Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
0:00 Thank you.
3:29 Good afternoon.
3:37 The February 6, 2024 board work session is now in order.
3:41 All roll call, please.
3:43 Ms. Wright?
3:43 Here.
3:44 Mr. Trent?
3:45 Here.
3:45 Ms. Campbell?
3:46 Here.
3:47 Ms. Jenkins?
3:47 Here.
3:48 Mr. Susan?
3:49 Here.
3:49 Thank you.
3:50 Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
3:56 I pledge allegiance to the flag of the flag of the flag of the
4:02 United States of America.
4:05 All right.
4:10 So our first topic this afternoon is a mowing plan.
4:14 Ms. Sue, I’m going to turn it over to you.
4:17 Good afternoon, everyone.
4:19 I’m really excited to have an opportunity to talk about mowing
4:23 and hopefully in a positive
4:24 vein because we do spend a lot of time talking about mowing.
4:27 I do want to introduce our director of maintenance, Jim Ross,
4:31 and Richard Vogt, supervisor in our
4:34 maintenance department who actually knows where all our money is.
4:37 So they will be helping out as we go through the presentation as
4:41 you have questions.
4:43 But so I’m going to talk a little bit about mowing, and one
4:46 thing I want to talk about from
4:47 the start is that we fund mowing out of the general fund, and
4:51 that is by statute.
4:52 So a lot of our budget is capital, and you’ll see that later on
4:55 in the presentation on our budget,
4:57 but the mowing piece is general fund.
5:00 So I just wanted to set the stage for that in a conversation
5:04 around both mowing and our budget
5:06 later on.
5:07 So all of you are familiar with our mowing issues, and these
5:11 kind of started back in 2013
5:13 when we had some fairly severe budget constraints, and so one of
5:18 the things that was done at the
5:20 time to kind of come within our resources was we took the mowing
5:24 out of the schools, centralized
5:26 mowing in maintenance, reduced custodial positions, and saved
5:31 some money.
5:32 We added some positions in plan ops, but saved some money in the
5:37 general fund.
5:39 And that was solely the intention.
5:41 I think there was perhaps not a good level of clarity as to the
5:46 impact on the level of service,
5:49 but clearly, as we’ve seen since 2013, we’ve just not been able
5:53 to keep up with the mowing
5:55 with the resources that we have in plan ops.
5:57 So this has been an issue for awhile.
6:04 So in 2019, we started to look at this again, and we looked at
6:09 it relative to level of service
6:12 versus cost.
6:13 And in 2019, we were still just kind of coming out of the era of
6:18 severe budget constraints,
6:20 and we’re working through the first couple of years of the sales
6:23 surtax and kind of making
6:25 some improvements with our air conditioning systems and our
6:28 other building systems.
6:29 But we really just didn’t have the support on the general fund
6:33 side to add significant resources
6:35 to the budget to address mowing.
6:37 So at that time, you can find a presentation where I said, I
6:40 think this is not the time.
6:42 And we had other priorities for general fund at the time, and we
6:45 didn’t add resources back
6:47 in 2019.
6:49 We have, as you see, been working around the margins a little
6:52 bit.
6:53 We’ve got a couple of robotic mowers, and those are up and down.
6:56 We use those for kind of our play field type of approaches,
6:59 where we just put a – it’s kind
7:01 of an electronic fence, so to speak, around the area and let the
7:05 mower go.
7:06 Those have been working pretty well.
7:08 We’ve got a few that are on order.
7:09 So we are trying some new things.
7:13 We did try special purpose ruminants.
7:15 Those are goats.
7:17 They are only really usable for messy sloped retention ponds.
7:22 They’re not the fine trimming type of apparatus that you might
7:26 want.
7:26 And then we’ve been experimenting with limited contract mowing.
7:31 So in 2021, we started contract mowing at 12 schools.
7:36 We funded through the general fund, fund balance at the time.
7:39 It was about $225,000.
7:41 And this really worked pretty well for those 12 schools.
7:45 And then in ‘23, going into ‘24, we transitioned from 12 schools
7:51 to 27 schools.
7:53 We eliminated four grounds technicians positions in maintenance
7:56 to fund those – to fund that additional
7:59 level of service.
8:01 And this has worked pretty well.
8:02 So we’ve got about, you know, a third-ish of our schools that
8:06 are under contract mowing.
8:08 If you look at the kind of the work orders and the customer
8:11 reactions that we get, the schools
8:13 that are under contract mowing are pretty happy with the service
8:16 that we’ve been providing.
8:18 Now, that depends a lot on the contractor and the management of
8:21 the contractor.
8:22 So that is not a 100% solution all the time.
8:26 But in this particular case, we’ve had a good vendor.
8:29 They’ve done a good job.
8:30 And we’ve been using that technique into fiscal year ‘24.
8:35 So one of the lessons we learned last year is we really didn’t
8:40 start that soon enough.
8:42 We kind of waited until the start of the fiscal year, and that
8:46 was on us.
8:47 And we got behind in the mowing to start.
8:51 So in terms of the plan going forward for 2025, you’ll see a
8:55 recommendation from me that we start
8:58 April 1st versus waiting to start with the start of the fiscal
9:02 year.
9:02 And that will allow us to get ahead of the mowing versus
9:05 starting from behind.
9:07 So that was the purpose of mentioning that in terms of a lesson
9:10 learned.
9:11 So where we are today, as you all have experienced, we’re still
9:16 under-resourced
9:17 to provide the level of service that we’d like to have.
9:20 And I think over time, we have taken care of some of our major
9:25 issues in terms of like air
9:26 conditioning and other building systems.
9:28 And we’re starting to be more cognizant of the importance of
9:32 curb appeal at our schools.
9:34 And so we’re doing more in painting and we need to do more in
9:37 grounds maintenance.
9:39 So this has really become a higher priority than it was back in
9:42 2013 or it was back in 2019.
9:45 And so this is a kind of a summary of our recommendations for
9:51 our mowing plan.
9:53 We’d like to upgrade the level of service that we have at the 27
9:56 schools to all schools.
9:58 And so that would be weekly mowing between April and September
10:02 and biweekly between October and March.
10:05 And we had put a contract out for bid.
10:08 And I got to give some shout outs to our friends in procurement
10:11 and our folks in maintenance.
10:13 We literally walked every single site with our contractors and
10:18 made sure that everybody was
10:20 clear on the scope of services.
10:22 Because when you say mowing, it’s kind of, we got a lot of stuff
10:25 out there.
10:26 So we’ve got to be clear what is in the contract and what is not
10:30 in the contract.
10:31 And so our folks in procurement really did a great job
10:34 supporting us.
10:34 And they literally spent a couple of weeks walking around school
10:37 sites with our folks in maintenance.
10:38 So we’ve got good bids.
10:41 The pricing that came in was pretty comparable to what we’re
10:44 paying at the 27 sites.
10:46 So it’s their valid bids.
10:48 Procurement’s kind of working through who the apparent low bidders
10:53 are.
10:53 We’re looking at potentially doing a primary, secondary, and
10:57 possibly even a tertiary contractor award.
11:00 So that if for some reason the primary low bidder can’t do the
11:04 job, we have a backup and a backup.
11:06 The award is going to be done in, I think it’s nine, nine chunks
11:12 of schools.
11:13 There are about nine to 10 schools in each chunk.
11:17 So we’ll have probably two to four contractors that are awarded
11:22 the bid.
11:23 So it’s not all one vendor.
11:25 The cost of this is about $850,000 on an annualized basis, more
11:35 than what we have budgeted now.
11:36 The last quarter of 2024, we’re estimating about $250,000.
11:42 These are numbers based on the bids that came in, but we’re not
11:47 settled on exactly who the low bidders are.
11:51 And we want to make sure that we’ve at least accounted for an
11:55 eventuality where we might have
11:57 to go to a second low bidder on certain groups of schools.
12:00 So these numbers are probably a little bit on the high side, but
12:04 it gives you an order of magnitude
12:06 of what it would take to transition from where we are to where
12:09 we want to go relative to the level of service for mowing.
12:12 So this is the scope of work that our contractors bid on.
12:17 And I want to be like super clear about this.
12:19 This is school site mowing.
12:21 This isn’t athletic field mowing.
12:23 This isn’t play field mowing.
12:26 This is just kind of the school front type.
12:31 You know, when you pull into the school, it will look like a
12:33 well-maintained school.
12:34 That’s what’s in the scope.
12:36 They’ll be doing some light retention pond maintenance.
12:39 Litter is not their job, but it’s also not their job to mow over
12:45 litter.
12:46 So we have an expectation that if it’s in the way, they pick it
12:48 up.
12:49 But litter control is still on us.
12:51 There’s edging of sidewalks, curbs, parking lots, flower and shrub
12:55 beds.
12:56 So again, the kind of the basics of the front door of the school,
13:00 so to speak, will be part of this contract.
13:03 Also asking them to weed whack our fence lines.
13:06 And we’ve got a lot of fence lines.
13:08 We’ll still be doing the herbicide, but the general like knock
13:12 down the weeds will be part of this contract.
13:14 And then rake and remove any excessive grass clippings.
13:17 So basic lawn mowing-ish type service for each of our schools.
13:22 We’re also proposing, at least for now, to retain the grounds
13:28 technicians positions that we have.
13:30 We have 14 FTEs, 13 are filled.
13:33 One was vacant as of January 31st.
13:36 I think we may be in the process of filling that.
13:38 But we’ve got a lot of work for these folks to do.
13:42 First and foremost, we want to make sure that this contracted mowing
13:47 experiment is successful.
13:48 So we don’t want to get rid of all of our personnel and our
13:52 equipment until we are sure that this is going to work.
13:55 I’ve had some experience with this in a prior life where it
14:00 seemed like a great idea to contract out this type of service.
14:03 And it was until it wasn’t.
14:05 And then you don’t have the people, you don’t have the equipment,
14:07 and it’s impossible to recover.
14:09 So having this sort of hybrid where we do contract mowing but we
14:14 also retain mowing capabilities in-house allows us to backstop a
14:19 contractor if for some reason that doesn’t work out.
14:21 We and our contractors experience issues with, you know, we can’t
14:28 match the labor force.
14:30 We have people, you know, on vacation calling in sick.
14:32 We have bad weather.
14:34 The same things that we experience that affect our level of
14:36 service will affect their level of service too.
14:39 So we want to make sure to have a backup plan or two in mind.
14:43 One of the things that is technically a custodial responsibility
14:49 is to rake playground mulch.
14:52 And that kind of keeps it safe for our kids.
14:54 And with our custodial shortages, we are concerned that that is
14:59 not a high enough priority for our on-site custodians.
15:03 And we’d like to take that back as our responsibility and
15:05 maintenance.
15:06 And kind of like we’ve been doing with our preventative
15:10 maintenance crew is to put up a crew and they go site to site
15:15 and make sure that our playground mulch is adequate depth and is
15:20 raked and make sure that it’s safe.
15:21 Eventually, we’ll be transitioning to the rubberized play tiles,
15:25 but that’s going to take a few years to get there.
15:28 So that’s one of the primary functions of retaining our ground
15:33 stakes.
15:33 Also assisting with mowing our play fields and athletics fields
15:37 as we start school and everybody’s like, oh my gosh, the
15:40 whatever field is not mowed or is not ready.
15:42 We’d like to be able to be able to respond to that a little bit
15:45 more effectively.
15:46 So it’s really, really hopeful that we will do a better job all
15:50 around so the front door of the school will look better, but
15:55 some of the backside things will also be better as a result of
15:59 being able to focus these positions on some of that other work
16:01 that gets neglected.
16:02 Mrs. Wright, you had sent me an issue at University Park and
16:06 that was like a perfect example of work that just doesn’t get
16:11 done because nobody has time to do it.
16:14 And it was a drainage issue, you know, water’s coming into the
16:18 courtyard and it’s just, it’s flooding.
16:21 And we sent some folks down and we wandered around and it’s like,
16:24 well, geez, you know, we could jet out this pipe, we could take
16:27 the grass that’s growing out of the drainage structure,
16:30 and perhaps it might work a little better.
16:33 So we have a lot of those things that are just kind of neglected
16:36 general maintenance and I think, again, we can stand up a crew
16:40 or two or three and start to address some of these things that
16:43 are affecting us in other ways and costing money and affecting
16:46 our learning environment and affecting our schools.
16:48 So I think we’ve got plenty of work for these folks and that
16:52 will provide an overall better level of service for our schools.
16:57 So that’s the end of my presentation.
17:01 I wanted to ask the board for some guidance on your thoughts on
17:04 this approach.
17:04 If you would like us to move forward, what we would put on the
17:10 board agenda for the 27th would be the award of bid.
17:12 As I mentioned, low bid and secondary and possibly a tertiary
17:18 vendor for each of the chunks of schools would include a budget
17:22 amendment to implement April 1st.
17:25 And then we would include contracted mowing in our FY25 budget.
17:29 So that concludes our mowing presentation.
17:32 Thank you, Sue.
17:33 Appreciate you.
17:34 Board, I want to give you guys an opportunity to ask questions.
17:34 Go ahead, Mr. Susan.
17:35 You’re raising your hand.
17:36 If that’s what it takes to get it over the finish line, I
17:48 believe Mr. Ramer can work on that because I know this is
17:53 important to his schools.
17:55 Well, no, my first concern was about the gentlemen that are
17:57 actually doing this because they’ve been, I mean, working their
18:00 booties off for so long.
18:02 I mean, against numbers and I mean, it keeps raining and they
18:05 have to sit and watch it grow and then know that they have to
18:07 get out there and do it.
18:08 And I wanted to make sure they were taken care of.
18:10 So I think they’ll be glad to know that they no longer, they
18:12 have different duties, but the other stuff’s being taken care of.
18:15 I appreciate you taking preference to our athletic fields
18:18 because it’s a different type of mower.
18:21 It’s a real mower as opposed to, and companies that come in to
18:23 do that are completely, they don’t understand the need behind it.
18:26 So thank you for that.
18:27 I like this.
18:29 I love it.
18:29 Every year we have a situation when school opens that, you know
18:32 what I mean, some of the schools are still trying to race to mow
18:35 the grass.
18:36 Our teams are trying to mow the grass and just takes care of
18:38 that.
18:39 We need to look professional if we’re going to be, and this is
18:41 part of the imaging and attraction campaign that we have.
18:43 So thank you.
18:44 That’s it.
18:45 But it’d be nice if some of those animals could make it out
18:47 there.
18:48 Can you go to slide number seven?
18:56 Something told me I should have put slide numbers on here.
19:02 I just want you to get respect for your meme game.
19:04 That’s all.
19:05 I felt like we went over that really fantastic meme of you
19:07 fought the lawn and the lawn won.
19:09 Four, five, six, seven, that one.
19:11 I just want respect for that one.
19:12 The animals are cute too, but that was great.
19:14 I may have borrowed that from someone else who was more creative.
19:17 I love it.
19:18 No, all kidding aside, I know that this isn’t easy work by any
19:23 means.
19:24 This is beyond a task, and it’s probably one of the most common
19:26 complaints that we get as school board members from both schools
19:29 and from parents.
19:31 So thank you for finally tackling this, and I hear you that don’t
19:36 rush into it.
19:37 It may not work out, but fingers crossed.
19:38 So thanks.
19:42 I’ll add to that list of people that we hear from is our
19:44 community members, you know, especially along certain roads.
19:47 I thank you for giving us this information, and I will tell you,
19:52 it hurts just a little bit to spend almost a million dollars mowing
19:57 the grass.
19:58 And I know it hurts you guys too because, you know, it’s got to
20:01 come from somewhere else, and part of me is, you know, fiduciary
20:05 responsibility.
20:06 I want to know, okay, where is it going to come from?
20:08 Do we have the 850, you know, the additional funding that we can
20:12 set aside?
20:13 So that’s one question that I have.
20:15 But then also, you know, I want to make sure I understand the
20:20 role of the contractor versus our team because is it just, like,
20:25 in front of the fence?
20:27 Because I also hear from our schools frequently, you know, the
20:30 areas that are behind the fence that are still kind of central
20:32 areas, and, of course, those play fields because when the grass
20:35 is, you know, 9 to 12 inches high or taller, we have snakes.
20:40 We have, you know, all kinds of things that cause a problem, so
20:44 any clarity on that?
20:45 So I’m going to ask Jim to weigh in on that just since you were
20:49 out.
20:49 You know a little bit more about this just to.
20:51 So that was part of the process of keeping the existing grounds
20:57 crew because we can now mow the fields more often also because
21:03 we’ll have that extra resource.
21:08 The fields are mowed, will stay in-house.
21:10 They will not go to the contractor.
