing that
1:38:53 because I heard it was lots of fun.
1:38:56 Excuse me.
1:38:57 I had a, just a real quick question about the class because that’s
1:39:00 an abbreviation that I’ve seen other places.
1:39:02 We have, like at Gardendale, like they, it’s class as a way of
1:39:05 setting up the classroom, like we’re in different areas.
1:39:07 So, this is not that same thing.
1:39:08 This is a different abbreviation, right?
1:39:11 - It’s not that.
1:39:12 - Okay.
1:39:13 - It’s the, it’s all like, there’s all these acronyms and they
1:39:17 have two.
1:39:18 I know, I know.
1:39:19 - I’m still waiting for the acronym dictionary.
1:39:20 - But it sounds like it’s, it’s, you know, you guys do so much
1:39:23 professional development and I love all the different people
1:39:26 that you bring in the coaches.
1:39:27 So, it’s a great model and you guys are doing a good job.
1:39:29 Thank you.
1:39:30 - Thank you.
1:39:31 - Ms. Jenkins.
1:39:32 - Yeah.
1:39:33 I also want to recognize.
1:39:36 And congratulate you for your statewide, regional and national
1:39:39 accolades that you continue to get.
1:39:41 And I know this wasn’t the first time.
1:39:43 I think everyone’s well aware of this is, this is my wheelhouse.
1:39:48 This is my passion, early intervention, early education services.
1:39:52 I hope that we can continue to grow in that area.
1:39:58 You know, when we always talk about setting ourselves apart as a
1:40:00 district, that’s actually where I think we should be setting
1:40:03 ourselves even more apart.
1:40:04 We already do, right?
1:40:05 We’re already recognized for programs like Head Start.
1:40:08 We’re one of the few that offer pre-K ESC services to kids
1:40:11 before they even come into the, to the door as kindergarteners.
1:40:14 Because that’s the most important thing we can do for our kids
1:40:17 is catch them early and get them early on.
1:40:19 It’s actually a conversation I had with the consultant team.
1:40:21 I don’t know.
1:40:22 I don’t know if everyone had their one-on-ones already or not
1:40:24 about, you know, what can we do in the future, yada, yada, yada.
1:40:28 But that was kind of where I left my focus with them was, can we
1:40:30 be the leaders when it comes to three-year-olds, four-year-olds,
1:40:35 and five-year-olds before they come into kindergarten?
1:40:36 It’s actually a cost savings at the end when we get kids in
1:40:39 early.
1:40:40 Can we have a conversation about, you know, piloting some of
1:40:43 those early education programs in certain areas where there’s
1:40:46 deficits in that third grade reading level?
1:40:49 And it goes hand in hand with, with the services that you guys
1:40:52 offer.
1:40:53 So again, congratulations on your accolades.
1:40:56 And I hope that this just keeps reminding us where, how advanced
1:40:59 we are when it comes to that.
1:41:00 And we can continue to do that going forward.
1:41:02 Mr. Trent.
1:41:05 Just congratulations on your recognitions.
1:41:08 Well deserved.
1:41:09 Thank you for all you do.
1:41:10 And again, just like Matt said, if you, if you ever think about
1:41:14 us not recognizing you or appreciating you, just reach out to us.
1:41:18 Thank you so much.
1:41:19 Thank you.
1:41:20 Yes.
1:41:21 What an honor you guys have achieved.
1:41:22 So I am winning, waiting for you to win that title.
1:41:25 So I want to ask the child that’s in the picture.
1:41:29 Is this a child that obviously went through our VPK program?
1:41:33 I’m guessing, I’m assuming based on this, or is it just a, don’t
1:41:37 tell me it’s a Google photo.
1:41:38 I’m like, please tell me that’s one of our kiddos.
1:41:40 Cause I, there’s a child that’s in the PowerPoint presentation
1:41:43 that you have the photo in there.
1:41:44 And I, huh?
1:41:45 I don’t remember.
1:41:46 Is he the same?
1:41:47 Oh man.
1:41:48 All right.
1:41:49 Sorry.
1:41:50 All right.
1:41:51 Well, anyways, I, I’m just going to say as you know, Hey, I love
1:41:54 it.
1:41:54 When I see a photo like that, it’s just like, Oh, that just
1:41:56 makes my heart so happy.
1:41:57 So good work you’re doing.
1:41:58 And she’s like, what photo is she talking about?
1:42:00 Oh, keep going.
1:42:01 Keep going.
1:42:02 So the, just the, that way.
1:42:03 Yes.
1:42:04 This child.
1:42:05 Yes.
1:42:06 That is one of ours.
1:42:07 I was going to say, this looks like they’re outside of one of
1:42:08 our schools.
1:42:09 So if this is a stock photo, this is really impressive.
1:42:11 But no, it’s no, I get, I think that’s just a great reminder of
1:42:14 why, right?
1:42:15 When you see a lot of the charts and the words and all that, it’s
1:42:18 great.
1:42:18 But it’s like, when you see a smiling face there, you’re like,
1:42:20 this is why.
1:42:21 So thank you so much.
1:42:22 We appreciate you guys tremendously.
1:42:24 I can’t wait for the update when you guys come back and say, we
1:42:26 won the entire thing.
1:42:28 Good work.
1:42:29 We appreciate you.
1:42:30 Thank you.
1:42:31 And we always feel appreciated by you.
1:42:33 Thank you for your time and support.
1:42:35 Thank you.
1:42:36 All right.
1:42:37 So moving on, I’m guessing that the, the, the next topic that we
1:42:42 have is a presentation
1:42:43 on the social studies, instructional materials, adoption process
1:42:46 review, which I, is that you
1:42:48 Ms. Harris?
1:42:49 Okay.
1:42:50 Yeah.
1:42:51 Let’s go ahead and do the student achievement update.
1:42:52 Sorry.
1:42:53 I apologize.
1:42:54 I forgot about that.
1:42:55 And I didn’t write it on.
1:42:56 Right.
1:42:57 So audience members, if they’re not aware, yesterday, the state
1:43:07 released school grades
1:43:09 and district grades for last school year.
1:43:12 So it’s six months later, but these are informational grades,
1:43:16 baseline grades on our performance.
1:43:18 Last year.
1:43:19 Remember that we have a new state assessment in many grades in
1:43:23 many subject areas.
1:43:25 Fast test is new to press the process is new.
1:43:30 So we do not have learning gains calculated for this year as
1:43:34 part of the school grade or district
1:43:37 grade.
1:43:38 And that’s because it’s the first year of the test last year.
1:43:41 They had no previous test scores to count it against or to
1:43:44 compare it against.
1:43:46 So informational baseline grades are still grades.
1:43:50 They’re still good ways to measure how we’re doing as a district
1:43:54 and to measure how each of
1:43:55 our schools is doing.
1:43:57 So Mrs.
1:43:58 Harris is going to present some information on our initial
1:44:01 glance at the data.
1:44:02 One of the other things is, you know, the state is finally
1:44:05 releasing the official cut scores and all
1:44:09 that kind of thing.
1:44:10 So we’re still really only digging into the true data.
1:44:13 So we’ve been working off of PM1 data for most of the year and
1:44:17 we’ll have PM2 when we get back after
1:44:20 break.
1:44:21 So, Ms. Harris.
1:44:22 So just some reminders and Dr.
1:44:25 Randell did mention this, that this is last school year’s data.
1:44:28 And I think that’s hard for our stakeholders because it’s the
1:44:31 middle of this year.
1:44:32 And so it’s confusing to know that all of these data points come
1:44:35 from last school year.
1:44:36 The other thing is when we talk about the informational school
1:44:39 grades, those are informational in nature.
1:44:43 And so something to keep in mind is if a school were to drop to
1:44:47 say a D or F, they would not go into the school
1:44:49 improvement status.
1:44:50 However, we are working with them because a school could
1:44:53 potentially come out of school improvement
1:44:55 status with these school grades.
1:44:57 And the biggest thing that is I want our stakeholders to take
1:45:01 away is that learning gains are not included.
1:45:04 And the reason that’s very important is depending on the
1:45:07 performance of a school, learning gains can
1:45:11 significantly help their school grade.
1:45:13 But in some schools where proficiency is high, those learning
1:45:17 gains are harder to get.
1:45:18 And so it can have a different impact based on the performance
1:45:23 at proficiency for schools.
1:45:25 And that’s something to keep in mind once we take those away.
1:45:27 Because for schools that those kind of can be a barrier, their
1:45:31 school grade could potentially be higher.
1:45:33 And those schools that count on those school grade points
1:45:36 through learning gains could potentially have a lower school
1:45:39 grade as a result.
1:45:40 So if we go over what we do know about our traditional BPS
1:45:46 schools is for nine of our schools they have improved school
1:45:52 grades.
1:45:52 And that is again important when we start looking at which
1:45:55 schools those are because some of those are schools that
1:45:58 learning gains have been their bread and butter per se.
1:46:01 Like those have been what have moved their student achievement.
1:46:03 So we had six elementary schools improve their school grade and
1:46:07 three middle schools improve their school grades.
1:46:10 We did have six of our traditional schools decrease their school
1:46:14 grade five being elementary schools and one high school.
1:46:18 But before we go into that I want to highlight our schools that
1:46:24 earned an A for some of them they’ve moved into this but some of
1:46:30 them maintaining an A again without learning gains.
1:46:33 So I’m going to quickly call out our elementary schools just
1:46:36 because I know the font is small.
1:46:38 And I think that’s a great thing because that means I had so
1:46:40 many schools to put on that slide.
1:46:42 So that is South Lake, Pinewood, Atlantis, Enterprise, Manatee,
1:46:48 West Melbourne, Sun Tree, Longleaf, Ocean Breeze, India Atlantic,
1:46:55 Gemini, Quest, Vieira, Tropical, Stevenson, Roosevelt,
1:47:02 Freedom 7, Holland, Seapark, Surfside, and Lewis Carroll.
1:47:08 So we want to congratulate the teams at those schools for
1:47:12 earning a school grade of A.
1:47:14 And now we want to celebrate our middle schools that also earned
1:47:18 a school grade of A.
1:47:19 Kennedy, Jefferson, Delora, and Hoover.
1:47:23 So next we’re going to move into those schools that are high
1:47:28 schools earning an A.
1:47:30 So we want to celebrate Vieira, Satellite, West Shore, Edgewood,
1:47:35 and Cocoa Beach.
1:47:36 So we want to commend the school staff, stakeholders, students
1:47:41 of their hard work in earning that school grade of A.
1:47:44 So now we want to celebrate those schools that have increased
1:47:49 their school grade.
1:47:51 And then we want to recognize what supports may be needed if the
1:47:55 school grade decreased.
1:47:57 And looking again at the impact that learning gains may have had
1:48:00 on that.
1:48:01 So if we’re thinking of those that have increased for elementary,
1:48:06 that is Pinewood, Challenger 7, Lockmar, Riviera, Croton.
1:48:11 And I’m very proud to say Creole Elementary, as you know that
1:48:16 they have been working as a school improvement school, had
1:48:18 earned a school grade of D.
1:48:21 And they have moved to school grade of C with these
1:48:23 informational school grades.
1:48:25 Before we move to the schools that have their grade has
1:48:28 decreased, I want to reiterate if they earned a school grade of
1:48:33 D with these being informational in nature, they don’t jump
1:48:38 right into that turnaround status.
1:48:39 I think there’s some misconception when they see a school grade
1:48:43 of D because it’s been a long time since we’ve had informational
1:48:46 school grades before.
1:48:48 So we look at Coquina that dropped to a C.
1:48:52 Fairgland and Saturn both moved to D’s.
1:48:55 And then we have Jupiter and Cape U that moved from B’s to C’s.
1:49:00 When we’re looking at our secondary schools, those schools that
1:49:07 moved from a B to an A,
1:49:08 Kennedy, Jefferson, and Hoover.
1:49:13 And then we had one secondary school moved from a B to a C at
1:49:17 Titusville.
1:49:18 This section below, that’s a special note.
1:49:22 So you saw on the chart that some of our schools have an I.
1:49:25 So Mrs. Francis that works in our testing and accountability,
1:49:29 she’s working directly with these schools.
1:49:32 Typically what they’re gathering data around is percentage of
1:49:36 students tested.
1:49:37 In order to get a school grade, you have to test a certain
1:49:40 percentage.
1:49:41 And sometimes it’s 1% debate here or there.
1:49:44 So we look at that data very closely and then complete the
1:49:47 appeal process.
1:49:52 Now I want to just move to our district.
1:49:55 Again, informational school grade.
1:49:57 So Brevard earned a school grade of B, a high B.
1:50:01 Last year we were also that high B, well within reach of that A.
1:50:04 I do believe that we have the formula to be an A district again.
1:50:08 And we will work very hard so that when we are presenting this
1:50:13 on not informational grades, but real school grades.
1:50:17 I hate to say real school grades, but non informational school
1:50:19 grades, that we’ll be announcing an A district again.
1:50:23 So you will see that we did increase in our overall percentage
1:50:28 points from 61 to 66%.
1:50:31 I wanted to highlight a large driver of that data point was our
1:50:35 increase in our college and career acceleration.
1:50:39 So those are students within a grad cohort that either earned a
1:50:43 score through an accelerated AP or an ACE/IB course or through
1:50:48 dual enrollment or through industry certification.
1:50:51 So those are points that we were able to increase based on an
1:50:54 increase of participation with earning scores in that cell.
1:50:58 So this is actually certainly a highlight for our district.
1:51:02 This is us making sure that our kids are prepared for that next
1:51:05 step after they leave high school.
1:51:07 So not just taking an advanced academic course, but they could
1:51:12 also, you know, demonstrate college and career readiness by
1:51:15 earning an industry certification in a CTE course.
1:51:19 And of course, the goal would be to be 100%.
1:51:21 You know, either kids taking advanced coursework or they’re
1:51:24 earning an industry certification.
1:51:26 So even though we moved from 66 to 73, really can’t rest until
1:51:33 that’s a much higher number.
1:51:36 Now, I want to move to something we talked about earlier in the
1:51:38 school year, because this is not informational.
1:51:41 So remember, we talked about school grade is the state
1:51:44 accountability system.
1:51:45 And then the federal government has an accountability system
1:51:48 that is specific to subgroups.
1:51:49 And we talked about the schools that have different subgroups
1:51:52 that they are not yet meeting the target,
1:51:55 that we are working to support.
1:51:56 So this is not informational that what was released yesterday.
1:52:01 That said, at the end of the school year, in about five or six
1:52:05 months, we’re going to have a whole new list.
1:52:06 And so you could maybe jump on or off the list now and then on
1:52:11 or off the list.
1:52:12 But I thought it was important to go over the improvements that
1:52:15 we’ve made in that area.
1:52:17 So we did have seven schools come off that list.
1:52:21 In full transparency, the chart that came from the state, once
1:52:25 it tells you what subgroups are not meeting the target.
1:52:29 So if a school was, you know, had three subgroups and now they
1:52:33 have a zero, they technically should not be identified as
1:52:37 targeted support, comprehensive support.
1:52:39 I’ve emailed the DOE because I believe there was a typo because
1:52:42 we have seven schools that now have a zero.
1:52:45 So all of their subgroups are meeting the target.
1:52:48 But the column that says, are you on an identified list still
1:52:52 has them on an identified list and they should not be on that.
1:52:55 So I believe it’s a typo, but I want to say that in full
1:52:58 transparency, based on the data we have about their subgroups,
1:53:01 they are off that list.
1:53:03 We did have four schools that were added to that list with subgroups
1:53:09 that are performing below the target.
1:53:12 So if you look on the left side, I didn’t want to say came off
1:53:16 the list or on the list because until they fix that typo on the
1:53:19 chart, that would be inaccurate.
1:53:21 So we’re going to call these schools, their subgroups that were
1:53:25 underperforming have met the target.
1:53:27 And so we want to celebrate those schools because that is very
1:53:31 intentional work in identifying who are the students that make
1:53:34 up that subgroup and how are we best meeting their needs.
1:53:37 The schools on the right side, those are ones that now have one
1:53:41 or more subgroups that are not meeting that state target.
1:53:45 Is there one school that’s missing? The previous slide said
1:53:48 there was four schools.
1:53:50 Four added.
1:53:53 Four added, and that’s only showing me three.
1:53:55 So there’s.
1:53:57 That is because I’m on Cape View.
1:54:02 That is an error.
1:54:04 I will, I’ll find it and I will email all of you.
1:54:06 That is an error.
1:54:07 Will you email us this presentation afterwards?
1:54:08 Absolutely.
1:54:09 I was, I was about to take a picture.
1:54:10 I’m like, no, just email it to us so we have it that way.
1:54:12 And what I will do is I will fix that and have her post it and I’ll
1:54:17 send it to you.
1:54:19 And now we are at questions.
1:54:20 I know that’s not a deep dive, but we wanted to make sure, you
1:54:24 know, there’s a lot of charts that were released yesterday.