21:11 The contractor will basically mow around the school, around the
21:16 sidewalks, everything from around the building out to the street.
21:21 So behind the fence but not out in the.
21:24 Not out in the play fields and things like that, yes.
21:26 And currently that’s the way we do it.
21:28 Our heavy equipment operators and grounds crew do that.
21:33 Our grounds maintenance techs do around the school.
21:35 So we’re just taking that grounds maintenance tech and wanting
21:40 to re-utilize them and then have contracted mowing through that
21:44 part of it.
21:44 Okay.
21:45 So that’s one thing.
21:46 So this should enable our, those 13, 14 employees, BPS employees
21:53 to do more frequent field mowing.
21:56 Okay, fantastic.
21:57 And then you had put in there on something about the, the
22:02 current contractors.
22:05 So will this, these groups of nine schools, these four, these
22:09 clusters, well that, that’s not going to be in addition to,
22:12 that’s just kind of wiping this lake clean and we’re starting
22:14 over.
22:15 Correct.
22:15 Once we do the notice of award and then once the board awards
22:19 the contract, then we’ll, we’ll let our existing vendors know
22:22 that we’ll be transitioning to the new contract as of April 1st.
22:25 Okay.
22:26 Are some of those the same?
22:27 Possibly.
22:29 Okay.
22:30 We’re purchase procurements evaluating all the bids.
22:33 Okay.
22:33 So I’m not crystal clear on, but our existing vendors are in the
22:36 mix.
22:36 Right.
22:37 Well, I appreciate the secondary tertiary.
22:38 So they’ll be basically on call.
22:40 So if we have extenuating circumstances, we can, we can call up
22:44 the second line of defense.
22:45 Yes.
22:46 But keep in mind, they, they’ll staff for this type of, like
22:49 this is a fair amount of work.
22:51 So whoever gets the bid award will staff up for this.
22:54 Those that don’t will not necessarily.
22:56 And probably, you know, they may be able to respond on a moment’s
23:01 notice.
23:01 They may not because they won’t be staffed for the project as a
23:05 whole.
23:05 Right.
23:05 But we do want to have that opportunity to at least ask.
23:09 Right.
23:10 Well, I, I, thank you for answering the questions.
23:12 I just, you know, I mean, it’s, I, I was here for the goat
23:15 conversation.
23:17 And by the way, we talked about a lot of things that day.
23:20 And the only thing that made the news was the goats.
23:21 But, you know, and that was, I appreciate always the creative
23:25 solutions that we, we came up with.
23:28 But this is as much as I do hate to spend almost a million
23:30 dollars on, on the grass.
23:33 It affects the learning environment and affects our community
23:36 and our community’s respect,
23:37 perception of the schools.
23:38 It affects safety because when we do have more hiding places for
23:42 our, you know, creepy critters,
23:44 we’re, we live in Florida, it becomes a problem.
23:47 And so very much appreciate you taking this deep dive.
23:50 So I, I’m supportive.
23:51 Mr. Trent, do you want anything to add?
23:55 Yeah, so, Zuna, we’ve, we’ve gone way back talking about the
23:58 appearance of schools.
23:59 So I’m glad we weren’t tackling this now.
24:02 I was in a school recently that was a contracted landscaping and
24:07 they just couldn’t brag enough
24:10 on how smooth it had gone from one situation to the next, you
24:16 know, that it was, they were just very, very pleased.
24:19 And, um, I’d like to see it continue and, and I think it just
24:22 makes a lot of sense.
24:24 So we appreciate all the work for all of you, especially going
24:27 to every single site and walking through what we’re expecting to,
24:30 to have done.
24:30 Um, we’re getting used to you guys doing a hundred percent.
24:35 So thank you so much.
24:36 Yeah.
24:37 Thank you.
24:39 Um, quick question.
24:40 I wanted, I think you hit on this a little bit.
24:41 So you guys walked every single site, correct?
24:44 And you, those guys, those guys.
24:46 Okay.
24:47 And you did this with the contractor hand in hand.
24:49 So the scope of work, they gave you a site specific to each one
24:52 of the schools and, and they were comfortable with what they
24:54 were doing there.
24:55 Yes.
24:55 And then was that turned into us when it came time for the bid
24:58 for the procurement?
24:59 So we have a very specific scope of what is being done at each
25:03 school site in case there’s ever a, Hey, you should have mowed
25:06 this.
25:06 And, and they say, no, that’s not in our contract.
25:09 I can’t say it’s specific to each site, but there’s a general
25:12 guideline of what’s to be mowed.
25:14 And that was one of the reasons we walked it because we wanted
25:18 them, everybody to be on the same page.
25:20 So, um, no, we didn’t, we don’t have like, at this school, you’re
25:23 going to mow this, this, this.
25:25 We did give them maps.
25:26 So they do have that.
25:28 But we, we, we felt it was in the best interest of the district
25:31 to have them walk the sites with us.
25:33 So there were no surprises.
25:34 And it took like three weeks to do that.
25:37 I imagine that would be a, quite a process, but I, I think it
25:41 would be smart of us just to make sure we have that clearly
25:43 outlined in the contract because I could see where they could,
25:46 we could end up with an issue where it’s a, Hey, you should have
25:49 mowed this.
25:49 And they’re saying, no, that wasn’t part of what we talked about.
25:51 Um, so when we look at that, that’s would make me feel a little
25:54 more comfortable with it.
25:56 I think it’s a great solution.
25:57 And obviously we do get a lot of phone calls from people in the
25:59 community when it comes to the grounds maintenance.
26:01 And, and as a parent, as my perspective is if you’re not taking
26:03 care of the outside of the building, what makes me think that
26:05 you’re going to take care of the inside of the building, which
26:07 is where my child’s at.
26:08 So I think it’s very, very smart of us to, to make sure we’re
26:11 making a focus on our, keeping our buildings, um, appealing and
26:14 helps the neighborhood overall.
26:16 So my only one ask would be just to clearly define in those
26:19 contracts, um, where the expectation is for mowing.
26:23 So there can’t be a, you know, pointing fingers and the list I
26:27 had on the second to last slide or so that is actual language
26:31 from the contract.
26:32 So what we don’t have, I don’t think is maps that, that are
26:36 attached to each site, but we do have the, the specifics on what’s
26:40 in the contract expectations.
26:41 So that bulleted list of what we’re doing that is taken exactly
26:46 from the, um, RFQ or RFP or ITB.
26:48 It was an ITB.
26:49 Okay.
26:50 So that that’s with, except for that piece that’s underlying,
26:54 that’s, that’s actual language in the invitation to bid.
26:57 Okay.
26:58 All right.
26:59 No, I’m in favor of it.
27:00 Honestly, I think it solves a, um, a huge issue that we have.
27:03 And we get a lot of phone calls and emails about the maintenance
27:06 of the outside of the building, especially sidewalks.
27:08 That one gets, you get a lot of phone calls on that.
27:10 So, so thank you for the presentation and being forward thinking
27:12 on a way to solve this.
27:13 So hopefully next year we won’t have thanks those same phone
27:16 calls.
27:16 All right.
27:17 Any other comments on this one?
27:19 I think if you look at the overall cost too, at the number of
27:24 sites that we have, if you divide that by the amount of money,
27:28 you start to really see that it’s not as much as you think.
27:31 That’s right.
27:32 But to have, you know, 86 or 100 and something sites that we’re
27:35 going to be mowing in, you divide it by that, it becomes a
27:39 hundred or a thousand dollars a year.
27:41 Yeah.
27:42 To be consistently mowed for the entire year.
27:44 Which is, it’s understandable when you’re talking about the
27:47 money mowed.
27:47 Yeah.
27:48 Absolutely.
27:49 Yeah, it is pretty reasonable.
27:50 And it’s, it’s really the force multiplier is kind of on the
27:53 back end with our folks and being able to get more work done at
27:57 the schools that’s currently not getting done.
27:59 So I’m pretty excited about that actually.
28:01 Yeah.
28:02 Pretty good.
28:03 All right.
28:04 So our next topic that we have is the facility maintenance and
28:07 staffing budget update.
28:08 And Sue, you have the floor again.
28:10 Okay.
28:11 So the purpose of this is just to kind of give you all a little
28:15 bit of a framework of our FY25 budget requests.
28:20 And I know we’re, we’re moving into the era of zero based
28:23 budgeting.
28:24 And I, I just want to make sure that everybody understands kind
28:28 of where we are in facilities.
28:30 We, we are trying to be performance driven.
28:33 And by being performance driven, I, I can literally spend any
28:37 resource we have in an excellent way in our schools.
28:40 And so you won’t be seeing budget reductions in facilities.
28:44 You’ll be seeing expectations of better performance that comes
28:49 with more resources.
28:50 But I wanted to kind of just give you the, the framework of
28:53 things that we’ve been talking about and dive in a little bit to
28:57 the capital side of our house and maintenance.
29:00 Is that the capital project or capital program cycles coming up
29:04 and you’ll be seeing that ahead of the FY25 budget.
29:07 And just wanted to kind of let you know where we’re going and
29:10 where we think we should go with the capital side of the house
29:14 relative to maintenance.
29:15 So I’m going to give you guys like a lot of information,
29:19 probably really fast.
29:20 You have seen some of this before.
29:23 Some of this you haven’t seen because we haven’t had the tools
29:27 to give you this information.
29:28 Jim’s team has implemented not only our facility assessment
29:33 project, but also we have new work order software.
29:35 And so between those two things, we have a really good handle on
29:39 our assets.
29:40 So we can actually tell you how much stuff we have.
29:43 And now that we can tell you how much stuff we have, it’s pretty
29:47 scary.
29:48 Because we have a lot of stuff.
29:50 But our current replacement value, over 2 billion, use that
29:54 number a lot.
29:55 Like we have a lot of stuff.
29:57 And if you’re just focused on one school or two schools, it
30:00 seems kind of manageable.
30:01 But over 85 schools, it’s a lot of stuff.
30:05 And this is a little bit more detail on the lot of stuff that we
30:11 have.
30:12 You know, 142 chillers, almost 1,000 transformers.
30:17 It is a lot.
30:19 And we are pretty thinly staffed to maintain all of this stuff.
30:25 And you’ll see later in the presentation, we talk about going to
30:28 contracted maintenance much more out of necessity.
30:32 And we’re adding stuff pretty much every day.
30:36 So this list keeps growing.
30:38 This is our chiller team.
30:41 And these guys do an incredibly good job.
30:45 And chiller’s kind of the tip of the iceberg in terms of better
30:49 performance from your facilities group.
30:52 This is where we started with the sales surtax program in 2014.
30:57 We’ve had seriously bad air conditioning issues.
31:00 And we have done a really good job of refreshing our chillers.
31:04 And you see every year as you go through our construction
31:08 contracts that we’re kind of doing a handful of chillers every
31:12 year.
31:12 And we’ve kind of gotten ourselves to a place where our chillers
31:16 are on a really pretty good replacement schedule.
31:19 So this is something that I’m really, really proud of.
31:23 A big asset to the district.
31:25 Very important to the learning environment.
31:27 And we’re doing pretty well.
31:29 The one thing that has really slayed us is when we need
31:35 temporary air for some reason.
31:38 A chiller is down.
31:39 It takes us a year and a half to get a new chiller.
31:42 So our temporary air bill has been crazy high.
31:46 We literally could buy chillers for the amount of money that we
31:50 spend on temporary chillers.
31:52 And in fact, we recently bought a small temporary chiller trying
31:56 to avoid that circumstance.
31:58 But the heavy duty lead time that we have for temporary air is
32:03 one of the things that is impacting the budget on the
32:06 maintenance side.
32:07 So I also wanted to talk a little bit about our work order
32:11 software.
32:12 So we implemented this system in FY21.
32:15 And we do about 36,000 work orders a year.
32:19 And every one of those 36,000 work orders has gone through one
32:23 of those two ladies that you see on the slide.
32:25 So we have two folks and they manage all of those work order
32:29 systems.
32:30 As we do our zero-based budgeting, you might see us thinking
32:38 about some staff in terms of scheduling work.
32:40 So we’re looking at different types of positions.
32:43 So you might see some potential new positions coming on your
32:48 agenda just to kind of set the framework for making that happen.
32:50 So nothing that I’m ready to really talk about today other than
32:56 just to say this is a big area of our system.
32:59 And we put a lot of work through these two nice ladies in
33:03 maintenance that answer the phone and take care of anything that
33:07 comes through our impulse work order system.
33:09 So we do about 3,000 work orders a month.
33:13 And the fourth bullet there, 4,400 or 4,500 preventative
33:19 maintenance work orders created.
33:21 That is a huge, huge step for us.
33:24 This is kind of a distribution of our work orders.
33:30 You see about half of them are in the urgent or emergency.
33:34 About half of them are in routine, and that’s going to become
33:38 important later on.
33:39 But also, 12.6% of all of our work orders are preventative
33:44 maintenance.
33:45 That number was zero in FY21.
33:48 And I believe it was probably zero prior to FY21.
33:52 So we had this monstrous backlog of work that we needed to do.
33:57 And I’m really proud of our team because we are now preserving
34:01 our assets versus just replacing them and forgetting about them.
34:04 We’re really changing the game in terms of how we do business.
34:07 And I’m super proud of our folks for the work that they’ve
34:09 accomplished here.
34:10 And as a result, I’m going to show you some pictures that just
34:14 kind of give you the sense of what it did look like and what it
34:17 looks like now.
34:17 This is little stuff, right?
34:19 You know, we just scrape the rust off and put some paint on.
34:22 But it’s so impactful in terms of preserving the life of our
34:26 assets.
34:27 And as you saw in the beginning, we have lots and lots of assets.
34:31 So our guys are like really making a difference in terms of
34:36 making sure our equipment remains reliable for our teachers and
34:40 our students.
34:41 So anyway, very proud of our preventative maintenance efforts.
34:46 And as we do more to refresh and rebuild and renew our major
34:51 assets in terms of like air conditioning and electrical and all
34:55 that,
34:55 we can put more effort into preventative maintenance.
34:58 So there’s a big game changer this year in our maintenance
35:01 department.
35:01 So our staffing, you know, got lots of statistics about staff.
35:07 But basically, we have about 100 of our 160 are allocated to the
35:13 trades.
35:13 And that means carpenters, electricians, that type of thing.
35:17 14 of those are vacant.
35:20 This is a slide that just kind of shows you our increasing
35:24 amount of square footage.
35:25 And it’s about to go up again with a new middle school.
35:28 And our sort of decreasing-ish amount of people to do all of
35:36 this maintenance.
35:38 If you look at this back in like the early 2000s, we had another
35:44 30 or so people that we have now working the trades.
35:48 So this is a concern.
35:50 This kind of graphically illustrates that a little more clearly.
35:54 So the Florida DOE recommended formula is one tech per 45,000
35:59 square feet.
36:00 So that’s this line.
36:02 And we’re at one tech for about 15,000 square feet.
36:06 Or I’m sorry, 150,000 square feet.
36:08 So we’re about a third staffed as to where we should be in terms
36:12 of the trades.
36:13 So we’re always running like our hair’s on fire.
36:16 Like literally that’s how we operate pretty much 100% of the
36:22 time.
36:22 We also struggle with vacancies as do our contractors.
36:26 Trying to find folks that can do this work for us.
36:30 And we literally have every single system.
36:34 Like it is complicated.
36:36 We have air conditioning, electrical, plumbing, carpentry,
36:42 building automation systems, flooring, masonry.
36:46 Like literally have any trade you can imagine we have that need
36:51 in our schools.
36:52 And you can see where we have staff.
36:55 But typically we have vacancies within all of our trades.
36:59 So I want to just give you a sense of where we’ve been
37:07 struggling.
37:09 And this is, I think there’s four or seven positions that have
37:14 been vacant for a year-ish or more.
37:16 You know, we cannot find another roofer.
37:20 And sometimes this is churn and sometimes this is just inability
37:25 to fill the position.
37:26 Part of this is the rates that we pay.
37:29 Part of this is just these folks are not available.
37:33 So I think we have both challenges.
37:36 Similarly, some other trades that have been carrying vacancies
37:41 for several months.
37:42 And this is a graphical representation of this.
37:46 And you can kind of see by trade how many folks we have versus
37:51 how many folks we’re missing.
37:52 So we have a couple of concerns around staffing.
37:58 So first of all, we have experienced people who are retiring.
38:03 So we have folks who know everything and they are retiring.
38:06 We also have new folks that are coming in that are eager and
38:11 excited to learn.
38:12 We teach them great stuff.
38:13 And then they find a job in the private sector.
38:16 Or in another public sector.