1:54:26 And sometimes it’s very hard for our stakeholders when they’re
1:54:29 talking about informational.
1:54:30 They’re just confused on what does that mean?
1:54:32 They know school grade.
1:54:33 I’m glad you took the time to talk about this since this came
1:54:41 out yesterday.
1:54:43 You know, I was quickly going through my spreadsheet and
1:54:45 highlighting schools and things like that.
1:54:46 But this, the difference between, you know, not counting the
1:54:49 learning gains and counting learning gains.
1:54:51 I mean, I just feel like this, isn’t it kind of an accurate
1:54:56 summary of, when you talk about informational grades, this is,
1:55:00 this is how our students come to us.
1:55:02 And we know that, that our schools that have the high numbers of
1:55:06 free and reduced lunch, that that economic disadvantage is one
1:55:08 of the, is probably the number one, you know, has the number one
1:55:14 effect on, you know, prediction of success.
1:55:17 We know those families, you know, those students are coming very
1:55:20 frequently without the support.
1:55:22 And so those schools that provide, that are doing so much
1:55:26 supporting those students to not get those learning gains, to
1:55:30 not show how much work, you know, the student who came in, who’s
1:55:34 in third grade, who started at first grade reading level,
1:55:37 and now they’re reading on grade level, and you don’t get the
1:55:40 benefit of showing that, that work that that staff, the staff
1:55:42 has done.
1:55:43 I mean, it’s, it really is tremendous.
1:55:45 And I’ve already talked to a couple principals that are like, oh,
1:55:47 you know, I can’t wait, learning gains are coming out.
1:55:50 So I’m thankful that you went over this information, because it’s
1:55:54 really important for the public to understand that this, you
1:55:57 know, there, when we get next year, and it’s frustrating that it
1:56:00 took so long.
1:56:00 Yes.
1:56:01 So I, because really, reasonably, next summer by July, we should
1:56:06 have the next round of numbers, and it’s December, right?
1:56:10 Correct.
1:56:11 So, so hopefully, I’m, I’m looking forward, because I know
1:56:14 everybody’s been doing such great work, and we haven’t really
1:56:16 been able to realize it over the last couple years, because last
1:56:20 year we had grades, but the year before we didn’t have grades,
1:56:22 and then it was COVID, and, and now we’re informational, and so
1:56:25 it’s taken so long to get around to seeing how successful we’ve
1:56:28 been post COVID.
1:56:29 And so I, I’m looking forward to July.
1:56:33 Yeah.
1:56:34 And Mrs. Campbell, I just, you know, I second the, our schools
1:56:39 that rely on those learning gains, we want to celebrate those
1:56:42 staffs too, because they worked really hard, and the numbers
1:56:45 presented in the cells that were represented for this year,
1:56:48 based on this process, don’t represent the hard work that they
1:56:52 put in with those learning gains.
1:56:53 Yeah, I agree.
1:56:54 I totally agree.
1:56:55 I think for those little things that didn’t change, like science
1:56:58 and things like that, can we can just like shout, because I was
1:57:00 at a school this morning, and they’re like, we improved our
1:57:02 science scores from this to that, and like, you, woohoo, you
1:57:06 know, but that’s just one part of the formula, so, but I think
1:57:09 every school should find those snippets of success, and, and
1:57:13 shout them from the rooftops, because it’s been a hard couple of
1:57:16 years, and we need to celebrate every victory.
1:57:19 Thank you, Ms. Campbell.
1:57:22 Mr. Trent.
1:57:23 So, same as Mr. Campbell was saying, it’s unfortunate that there’s
1:57:32 so much more to celebrate that we’re not seeing because of the
1:57:37 lack of learning gains component, and because we know there’s so
1:57:40 many schools out there putting in the extra effort, and I mean,
1:57:44 I look forward to when we can get back to the normal, and have
1:57:48 the full grades there, but a lot of good things to take from
1:57:51 here, and thanks for putting this together at the last time.
1:57:51 You know, too, when we started going through that, there’s,
1:57:55 there’s still a lot to celebrate, and the future is bright, so,
1:57:58 it’s looking good, thank you.
1:57:58 Mr. Susan.
1:57:59 I applaud the school district for the hard work that they went
1:58:04 through last year to come to this grade that we have right now.
1:58:09 I think that there was a lot of dedication, and hard work, and
1:58:13 determination getting through some of those things, but one of
1:58:17 the things I did want to say is in the middle of the deregulation
1:58:21 conversation that we’ve had in Tallahassee, I’ve been with a
1:58:25 couple of the state representatives, and I’ve talked to them
1:58:28 that the overall school achievement is more so than just the
1:58:31 grades that we see as far as student achievement.
1:58:34 Now, that is a large component of what we do, but also how we
1:58:38 grade up on workforce development, how the kids are graduating
1:58:42 and going into the industries that they are asserted for, and
1:58:45 all of those things should be part of the conversation moving
1:58:48 forward.
1:58:49 What is the mental health of a faculty, are your teachers, you
1:58:53 know what I mean, like there’s so much more that drives the
1:58:56 achievement levels inside of a district that we don’t, we don’t
1:58:59 look at when we’re looking at student achievement.
1:59:01 They, they come in, they test the kids and everything else, but
1:59:04 there’s a lot more to what we do that doesn’t get graded, and
1:59:07 that’s a lot of our career and technical programs, a lot of our
1:59:10 other things that we do that knock it out of the park that may
1:59:13 not be graded to the point where we can.
1:59:14 Like, yeah, we get the total number of career and technical certs,
1:59:18 but the industry alignment that we have to our county is ten
1:59:21 times what a lot of other counties are.
1:59:23 We have programs that have been developed here that aren’t
1:59:25 developed anywhere else in the country, and that doesn’t show on
1:59:28 any of your achievement levels.
1:59:29 It doesn’t show on some of the other stuff that’s out there, and
1:59:31 my heart goes out to all the teachers and all the staff that
1:59:34 brought us to the grades that we have here, and I have no doubt
1:59:37 in my mind that next year we will be shooting for an A.
1:59:39 And I will party like it’s not going to ever stop when we get
1:59:42 that, so thank you so much.
1:59:44 I appreciate the time. Thank you.
1:59:45 Thank you so much for throwing this together for us very last
1:59:47 minute.
1:59:48 I, one of the things I think that’s very frustrating, and I tell
1:59:50 my daughter this when she goes in to take a test, is that they
1:59:53 look at certain things, but they can’t measure everything.
1:59:56 And so the same is true for any kind of school grade, and so if
1:59:59 anybody’s looking at these in the public and going, oh, that
2:00:02 school doesn’t maybe have the grade that I would like to see out
2:00:04 of a school.
2:00:05 I would just encourage you, go toward the school. If you walk
2:00:07 the school ground, you will see the good that is happening
2:00:10 inside of those walls.
2:00:11 There’s no way to deny that. So for all the things they measure,
2:00:15 wonderful, that’s great, but there’s a million other things that
2:00:17 can’t be measured that are still wonderfully happening inside
2:00:21 the walls of these buildings.
2:00:22 So, good work. Thank you for putting it together. I’m looking
2:00:25 forward to cheering and celebrating and having, you know, that
2:00:27 wonderful, we got an A, yay!
2:00:29 I can’t wait for that to come forward, so, but thank you so much.
2:00:32 All right, we’re going to move on, which is also you, Ms. Harris,
2:00:34 since you’re right there, we don’t even need to recess. Look at
2:00:36 that.
2:00:37 To the next topic on the agenda, which is the presentation of
2:00:40 the Social Studies Instructional Materials Adoption Process
2:00:43 Review. That’s a mouthful.
2:00:44 All right. So, I am going to, I just feel the need to recognize
2:00:49 a whole lot of people in the back row, because our goal,
2:00:52 each year is to gain more community involvement, because we know
2:00:56 instructional materials are a hot topic, but it’s important.
2:00:59 And there’s a whole lot of research behind getting the right
2:01:02 instructional materials and the right teachers, and the sky is
2:01:06 the limit for our students.
2:01:07 And it takes a lot of members. So, I just want to recognize both
2:01:10 of our social studies content specialists. So, we have
2:01:13 elementary is Christina, Ms. Jolly is secondary.
2:01:16 Janet Stevenson, you know her as school improvement, but she has
2:01:19 a part-time job that is our instructional materials manager.
2:01:22 So, as far as all that legislation around that, under the
2:01:25 leadership of both Dr. Smith and Ms. Vega. So, it’s a whole team
2:01:29 that is going to share with you all the highlights.
2:01:33 Wonderful. Thank you.
2:01:38 Okay. So, like Ms. Harris said, I’m going to present the
2:01:42 instructional materials adoption process that we are currently
2:01:46 going through with social studies.