38:18 We compete with some of the other public sector employers here.
38:22 Like the Port, for example.
38:24 Kennedy Space Center for our trades people.
38:27 So we’re really in a competitive environment for skilled trades
38:33 workers here in Brevard.
38:35 So it’s pretty challenging to fill our vacancies.
38:39 We also have an evolving situation where our needs are evolving.
38:45 Because a lot of the assets that we’re buying now have more
38:49 technology embedded in them.
38:51 So our chillers, our building automation systems, our lighting
38:55 systems, our intercoms, all of our security cameras.
38:59 Much more high tech than they were 10 years ago.
39:02 So the skill set that’s needed is different.
39:04 And in fact, Mr. Cheetah and I have been, and Mr. Ross, we’ve
39:09 been talking about is there a better way to staff some of these
39:12 maintenance projects.
39:15 So you might see maybe some positions coming from my department
39:19 going over to Russell’s department.
39:21 Just because the skill set that’s needed on that side of the
39:25 house would better serve some of the functions that we have in
39:28 our budget and facilities.
39:30 So just something to, you know, give you a heads up on that we
39:34 collectively might be looking at what’s the better way to make
39:38 sure that we are maintaining those assets that have that high
39:42 tech component to them.
39:43 We’ve been, as I mentioned, going to more contracted work.
39:47 And I’m going to talk a little bit about the financial side.
39:51 Richard has developed this.
39:53 Many of you, I think, are familiar with Smartsheet.
39:55 This is actually in Smartsheet.
39:57 And if we want to go into lots and lots of detail, I can pull it
40:01 up.
40:01 But he tracks the budget pretty much on a daily basis.
40:05 So on any given day, we know where we are.
40:08 And I want to kind of highlight a couple of lines.
40:11 So this gray line is FY23.
40:15 Green line is FY24.
40:18 Blue line is our budget in plant operations and maintenance.
40:24 And every year, we kind of do the same dance where we start our
40:34 year off with a backlog of work that we need to do.
40:37 Because we kind of ran out of money at the end of the prior
40:40 fiscal year.
40:41 And so in May and June, we accumulate lots of work orders that
40:46 we don’t fund.
40:47 And they sit there until July.
40:49 And then the system wipes them out.
40:51 And then we re-enter them all.
40:52 And then we do a bunch of work in July.
40:54 And we start spending money and implementing work.
40:57 Now, there’s very rarely a work order that we shouldn’t do.
41:02 We do have a few where it’s like, no, we’re not going to do that.
41:05 But everything from, oh, my gosh, the air conditioning doesn’t
41:09 work to, hey, your tree is overhanging our property and needs to
41:13 be trimmed.
41:13 That all goes through our system.
41:15 And Jim is in the position of having to prioritize those as to,
41:20 you know, whether we got to do it for our schools or whether
41:24 this is something that is, you know, bothering the neighbor and
41:27 we just need to get it done.
41:28 But all of those things run through this system and run through
41:32 this budget.
41:33 So every year we do a little bit more work.
41:38 And the work has gotten a little bit more expensive.
41:40 But in particular this year, I wanted you to notice that the
41:44 delta between where we are more or less today is – and where we
41:49 were a year ago is about $2 million.
41:51 And if you kind of keep that going, you were going to be up here
41:56 somewhere.
41:57 So our delta is bigger.
41:59 Now, where we cover that is through facility renewal capital
42:03 that comes through the capital program, comes into kind of the
42:07 project side of the house.
42:08 And that’s about a $6.2-ish million piece of the capital plan.
42:14 And I kind of sit on that because I know that maintenance is
42:17 going to run out of money.
42:18 And so I start to help them as time goes on.
42:22 So you see these little inflection points.
42:24 That’s when I’m moving money from the project side over to the
42:27 maintenance side to try to cover that.
42:29 But what I’m really going to be advocating for as we go forward
42:33 in FY25 is to fund maintenance properly.
42:35 So that we don’t have the big dips in the funding that we are
42:41 experiencing.
42:42 So as I mentioned, we sort of do this self-created backlog
42:47 process every year as we get towards the end of the fiscal year.
42:50 And in fiscal year ‘22, we had about three quarters of a million
42:54 in deferred work, 155 requests, 92 days in queue.
42:58 Now think about that.
42:59 So three months people are waiting for us to get the work done.
43:02 And then we start over in July.
43:04 So it’s probably another month and a half to two months.
43:06 So it might be five months before we get whatever that work
43:10 order request is done.
43:12 Now, our kind of perspective is if we’re going to do it, we
43:17 might as well do it now versus do it five months from now.
43:19 Like the answer should be no, we’re not going to do it or yes,
43:22 we’re going to do it and we’re going to do it soon.
43:24 So the span of time that is sort of artificially created by our
43:30 wonky funding cycle is really not in good service to our schools.
43:34 So we’d like to fix that.
43:38 The other problem is that the fiscal year change order is right
43:42 in the summer construction season.
43:44 So it’s kind of the worst time to have these wonky funding
43:48 scenarios given the time that’s when we want to do most of our
43:56 work.
43:57 So anyway, let me talk a little bit about facility capital
43:59 renewal.
43:59 So as I mentioned, I get my 6.2 million on the project side of
44:03 the fence.
44:04 I kind of don’t do much with that.
44:06 Like I used to do some projects with it and now it just sort of
44:09 sits there because I worry about being able to fund anything
44:13 they need on the maintenance side.
44:14 I worry about whether we’re going to have any storms.
44:17 We had a couple fires.
44:18 I just, you know, do little stuff with it, but I’m not doing
44:21 anything substantial with that because I’m concerned about not
44:25 being able to get to the end of the fiscal year or until
44:28 December when we get our new capital revenue.
44:31 So put these graphs together to kind of illustrate that point.
44:35 We get our capital money in December.
44:38 So property taxes come in.
44:40 We get a big chunk of money.
44:41 I get about 6.2, 6.3.
44:45 It varies every year for the facility capital renewal project.
44:49 And then we kind of spend it down.
44:52 And you see the kind of the low point here, July, August,
44:56 September, where I’ve got about a million and a half, 2 million
45:00 left.
45:00 That’s storm season.
45:01 That’s school’s starting season.
45:03 And so it just concerns me that that’s kind of the lowest point
45:09 in our revenue stream in our department.
45:12 And it coincides with a potentially high demand season.
45:16 Especially concerning this year, this yellow line is this year,
45:21 is we’ve really had to supplant maintenance.
45:23 So I’m already into maintenance, 1.6 million from the project
45:27 side to the maintenance side of the house.
45:29 And you’re estimating and saw in the graph, we estimate another
45:33 2 million.
45:34 So this shows kind of the cyclical nature of this.
45:38 So we get our money in December.
45:39 And these are actual numbers.
45:40 I pulled this out of AS 400.
45:42 So we get down to, you know, a million and change.
45:45 We go back up, we go back down.
45:47 And you see the lowest point of this is the worst possible time.
45:51 So really motivated to try to fix this so we don’t have this
45:57 situation.
45:58 This table shows you the transfer from facility capital renewal
46:01 to maintenance.
46:02 And, you know, it used to be kind of in the 800 to a million and
46:07 a half, 800,000 to a million and a half.
46:07 But we’re going to be probably over three and a half million
46:10 this year by the time it’s all said and done.
46:12 Because what’s coming into the work order system is work that
46:15 needs to be done.
46:16 And so I don’t want to just, like, not do it.
46:18 So use the money on my side of the house to the maintenance side
46:22 of the house.
46:23 But it’s getting to where it’s a little bit unmanageable.
46:27 So why is this happening?
46:29 So cost increasing.
46:30 You know, we’re using more contracted labor because of the fact
46:33 that we don’t have our in-house labor.
46:35 More expensive just in general.
46:37 Price increases in labor and materials.
46:40 Lead time’s crazy.
46:41 And we just have more costs that we have to cover to do the same
46:49 work.
46:50 This series of graphs shows you the change in contracted labor.
46:55 So this is our contracted labor.
46:57 And this is our materials and supplies line, which kind of
47:01 stayed about flat because the cost of materials and supplies has
47:06 gone up.
47:06 So even though we may be using less materials and supplies, the
47:09 cost of those materials and supplies is about the same.
47:12 But you can clearly see that our percent of total budget is
47:16 creeping up to about 70-ish percent of the total maintenance
47:21 budget is now in contracted services.
47:23 So the other reason that our costs are increasing is our scope
47:27 is increasing.
47:28 We’ve done a lot more work in athletics.
47:31 We’ve done big projects.
47:32 But now we’re maintaining tracks.
47:35 And we want to maintain our stuff.
47:37 Like we used to do projects and then that’s it.
47:40 We do a project in another 20 years.
47:42 Now we want to actively do maintenance.
47:45 We’ve also added a lot of assets.
47:47 We have many more cameras than we used to have in the district.
47:52 Somebody’s got to maintain those.
47:54 We’ve got to maintain the miles of fences that we put up.
47:57 Lot of things that we are doing differently in the district in
48:01 service to our schools and our students.
48:03 But all of that needs to be maintained.
48:05 So the scope and the landscape over which we need to do
48:09 maintenance has been increasing over the years.
48:12 We’re also still getting older.
48:14 Our schools are getting older.
48:16 We have some underground situations that I’m nervous about.
48:22 You know, when we talk about site drainage, we’re going to need
48:26 to be doing some major drainage, major parking.
48:29 That’s a set of assets we haven’t really dealt with.
48:32 We also have aging water and sewer utilities.
48:35 You know, you all see the, hey, you know, water line broke at
48:39 such and such a school.
48:40 You know, we should be getting in there and doing some rehab on
48:44 our water and sewer facilities.
48:46 So a lot of underground stuff that we don’t know about that is
48:51 starting to age and break.
48:53 So, and then I think the final thing is just an expectation of a
48:57 higher level of service.
48:58 I would say we have a higher expectation internally.
49:02 Like we used to be able to say we don’t have enough resources.
49:05 Too bad we’re not, we’re not helping you.
49:07 But now we’d like to help our schools.
49:09 We’d like to recognize the importance of our work in the
49:13 educational mission.
49:14 Like people can’t learn if we don’t have air conditioning.
49:17 You know, if the mowing isn’t done, folks want to go somewhere
49:22 else.
49:22 So we have a really important role and we have a higher
49:25 expectation and performance for ourselves.
49:28 So this is how we’re funded.
49:32 The maintenance budget is about 17.3 million.
49:35 And we get about 11.3 of that through LCI as the capital money.
49:41 So when you see the capital plan off the top, 11.3 has been
49:46 coming to maintenance.
49:48 And then this shows you the whole capital pie is about 101
49:53 million.
49:54 The maintenance salaries and operating is 11.3 million.
49:58 We’ve got debt service comes out of that, property insurance,
50:01 charter schools.
50:02 This is a 20% share this year and that’s going to, on that glide
50:07 path going up.
50:08 So that’ll be at least double next year if not more.
50:12 And then what’s left is for other capital projects.
50:15 So this is where we fund school buses and technology.
50:19 The 6.2 million that’s facility capital renewal is part of that
50:23 41.1 million.
50:24 And all of the other capital projects that you see in the annual
50:27 cycle.
50:27 This gives you kind of a detail of the 41.1 million that’s the
50:34 other capital projects.
50:36 And this is the capital renewal amount that I kind of sit over
50:41 off to the side in order to support maintenance and other
50:44 unexpected things that come up.
50:46 So we’re thinking that there will be about a 4% increase in
50:52 capital revenue in FY25.
50:55 So hopefully we can support some additional resources going to
51:00 the maintenance side of the house.
51:02 So our goals are improving service to schools, continue
51:07 improving our operations, maintaining the assets that we have,
51:10 and doing that properly.
51:12 So this is kind of the end game.
51:16 And our recommendations are to properly fund maintenance.
51:19 And our suggestion is to increase the off the top capital
51:24 allocation by 3.5 million and bringing that up to 14.8 million
51:29 in FY25.
51:30 So I say that because that will get rid of that big dip at the
51:37 worst part of the year.
51:39 It will allow them to continue working and will eliminate all
51:44 those crazy budget machinations that we do every year because
51:48 our money keeps going like this.
51:49 So it will help us a lot, but it may also be at the expense of
51:54 other capital projects.
51:56 So that’s why I wanted to show you the full gamut of, you know,
51:59 this is what we spend that pie on.
52:01 And if we take a bigger piece of the pie for maintenance and the
52:05 pie isn’t getting bigger, there will be some impacts to that.
52:08 But when we do our capital allocation process and we do that
52:12 collaboratively with other members of cabinet, I’m going to
52:16 advocate for increasing that off the top share to maintenance.
52:20 Also on the general fund side, I just wanted to make you aware
52:24 of a couple of things we’ll be asking for.
52:26 One is in the mowing arena, and that’ll be an $850,000-ish
52:32 change in FY25.
52:33 We would like to redo our facility assessment.
52:37 That’s the project that we did in 2019, just ahead of the 2020
52:43 surtax renewal.
52:44 It’s about time to update that.
52:47 We’re talking with a vendor about scope, and I think we’re going
52:50 to broaden the scope because last time we didn’t do our athletic
52:53 facilities, our portables.
52:53 There are some things that we left out to try to contain costs.
52:56 So we’re working on that and should have a better budget figure,
53:00 but that’s about, you know, broad level estimate.
53:03 And just the cost of materials and the cost of services that are
53:08 not able to be funded through capital, specifically in the
53:12 grounds maintenance arena, are going up.
53:14 So you will likely see some increased requests in our general
53:17 fund budget.
53:18 And I think that’s it.
53:21 So I appreciate your time today, and I know this is like a lot
53:25 of stuff.
53:25 But I wanted you all to see kind of what we’re doing, where we’re
53:29 going, and where we think we can make some improvements with
53:32 funding our operation a little bit differently.
53:35 So happy to take any questions.
53:36 Thank you, Sue.
53:37 Board members, any questions?
53:38 Thank you again.
53:39 So I had a question about the change.
53:52 So you’re saying, you’re advocating for an increase in just
54:01 overall, or is it a shift in the timing of it?
54:04 Because I’m trying to figure out, is it a one-time shift in
54:07 timing?
54:07 Or is it just an overall, we’re going to, from this point on,
54:11 have a $3 million increase to the budget?
54:13 It is a $3.5 million increase to the budget that will continue
54:19 year after year.
54:20 So we’ll still have that cycle, but it won’t get so close to the
54:23 bottom.
54:23 It won’t get so close to the bottom.
54:25 In fact, you may not see that again because that graph was the
54:31 capital, the facility capital renewal.
54:34 That was money on my side of the fence.
54:36 So if I don’t have to put any over on Jim’s side of the fence, I
54:40 won’t be so worried about that.
54:42 Okay.
54:43 So it doesn’t, it affects, this thing affects the maintenance
54:50 budget because so much of that is going over to help them.
54:53 Okay.
54:54 But if I don’t have to send so much over there, I can live with
54:57 that on my side and just manage the project costs.
55:00 Okay.
55:01 That makes sense.
55:02 And then, so we have, we do capital transfers into the general
55:09 fund.
55:10 So I know you said things like mowing and grounds maintenance
55:15 can’t, you know, has to be out of the general fund, but can it
55:18 be taken care of with a capital transfer to the general fund?
55:21 Is that some of what you’re talking about?
55:22 No.
55:24 Okay.
55:25 So the capital transfer to the general fund goes into Jim’s
55:29 department for work that can be funded by capital.
55:33 So everything else.
55:34 Right.
55:36 Okay.
55:37 We’ve had that conversation before.
55:38 I’m just trying to figure out because actually this is the first
55:40 time that I realized the statute actually has written
55:43 specifically, you can’t mow out of capital.
55:47 It seems like that should have been on some of the deregulation
55:51 bills that are work that’s going on.
55:53 I’ll have to look and can we, can we get that out of there?
55:56 Because it seems like as a school board, we should be able to
56:00 handle things like that.
56:01 So oddly we can buy equipment.
56:04 Right.
56:05 So you see grounds equipment in the capital plan, but you don’t
56:09 see any grounds contract services or people over there.
56:11 Right.
56:12 But just for mowing.
56:13 Just for mowing.
56:14 Right.
56:15 It needs to go to the dereg next year.
56:17 All right.
56:18 Let’s add that to the list, please, and by making it.
56:20 So again, I just, I kind of like the other question, what won’t
56:24 get done?
56:24 So you talked about if we, you know, if we have an increase of $3
56:28 million this year, then maybe we just won’t see an increase in
56:32 the capital dollars available.
56:33 But, I mean, is that kind of how you’re anticipating this is
56:37 going to go this year?