2:01:48 And Tara did a great job of introducing all of the people that
2:01:52 are on the district team, as you see up here, and the names she
2:01:57 just told you all about.
2:02:02 And the district adoption process, let’s talk about that for a
2:02:06 minute.
2:02:07 So, first of all, the district team, which Ms. Harris alluded to,
2:02:13 we first developed a BPS vision for social studies instruction.
2:02:17 What is it going to look like?
2:02:19 The task was next to develop the adoption timeline.
2:02:23 Then this tool that was used by all people who reviewed the
2:02:27 material, we call it the IMET, which stands for Instructional
2:02:33 Materials Evaluation Tool.
2:02:35 A course call for all publishers to submit their digital
2:02:39 presentation of materials.
2:02:41 So, in other words, any publisher is allowed to put forth their
2:02:47 materials for us to review.
2:02:50 We did look at materials that were on the state adopted list.
2:02:55 Elementary, K-5, there were actually five publishers who
2:02:59 submitted materials.
2:03:00 Grade 6, there was five publishers.
2:03:03 Three of them were the same.
2:03:05 Two were different in the K-5 and then just the 6.
2:03:08 And then in 7-12 we had 11 publishers to cover all of those
2:03:15 secondary courses.
2:03:17 Next, teachers, parents, and community members applied to be
2:03:21 able to be on the district review committee itself.
2:03:26 We were able to train the teachers, parents, and community
2:03:31 members to serve on this instructional review team.
2:03:35 If you didn’t or weren’t able to commit to the district review
2:03:39 team, there was an option for stakeholders to provide input on
2:03:44 all the submitted materials.
2:03:46 One way was digitally via links and then they were able to
2:03:53 submit the survey.
2:03:56 I’m going to slow down.
2:03:57 I’m trying to get fast for you.
2:03:59 A second one was in person.
2:04:01 We had three different sites where the team and I lugged books
2:04:06 to Kyler Park in the north.
2:04:08 The central area was right here at ESF.
2:04:11 And the south was central middle school where community members,
2:04:15 teachers, parents, staff could come and actually hold the books,
2:04:20 look through them, and complete the survey.
2:04:22 And there was also opportunities for community members to
2:04:28 participate by actually sitting in on the review team’s meetings
2:04:34 to observe.
2:04:35 They weren’t participants, but they were able to observe.
2:04:38 So that purpose of that review team, they first of all needed to
2:04:42 understand the requirements of the sunshine laws.
2:04:45 They build a shared vision for the high quality instructional
2:04:50 materials.
2:04:51 And also we were able to develop a clear understanding of what
2:04:56 the IMET was and what their responsibility was to complete this
2:05:00 survey.
2:05:01 We kicked it off in September of 2023, right here in the boardroom.
2:05:08 It was highlighted in Dr. Rendell’s publication, his monthly
2:05:14 publication of celebrating of good things.
2:05:16 So we had a great turnout of all of our district team members.
2:05:20 And that was their first night where they actually received some
2:05:25 homework to get ready for our first in-person meeting.
2:05:30 We do have the stakeholder engagement opportunities posted on
2:05:35 the instructional materials website.
2:05:38 And that’s the one I just went over where we had those three
2:05:41 places, Kyler, ESF, and Central.
2:05:45 We do have a complete calendar of events that I will click on in
2:05:51 just a minute.
2:05:53 Tonight’s recommendation will happen to at the board meeting.
2:06:00 At the public hearing is scheduled for January 23rd, 2024.
2:06:07 The school board meeting to hear public comment will be prior to
2:06:11 consideration for adoption.
2:06:13 Now the public will have access to student additions for 20 days
2:06:18 prior to your approval so that they will be able to give input
2:06:22 at the January meeting.
2:06:24 And then on the January 23rd meeting, the approval and
2:06:28 recommendation by you could potentially happen.
2:06:33 If approved student additions of the instructional materials
2:06:37 must remain digitally available for people to review for 30 days
2:06:44 until February 22nd, 2024.
2:06:49 So I just wanted to give you a quick look at the calendar events
2:06:55 on the instructional materials website.
2:06:59 This was also posted blasted out by government and community
2:07:04 relations as well as posted in a newspaper.
2:07:08 So any questions on the process?
2:07:16 Okay.
2:07:17 Thank you very much.
2:07:18 Thank you to the team.
2:07:20 We almost got out of there with no questions.
2:07:23 So I looked through some of the links that you guys have
2:07:26 provided and I tried to jump on some of the links to the student
2:07:30 additions.
2:07:31 And it said, put in your email to, you know what I mean, sign up
2:07:35 and get into it.
2:07:36 And I put in my email and it said, you’re not a teacher.
2:07:38 You can’t get access.
2:07:39 So just so you know.
2:07:40 That was on purpose.
2:07:41 No, I’m just kidding.
2:07:42 I’m just kidding.
2:07:44 Just so you know.
2:07:45 I don’t know.
2:07:46 Was that in the web?
2:07:47 Was that in the PowerPoint?
2:07:48 It was one of the forms.
2:07:49 Or it was on the live link?
2:07:50 It’s the TCI High School Student Studies Student Edition Access.
2:07:54 Click here if you want one.
2:07:56 And then you go into it.
2:07:57 It’s just, there’s a link.
2:07:58 There’s a form.
2:07:59 With the high school?
2:08:00 Yes.
2:08:01 Okay.
2:08:02 Jen, we’ll look into that and see.
2:08:03 It’s not a big deal.
2:08:04 I was just trying to reveal.
2:08:05 We want to make sure that it’s accessible.
2:08:07 When I was a teacher, I looked at multiple editions from
2:08:10 previous because once in a while you see them laying around and
2:08:13 I pulled them all.
2:08:14 And I laid them out for like about a 10 or 15 year period.
2:08:17 There was three editions.
2:08:18 And what I found was, is that the only change, there was barely
2:08:22 any change throughout.
2:08:24 And we spend this exorbitant amount of money in the social
2:08:28 studies area for the content remains the same.
2:08:31 It just so happens to be the engagement of how to engage with
2:08:34 the children inside the textbooks changes.
2:08:37 You know what I mean?
2:08:38 Sure.
2:08:39 But I was looking at the one for American history because that’s
2:08:41 the one I taught.
2:08:42 I kind of swarmed my way online and was able to find out some of
2:08:45 them.
2:08:45 It’s like 788 pages.
2:08:48 You know what I mean?
2:08:49 So to be able to teach 788 pages on a, you know what I mean, in
2:08:54 this time period that we have is really tight.
2:08:56 It is.
2:08:57 So I applaud you.
2:08:58 I applaud everybody else.
2:08:59 And I thank you.
2:09:00 I just want to point out that one.
2:09:01 The team, the community was amazing.
2:09:03 Our teachers, our staff, the community members, our parents.
2:09:06 They were so engaged, so excited to be there night after night
2:09:10 after night.
2:09:11 And it was just…
2:09:13 Sounded like a couple nights, huh?
2:09:15 Yeah.
2:09:16 It was more than a couple.
2:09:18 Did you have refreshments or anything?
2:09:19 Yeah, I was going to say.
2:09:20 And why was everybody so excited?
2:09:21 Yeah, I was going to say.
2:09:22 I don’t know.
2:09:23 Because they were able to spend time with my amazing team and we
2:09:27 just had fun.
2:09:28 You get a bunch of teachers outside the work day and looking at
2:09:32 books and instructional materials and get to fill out a survey.
2:09:36 It was good times.
2:09:38 Seriously, they had fun.
2:09:39 Good.
2:09:40 I do want to mention that one of the reasons we had them present
2:09:44 this information is a lot
2:09:46 of times there’s questions about how do we select these
2:09:49 materials.
2:09:50 Right.
2:09:51 And we have this whole process that we just outlined and the
2:09:54 community is involved.
2:09:56 You know, that’s the thing that everybody that criticizes a lot
2:09:59 of times doesn’t understand
2:10:01 that, you know, the community was involved in the selection of
2:10:02 these materials.
2:10:03 Yeah.
2:10:04 And, you know, we do our best to select the best materials
2:10:07 possible and we bring the stakeholders
2:10:09 in.
2:10:10 So, and it doesn’t mean, you know, there still might be some
2:10:13 things that people don’t agree
2:10:14 with in there, but, you know, this has been an effort with the
2:10:17 community.
2:10:18 They’re involved.
2:10:19 Yes.
2:10:20 Thank you.
2:10:22 Okay.
2:10:23 All right.
2:10:24 I see Mr. Raymer and Ms. McNutt in the back standing up.
2:10:25 So they’re ready to go.
2:10:26 All right.
2:10:27 The next item that we have on our agenda is the presentation on
2:10:30 the proposed naming of mid-county
2:10:33 schools.
2:10:34 So.
2:10:35 Mid-county middle school.
2:10:37 Needs a name.
2:10:38 Needs a school.
2:10:39 Yep.
2:10:40 I don’t know about that.
2:10:45 I don’t, I don’t know how high that ranked on the poll.
2:10:48 So we’ll see.
2:10:49 All right.
2:10:51 Good afternoon.
2:10:52 Hello.
2:10:53 I have Ms. Kathy McNutt with me principal of current mid-county
2:11:04 middle school.
2:11:05 And we are going to present to you the naming process that was
2:11:10 followed, which is based on
2:11:12 policy 7250 for naming of a new school.
2:11:15 So what we are going to do at this time is Ms. McNutt is going
2:11:19 to present to you the timeline.
2:11:20 She’s going to present to you the process that was followed.
2:11:22 And the committees that were convened for the naming of the
2:11:26 school.
2:11:27 And then we will take a seat and answer any questions or any
2:11:30 further conversation.
2:11:31 So I’m going to turn it over to principal of current mid-county
2:11:34 middle school, but hopefully
2:11:35 to have a name later tonight, Ms. Kathy McNutt.
2:11:42 Thank you, Mr. Ramer.
2:11:43 Good afternoon board members, Dr. Rendell.
2:11:45 I am excited to review the process that we’ve undergone to
2:11:49 propose a name for the new middle
2:11:52 school.
2:11:53 So thank you for taking some time today to review the feedback
2:11:56 that we’ve gathered.
2:11:57 I am certain that everyone will be in favor of changing the mid-county
2:12:02 name.
2:12:03 Yes.
2:12:04 So as you can see from our timeline, we started the process by
2:12:09 kicking off a community meeting
2:12:11 on August 29th.
2:12:13 Mr. Seusson was in attendance and we invited all of our zoned
2:12:18 families to our community meeting
2:12:20 if they are zoned within the school boundary through a postcard
2:12:24 that was mailed directly
2:12:25 to their home.
2:12:27 We posted the invite on our school webpage.
2:12:31 Government and community relations helped to relay that message
2:12:34 and that invite as well
2:12:35 as all of our feeder elementary and high schools.
2:12:40 From there, at the end of that community meeting, I was able to
2:12:45 share a QR code with families
2:12:46 who were in attendance.
2:12:48 Of course, it happened to be the evening before school was
2:12:51 canceled due to the hurricane.
2:12:53 But at that time, the families were able to access a QR code and
2:12:58 to start providing feedback
2:13:00 on the name of the school, the mascot, as well as programs that
2:13:04 they would like to see in the middle school.
2:13:07 And from that community feedback, we had nearly 300 responses.
2:13:15 You can see there how people identified who completed our survey.
2:13:20 It was a Google form that was available for one month.
2:13:24 And again, it was shared through a number of avenues so that we
2:13:27 could get as much community input as possible.
2:13:30 Our responses are broken down there by school.
2:13:34 Vieira Elementary School and Manatee Elementary School had a
2:13:36 very high number of responses.
2:13:39 And we did see that a lot of those families were in attendance
2:13:41 for the community meeting that evening.
2:13:45 Our responses on the Google form really highlighted three
2:13:49 recurring themes.
2:13:50 And those themes were location, space, and people.
2:13:54 And I think that it’s important that we see those themes coming
2:13:58 up so often
2:13:59 because that really drove some of the conversation that we had
2:14:02 with the naming committee.
2:14:05 So I don’t have any students who are registered at the new
2:14:11 middle school at this time.
2:14:14 So we went through our zoned students and I reached out to our
2:14:19 elementary, our sixth grade principals,
2:14:23 as well as our seventh grade principals for the feeder schools
2:14:27 to ask for recommendations of parents and students
2:14:32 who are highly involved in their school to be a part of our
2:14:36 school’s naming committee.
2:14:38 And so the schools went primarily through their SAC committees,
2:14:42 asking for volunteers as well as PTO and student government.
2:14:46 And we were able to establish a naming committee that consisted
2:14:51 of 13 zoned students and parents,
2:14:53 as well as myself and my school secretary, Patty McCormick.
2:14:57 As you can see, the names that were presented to the naming
2:15:02 committee were broken into those three categories.
2:15:06 But that was really more of just an organizational structure.
2:15:10 When we discussed the name options, those categories did not
2:15:15 limit the final six that we came up with at the end of our
2:15:20 naming committee.
2:15:22 So the committee could select all the names from location, for
2:15:26 example.
2:15:27 They didn’t have to select just one or two names from each of
2:15:30 those three categories.
2:15:32 The bolded names that you see there, Vieira Middle School, Artemis
2:15:36 Middle School, and Moore Middle School,
2:15:38 came up most often in the community feedback.
2:15:42 So those were repeat recommendations from our community input.
2:15:52 Our naming committee, I just have to say a thank you to the
2:15:55 students and parents who were on that committee.
2:15:58 I was wowed by the thoughtful discussion from some of our kiddos
2:16:02 on that committee.
2:16:04 And an example would be Infinitus Middle School, which is under
2:16:09 our space category.
2:16:11 It was a recommendation in the community input, which is Latin
2:16:15 for boundless or endless.
2:16:17 And to hear my sixth grader Ben from Century Elementary present
2:16:22 his reasoning for why he believed that should be the name of the
2:16:25 middle school, convinced the whole committee that needs to stay
2:16:28 on there as an option.
2:16:29 So from there, the committee discussed how it would be presented
2:16:34 to our future students of the new middle school.
2:16:38 And that’s a little bit tricky because I didn’t have students
2:16:42 associated with me through focus to be able to communicate with
2:16:47 them.
2:16:47 And the committee definitely believed that whatever the name
2:16:51 selections that we came up with, that there needed to be an
2:16:54 explanation as to why that name was chosen.
2:16:57 So on the original Google form, community members had to say
2:17:02 what their recommendation was for a name and provide a reasoning.
2:17:06 And the committee felt very strongly that that explanation
2:17:10 needed to be included when we shared the options that they had
2:17:13 selected with our future students.
2:17:16 And so there were six names that were listed for our future
2:17:23 students to choose from.
2:17:26 And I have to give a shout out to Gina Clark in Educational
2:17:29 Technology for brainstorming a way for me to communicate this
2:17:33 out to our students.
2:17:34 And we received 329 responses from sixth graders.
2:17:40 The reason why we focused on sixth graders as opposed to seventh
2:17:44 graders who are zoned for the school was because it was very
2:17:47 difficult to determine which seventh grade students would remain
2:17:52 at their middle school versus coming to the new middle school.
2:17:55 There was no way to differentiate that.
2:17:57 So we focused on our sixth grade.
2:17:58 So we focused on our sixth grade feeders and the top three
2:18:01 schools that were selected were Vieira Middle School, Artemis
2:18:06 Middle School, and Infinitus Middle School.
2:18:12 And so now Mr. Ramer and I will be available for any questions
2:18:21 that you have.
2:18:24 It sounds like the students are clear.
2:18:28 My only, it was fun to look through the responses on the Excel
2:18:32 spreadsheet.
2:18:33 And I’m just wondering if when it comes time for the mascot, if
2:18:37 you can incorporate some of these suggestions.
2:18:38 But one of my favorite I have to say is the Velociraptors.
2:18:41 And I think the Vieira Velociraptors would be an excellent
2:18:44 mascot and we don’t have a Velociraptor yet.
2:18:47 So, and you get the V and the V. So I’m just throwing that out
2:18:50 there.
2:18:51 I know we don’t get to vote on the mascot, but I’m just going to
2:18:54 toss out my input.
2:18:55 So, but thank you for walking through this process so transparently
2:18:58 with our community and getting everyone involved.
2:19:00 I think that’s good.
2:19:01 Thank you, Ms. Campbell.
2:19:03 Ms. Jenkins, do you have anything?
2:19:05 Any questions?
2:19:07 No.
2:19:08 I obviously appreciate the extent of community input that we had
2:19:13 to obtain.
2:19:14 It, it did make me laugh though, what ended up as number one.
2:19:19 You know, as long as the community is going to be happy with it,
2:19:24 I, I think it’s, I think it’s going to be great.
2:19:26 I think it would be nice for you to finally have a name to put
2:19:29 to this school.
2:19:30 So you can kind of start getting going and looking forward to
2:19:33 other things going forward.
2:19:35 Thank you.