56:38 Is that we just, this year it’ll be more flat because we’re
56:41 going to take this $3 million and move it to maintenance?
56:44 So I, I think it’ll be kind of flat.
56:47 And I also think that I may not need $6.2 million.
56:52 I might be able to say, look, maybe $5.8 million.
56:55 So like I might be able to absorb some of that on the side of
56:58 the facility capital renewal.
57:00 As we start to fund maintenance more appropriately, the less I
57:03 have to worry about that.
57:04 I think that number can probably go down a little bit.
57:06 That’s true.
57:07 I just think about all the agenda items that I’ve seen that it
57:11 was a sales surtax project.
57:12 But the scope of the project went beyond the sales surtax plan.
57:16 And so it came out of that, that bucket.
57:19 That’s where it comes.
57:20 Or it was something that couldn’t be done by that.
57:22 And so that bucket is something that we’ve used so frequently.
57:25 And we need it quite frequently.
57:29 And thankfully the surtax has done so much better, continued to
57:33 do so much better than we anticipated.
57:34 And so we have that extra fund.
57:35 But there’s always that if it can’t be done.
57:38 Right.
57:39 And you absorb that out of that funding.
57:41 So.
57:42 But I will tell you, Sue, you always do such a great job.
57:45 You and your team.
57:46 And very, have proven yourself so trustworthy.
57:50 I have to surrender to your expertise of your whole team.
57:54 And, you know, I mean, I just know how to turn the lawn mower on.
57:58 I mean, that’s just about it.
58:00 So.
58:01 But I appreciate the serious work you thought about the funding.
58:04 Because it is, we have really seen a shift, even since my
58:08 beginning time on the board,
58:09 to this idea of let’s take care of it better on the front end.
58:13 So it’s not so expensive on the back end.
58:15 And fortunately it takes a while to see that payoff.
58:18 But I think we’re starting to see some of that.
58:21 So hopefully I’ll keep moving forward.
58:22 I appreciate that.
58:23 Thank you.
58:26 Mr. Susan.
58:27 You’re good.
58:28 Mr. Trent.
58:29 Good.
58:30 You’re good.
58:31 All right.
58:32 No, I think this is a great presentation, honestly.
58:33 And I, the facility assessment, I, that part of it I’m very
58:36 excited about.
58:37 Honestly, that was one of the things I wrote was to go through
58:40 each one of our facilities,
58:40 every bit of property that we own and sit down with not only
58:44 just us from the building department
58:46 or whoever it is, but have the staff at the school.
58:49 Because I walk classrooms sometimes and silly little things like,
58:51 oh, we’re missing a tile here.
58:53 Little things, right?
58:54 Which end up being a work order.
58:55 But just so we have a good, a good idea of what needs to be
58:58 fixed in each one of our school sites.
59:00 You know, I think it’s interesting.
59:02 It’s very, your, your slides are, are spot on.
59:05 They highlight a lot of the issues we have.
59:07 We’re increasing in square footage.
59:08 We’re decreasing in personnel.
59:09 Now we have a longer backlog of work order.
59:12 Obviously we can see like what’s happening here.
59:14 And again, you guys do a phenomenal job.
59:18 So we have the utmost respect.
59:19 I know I have the utmost respect for you and your team there and
59:22 what you guys are doing.
59:23 So you have my blessing to go forward.
59:25 I trust all the things that you’re doing because you’re doing an
59:28 amazing job.
59:28 So we appreciate you.
59:29 Thank you, Mr. Wright.
59:30 And thank you to the board.
59:31 I will say like all of the facility capital programming work is
59:35 a collaborative effort with my peers on cabinet and their, their
59:39 support.
59:39 Like we work together on this really well.
59:41 So we all give and take.
59:43 And so even though I’m the first one to tell you about all this,
59:46 I will absolutely be a team player with my friends on cabinet
59:50 because we, we want to do the best work for our schools as a
59:54 whole.
59:54 Right.
59:55 So if solving my problem entirely means it creates a problem
59:59 with them, we might solve my problem 80% and try to, so, so I
1:00:03 want everybody that’s my peers back there to understand that we
1:00:06 will be working together on this and we want to do our best job
1:00:11 for the school.
1:00:11 So thank you very much.
1:00:12 Thank you so much.
1:00:13 We appreciate you.
1:00:14 All right, board.
1:00:15 Are you good?
1:00:16 Do you need to take a recess for restroom break or anything?
1:00:18 Nope.
1:00:19 All right.
1:00:20 So we are onto our next topic, which is the orchid lake
1:00:23 educational facilities impact fee deferral contracts.
1:00:25 And I think we have some gentlemen here that are going to
1:00:29 present to us.
1:00:30 All right, just by way of introduction, I want to introduce Mr.
1:00:49 Larson, Mr. Crump.
1:00:50 They are, Mr. Larson’s representing the development group and Mr.
1:00:54 Crump is representing housing for the homeless.
1:00:56 They had proposed an impact fee exemption for a portion of their
1:01:01 project and I wanted an opportunity for them to discuss that
1:01:04 with you before we put it on the agenda.
1:01:06 Thank you.
1:01:07 Yeah.
1:01:08 Well, thank you.
1:01:09 My name is Jason Larson.
1:01:10 I’m with Housing Trust Group.
1:01:12 We’re an affordable housing developer based in Coconut Grove.
1:01:15 And we’ve partnered with Rob Cramp and his organization, Housing
1:01:20 for Homeless, that’s based in Rockledge.
1:01:23 He has a lot of experience in dealing with homeless households
1:01:27 and homeless families in Brevard County.
1:01:30 And in 2001, we teamed up and we submitted an application for
1:01:36 funding to Florida Housing for the development of a 90 unit
1:01:42 apartment complex called Orchid Lake.
1:01:45 And it’s in Coco.
1:01:46 It’s generally at the, let’s see, the southeast corner of
1:01:53 Michigan Avenue and Clear Lake Road.
1:01:57 And we applied the, the program is a special set aside for
1:02:02 homeless families.
1:02:03 So of the 90 units, 45 are set aside for, for homeless
1:02:09 households.
1:02:10 We’ve got one, two and three bedroom units.
1:02:12 We actually worked with the Brevard County Housing Authority to
1:02:17 get funding to cover the rental income for the homeless units.
1:02:22 So families that qualify will only have to pay a portion of what
1:02:27 their income is.
1:02:28 And so they, they won’t be precluded from living there because
1:02:33 they don’t make enough money.
1:02:35 And so, you know, we, it kind of working with this, we had come
1:02:43 across the homeless development that the Housing Authority, or
1:02:50 that the, I’m sorry, the school board had participated in.
1:02:53 St. Stephen’s Way with a long-term deferral of the, the school
1:02:59 fee waivers or the school fees.
1:03:02 And so we thought that it, it might be an opportunity for, for
1:03:07 us and Orchid Lake to maybe partner with the, with the school
1:03:12 board.
1:03:12 And we give the school board some participation in this
1:03:17 development such that we could, you know, work with the school
1:03:21 board for referrals or anything with, you know, your homeless,
1:03:25 your students that are experiencing homelessness and their
1:03:29 families.
1:03:29 So, so we wanted to come here and speak with you about Robin.
1:03:35 Yeah, I’m the executive director for housing for homeless.
1:03:40 We’ve been in Brevard since 1989.
1:03:43 We currently have around 90 units, 90 properties across the
1:03:49 county that we found that we house homeless and low income.
1:03:54 A third of them are for veterans and their families.
1:03:57 And I think what Orchid Lake is going to be different though.
1:04:02 The, the, the homeless support that HUD provides is, as you know,
1:04:08 they provide more funding than any, any other government
1:04:11 authority.
1:04:12 But it’s not, it’s really just about housing.
1:04:16 It isn’t about, well, when you’ve got them in there, now what
1:04:18 are you going to do?
1:04:19 And there’s very little funding support supplied for the support
1:04:23 of the people wants are in there and children particularly
1:04:27 suffer from this lack of support.
1:04:29 So to be frank, over many of the years that we’ve housed people,
1:04:32 we bring them in and they, we help them stabilize the situation.
1:04:36 But they leave eventually in the 85%, 85, 90% of our, um,
1:04:41 residents are able to transition to their own properties, but
1:04:46 they, they keep the same issues.
1:04:47 Um, children’s issues, um, children’s issues, mental health
1:04:50 issues, substance abuse issues, because there isn’t the support
1:04:55 available, isn’t the funding for support.
1:04:57 Orchid Lake is going to be different.
1:04:59 We not only have case management, um, for the families, we have
1:05:04 what we call resident service coordinators who will work with
1:05:07 the case manager, identify what the issues are that the children
1:05:11 or the adults may be having, go out and find the, um,
1:05:16 um, health, health, health service provider that can provide
1:05:20 that support, follow through to make sure it’s delivered and
1:05:22 measure the results.
1:05:23 And that is for nobody else in Bravada is doing this at all.
1:05:26 There is nobody even approaching this.
1:05:28 And it’s so important because you’ll probably well know yourself,
1:05:33 the medical healthcare communities is hopelessly fragmented.
1:05:37 It is very difficult.
1:05:38 The case manager working, you’ll hear people talk about case
1:05:42 managers.
1:05:42 They don’t have any time to go out and try and find out who they
1:05:46 should talk to about getting support.
1:05:49 And this way we feel we’re gaining outstanding, better support.
1:05:53 We’ve, we’re going to see spectacular results in, in the
1:05:56 improvement of family condition.
1:05:58 And we don’t keep these homeless, um, families separated.
1:06:02 Half, the other half will be for what we call workforce housing.
1:06:06 They could be first responders.
1:06:07 It could be, um, it could be teachers.
1:06:10 It could be firemen.
1:06:11 They, they live, well next, they’ll be on the same landing as
1:06:16 the homeless.
1:06:16 The idea is you set a model for the, for the homeless families
1:06:20 to aspire to.
1:06:21 Children will see the children of other families at a higher
1:06:25 income level with prospects.
1:06:27 It, it’s, it starts to break the cycle of homelessness.
1:06:31 Yeah, so kind of our ask was, um, for, um, deferral of the
1:06:39 school fees.
1:06:40 It would, even though it is a $30 million development and this,
1:06:44 uh, deferral would be worth about $85,000.
1:06:47 So, in the grand scheme of the development, it, you know, it’s
1:06:51 not a, a huge sum of money.
1:06:52 Um, but we thought it would also give a, a relationship and, and
1:06:56 we give the, the school board kind of a, a financial interest in
1:07:00 the property.
1:07:00 Such that we could, uh, work together on any, um, programs that
1:07:06 you have or initiatives that you have on, uh, housing any of
1:07:10 your students.
1:07:10 Or any of the families that come to the, the, um, the, um, that,
1:07:14 that you understand are, are housing insecure.
1:07:17 It’s kind of one of the explore of that.
1:07:21 That was, uh, that was the, that was the ask.
1:07:24 Okay, thank you.
1:07:25 Do the board members, do you have any questions or?
1:07:27 I do.
1:07:31 Um, so it says that 45 of these units will be reserved for
1:07:36 families with students enrolled in Brevard Public Schools.
1:07:40 Um, I’m looking at the, sorry, I’m looking at the, the main.
1:07:48 Um, so I mean, is that a guarantee?
1:07:57 Is that a long term vision?
1:07:59 Like, is that written somewhere?
1:08:02 Yeah.
1:08:03 Yes and yes.
1:08:04 Okay.
1:08:05 It’s part of the, um, funding is controlled.
1:08:08 Part of it comes through the Brevard Homeless Coalition.
1:08:10 Thank you.
1:08:11 And the HUD funding is such that, which only allowed for
1:08:15 families with a resident in Brevard.
1:08:18 Yeah.
1:08:19 So it, it, it would be for families from Brevard County.
1:08:22 Now we, because we have some other commitments for the other
1:08:26 funding, we couldn’t guarantee that the unit would only be, uh,
1:08:30 occupied at all times with, um, you know, a child that’s in Brevard
1:08:35 schools.
1:08:36 Um, but certainly our, you know, we do have, um, you know, the,
1:08:40 the homeless, uh, units that are set aside are 18, one bedrooms,
1:08:43 but we do have 19, two bedrooms and eight, three bed, three
1:08:47 bedroom units.
1:08:47 That, you know, certainly will, will house children, um, at some
1:08:52 point.
1:08:52 And it’s a, it’s a 50 year set aside for the building.
1:08:55 So, um, although we couldn’t guarantee that at all times it
1:08:59 would be, uh, students, but, uh, certainly majority of the time.
1:09:03 The goal.
1:09:04 Right.
1:09:05 Um, I’m assuming that this is something that’s already, you know,
1:09:09 it’s all done with the city of Cocoa.
1:09:10 I’ve seen the document there with mayor Blake.
1:09:12 Um, I appreciate this just as an educator and, and as a school
1:09:17 member for Brevard public schools, because, you know, we have
1:09:21 over, I don’t know at this point what the number is anymore, but
1:09:24 about 3000 students homeless and in transition.
1:09:26 And one of my first experiences as an educator at Harbor city
1:09:31 was in the daycare line after school and, and watching families
1:09:34 who legitimately lived in their cars and all the things packed
1:09:36 inside and on top of it, come in day in and day out.
1:09:40 And so, um, having affordable housing in communities that are in
1:09:44 dire need for that is meeting a need for our students.
1:09:47 And ultimately, if we can provide a consistent home for our kids,
1:09:51 um, it’s benefiting us as a school system as well, because that
1:09:55 stability is, is absolutely critical.
1:09:56 And especially in a city where the median income is about $33,000.
1:09:59 So, um, I mean, to me, it’s a drop in the bucket.
1:10:03 I don’t, I don’t see any red flags.
1:10:04 That’s why I would have a problem with it, but somebody else
1:10:06 might see something.
1:10:07 I don’t.
1:10:08 Thank you gentlemen for coming, sharing with us and thank you
1:10:15 for the work you’re doing.
1:10:18 I am in support of, um, you know, every community trying to find
1:10:23 solutions for affordable housing, especially in the area where
1:10:26 we live.
1:10:26 I’d very much appreciate that.
1:10:28 Um, I wanted to make sure I understood the, um, the, the actual
1:10:35 ask.
1:10:36 Um, and so our, our discussion item says that, uh, based on the
1:10:42 deferral contract, the, the impact fees, the $87,000 will be
1:10:48 deferred with the lien recorded on the property.
1:10:50 If the property is sold or no longer being used in accordance
1:10:53 with the terms of the contract, you know, not used for, um,
1:10:55 affordable housing or including half dedicated.
1:10:58 Um, you know, meeting the needs of the homeless, um, the
1:11:03 educational impact fees become due and payable.
1:11:06 But then it says if the developer full, uh, assuming that means
1:11:10 that should be fulfilled.
1:11:11 The terms of the deferral contract for 10 years, the lien will
1:11:14 be extinguished.
1:11:15 So, it kind of says two different things.
1:11:18 It says to me, you know, if it’s, you know, if any, if the, if
1:11:23 it becomes something else than what it was originally intended,
1:11:26 then those impact fees are payable.
1:11:28 Um, but not if it stays what it’s supposed to be doing for 10
1:11:33 years.
1:11:33 Am I understanding that correctly?
1:11:35 Yeah.
1:11:36 That language we actually, uh, took from the St. Stephen’s way.
1:11:40 Okay.
1:11:41 So that, that’s kind of where that came from.
1:11:43 But as a practical matter, we have a deed restriction from
1:11:46 Florida housing, um, who’s providing the, you know, $25 million
1:11:49 of the funding.
1:11:50 That is a 50 year set aside, you know, and must, um, serve, you
1:11:54 know, at least 45 homeless families.
1:11:57 Okay.
1:11:58 So we’re sure that, you know, for that 50 years, this is what it
1:12:01 has to be done.
1:12:01 It can’t, even if it’s sold to someone else, it, it will follow
1:12:04 that.
1:12:04 Yeah.
1:12:05 It runs with the land.
1:12:06 So even if it was sold to someone else, it would still be
1:12:09 affordable.
1:12:09 Yeah.
1:12:10 For all the programs.
1:12:11 I’ll just share with you and share with the board.
1:12:14 Um, I, I do have a little bit of hesitation and I’ll, uh, I
1:12:17 haven’t had conversations with, with Ms. Hand about this.
1:12:20 Um, talked about it briefly with Dr. Rendell, but, um, I do see
1:12:24 a difference between the process that you guys are following
1:12:28 versus St. Stephen’s way.
1:12:29 It’s, it’s some of the same work, but, um, you know, St. Stephen’s
1:12:34 way from the ground up has been a donation based, um, work.
1:12:39 That getting the property, doing the, doing the building, you
1:12:42 know, uh, it’s been a very slow process.
1:12:44 But I, and I know that there’s been some, there’s some what’s
1:12:48 profit and what’s nonprofit and there’s coordination between it.
1:12:51 But I have some hesitation to do the exact same thing for this
1:12:55 project as far as impact fees.
1:12:57 One, because we do, we do need those fees.
1:13:00 We need those fees for what we’re doing next door.
1:13:01 We do need those fees for what we’re doing for all of our
1:13:04 communities across the district.
1:13:05 Um, but, which includes building schools for the students who
1:13:09 are coming in and including the ones that have needs.
1:13:12 But I, that is my hesitation is the differences in those two
1:13:16 projects.
1:13:16 Um, and I’m not saying I can’t over, that can’t be overcome in
1:13:19 my mind, but I’ll just have to have some other conversations.
1:13:21 Any, any, um, you know, any input into that, uh, that you would
1:13:26 have.
1:13:26 I, I would appreciate it either now or later, or, um, you know,
1:13:31 those are some questions that I’m having to ask.
1:13:33 No, it’s a, it’s a really good question.
1:13:35 You’re, you’re comparing, you know, private donations to
1:13:38 taxpayers, because taxpayers are funding what we’re doing.
1:13:41 Um, whether we, whichever way you describe it.
1:13:45 But I think that the level of support that we are going to give,
1:13:50 um, the children that are in our thing is because the end result
1:13:55 is what is best for the children?
1:13:56 You know, we will have a splash pad.
1:13:59 We will have a play area.
1:14:01 Um, and even though it’s, it’s still subsidized funding, it is,
1:14:07 um, the focus is on protection of the children.
1:14:11 And I don’t think you’ll find any other development in Brevard
1:14:14 that’s giving the same kind of support for the families that we
1:14:18 will be doing in Orchid Lake.
1:14:20 Yeah, and I, you know, Rob deals with the, uh, the programs for
1:14:24 the, for the homeless units.
1:14:25 Um, but kind of the idea is that, you know, because the school
1:14:29 board is, is giving a contribution to the development that there
1:14:33 could be created some type of special, special relationship
1:14:37 where, um, you know, maybe like with, uh, St. Stephen’s way, um,
1:14:44 you know, as opposed to, to just going through the, uh, you know,
1:14:48 the, the coalition of homeless providers, waitlist that there
1:14:52 might be some way to do direct referrals or something.
1:14:54 So, you know, to kind of leave that up to, to the way that that
1:14:56 works with Rob.
1:14:57 And we, and we are like, um, St. Stephen’s way that it’s very
1:15:02 locally focused.
1:15:03 We know St. Stephen’s way, I know John on the people on the
1:15:06 board there, but so is Orchid Lake.
1:15:10 Jason goes away after a couple of years.
1:15:13 He’s a developer.
1:15:14 It’s our property then.
1:15:16 We own it.
1:15:17 Um, we will, in fact, um, as soon as it, before it even opens,
1:15:21 we’re moving our Rockledge office into the, onto the site.
1:15:24 We will operate from there.
1:15:25 That will be our headquarters.
1:15:27 So it’s very much a local, um, operation.
1:15:30 Thank you.
1:15:31 I appreciate that.
1:15:32 All right.
1:15:33 Mr. Susan.
1:15:34 Thank you.
1:15:35 I just had a couple of quick questions.
1:15:38 Um, can you run that unit breakdown again?
1:15:41 So many one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom.
1:15:43 It was, if you had that.
1:15:44 Sure.
1:15:45 Yeah.
1:15:46 So for the unit set aside for the homeless families, um, it’s,
1:15:50 uh, 18, one bedroom units, one bedroom,
1:15:52 one bath, uh, 19, two bedroom, two bath and eight, three bedroom,
1:15:57 two bath.
1:15:58 And, um, basically the same unit count for the workforce units
1:16:04 that, that are 60% AMI maximum.
1:16:07 So, uh, for the workforce units, one just needs to income
1:16:11 qualify.
1:16:11 Thank you.
1:16:12 Next question is, is towards that workforce piece.
1:16:15 Um, you were saying teachers and all these other things.
1:16:18 And Sue knows that when that gets mentioned, I get a little
1:16:21 excited about some things.
1:16:22 Can you explain a little bit more?
1:16:23 Is there an application process?
1:16:25 Are they going to be applying through with their jobs?
1:16:27 Like how does that work?
1:16:29 Explain that.
1:16:30 Or is it just because it’s within an income that matches what we
1:16:33 have for those jobs?
1:16:34 Like if you can explain some of that.
1:16:36 Sure.
1:16:37 There is a application process.
1:16:38 And then, uh, you know, as part of the, you know, filling out a
1:16:42 lease application and everything,
1:16:43 we do, you know, background checks and things like that.
1:16:46 But as part of that is also income, income verification that
1:16:50 goes into the file.
1:16:51 And because it’s, um, tax credit financed, uh, that’s a, um,
1:16:56 important part of ensuring compliance
1:16:58 with the tax credit regulations and, uh, uh, Florida housing
1:17:03 comes in audits those files.
1:17:05 And so, um, we, we typically want to see income, um, at least
1:17:11 two and a half times the rental
1:17:12 rate to make sure that there’s enough income that, uh, families
1:17:15 can pay the rent.
1:17:16 Um, and then there are some maximums.
1:17:19 So like, uh, for this year, um, in Brevard County at a, let’s
1:17:26 say our 60% unit, um, on a two bedroom.
1:17:30 So let’s, let’s just say, well, let’s just say it’s a two person
1:17:34 family in a, in a one bedroom.
1:17:35 Uh, the maximum would be 41,280.
1:17:39 And, uh, you could in a, you know, we, we do allow two people
1:17:44 per bedroom.
1:17:45 So on a three bedroom, you could have a family as large as six,
1:17:49 although we typically don’t
1:17:50 see that much, but you could go up to 59,880.
1:17:54 Uh, and that’s on the workforce side.
1:17:57 Can you explain that max?
1:17:58 Does that mean the max that family can make in order to become a
1:18:01 part of it?
1:18:01 Yeah, that’s, that’s the most a family could make.
1:18:04 Um, now if a family has been there, I think for two years, you
1:18:08 can make more than that.
1:18:09 Cause the idea is that you don’t want to hinder people from, you
1:18:14 know, getting better jobs
1:18:14 or things like that.
1:18:15 And, and you can stay in the unit.
1:18:17 So, and then that is some, um, so who owns and manage and I’m
1:18:22 sorry, I’m just fascinated
1:18:22 by what’s happening.
1:18:23 Right.
1:18:24 Um, and I apologize if some of these may go outside the scope.
1:18:27 No, sorry.
1:18:28 Um, who manages the overall process of what you’re saying?
1:18:31 Is that your organization or is that another organization that
1:18:35 runs the workforce side?
1:18:35 Oh, it’s how it worked.
1:18:38 Um, housing trust group have a management subsidiary, um,
1:18:42 housing trust group management
1:18:43 who manage many properties.
1:18:44 They will do the day take for three years.
1:18:46 They do to the day to day running of the operation.
1:18:49 We take care of the, of the homeless clients of the homeless
1:18:53 residents.
1:18:54 Um, we care of them.
1:18:55 We provide a case manager.
1:18:56 We provide a program director and we provide this resident
1:19:00 services coordinator.
1:19:01 After three years, we take over the whole property.
1:19:04 So you manage the workforce in the beginning for the first three
1:19:09 years.
1:19:09 He manages homeless.
1:19:10 And then after three years, you take over.
1:19:11 You got it.
1:19:12 Right.
1:19:13 Yeah.
1:19:14 As the, uh, as the for-profit developer and we’ve done, you know,
1:19:17 we, we currently have
1:19:18 about 8,000 units, uh, like the, uh, affordable units in our
1:19:22 portfolio.
1:19:22 And over the past, you know, 25 years, we’ve probably done 20,000
1:19:25 units.
1:19:25 So we’re providing the, the financial guarantees and the kind of
1:19:29 development expertise.
1:19:30 Yeah.
1:19:31 Um, to, you know, physically get the property funded, built.
1:19:35 Um, you know, there is a tax credit investor, which is, um, uh,
1:19:39 Raymond James contributed about
1:19:41 $16 million.
1:19:42 The way it works is it’s, um, a federal tax credit that then
1:19:47 gets sold to private, uh,
1:19:49 business.
1:19:50 So typically it’s banks that buy into it.
1:19:51 So you, you turn kind of a federal source into a private
1:19:55 investment and then you’ve got,
1:19:56 you know, private business, um, interest involved.
1:19:59 And so that’s, you know, what helps ensure that the property is
1:20:02 maintained and the property
1:20:04 has to be, you know, kept in compliance and maintained, um, you
1:20:08 know, for 50 years.
1:20:10 And the, the tax credit, um, period is 15 years.
1:20:15 Yeah.
1:20:16 So, uh, so after that, uh, Rob’s organization has a, a right of
1:20:20 first refusal to buy out the
1:20:22 limited partner.
1:20:23 Got it.
1:20:24 And we’re in, you know, just as long as we have to, uh, maintain,
1:20:27 um, operating deficit
1:20:28 guarantees on the property, which is typically three years.
1:20:31 And since this is, you know, a, a special needs, you know,
1:20:34 primarily special needs property,
1:20:36 which, you know, Rob’s organization, uh, specializes in, and,
1:20:40 and, and housing for homeless
1:20:41 already has 90 other units around the County.
1:20:43 Um, yeah, we’re exiting from the partnership.
1:20:46 So let me ask you this now on that workforce side.
1:20:50 And even on the homeless side, there’s a bare minimum that they
1:20:54 pay.
1:20:54 Is there an offsetting costs that you guys fill in to pay your
1:20:58 organization?
1:20:59 So like if I’m on the workforce side and my rent is a thousand
1:21:03 dollars and I pay that
1:21:04 is the federal government subsidy subsidizing that and paying on
1:21:08 the workforce side, but
1:21:09 the, the, the rents are extremely competitive.
1:21:11 You’re talking of a three bedroom.
1:21:13 What?
1:21:14 Thirteen.
1:21:15 Uh, well, yeah, let’s say, uh, let’s see, 60%.
1:21:18 It’s around the, the, the, from one to three bedroom, it’s
1:21:22 around 900 up to 1300.
1:21:23 Now you can tell me where you can find a three bedroom for 1300.
1:21:26 You can’t.
1:21:27 And it’s ridiculous.
1:21:28 On the, on the homeless side, the deal with the housing vouchers,
1:21:32 which is what we’re getting
1:21:33 for the, um, for the, um, with housing authority, they’re
1:21:38 guaranteed that they, no tenant ever
1:21:42 pays more than 30% of their income ever.
1:21:44 Right.
1:21:45 That’s the deal.
1:21:46 That’s good.
1:21:47 Doesn’t matter what their income is.
1:21:48 Um, small or large, they never pay more than 30%.
1:21:51 And then.
1:21:52 Okay.
1:21:53 Um, all right.
1:21:55 Backtracking just a little bit.
1:21:57 Um, all right.
1:22:00 So we’ve got the control of the Reese management.
1:22:03 When I’m looking at the 41,000 and 59,000, many of our, just so
1:22:06 you know, many of our beginning
1:22:07 teachers make above 41,000.
1:22:08 So they wouldn’t qualify on the website.
1:22:10 Exactly.
1:22:11 But you may have some families that have multiple units that may
1:22:14 qualify for that.
1:22:15 We also have IAs, bus drivers, custodians, everybody else that
1:22:18 may want to do that.
1:22:19 That’s where a lot of this affordable housing comes into play.
1:22:21 Um, I appreciate that.
1:22:23 I may have some follow up, but I think I’ve gone through.
1:22:26 Thank you for taking the time to explain that.
1:22:28 Um, I appreciate the partnership between public and private.
1:22:32 I do.
1:22:33 I understand that we need to do this more often.
1:22:34 Um, you know, my heart goes out to you for doing what you do for
1:22:37 the organizations and
1:22:38 stuff like that throughout our county with 90 other units that
1:22:41 you’re working with.
1:22:42 So thank you.
1:22:43 I might want some other follow up, but I just wanted to mention
1:22:47 that first.
1:22:47 Thank you, Mr. Trent.
1:22:48 Do you have questions?
1:22:49 They’ve been answered so far.
1:22:50 They have.
1:22:51 Okay.
1:22:52 All right.
1:22:53 Um, thank you guys for coming and presenting to us today and
1:22:55 giving us a little overview.
1:22:55 Um, I miss Campbell, you said it very well, I guess.
1:22:58 I do have a bit of pause on the deferral and I’m going to be
1:23:01 honest and transparent.
1:23:02 I commend what you’re doing.
1:23:03 And I think it’s a great need that our community absolutely has.
1:23:06 But this application is significantly different than the St.
1:23:09 Stevens way application and how
1:23:10 it came to us.
1:23:11 And so that’s the part where I just have a bit of hesitation
1:23:14 because they came through scraping
1:23:15 every penny they possibly could.
1:23:17 Uh, you guys presented a projected expense with this already in
1:23:21 there.
1:23:21 One of the other issues that I’m kind of seeing is when we look
1:23:24 at this contract for
1:23:25 the deferral on page four of this contract, it says that if you
1:23:29 transfer this property that
1:23:31 the deferral will only remain in place should it be transferred
1:23:34 to another non-for-profit organization.
1:23:36 And you’re not a non-for-profit right now.
1:23:38 And so that seems to almost kind of counter.
1:23:40 I, that’s where I’m just having the issue.
1:23:44 I, I understand.
1:23:45 I understand your why.
1:23:46 I a hundred percent do.
1:23:48 Um, but there is some things here that just give me a bit of
1:23:52 pause and mainly it’s how it
1:23:53 was presented versus how the other one was presented and then
1:23:56 being so drastically different.
1:23:57 I know this, the community that it serves is the same.
1:23:59 And there is a huge need for this.
1:24:01 So I support this project a hundred percent, but I just want to
1:24:04 be honest and transparent
1:24:04 on where I’m kind of having a hiccup on saying, okay, we agree
1:24:08 with deferral of these impact
1:24:09 fees that we obviously you sat through two presentations on our
1:24:12 capital projects that we have.
1:24:14 So you’ve seen, there’s a lot of deficit there that we need.
1:24:16 So, uh, that’s where my, if I’m being honest and transparent
1:24:19 with you, where I have a bit of an issue.
1:24:21 Uh, just quick response on that.
1:24:23 St. Stephen’s way aren’t the only ones who are scraping for
1:24:26 expense.
1:24:26 The 30 million did not include any, not $1 in support of the, of
1:24:30 the residents we’re putting
1:24:32 in that.
1:24:33 All the services I talked to you about, we have to go out and
1:24:36 find and do the same thing.
1:24:37 We had to scrape wherever we could find funding to support those
1:24:41 services.
1:24:41 So it’s, it’s not, you know, a complete package.
1:24:44 It wasn’t.
1:24:45 HUD never do, still don’t do this.
1:24:47 They still, it’s a tragedy.
1:24:49 They do nothing to support clients once they’re in the problem.
1:24:52 And one other quick question I had is once they’re there, do
1:24:54 they only, do they have a year long lease?
1:24:57 And then do they, how long can they qualify under the homeless
1:25:00 portion of this?
1:25:01 Or is it?
1:25:02 It’s, it’s called permanent supportive housing.
1:25:05 And that’s what it is.
1:25:06 It’s permanent as long as they qualify.
1:25:08 Okay.
1:25:09 So they, so it’s not like their lease can be extended forever
1:25:12 then, so to speak.
1:25:12 Is that correct?
1:25:13 I’m just trying to understand it.
1:25:14 Yeah.
1:25:15 Just like our other 90 product, we recertify them every once a
1:25:18 year.
1:25:18 And as long as their income’s fine and they’ve met all the
1:25:21 conditions of, of the lease, then
1:25:22 they’re fine.
1:25:23 Okay.
1:25:24 All right.
1:25:25 But, but yeah, they’re annual leases to start.
1:25:26 They are annual leases.
1:25:27 We, we, we do have a culture of trying to, um, motivate them to
1:25:31 kind of move on and get
1:25:32 into the private market race.
1:25:33 The problem with the county now is, is the rate, the rate, the
1:25:37 rate, the market rate
1:25:38 rates are so high above our subsidized rates.
1:25:41 They can’t move out.
1:25:42 There’s nowhere for them to go.
1:25:44 It is a problem.
1:25:45 You’re a hundred percent correct.
1:25:46 Because it does almost set up a situation where there is no way
1:25:50 out, so to speak, or to
1:25:51 better, you know what I mean?