2:19:36 Mr. Susan.
2:19:37 So I, I had a lot of conversations with the families and staff
2:19:40 and what was interesting with the Viera high school staff and Viera
2:19:46 middle or elementary is that they get each other’s mail all the
2:19:49 time because like it’s Viera this, Viera that.
2:19:51 So they end up with it and they’re like, Oh, just whatever you
2:19:53 do, don’t name it Viera middle school.
2:19:55 I was like, okay, I’ll take that.
2:19:56 And then we, we end up with it.
2:19:57 Right.
2:19:58 So they can deal with a little bit of mail.
2:19:59 But I think this is good.
2:20:01 Um, question I had, and it’s coming up as I visit schools, talk
2:20:04 to people, stuff like that is, how are we, how far along are we
2:20:08 for the planning of the faculty and all of those questions?
2:20:13 Right.
2:20:14 Like, so I got hit when I was at Kennedy, I got hit when I was
2:20:16 over at Delora and they’re asking questions.
2:20:19 Is there a scope and plan like going forward?
2:20:22 Like what, what is that real quick?
2:20:24 Like, yeah.
2:20:25 So we’re staffing the school, there’s a procedure we’ll go
2:20:27 through.
2:20:27 It’s in contract, you know, cause to fill this school, we’re
2:20:30 going to be drawing students from existing schools.
2:20:33 Yep.
2:20:34 So with students comes FTE.
2:20:36 So the schools that we’ll be drawing from will be losing FTE.
2:20:40 So staff at those schools will get the first opportunity to
2:20:44 apply for vacancies that said middle school.
2:20:47 And, uh, there’s a whole process.
2:20:49 We were actually reviewing it the other day.
2:20:51 So when we get back from winter break, we’ll start pushing that
2:20:54 information out.
2:20:55 So the staff at the two or three schools that are going to be
2:20:59 affected by losing enrollment will be the first opera, you know,
2:21:03 they’ll have the first opportunity to apply for jobs that are
2:21:06 advertised at said middle school.
2:21:08 And I think the anomaly that you face is that seventh grade
2:21:11 turning to eighth grade, how many of the kids are going to stay,
2:21:13 come back, it’s kind of up there.
2:21:15 So if there’s anything I can do to help facilitate, you know
2:21:18 what I mean, getting a heart, you know what I mean, a beat of
2:21:20 what’s going on out there.
2:21:22 I think we’re going to see a considerable amount of people
2:21:24 coming, but they are some people that love their schools.
2:21:26 So I think it’ll be 50% of what we think, um, for the fill rate
2:21:29 on the eighth seventh grade.
2:21:31 Yeah. So middle school is a transition year and here in Gavard,
2:21:34 it’s a two year transition.
2:21:35 Yep.
2:21:36 So if you just transition to Delora this year, you may not want
2:21:40 to transition to another school just for a one year.
2:21:43 You may stay at Delora or Kennedy or McNair or, you know, so
2:21:47 that’s why the sixth grade question is a little bit more
2:21:51 important.
2:21:51 Uncertain.
2:21:52 Absolutely.
2:21:53 Yeah.
2:21:54 Thank you.
2:21:55 I just wanted to ask that question.
2:21:56 Thank you.
2:21:57 Mr. Trent.
2:21:58 No, I’m good.
2:21:59 Good job guys.
2:22:00 Yes.
2:22:01 No, I’m excited.
2:22:02 I, uh, the community has spoke obviously they’re very vocal
2:22:04 about what they would like their school to be named.
2:22:05 So it’s very exciting.
2:22:07 It was, it’s cool to see this thing going up.
2:22:09 It is changing every day when you go by there.
2:22:11 I’m like, man, it’s gonna, it’s gonna be here before we know it.
2:22:13 So thank you for the work you’ve done.
2:22:15 We appreciate you.
2:22:16 We’re looking forward to, to the ribbon cutting and that, that
2:22:19 building opening up.
2:22:20 So thank you all.
2:22:22 Yes.
2:22:23 Thank you.
2:22:24 All right.
2:22:25 Um, I added a couple of topics that are on here and I, these are
2:22:28 going to be quick discussions.
2:22:29 I don’t think that they’ll, they’ll be too much.
2:22:31 So we’re going to kind of move through them, which was the
2:22:33 discussion of the offsite.
2:22:34 Last year we had an offsite where we kind of vision cast where
2:22:38 we want to go in the next year.
2:22:40 Some of the goals that board members had, I think it was very
2:22:43 beneficial for our board to kind of use as a guiding principle.
2:22:45 Um, and I think that I would like to entertain us doing another
2:22:49 offsite in January.
2:22:51 So I wanted to bring this up as a discussion, check everyone’s
2:22:56 calendars to see if January 9th would work for everyone.
2:23:00 And then we’ll get to working on planning from there.
2:23:04 I’m good.
2:23:07 Okay.
2:23:08 You’re good.
2:23:09 Okay.
2:23:10 All right.
2:23:11 So that’s easy.
2:23:12 Uh, the other, the other topic that I wanted to bring up was, um,
2:23:15 you know, having the work sessions prior to the board meetings
2:23:18 sometimes can pose as a challenge based on how much is on that
2:23:21 work session.
2:23:22 And then it also doesn’t always give us adequate time to digest
2:23:25 everything that’s been brought before us before we go into a
2:23:27 board meeting and sometimes are voting on those same exact
2:23:29 things that evening.
2:23:30 Uh, and so if you’re anything like me, I like to read and look
2:23:33 into and investigate and kind of see.
2:23:35 Um, so I, I wanted to propose this idea to the board and see if
2:23:38 this is something that everyone’s calendar would entertain and
2:23:42 that we could possibly look at doing in an effort to allow us
2:23:45 enough time to really know what we are, what we’re going into
2:23:49 the next meeting.
2:23:50 Um, so I was wondering would the board entertain the idea of
2:23:54 possibly looking at holding our work session dates on the
2:23:57 Thursday morning at 9:00 AM prior to the board meeting that
2:24:01 would follow that Tuesday.
2:24:03 Um, and you’re saying we would come in at 9:00 AM and oh, 9:30
2:24:08 AM.
2:24:20 Yeah, so it would consist of two Thursdays a month,
2:24:23 and it would be the Thursday prior to the board meeting
2:24:26 that would follow that following Tuesday.
2:24:28 And you’re saying we would come in at 9 o’clock?
2:24:30 Oh, 9.30.
2:24:32 9?
2:24:32 9.30, 9.8.
2:24:34 9 o’clock, yes, to go through.
2:24:37 And we can go until 5?
2:24:38 It’s a work session.
2:24:40 Well, I’m just saying.
2:24:41 In theory, we wouldn’t go until 5.
2:24:43 It would, I mean, right now we’re wrapping up work sessions in
2:24:47 two and a half hours.
2:24:48 It just would give us more time as a board to really be able to
2:24:51 take back the materials, read it.
2:24:53 If we had any questions, we could ask questions about it.
2:24:55 A lot of times when the presentations are given to us before,
2:24:57 today was not that case,
2:24:59 but sometimes it, you know, we have more questions once a
2:25:02 presentation is given.
2:25:03 And so if we’re voting on that, that evening, it doesn’t really
2:25:06 give us adequate time
2:25:07 to read through everything and then ask our questions, get them
2:25:09 answered before we make a vote that evening.
2:25:11 And then if we have to throw an executive session in there or a
2:25:14 security meeting or things like that,
2:25:16 then it really gets tricky.
2:25:17 So I was just thinking in an effort to free up some of our time
2:25:22 and having adequate time to research, it would be a good idea.
2:25:24 And what I would say to that is, is that I’m in favor of it
2:25:27 because there’s a lot of what you just said, that there’s other
2:25:30 meetings that go on.
2:25:31 There’s things that we need to do.
2:25:32 What I would say is if we move to that, that everybody kind of
2:25:35 puts to their calendar
2:25:36 and just blocks those days just in the event that you have some
2:25:39 of those other things that are needed.
2:25:41 I like the idea because it gives us more flexibility to where we’re
2:25:44 not running up on a deadline date of,
2:25:46 hey, we’ve got to get to 430.
2:25:47 I always wanted to start a little bit early.
2:25:49 So I love the idea.
2:25:50 But that does mean that we will not come to a board meeting or a
2:25:54 workshop on the workdays of the Tuesdays, right?
2:25:58 Correct.
2:25:59 And we can move those.
2:26:00 We would have the workshop the Thursday prior to.
2:26:01 And we can move those to the 10 o’clock if we needed to a couple
2:26:04 of times
2:26:05 without any kind of conflicts and stuff like that like we did.