1:25:52 Because the rent right now, the average rent is astronomical.
1:25:55 So, um, I appreciate you guys tremendously.
1:25:57 I may have some more follow up questions as I kind of go through
1:26:00 this and talk with Sue
1:26:01 a little bit more.
1:26:02 And, um, I’m sure we’ll be able to have your contact information.
1:26:04 Should we have follow up questions for them?
1:26:05 Is that okay?
1:26:06 Sure.
1:26:07 Yes.
1:26:08 Any time.
1:26:09 Can I follow?
1:26:10 One, and one thing to add too, because of the way the tax credit
1:26:13 program works is the
1:26:14 actual partnership that owns the property.
1:26:16 Um, it can’t be a nonprofit.
1:26:18 Um, but the general partner who is, is Rob is a nonprofit.
1:26:24 So when we applied to Florida housing for the funding, we
1:26:27 actually qualified as a nonprofit,
1:26:29 um, application kind of under the Florida housing rules.
1:26:33 But just because the, the, the tax credit is something that, uh,
1:26:38 you know, will go to
1:26:40 somebody’s tax liability, which means that, that they are a for
1:26:43 profit kind of by definition,
1:26:44 uh, kind of the entity that, that owns the, the, uh, property
1:26:48 isn’t, uh, you know, 100% nonprofit.
1:26:50 But like I say, the general partner is in, uh, at closing, there
1:26:55 was a right of first refusal
1:26:57 that, uh, Rob’s, uh, housing for home assigned.
1:27:00 And so the tax credit investor will, uh, sell their interest at
1:27:04 the end of the tax credit
1:27:05 period to housing for homeless for a dollar.
1:27:08 And then of course we’re exiting before then.
1:27:10 So it will at some point become a, you know, a hundred percent
1:27:15 nonprofit once the tax credit
1:27:16 periods run out.
1:27:17 Okay.
1:27:18 Can I follow up?
1:27:19 Thank you.
1:27:20 I think, um, Mr. Susan, do you have a follow up question?
1:27:22 Yeah, just real quick going back to it.
1:27:24 Cause I didn’t kind of give you what my, where I was at with
1:27:27 things.
1:27:27 Um, can we, one of the things that have recently has come in
1:27:31 some of the research that I’ve been
1:27:32 reading is, is that our number one problem with many of the, um,
1:27:35 issues that we deal with
1:27:36 in schools is both the family structure and the house that they
1:27:40 live in, right?
1:27:41 Um, you’re bringing able to provide that, that house that they
1:27:44 live in, which also helps
1:27:45 with the family structure.
1:27:46 But what I was going to ask you is, is that when I’m looking at
1:27:49 this between the 19 two bedrooms
1:27:51 and the eight three bedrooms, that gives us 27.
1:27:53 I know for a fact that area that we have, there has 27 parents
1:27:57 that have children that
1:27:58 are inside of our schools that would qualify, but I didn’t hear
1:28:02 a definitive.
1:28:02 Yes, there may be a first right of refusal for parents who have
1:28:06 children that are inside
1:28:07 your schools to be a part of it.
1:28:08 Is that a possibility that we may be able, cause you talk about
1:28:12 splash pads and everything else.
1:28:12 I figure that would be your goal.
1:28:14 I was just curious for that.
1:28:15 Absolutely.
1:28:16 We will work towards that.
1:28:17 You, you get some, um, pushback from, um, from other people with
1:28:23 other interests.
1:28:24 But yes, the idea would be to try and give priority to local
1:28:28 people.
1:28:28 It’s very much, that’s the way we, we’ve never had, um, you know,
1:28:32 you hear of this NIMBY,
1:28:34 you’re familiar, I’m sure with the phrase NIMBYism.
1:28:36 Never happened here.
1:28:37 We had Mike Blake as our biggest cheerleader from day one.
1:28:40 Um, um, because we stressed that it was local and it’s going to
1:28:44 be for local.
1:28:45 So shame on us if we go out now and push it out to a much wider
1:28:48 community.
1:28:49 It’s cocoa for us.
1:28:50 I was just, we have a lot of, like Ms. Campbell was saying, the
1:28:55 revenue that we receive from
1:28:55 certain places goes directly into funding some of those areas.
1:28:58 And some of our major funding goes in to support some of the
1:29:01 children that are inside that area.
1:29:02 If we were asking to offset that from something else, it would
1:29:06 be nice to know that the children
1:29:07 that we are dealing with are benefiting from that, which would
1:29:10 reduce the load that we have
1:29:11 on our employees based upon the structure that they’re given
1:29:13 inside.
1:29:13 Absolutely.
1:29:14 So I appreciate what you’re doing.
1:29:16 And I just wanted to let you know where my head’s at with the
1:29:18 approval.
1:29:18 And stuff like that.
1:29:19 So thank you.
1:29:20 All right.
1:29:21 Yeah.
1:29:22 And that, that’s kind of the idea is that by, by doing the fee
1:29:25 deferral.
1:29:25 Now the school board has a financial interest effectively in the
1:29:29 property.
1:29:29 So it should, you know, I would think, and we have to, you know,
1:29:32 you know like i was speaking with rob on because we’re kind of
1:29:35 dealing with multiple different
1:29:36 organizations the homeless coalition um but i mean in my mind it
1:29:40 should give the school board
1:29:42 to see the table with you know and and i would also say on the
1:29:45 workforce side also if we could
1:29:47 be a part of that um i know that you’re saying that that there’s
1:29:50 there but if i’m gonna if i feel
1:29:53 like like miss campbell was saying that’s 86 000 i know i know
1:29:56 in the scheme of the 30 million it’s
1:29:57 not that much because i’ve done my dad did construction for many
1:30:01 years um but for us it
1:30:03 means a lot right and for us i would like to try to squeeze as
1:30:06 much as i can out of you guys for my
1:30:08 kids is what it basically comes down to and i hope you would
1:30:11 understand that no i think from a family’s
1:30:13 point of view it doesn’t matter which unit they’re in whether
1:30:15 they’re homeless or the workforce they’re
1:30:17 going to get the same level of care and attention i tell you my
1:30:20 wife she knows where all the great
1:30:21 um splash pads are in the multi-county area and i will tell you
1:30:26 i’ve visited them many times out
1:30:28 in the middle of nowhere a new splash pad will go in my wife
1:30:30 knows about it so i know how much that
1:30:31 means to families especially some of the families that need a
1:30:34 break so thank you for innovating this
1:30:36 project and getting there um i think for me it would be having
1:30:39 that seat at the table and how that plays
1:30:41 out and i appreciate all your work thank you thank you john i
1:30:44 appreciate you and you’re all invited to
1:30:46 the ribbon cutting can we bring our swim trunks and be in the
1:30:50 splash pad sorry can i bring my swim
1:30:53 trunks and be in the splash pad at least my kids that’s a no sir
1:30:56 when is your estimated time of
1:30:59 completion for this project um right now it’s probably going to
1:31:02 be april may time yeah so ribbon
1:31:05 cutting well we’re moving into our clubhouse we’re moving into
1:31:07 yeah this is this year yeah we’re office
1:31:09 first but then we um the buildings will be complete by about the
1:31:13 last building there’s four buildings
1:31:15 plus a clubhouse and the last building is complete by june so
1:31:19 ribbon cutting will be april may time wow
1:31:22 okay all right good work you need our you need our approval
1:31:25 pretty quick
1:31:28 i know we did it at the groundbreaking i gave it to him then and
1:31:32 it turned into a revival
1:31:33 meeting i believe that thank you gentlemen all right thank you
1:31:37 very much thank you madam chair if
1:31:40 we could take a break while we step for the next presentation
1:31:42 and give everybody a chance to
1:31:43 absolutely let’s take a five minute break all right
1:31:58 so
1:33:39 you
1:33:53 and
1:34:06 you
1:37:42 I would resign
1:37:44 all right welcome back our next topic is our vpk update so i’m
1:37:48 going to turn
1:37:48 the floor over to ms harris and ms chaffee okay good afternoon
1:37:52 we are very excited to be here
1:37:53 because we watched your off-site workshops and uh vpk and and
1:37:58 possible
1:37:59 exploring expansion opportunities came up uh so i’m going to
1:38:04 turn it over to ms chaffee our director of early childhood
1:38:08 that some of the things as she works through we’re going to
1:38:11 inform you of all the pre-k opportunities
1:38:14 and we are hoping that everyone either here live or that is
1:38:17 tuning in
1:38:18 will have more clarity because we have a lot of pre-k programs
1:38:21 and so i think sometimes it can get confusing for our
1:38:24 stakeholders
1:38:25 so we hope that this provides clarity of what we currently have
1:38:28 what it looks like if we want to pursue some expansion
1:38:32 opportunities just from an expense side
1:38:35 and the requirements of the state as far as facility and teacher
1:38:40 certification
1:38:41 we want to explore that and then we hope to have takeaways from
1:38:45 our board
1:38:46 of what you want us to dive deeper into to explore with greater
1:38:50 detail for possible expansion
1:38:52 so that we can come back in a few weeks with updates of the
1:38:55 information that we find
1:38:56 based on that all right thank you okay we’re going to start with
1:39:02 our agenda today
1:39:03 okay there we go all right so we’re going to start like mrs harris
1:39:10 said we’re going to go over
1:39:11 some program descriptions because when we hear vpk we think of
1:39:15 all of our programs but we have vpk
1:39:18 programs head start vpk programs we have our pre-k esc so we’re
1:39:23 going to kind of do a deep dive into
1:39:24 what those programs look like and where we have those programs
1:39:27 um you will see that i’ve provided
1:39:29 everyone a map today it’s kind of an overview of brevard county
1:39:34 and it has little school houses to show you
1:39:36 where we do currently have pre-k programs in our district so you
1:39:40 can see we have them from the north
1:39:42 all the way to the south end of the county all right so we’re
1:39:45 going to do that we’re going to talk about
1:39:48 our locations our pre-kindergarten programs and locations
1:39:51 teaching preschool in florida public
1:39:53 schools what are the requirements necessary for our teachers um
1:39:56 what are the required elements for vpk
1:39:59 program um being that the vpk program is a state funded program
1:40:03 we work with our early learning
1:40:06 coalition and we have funding that comes through them through
1:40:09 the state and because of that we have
1:40:11 requirements that we have to meet in order to have their
1:40:13 programs in our schools what furnitures and
1:40:16 materials are required in our vpk classrooms and do a little
1:40:20 overview of what the expenses look like
1:40:22 that for that and recruitment steps to maximize our current
1:40:25 enrollment
1:40:26 okay so for our program descriptions first we’re going to start
1:40:31 with our step forward vpk programs
1:40:35 our mate they are a class of 20 children with a teacher to a
1:40:39 child ratio of one to ten so in each of our
1:40:43 step forward vpk classrooms you’ll have one teacher one
1:40:47 assistant and 10 students children are eligible to
1:40:51 attend the program by living in the attendance area of the
1:40:54 school so they must be zoned for the school they
1:40:56 are attending for a step forward vpk program okay next we have
1:41:01 our blended vpk programs our blended vpk
1:41:05 programs consist of 18 children there’s 10 general education
1:41:10 students and up to eight ese students in
1:41:13 those pro in those classrooms those classrooms are the children
1:41:18 do not have to live in the area to be in
1:41:21 those programs we have high school vpk programs we have four
1:41:25 high schools that currently house vpk programs
1:41:30 and they are run through our cte program and they have 20
1:41:34 children with a ratio of one to ten one teacher
1:41:37 one assistant and then there’s also high school students in
1:41:40 there that are taking it as a cte class
1:41:49 we have our head start vpk program head start is a federally
1:41:53 funded program in which enrollment must
1:41:55 adhere to family income guidelines those classes house up to 20
1:41:59 children also then we have our pre-k ve
1:42:02 program exceptional student education program that provides for
1:42:05 the educational needs of students with
1:42:07 ieps who are placed according to their home address or
1:42:10 designated service school so that is based on
1:42:14 wherever they feel the child’s needs will best be met
1:42:19 so now we’re going to look at our programs and locations so we’re
1:42:21 going to start with our step
1:42:22 forward vpk currently we have 15 classes in our schools and here’s
1:42:27 a list of the schools and the
1:42:29 number of classes that they currently have and how many children
1:42:33 can be served in those classrooms
1:42:35 so step forward can serve up to 300 children currently
1:42:39 i just want to add for these schools with step forward that our
1:42:45 district title one funding offsets that full day
1:42:48 and so this is where um we have district funding from title one
1:42:51 that supports this program being full
1:42:53 day okay thank you then we have our blended vpk currently we are
1:42:59 have 17 classrooms serving 306 children
1:43:04 up to 306 it shows you the number of children that are eligible
1:43:09 to be in the classrooms it does not
1:43:11 so that does not necessarily mean that these classes are full
1:43:15 our head start vpk at 19 locations serving up to 380 children
1:43:34 while she’s flipping over i’ll just uh interject because i know
1:43:37 you spend a lot of time with head
1:43:39 start um information but the reason that this is not that 624
1:43:43 spots is because
1:43:44 head start also has a three-year-old program so for today we’re
1:43:48 just talking about four-year-olds
1:43:52 and then we have our high school cte programs at our four
1:43:55 locations merritt island high palm bay high
1:43:57 satellite high and bear high and we can have up to 80 children
1:44:01 in those classrooms
1:44:02 and then we do have our head start threes so the head start threes
1:44:10 are only 17 children to a classroom
1:44:12 they are fully funded through head start our head start four-year-old
1:44:16 programs that is funded through
1:44:18 title one and head start because it’s a vpk program head start
1:44:22 threes are fully funded through head start
1:44:24 and we have them at 15 school sites serving two under up to 255
1:44:29 children
1:44:30 yes they are they are full day and that’s a good question
1:44:37 because um our certificates the state program
1:44:40 through the certificates is a three-hour school day so we
1:44:43 allocate head start and title one funds in order
1:44:46 to provide a full school day even for the three-year-olds
1:44:49 okay then we have our pre-k ve these are programs they are
1:44:58 funded through fte because these children
1:45:01 have been staffed into an esc program and we have currently 50
1:45:06 school sites or 50 classes
1:45:10 with pre-k ve students serving 557 children in our district
1:45:24 now here are our schools that currently do not have a vpk or pre-k
1:45:31 ve program
1:45:34 the majority of these schools are not title one schools as mrs
1:45:37 harris said in order for us to do the full
1:45:40 day for our vpk students we have to place our step forward
1:45:43 classrooms in title one schools in order to get the
1:45:46 additional funding to be able to staff the classroom and have
1:45:50 meet the needs of the full day
1:45:58 we currently have approximately 120 private providers throughout
1:46:02 the county that also
1:46:03 do vpk and i know at your workshop i heard you discuss the
1:46:07 private providers so we do have 120
1:46:10 private providers and that’s changing all the time but that’s an
1:46:13 approximate number
1:46:14 that we do try to work with the early low early learning
1:46:17 coalition with on you know getting information
1:46:20 between us and what they do at their programs to have them
1:46:23 aligned up with what we do for vps
1:46:26 so here is kind of an overview of vpk programs vpk step forward
1:46:36 total schools offering the program 12
1:46:38 step forward with inclusion that’s where we have a step forward
1:46:41 classroom but we have two slots in each
1:46:43 of those classrooms so we can have an esc student in them we
1:46:47 have that at nine sites we have our
1:46:49 blended gen ed students at 17 blended xed at 17 programs head
1:46:55 start vpk 12 head start three-year-olds 12
1:46:59 sites ct high school 4 pre-k ve 37 and itinerant services are
1:47:03 where we’re meeting the needs of
1:47:06 four-year-olds and possibly three-year-olds that their parents
1:47:09 are we you might have heard of them
1:47:11 called drive-ins that’s where parents will bribe drive their
1:47:15 child to the school they receive speech
1:47:17 language services or whatever you know maybe ot services and
1:47:21 then the parent takes them home
1:47:23 so we currently have 76 children receiving itinerant services
1:47:27 that are four-year-olds but total right
1:47:29 now in our schools we are serving the needs of 1 409 pre-k
1:47:34 students
1:47:35 and now we’re going to look at our current openings because like
1:47:40 i said we
1:47:41 not of all of our spots are full currently in our step forward
1:47:45 and blended vpk we have 31 openings
1:47:48 across the district in our cte vpk high school programs we have
1:47:53 20 openings and in our head start vpk
1:47:56 and three-year-old programs we have 34 openings so we have total
1:48:00 of 85 openings currently for children
1:48:03 in our programs and this is where uh to me it’s going to take a
1:48:08 whole village because we’ve had to
1:48:10 actually move classes or in some cases collapse um classes due
1:48:14 to low enrollment but we know the
1:48:16 students are out there but if you are a first-time parent of a
1:48:21 pre-k child you just may not know that bps
1:48:24 is a provider and so we want to continue to grow in that area
1:48:27 because we want to ensure that any student
1:48:30 with step forward we’ve even she mentioned that you have to live
1:48:34 in the zone but if we have zoned
1:48:36 if we have spots available and you are outside of the zone we
1:48:39 have helped you to get into those
1:48:41 programs just because we want children in the seats um behind a
1:48:45 certified teacher in our classrooms
1:48:47 you have a handout that looks like this in front of you and over
1:48:52 on the left hand side it’ll show
1:48:53 you the school up at the top of each area it’ll show you whether
1:48:56 it’s a step forward a blended or a
1:48:58 head start vbk program and it does go to the back and it will
1:49:02 show you um the ar is for the area that
1:49:05 is in north central south and then it will tell you like what
1:49:09 the current enrollment is it has the
1:49:11 date up at the top because we do track it by the month and you
1:49:14 can see over on the far right hand
1:49:16 side how many open slots we currently have at those schools like
1:49:20 right now at cave view elementary we have
1:49:22 nine openings okay yeah and can they come in any point in the
1:49:28 year yes any point in the year they
1:49:30 just have to get their certificate through the early learning
1:49:33 coalition or qualify through head start
1:49:35 and then get a certificate through the early learning coalition
1:49:38 so i thought this would help you see
1:49:41 where we have openings okay let’s get to see really separate you
1:49:50 know kate view being at the top of
1:49:51 the list i mean there’s there’s not a lot of opening no there
1:49:54 aren’t it’s it’s really just a few spread
1:49:56 out throughout the district but okay so what are the
1:49:59 requirements to teach pre-kindergarten florida public
1:50:02 schools there’s a lot of requirements um first of all the
1:50:05 teacher has to have a bachelor’s degree or a
1:50:07 higher from an approved teacher education program to teach bpk
1:50:12 in a public school system florida
1:50:15 certification in one of the two areas either pre-kindergarten
1:50:19 primary ed ages grade three through
1:50:22 grade three or preschool education birth to age four so the
1:50:26 first thing they have to do is complete an
1:50:29 approved teacher preparation program including a 10-week field
1:50:32 experience in a preschool setting
1:50:34 step two they have to take and pass the required florida teacher
1:50:37 certification examinations beginning
1:50:39 with the general knowledge test essay subtest english language
1:50:43 skills subtest reading and math
1:50:45 and take and pass the test for either the pre-kindergarten
1:50:48 primary education or preschool education
1:50:50 and apply for and maintain the education education certificate
1:50:54 they are not allowed to be out of field
1:50:57 to teach in our vpk classrooms you often hear that oh that
1:51:00 teacher’s just out of field for this year to be in a
1:51:03 pre-k the or to be in a vpk classroom the teacher cannot be out
1:51:07 of field they have to be certified
1:51:09 conversely if i’m a private provider and i have a private
1:51:13 child care they will meet these uh you know the courses but they
1:51:19 don’t have to be a certified teacher
1:51:21 and so that’s what we really want our community to know too is
1:51:24 um our teachers are certified teachers
1:51:28 and i’m not saying that there are not high quality programs that
1:51:31 are private i’m just saying the bar
1:51:33 is very high for who is selected to teach in our pre-k settings
1:51:37 due to this requirement in public schools
1:51:39 so in a little bit we’re going to kind of talk about marketing
1:51:42 and how we need that’s one of the
1:51:44 things that we need to get out to the community is that our
1:51:46 teachers are certified teachers
1:51:51 okay so what does a vpk classroom look like to set up furniture
1:51:54 and materials to open a vpk classroom
1:51:57 these prices are all current because back with covid through the
1:52:02 early learning coalition in the
1:52:04 state we received a large grant that enabled us to purchase
1:52:09 materials for all of our vpk classrooms to
1:52:11 update them according to the state standards how they wanted
1:52:14 them and that’s what the money had to be used
1:52:16 for when we received it so we redid all of our vpk classrooms in
1:52:21 brevard county within the last two
1:52:24 years so the furniture i would say all of our vpk classrooms
1:52:30 should look just like this it should be
1:52:33 the model you see when you go to your schools and have vpk
1:52:37 classrooms so the furniture is 18 000
1:52:41 the curriculum is 3700 learning materials 8 500 there’s a lot of
1:52:47 hands-on materials in a vpk classroom
1:52:50 so the cost to set up the room is 30 950 but look how nice it
1:52:55 looks looks so nice okay so required
1:53:02 elements for vpk programs we are required by the state to meet
1:53:05 certain requirements for our outdoor space
1:53:09 45 square foot of open space per child the structural equipment
1:53:14 the playground equipment must be
1:53:16 appropriate for four to six year olds many of our schools have
1:53:19 five-year-old playgrounds for their
1:53:21 kindergartens but they aren’t necessarily approved for four-year-olds
1:53:25 so that’s something that we always
1:53:27 have to look at is there a playground that is able to be used by
1:53:31 the four-year-olds and if you have a
1:53:32 three-year-old program then you also have to make sure that it’s
1:53:35 able to be used by your three-year-olds
1:53:38 enclosed with fencing four feet or higher and mulch areas six
1:53:42 inch deep you heard this on talking about
1:53:45 keeping that mulch raked and everything that’s critical because
1:53:49 when they fall they break
1:53:50 and a designated shade area is preferred you know they like the
1:53:56 big shade areas but if not
1:53:57 then you actually you have to have at least a small area where
1:54:00 the children can get out of the sun
1:54:02 the indoor space 35 square foot open space per child in the
1:54:07 classroom sometimes we hear like oh this
1:54:10 classroom is big enough actually for the little ones sometimes
1:54:13 you need a bigger space they because
1:54:15 they have to have the 35 square foot open space per child there
1:54:19 must be a bathroom and a sink accessible in
1:54:22 the classroom and space to have designated learning centers and
1:54:26 appropriate size furniture and also
1:54:29 appropriate size bathroom facilities sometimes the facilities
1:54:32 just aren’t quite right for four-year-olds so
1:54:35 we have to make sure that that’s appropriate when we’re looking
1:54:37 at requirements is is this the same for a private
1:54:41 provider as it is for us or this for private providers this is
1:54:44 the same okay yes this is the same
1:54:46 but this is where it gets tricky when we’re looking at moving
1:54:49 programs it’s the playgrounds
1:54:51 the playgrounds become the tricky element because like miss jeffy
1:54:55 said they could have
1:54:56 the kindergarten with the playground right but if it’s not
1:54:59 certified for the four-year-olds then we’re
1:55:02 talking with sue about you know where is there 40 000 for a
1:55:06 playground
1:55:07 and that’s where i have that right there new playground with
1:55:13 ground cover is
1:55:14 approximately 40 000 and that’s if you don’t have to remove an
1:55:19 old playground if you have an old
1:55:21 playground that’s we have that at one school right now where we’re
1:55:24 having to remove a playground
1:55:25 then you have to add in the cost of that and then fixing the
1:55:28 ground and everything in order to put in
1:55:30 the new playground so playgrounds are very costly okay so right
1:55:36 now when we look at our schools that
1:55:39 are below 85 percent capacity because when we’re looking at
1:55:44 where could we put a new vpk
1:55:46 well you have to have the space in a in a school so currently
1:55:50 these are our schools that are below 85
1:55:52 percent capacity with our k-6 children the only school up there
1:55:57 that’s title one currently is apollo
1:56:00 elementary so the only place that we could look at possibly
1:56:03 starting a new
1:56:05 vpk using title one funding would be apollo at this time the
1:56:10 other schools we would have to look at some
1:56:12 other way to do the funding sources
1:56:14 and as you look at that list that’s where we want to you know
1:56:20 just highlight some areas that we can
1:56:23 explore so some districts go to half day so that you’re looking
1:56:27 at what is the funds generated off the
1:56:29 certificate and what would be the offset of fund 100 some do uh
1:56:35 fee-based programs where parents are
1:56:38 you know paying for the aftercare and you see that a lot in the
1:56:41 private sector so um a private sector
1:56:43 may say okay you can come for the three hour but then it’s xyz
1:56:46 dollars to pay so we could explore some
1:56:49 fee-based opportunities and then we could also look at
1:56:53 generating uh sessions so we would have a morning
1:56:57 session and afternoon session and so parents would select i want
1:57:01 my child to go to the afternoon
1:57:02 session so it’s five days a week but the combination of that now
1:57:06 that does bring some challenges as you
1:57:09 can imagine but those are just some of the possible options that
1:57:14 we would be able to explore and get
1:57:16 more data with apollo being the only one that we have a funding
1:57:20 source that’s allowable to offset that full day
1:57:24 and one other thing is that we always have to consider is that
1:57:27 we have to look at what does
1:57:29 the enrollment look like in the you know the future enrollment
1:57:32 out of school because if they only have
1:57:34 one classroom available and we think that in a year you know
1:57:37 there’s a new neighborhood going in or
1:57:39 something and that their enrollment is going to increase for
1:57:42 their k-6 children we would need those
1:57:44 classrooms possibly for k-6 and then we’d have to relocate the vpk
1:57:49 because k-6 have you know access to our
1:57:53 schools first all right you also in front of you have a funding
1:57:56 and expense in a vpk classroom sheet
1:57:59 this isn’t on a slide but it just shows you for our vpk hours a
1:58:05 vpk child attends school for we get
1:58:08 now like miss harris said we have half day programs and whole
1:58:12 day programs with vpk and our private
1:58:14 providers we do a full day program but we only get money for 540
1:58:21 hours of a child attendant in vpk and
1:58:24 it’s we get five dollars and 42 cents per hour so it’s two
1:58:28 thousand nine hundred and twenty six dollars
1:58:30 per year for a child to attend our vpk programs and so if you
1:58:35 look at the cross the top it shows you
1:58:37 by classroom that’s 58 000 for a class of 20 children that we
1:58:42 bring in so that’s when you’re looking at
1:58:45 the teacher salary and then we have an ia in the classroom that’s
1:58:50 why we use the title one funding so
1:58:56 we also have some just you know expenses that we incur
1:58:59 throughout the year all of these expenses are
1:59:02 through our title one grant currently because the vpk dollars go
1:59:07 to salaries so all the other expenses
1:59:11 currently for our vpk programs either come from title one grant
1:59:15 funding or through head start
1:59:18 our pre-k esc that funding comes through like i said earlier fte
1:59:23 dollars
1:59:24 okay and then finally recruitment steps to maximize enrollment
1:59:36 you know having over 80 openings currently
1:59:40 you know what can we do to get the word out better we we want
1:59:44 the all seats filled we want all seats
1:59:47 filled especially if we’re thinking about looking at expanding
1:59:50 we want to fill the seats we currently
1:59:51 have first so how can we do that well we can work through our
1:59:55 early learning coalition um priscilla
1:59:58 denino our coordinator with um our vpk coordinator and early
2:00:02 childhood coordinator she is on the board with
2:00:05 the early learning coalition so she is our direct connect to
2:00:08 them and she works
2:00:10 and she works with us tirelessly with them to try and get the
2:00:12 word out about you know to the community
2:00:14 but we we want to do more and we have you know some ideas over
2:00:20 here for you know we do our school
2:00:22 marquees when we do our kindergarten transition and kindergarten
2:00:26 orientation and our vpk registration
2:00:28 but we want to continue that and get more out on our web pages
2:00:31 and facebook
2:00:33 we already do have a great partnership with government community
2:00:36 relations
2:00:36 we want to do more through our thrive by five to help parents
2:00:41 know how to go to the early learning
2:00:43 coalition and get that certificate so they can get their child
2:00:46 involved in our vpk programs
2:00:47 and use other means of communication through the district to get
2:00:52 parents in our you know into our programs
2:00:57 i think too when we think of uh you know the impact that vpk
2:01:01 programs have on school readiness like
2:01:03 we have a lot of research behind that but if you spent time in a
2:01:06 school you can tell the difference
2:01:07 between a child who has had a schooling experience and one who
2:01:11 has not yet had that by kindergarten
2:01:13 but when i think of you know the achievement gap is very small
2:01:17 in kindergarten and i know later we’re
2:01:19 going to talk about some data but i can’t help but think of the
2:01:22 game changer we could provide for
2:01:25 students that are entering kindergarten which is their first
2:01:28 formal experience um that just when they
2:01:31 know how to do school you know they they understand that you
2:01:34 know there’s going to be times where we
2:01:36 have to do things we don’t want to do it’s it’s the social
2:01:39 interactions it is the learning through play
2:01:41 that it’s not it’s it’s an environment that just readies them
2:01:46 for there is such a thing as letters
2:01:48 and sounds and and all of those foundational skills and when i
2:01:52 think of um how to get in
2:01:55 to our communities so that we’re making sure especially in those
2:01:58 schools where we have
2:01:59 readiness rates that are not where we collectively want them to
2:02:03 be yet and uh it’s i i think of the
2:02:06 parent that it’s their first child i know we’ve talked you know
2:02:10 and if it’s my first child i don’t
2:02:12 even know what the school um the school system offers and i
2:02:16 think this is why we’re trying to get into
2:02:19 our faith-based settings we’re trying to get to our community
2:02:22 stakeholders every time you see a little
2:02:24 one um i i remember at clear lake at the back to school event a
2:02:28 little boy with a backpack you know
2:02:30 that was falling off his back he couldn’t even hold it up and i
2:02:33 said where are you going to school and
2:02:34 he’s like i’m not this is my brother’s backpack right there
2:02:38 making a connection of with mom guess what
2:02:41 you’re five minutes away from a pre-k setting you know that has
2:02:44 space and so just really making sure
2:02:47 that it’s it’s yes we want to expand but we also want to make
2:02:50 sure that we’re spreading this word so
2:02:53 that every bavard four-year-old knows that there there’s
2:02:56 potential spot for them thank you so much
2:03:00 for the presentation board members i’m going to give you
2:03:03 opportunity to ask questions yeah thank you
2:03:05 guys so much i i very much appreciate all the information and
2:03:09 some of its review but some of it
2:03:11 is new and and just having it all collectively in one place
2:03:14 because we have so many different ways of
2:03:17 doing it um i will just share with you you know from our
2:03:20 conversation that we had at our off-site and
2:03:22 just and all along the way i as far as expansion of vpk my to me
2:03:27 my vision of that is not necessarily
2:03:30 that we have a vpk in every school obviously we couldn’t do that
2:03:32 we don’t have a space for that
2:03:34 but that we really focus in on those schools where we are seeing
2:03:37 that kindergarten readiness that’s
2:03:39 not there um and so to me that is a priority for me rather than
2:03:44 looking at these schools that don’t
2:03:46 have one and say which where can we put one except for apollo if
2:03:48 we’ve gotten rid of apollo apollo
2:03:50 is the title one school i’m saying i think we need to look at apollo
2:03:53 because that is a high needs
2:03:55 community um but you know let’s take a uh the university park
2:04:00 area do we have room to put
2:04:03 i know we already have head start there i think we’ve got ve i
2:04:06 mean is there a need wherever there’s
2:04:07 needs can we do another classroom in an area and i don’t know if
2:04:10 university park is a good example
2:04:12 because they do already have several classrooms but um where
2:04:16 where is the need and let’s put additional
2:04:18 resources there because that’s where the payoff will be in the
2:04:23 kindergarten readiness and the learning
2:04:25 to read in addition to you know the can i was just thinking
2:04:28 about the behaviors because we talked
2:04:30 about the vast increase in in behaviors in our youngest learners
2:04:35 because they don’t know how to
2:04:37 do school and if we can get them into pre-k and just kind of get
2:04:41 that learning how to do school i i
2:04:43 absolutely support that um the only other thing that i would say
2:04:47 that i would if there’s something we
2:04:49 can take a look at and maybe this is something i’ve not got any
2:04:52 interest in competing with other
2:04:54 vpk providers my kids went to uh first badness melbourne’s creek
2:04:59 vpk which i loved and adored
2:05:01 i mean it was amazing program you know i mean there are schools
2:05:04 going out but if they’re but there’s
2:05:05 plenty of kids to go around so i absolutely support any efforts
2:05:10 to to try to help families navigate the
2:05:12 process because it is more complicated than i feel like it needs
2:05:16 to be to get that that certificate and
2:05:19 then go take it where you’re supposed to go anything we can do
2:05:21 to help families and then also to explore
2:05:24 potentially for families if it’s if there’s even a desire or
2:05:28 need out there to for could we do a
2:05:30 half day i love the idea of split i know it could be complicated
2:05:34 um but like a morning afternoon you
2:05:36 know that family those families are probably going to more be an
2:05:40 affluent area but if it’s if it’s
2:05:42 something that we could do i i like the idea of exploring a a
2:05:46 half day option for families who have that