2:26:07 Ideally, we’d cut it for 9 a.m.
2:26:09 If we could, I think that’s the Thursday prior to.
2:26:12 Sounds good.
2:26:13 That would be what I’d propose.
2:26:14 So you’re in favor, Mr. Susan.
2:26:15 I have a different proposition.
2:26:17 Okay.
2:26:18 I mean, I prefer to keep it the way it is.
2:26:21 But if not, then I would prefer it to be on the off Tuesdays.
2:26:24 It’s easier for me to plan when I know.
2:26:27 Like anytime someone asks me for anything, I go, please just
2:26:30 avoid a Tuesday.
2:26:30 Okay.
2:26:31 So I don’t want to mess up.
2:26:31 Because the meeting days will sometimes change.
2:26:33 For me, it would just be a lot easier for me mentally and
2:26:37 planning-wise to say,
2:26:38 my Tuesdays are off the books, which is what I do now.
2:26:40 Yeah.
2:26:42 It’s just easier for me.
2:26:43 Yeah.
2:26:43 I’m coming in the same boat for right now.
2:26:45 I’m not opposed to changing it maybe in the future.
2:26:48 But as for right now, I’ve built my whole life around the
2:26:51 calendar the way we had it.
2:26:54 And so I would have to literally go through the next four or
2:26:57 five months
2:26:58 and look at Thursdays and shift a bunch of things.
2:27:00 So I’m not saying it’s impossible.
2:27:02 But I’d prefer, I do, I’ll actually like the off Tuesday idea.
2:27:06 And I don’t know, that would be meeting staff getting something
2:27:09 ready a whole week in advance
2:27:11 rather than five days in advance.
2:27:12 But, you know, if that’s, you know, and I hear what you’re
2:27:17 saying.
2:27:18 Sometimes the workshops are 45 minutes to an hour and sometimes
2:27:22 they’re loaded.
2:27:23 And sometimes we’ve moved them back and started at one.
2:27:25 Well, I mean, listen, I’m thinking of a five-year plan.
2:27:28 But they’re not always super long.
2:27:29 And there’s been times, like even one of the most recent ones we
2:27:32 had,
2:27:32 we were done in like an hour, an hour and a half.
2:27:34 And then we had a big, big break.
2:27:36 So, you know, it just depends.
2:27:38 I would at least like for now to either leave it the way it is
2:27:41 or potentially look at some kind of do it the Tuesday on the off
2:27:46 week times.
2:27:47 Just because I do kind of have my, I have, I can already tell
2:27:51 you right now, I’m going to have some Thursday issues.
2:27:56 Maybe not as many as I thought.
2:27:58 I mean, I just need to take a look.
2:27:59 So I can’t give you a full yes today.
2:28:01 Okay.
2:28:02 But I’d rather commit.
2:28:03 But if it was a Tuesday, you could commit to doing it Tuesday.
2:28:05 But I will tell you, I don’t have another job.
2:28:07 And I know that Ms. Jenkins does have another job.
2:28:10 And Mr. Susan has another job.
2:28:12 And I think Mr. Trent has another job.
2:28:14 He’s a flexible job, but right?
2:28:15 Yeah.
2:28:15 So, you know, I think we’d need to just take a look at it and
2:28:19 see what it might look like.
2:28:21 And I mean, I could give you a more firm yes the next time we
2:28:24 look at it.
2:28:26 The other thing, too, is like, I mean, this isn’t often, but,
2:28:29 you know, when we have those Thursday mandatory meetings, too,
2:28:32 if it’s just out of Tuesday, then it kind of avoids that boopsie
2:28:35 conflict.
2:28:36 I think that happens once a year.
2:28:37 I just like it because we’ve been a lot longer.
2:28:39 Mr. Trent, do you want to chime in on this one?
2:28:41 Not really.
2:28:42 Oh, nothing.
2:28:43 You got nothing.
2:28:44 Well, so what I could do is put together a couple of tentative
2:28:47 calendars to, you know, send out to you guys.
2:28:50 And then when you come back in January, on the 9th, you could
2:28:54 even discuss it.
2:28:56 On the off-site, we think.
2:28:57 At the off-site.
2:28:57 Yeah.
2:28:58 You know, because when you see how it lines up, you might go,
2:29:00 actually, I don’t like that.
2:29:02 You know, because right now we’re going first Tuesday of the
2:29:05 month is a business meeting at 530.
2:29:08 Right.
2:29:08 And the second, first meeting of the month is 530.
2:29:12 And then the second meeting of the month is 930 Tuesday morning.
2:29:15 Right.
2:29:16 So.
2:29:17 It’s very consistent.
2:29:18 Every Tuesday, you’re going to be coming here.
2:29:20 Yeah.
2:29:21 For something.
2:29:22 And I guess, I mean, I’m not opposed to doing it on a Tuesday.
2:29:25 I just didn’t know would that be enough time for staff to
2:29:27 prepare the presentations that they need to give forward.
2:29:29 I, my whole gist here is just really trying to get away from the
2:29:32 workshop falling on the exact same day that we have the board
2:29:35 meeting.
2:29:35 And a lot of times us voting on those things.
2:29:39 Yeah, but I also think that’s something for me to work on to
2:29:42 make sure that we’re not presenting material to you at a
2:29:44 workshop that we’re asking you to vote on that night.
2:29:47 Like we have, I think, two items today that we discussed today
2:29:50 that we’re voting on tonight.
2:29:51 One board meeting this week, this month.
2:29:54 So that’s part of the issue, you know, so yeah, yeah, I know,
2:29:57 you know, if we can commit to getting you the information in a
2:30:00 workshop that you’re not voting on that week, you’re voting on
2:30:03 it at the next meeting, you might even have more.
2:30:06 You’d have two weeks to review it.
2:30:09 I think Paul probably needs to weigh in on, in the process, not
2:30:12 necessarily today, but if you have it on the top of your head,
2:30:16 on the, like the policy revision, public notice, the way, like
2:30:19 the number of days has to be noticed beforehand.
2:30:22 And how much would that affect, because then those Thursdays
2:30:25 would become a public hearing, we’d have to kind of see how that
2:30:29 works.
2:30:29 Right now, we don’t have any scheduled other than our special
2:30:32 set, which should not be affected by any of these changes, so we’re
2:30:35 good.
2:30:35 Can I also ask that we, ask Dr. Rendell to just like ask the
2:30:39 staff to, like to me, like it’s easier for me to say Tuesdays
2:30:42 are Tuesdays, like that’s meeting day.
2:30:45 And they may feel the same way or they may not, they may be like,
2:30:47 oh, we prefer the Thursday before or whatever.
2:30:50 Right, okay, yeah, if you don’t mind just laying in.
2:30:52 Yeah, overall goal, I think it sounds like everyone’s okay with
2:30:55 us moving away from having a workshop on a different day.
2:30:57 It sounds like majority are preferring, well, Tuesdays are
2:31:00 preference for Ms. Jenkins, Ms. Campbell.
2:31:03 Right, but maybe doing an alternating workshop, not the same day
2:31:08 as business meeting.
2:31:09 Right, right, and building a few days in between.
2:31:12 That’s really what I’m looking for so that I can have time to
2:31:15 really go through whatever it is that we’re voting on that
2:31:18 subject.
2:31:18 So I would appreciate that.
2:31:21 The other discussion topic that I have on here is slightly
2:31:24 changing the board meeting format.
2:31:26 And I, let me tell you why.
2:31:29 Ms. Ray, before you get into that, can I, I just thought of
2:31:30 something too.
2:31:31 Just for, so I get what you’re saying about having time to ask
2:31:35 your questions.
2:31:37 But if we do do it on a Tuesday, it does technically give the
2:31:40 staff more time to answer us too.
2:31:42 Because if we do it on Thursday, then they’re going to have to
2:31:44 work over the week.
2:31:44 Right.
2:31:45 And we know they’re going to.
2:31:45 Right.
2:31:46 Because they’re not going to let us and not have an answer.
2:31:47 Yeah.
2:31:48 So just consider that.
2:31:49 Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I didn’t want to go
2:31:50 backwards.
2:31:50 No, no worries.
2:31:51 No worries.
2:31:53 Good point.
2:31:53 So the other, the last thing that I was saying was I, you know,
2:31:56 attended the FSBA chairmanship academy, I suppose is what it’s
2:32:00 called.
2:32:00 And so it was very informative.
2:32:02 I got to hear from multiple districts around the state on, on
2:32:05 how they run their board meetings and some of the hurdles they’re
2:32:08 having.
2:32:08 A lot of the stuff is, is similar to what we’re having.
2:32:10 And, um, you know, one of the things that kind of stuck out to
2:32:14 me when I was looking at multiple different districts is that a
2:32:17 lot of them have their parliamentarian, AKA Mr. Gibbs, in our
2:32:21 case, uh, announce the public speakers and control the clock.
2:32:25 And I think this would be a wise idea for Brevard to look at
2:32:28 doing.
2:32:28 And so, you know, we had this discussion, Mr. Gibbs, you still,
2:32:31 I’m like, is he, is he okay down there?
2:32:33 You’re still comfortable with doing this?
2:32:35 Yeah, I know.
2:32:36 I’m like, yeah, that’s a valid question.
2:32:40 Can you start tonight?
2:32:41 Are we set up for tonight?
2:32:43 Uh, yes, with the exception of the clock.
2:32:45 So I’m still going to have to do the clock tonight just because
2:32:47 the, the cord didn’t come in time in order to move it down.
2:32:49 It will eliminate anybody having, I know, having the, um, the
2:32:53 idea that there’s any bias that I allowed somebody to go over
2:32:57 and speak that it, you know, so it just kind of wipes us like
2:33:00 clean with that.
2:33:01 So I changed the script slightly just to make it my own because
2:33:04 I, I don’t, you know, reading it, sometimes you feel like, okay,
2:33:07 this is not my words.
2:33:08 This is somebody else’s words that typed it.
2:33:09 Um, so just, but for the most part, uh, that was the main thing
2:33:13 was having Mr. Gibbs.
2:33:15 That’s the biggest thing that everyone’s going to go.
2:33:16 Oh my goodness.
2:33:17 This is, you know, what is this?
2:33:18 This is different.
2:33:18 Uh, the other thing I did have is I had the rules posted at the
2:33:21 podium for the speakers just so that they can be reminded again
2:33:24 of what is expected of the speakers.
2:33:26 So, um, we want to try to make sure that our, our meetings are
2:33:30 business meetings.
2:33:31 So that is really what it should be kept as.
2:33:34 And so I’m hoping that if we make these couple small changes
2:33:37 that we might see that this pays dividends and that they’re run
2:33:40 a little more efficiently, uh, and, and that our public will
2:33:43 respect the process a little bit more rather than, you know,
2:33:47 some of them bring in their political view.
2:33:48 Um, and they kind of put that on whoever it is they’re speaking
2:33:51 to, so, um, just wanted to make you guys aware of that.
2:33:54 But other than that, um, because I just wanted to just check
2:33:58 because our policies talks about the presiding officer, um,
2:34:02 administers the rules of the board, which you can, you can
2:34:06 delegate that.
2:34:07 I will.
2:34:08 But I want, so if he’s just doing, reading the names and yay for
2:34:11 you, you get to read all the names, um, and controlling the
2:34:14 clock.
2:34:15 Right.
2:34:15 As the board chair, is the board chair still controlling the,
2:34:19 the, the behavior in which the board chair can still cause
2:34:22 someone to stop if they’re irrelevant, abusive, and all those
2:34:25 still things.
2:34:26 So, cause we’re not, that’s not on him, that’s still on the
2:34:28 board chair.
2:34:28 That is a hundred percent still my responsibility.
2:34:30 So I’m really trying to, I mean, our district, we have had a
2:34:33 lawsuit brought before us in regards to bias on speaker time and,
2:34:37 and, uh, being asked to stop.
2:34:39 And so I think this is, this possibly could eliminate that, I
2:34:42 know, I know, but I’m just saying I, I do believe, and the
2:34:46 districts that do this, it sounds like goes a little smoother
2:34:49 for them than it does for us.
2:34:50 So I have a question though.
2:34:51 Cause so I thought that that it was delegating that
2:34:55 responsibility to Mr. Gibbs, cause my opinion, that’s where the
2:34:58 issue would be.
2:35:00 Not that I’m thinking you’re going to cause an issue.
2:35:02 I don’t mean that, um, I don’t, I mean, I don’t care if he reads
2:35:06 the names and does the clock, but I don’t think that’s for the.
2:35:09 Issue is and where the conflict always comes to.
2:35:12 So I feel like, uh, that’s not all of our issues.
2:35:15 You’re correct.
2:35:15 Yeah.
2:35:16 So, I mean, cause there are people who go, yeah, I mean, is
2:35:19 there, but not like you’re in charge of the meeting.
2:35:22 So there’s no way to even give that up.
2:35:23 No, no, no.
2:35:24 And then is that going to be weird because she’s, I mean, I
2:35:27 guess you’re just going to have to stop the clock.
2:35:28 So I’m going to make a statement about that.
2:35:30 And I will, if I, if I stop a speaker, I’ll say, Mr. Gibbs,
2:35:33 please stop the clock so that he has it.
2:35:34 And then if I have to warn them and say, sorry, I’m just
2:35:37 thinking, no, no, I know the logistics of how it’s going to go.
2:35:39 So I understand a hundred percent tonight.
2:35:41 I’ll have the clock still in front of me.
2:35:43 We may look at that and go, that really still works great.
2:35:45 I don’t know if it does, then it almost is like, why are we
2:35:47 having Mr. Gibbs through the night?
2:35:48 It’s a lot to control though.
2:35:50 It’s a lot to control because you also have personal as a clock
2:35:53 also has them because the, well, no, I take that back.
2:35:55 The clock controls one thing.
2:35:57 The mic, the chairman still needs to have the mic.
2:35:59 The chairman needs to be able to mute someone if they start.
2:36:01 Absolutely.
2:36:02 Cussing at the, you know.
2:36:03 Right.
2:36:04 And you’re flipping through name cards sometimes if somebody’s
2:36:06 like, hey, let me get the address.
2:36:07 It just, I think will help on the back end of things.
2:36:09 So.
2:36:09 The roll call voting.
2:36:12 No?
2:36:12 Roll call voting.
2:36:13 Oh, roll call voting.
2:36:15 That’s the other thing.
2:36:15 So right now we typically vote and we all say, you know, if you’re
2:36:18 in agreeance, you say aye.
2:36:20 If you’re not, nay.
2:36:21 So we’re going to specific, he’s going to individually call us
2:36:23 for roll call voting so that we don’t ever have any confusion on
2:36:26 where you’re at on a vote.
2:36:27 So it’ll, he’ll ask Ms. Jenkins your vote and that way it’s
2:36:29 recorded very clearly.
2:36:31 It’ll help with keeping record of accurate votes and all that
2:36:34 stuff.
2:36:34 Okay.
2:36:35 And who walks, who’s not present?
2:36:38 Whenever happens, that is true.
2:36:39 Yeah.
2:36:40 So I think it’ll make life a little easier on the, on the bookkeeping
2:36:42 end of things.
2:36:43 So, all right.
2:36:44 Does any other board member have any further items they wish to
2:36:46 discuss?
2:36:47 Yeah.
2:36:47 We were talking, one of the reasons we have to do that voice
2:36:49 call is, is because we were talking,
2:36:51 about going back to the old, um, online system that we had.
2:36:56 So right now we have the current one, but we were talking about
2:36:59 going to board docs.
2:37:00 Paula, do you had a chance to get ahold of those people?
2:37:03 I think.
2:37:04 No, that’s, uh, through procurement for board docs, but I think
2:37:07 agenda plus works.
2:37:08 It’s just, it was really slow.
2:37:10 So it was faster for the board to just do an aye or nay rather
2:37:15 than wait on the computers because people’s computers went to
2:37:19 sleep and all that.
2:37:20 There was a whole lot of, there was a whole lot of other issues
2:37:22 that are going on with that agenda.
2:37:23 Plus, did we call procurement?
2:37:25 Like where are we at with that?
2:37:26 Yeah.
2:37:27 We have to go through the normal procurement process to get
2:37:29 quotes and all that.
2:37:30 To add?
2:37:31 But we can’t, we, we don’t have board docs right now.
2:37:34 We have board docs for the other piece that we pay for, right?
2:37:37 For what piece?
2:37:38 I’ll follow.
2:37:39 I’ll take this offline.
2:37:39 Yeah.
2:37:40 Neola has board docs.
2:37:42 That’s through Neola.
2:37:43 We don’t contract with them.
2:37:45 Okay.
2:37:45 Gotcha.
2:37:46 I’ll, I’ll get with you after this.
2:37:48 Okay.
2:37:49 Thank you.
2:37:49 All right.
2:37:50 Hearing no further business, meeting is adjourned.
2:37:52 Thank you.
2:38:01 All right.
2:38:02 Hearing no further business, meeting is adjourned.
2:38:03 Thank you.