2:05:48 desire thank you miss campbell miss jenkins yeah so forgive me
2:05:52 because i i legitimately have notes
2:05:54 like scribbled all over in randomness here so sorry um first and
2:05:59 foremost i appreciate you uh doing
2:06:02 this work and doing it so quickly um since i feel like i brought
2:06:06 this up like three weeks ago
2:06:09 um obviously this is a passion of mine and i know that you were
2:06:12 paying attention to that workshop so
2:06:14 i i appreciate this this broad um display of what we’ve got
2:06:17 going on because that’s step one we
2:06:19 need to know what we have in the first place before we can talk
2:06:21 about expanding or potentially adding
2:06:23 things in certain areas um and so what i had proposed was
2:06:27 hopefully and and like miss campbell just said
2:06:30 is maybe we can pilot in a specific community and and i know it’s
2:06:33 a choice system but i’m going to call
2:06:35 it a feeder line because traditionally most of these students
2:06:38 that go to certain elementary schools are
2:06:39 going to a certain middle school going to a certain high school
2:06:42 and the ones i was talking about
2:06:43 was uh university park ribiera and palm bay elementary um to
2:06:49 kind of kill multiple birds with one stone so
2:06:53 like we already mentioned we already can identify with data
2:07:00 certain communities where they are when it
2:07:02 comes to their vpk assessments even when they’re taking them out
2:07:05 in those daycare sites and those
2:07:06 community vpk sites um so if we can put together and this is of
2:07:10 course if there’s a majority of
2:07:11 support for this um a presentation that looks at that area and
2:07:15 those specific um zip codes to the
2:07:18 facilities that are in there what their performance is what
2:07:21 those vpk assessments are showing
2:07:24 in terms of our kindergarten readiness for those kids that are
2:07:27 coming in
2:07:28 um i i feel pretty confident in what’s gonna what it’s gonna say
2:07:32 um i spent a couple years in and out
2:07:34 of every single one of those facilities almost um and i have
2:07:38 opinions on many of them um so what we
2:07:41 would probably see if we can give better um access to vpk
2:07:44 services for those communities is a decrease in
2:07:47 kindergarten behavior a decrease in those learning gaps like we
2:07:50 already talked about um when there’s
2:07:52 significant deficits in kindergarten you have a student who may
2:07:55 not have even had access to books or have
2:07:58 letters sitting next to kids who have sight words you’re already
2:08:00 creating this negative perception
2:08:02 with school and you’re going to lose them from from there
2:08:04 forward so hopefully that can increase
2:08:07 literacy rates and improve our k-3 reading scores in those
2:08:10 communities ultimately if a family has entered
2:08:15 bps in vpk they already are establishing we hope a positive
2:08:19 relationship with our public schools but
2:08:22 also the likelihood of them staying in our public schools has
2:08:25 been dramatically increased and the
2:08:26 reason i care about looking at a pilot program in this area is
2:08:30 not just because there’s a need
2:08:32 and because we can target academically and socially and benefit
2:08:36 the community but because like i had
2:08:38 mentioned in our previous workshop when we got our cte
2:08:41 presentation palm bay high school and stone magnet
2:08:45 middle were on the top of the list when it came to students
2:08:48 leaving and going to charter and private
2:08:50 schools so if we can and stop doing this top-down approach like
2:08:54 we keep doing and trying to attract
2:08:57 students to come back or stay in our schools we should be doing
2:09:01 a bottom-up approach where we are
2:09:03 greeting them at the door from the very beginning of their
2:09:06 educational experience with positive things
2:09:08 setting them up for success and making them want to stay in our
2:09:11 schools in the first place so
2:09:13 i think that would help there um other things to consider is and
2:09:22 it depends on you know if if this
2:09:25 was to be something to dive deeper into if this was where we
2:09:27 could pilot extra i don’t know if there’s
2:09:29 space in those schools if there’s not space in those schools is
2:09:32 it something that we can look at where
2:09:33 there’s other programs in that school that could maybe be moved
2:09:36 to a different school are there um
2:09:38 um is there a veb program in that school that potentially could
2:09:43 be housed somewhere else so we
2:09:44 could make room for a pre-k program in that community instead um
2:09:48 another thing to think about too is
2:09:51 working with the pre-k esc itinerant services department to find
2:09:56 out where there is a
2:09:59 a cluster of students uh that they’re servicing could we then
2:10:05 justify why we might need one of
2:10:07 those classrooms at one of those schools in that community
2:10:10 versus paying an employee to go all
2:10:12 around to service those students maybe we should be having those
2:10:14 students service right there at bps
2:10:16 um
2:10:18 let me see can you repeat the three schools sorry you said palm
2:10:24 bay university park and which
2:10:26 was riviera and i’m just riviera okay thank you and like from an
2:10:29 analysis that might not be the
2:10:30 right choice but that’s just from my gut that’s what makes the
2:10:33 most sense um and ultimately too
2:10:38 i mean to do a community survey to ask the community and the
2:10:41 parents out there you know
2:10:42 are you thinking of choosing bps for vbk or why didn’t you
2:10:46 choose bps for vbk and one of the things
2:10:49 that we can’t ignore is often and this is just from my personal
2:10:53 experience going to those daycares
2:10:56 and vpks i’m just going to tell it like it is a lot of them are
2:10:59 really low quality i wouldn’t want to
2:11:01 send my own child there ever that’s what’s there sometimes that’s
2:11:05 all that’s affordable or sometimes
2:11:07 that’s all that’s available or sometimes it’s the only thing
2:11:10 they can have with aftercare and i know
2:11:13 that we can’t just have aftercare for pre-k like that’s a
2:11:15 magical thing we can do here but if we’re
2:11:18 looking at a pilot program can we consider just looking into
2:11:22 what what could we do in those schools
2:11:25 to potentially offer aftercare just there because those
2:11:28 communities significantly need that in order
2:11:31 to choose our vpk program to see what that does again this is
2:11:35 going to be an investment it’s going to be
2:11:38 at a negative cost for bps i’m aware of that but in the long run
2:11:43 i argue that it actually is a cost
2:11:45 benefit so statistically and data wise when you intervene with
2:11:50 early childhood intervention you
2:11:52 spend less money on remediating that’s those students throughout
2:11:55 their elementary and middle school
2:11:56 years you identify students sooner if they have esc service
2:12:00 needs and then the sooner you get them those
2:12:03 needs the shorter amount of time they spend with those needs and
2:12:06 you end up saving money there and i
2:12:08 argue if this plan worked for a small community pilot program
2:12:12 and we kept those kids in our schools and
2:12:14 we kept them in the long run to come to our middle schools and
2:12:17 to our high schools we’re actually going
2:12:19 to be gaining that fte for that student who isn’t leaving us in
2:12:22 the long run of course you can’t prove
2:12:24 that off the bat which is why i’m proposing we work on a small
2:12:27 community pilot program versus
2:12:28 throughout the entire district and i’m with uh ms campbell too i
2:12:31 mean if we have a title one school
2:12:33 that doesn’t have a bbk let’s look at let’s make that happen
2:12:36 okay thank you thank you for bearing with
2:12:38 me sorry i just had a million notes written though all right mr
2:12:42 susan yeah just um one of the things
2:12:44 that i’d like to do is is that um having as many kids in this
2:12:47 age group that i i do there’s been a
2:12:49 couple of times where i’ve gotten a lot of you know what i mean
2:12:52 what i receive is cards to the house
2:12:55 saying hey we have pre-k available and all these other things
2:12:58 right on top of that they have tours
2:13:00 and stuff like that so um what i did was i just kind of went
2:13:03 through my mind real quick over what we
2:13:05 receive and then i would just try to share it with you guys and
2:13:08 we always get letters back from the
2:13:09 parents there’s always tours of their facility available i don’t
2:13:12 know if we do that currently but
2:13:14 not just right before the decision making but catching them six
2:13:18 months to eight months prior to them
2:13:20 making the decision rather than us competing we can already get
2:13:23 in a seat in their heads when i say
2:13:25 letters to the parents i’m getting it so somehow they’re pulling
2:13:28 and knowing that my kid is of age
2:13:30 for them to get it i don’t know where they get that um but i
2:13:33 think miss miss uh jenkins had mentioned
2:13:35 that there is a way to get that information um the other thing
2:13:39 is is that there’s a there’s there is a
2:13:41 pushback in the community of people that provide go to the
2:13:44 private schools that the curriculum
2:13:46 is too over the top and it doesn’t allow kids to allow
2:13:49 themselves to become a part of the school and
2:13:51 feel comfortable and stuff like that that is not the reality but
2:13:56 that is what is out there right so
2:13:58 through a communication campaign with maybe videos and stuff
2:14:02 like that focusing on hey we have certified
2:14:06 teachers we have you know what i mean achievement levels that we
2:14:09 have that show from our children that
2:14:11 are coming out of our schools show a better return um in some
2:14:14 way the social preparedness right these
2:14:17 students are socially prepared more they’re achieving better um
2:14:21 you know and setting them so that their
2:14:24 first year is easier so those are some of the things that i
2:14:27 think would help target a parent who’s trying to
2:14:29 make that decision um the other thing is i was going to ask is
2:14:33 there a committee that meets or a group that
2:14:35 meets kind of like the private schools meet with miss campbell
2:14:39 but is there a pre-k committee that meets
2:14:41 with all the pre-k providers in the county like do we pull them
2:14:44 all together and say hey guys let’s
2:14:45 talk do we do that at all i attend a monthly meeting with all
2:14:49 directors of private providers okay so it’s
2:14:53 through the early learning coalition that does that great um
2:14:55 okay because the next thing that i was
2:14:57 going to say is is one of the things that i thought would be a
2:15:00 great idea that i was talking to my wife
2:15:02 about last year was that we work with some of them to provide
2:15:07 tours of the families while they’re in
2:15:09 the private schools let me explain so i may have a kid that’s in
2:15:13 pre-k or in kindergarten still
2:15:14 that’s part of a private school but we go and we offer up for
2:15:18 those schools that have that cap at
2:15:21 kindergarten for their children to take tours of our schools
2:15:24 that are local for them meaning that we
2:15:26 catch them six to eight months out ahead so that we’re targeting
2:15:29 them so that they’re comfortable with
2:15:31 the move a lot of times people don’t they like drive by they see
2:15:34 the marquee but they don’t see the
2:15:36 internal workings i think that that would be a good way to
2:15:39 attract some of that first year like kids
2:15:42 that make decisions into the charter schools and we may be able
2:15:45 to capture them for the k through eight
2:15:47 um and that’s pretty much all i had thank you master that’s good
2:15:52 i don’t quite possibly know if there
2:15:54 could be a question left out there um it is yeah um if there is
2:16:05 a title one school it doesn’t have one
2:16:06 absolutely i think you you got it we we’ve got to get that done
2:16:10 asap and with all the marketing that’s
2:16:12 you know between matt and the rest of the board here is
2:16:15 mentioned i’m sure you have your heads probably
2:16:18 spinning but um it is a great presentation it shows that we we
2:16:23 have a number of opportunities out there
2:16:25 for our our students and our families and you know you’re always
2:16:29 going to get thumbs up from us to do
2:16:31 whatever you absolutely think of uh that may help uh attract
2:16:35 more students and families uh you have our
2:16:38 support again thank you thank you i i do actually have a couple
2:16:42 questions and so i’m gonna i’m gonna go with
2:16:44 this the vpk enrollment and because i don’t know the answers i’m
2:16:47 gonna ask the questions no such a
2:16:48 stupid question i can gather on some of these that it looks as
2:16:52 though maybe a vpk class has collapsed
2:16:54 into another one um i’m looking at like fair glenn’s numbers and
2:16:58 some of these numbers vary now during
2:17:00 the summer months as far as enrollment i can that makes sense
2:17:02 obviously it’s summertime so children
2:17:04 typically travel with families but why such a drastic difference
2:17:08 when we look at cape view for instance
2:17:10 i mean well i guess they’ve always had a big variation there but
2:17:14 it seems like it just
2:17:15 june and july is on here but that is just during that
2:17:20 registration so that is the for that month
2:17:23 here’s how many students are registered so okay the june and july
2:17:27 would be to before but you are correct
2:17:29 when the school is starting that what happens sometimes is
2:17:33 people realize school has started when
2:17:36 they start seeing the buses right so in some settings you will
2:17:39 see a delayed entry and i know that sounds
2:17:41 significant but i can tell you we have schools that gain a
2:17:44 hundred students four weeks into the school
2:17:46 year right and so that’s that’s good that’s what i kind of
2:17:49 wanted to hear on what what’s happening
2:17:51 there because i think that that just goes back to effective
2:17:54 marketing right so if we get ahead of them
2:17:56 and we’re making them aware that this is something that’s
2:17:57 available in the community and i i shared with you
2:17:59 guys earlier my story on my own personal children i’m like i’m
2:18:02 very involved and i’m having to figure out and
2:18:03 navigate through this early learning coalition how do i sign my
2:18:06 child up for this um and i’m sure there
2:18:08 are many other parents that feel that same frustration so if we
2:18:10 could figure out a way to market more
2:18:12 effectively to these potential students i think that’s that’s
2:18:16 huge i think obviously if we have a title
2:18:17 one school that doesn’t have a vpk program we need to make sure
2:18:21 we get that um established one question
2:18:23 i have though as far as a title one eligibility goes what
2:18:26 happens if a school loses title one eligibility and
2:18:30 they have a vpk program what what do we do there usually we can
2:18:34 grandfather the program in for the
2:18:36 following year but then after that we will have to move the
2:18:38 program unless we find a different funding
2:18:40 source okay we used to have a program at roy allen and roy allen
2:18:46 lost their title one we were able to
2:18:48 keep it there for one additional year and then we had to move
2:18:51 the program okay which is unfortunate
2:18:53 because there’s a lot of schools there’s a lot of schools that
2:18:55 are on the edge of title one that don’t
2:18:57 receive it that still should be title one so that that’s the
2:18:59 information i would like to see is what
2:19:01 schools do we have that are really close within a very close
2:19:04 percentage of maybe losing it one way
2:19:05 or the other because i think that needs to be on our radar so we’re
2:19:08 aware if we have a school that’s
2:19:09 going to potentially look at losing a vpk uh unit coming up but
2:19:14 yeah honestly i think the expansion of
2:19:16 the vpk is tremendous i think it’ll pay dividends that we can’t
2:19:19 even really uh we won’t really even be able
2:19:21 to fully comprehend them until probably 10 years down the road
2:19:23 unfortunately but that’s just the way it goes
2:19:25 it’s planting a seed we’ll see what it cultivates i think it
2:19:28 would be good for brevard county
2:19:29 overall but i’m excited thank you for this data it’s very very
2:19:32 informative i’m excited about how
2:19:33 we’re going to move forward and do big things in this arena so i
2:19:36 appreciate you ladies thank you
2:19:38 right may i follow up real quick yes right ahead um so also too
2:19:42 when you were talking about why is that
2:19:44 number change not not only the buses like that’s legitimate um
2:19:47 but also because it’s the first time
2:19:49 they’re really dealing with school some of these families they’re
2:19:52 very confused about the birthday
2:19:53 cutoffs too so that always kind of there’s always like this
2:19:56 weird beginning stage section section too
2:19:58 um so i guess i just wanted to get a consensus from the board
2:20:03 because when i when i brought this
2:20:04 up in the workshop i mean i was really adamant about what my
2:20:07 long-term hopes were um again like it’s
2:20:10 not like my passion sure i would love every single school to
2:20:13 have a vpk totally um but i don’t think
2:20:16 that’s where the biggest bang for buck is you know when we’re
2:20:19 looking at this list of the schools that don’t
2:20:20 have them um you know quite frankly most of those were in my
2:20:24 district and i feel very comfortable
2:20:26 saying that most of those don’t need them um and they have
2:20:28 plenty of community daycare sites that are
2:20:30 fantastic and adequately um affordable for that area um and so i
2:20:35 don’t think us investing our money in
2:20:38 those places really makes the most sense and so i guess what is
2:20:42 the appetite of the board for to
2:20:44 continue to even just explore the option of a pilot program in
2:20:48 the south melbourne and palm bay area
2:20:50 to that feeder chain concept just to see what that would look
2:20:53 like and what they could even possibly
2:20:55 pull off over there what are you guys thinking and the one thing
2:20:59 too mr susan brought up i think would be
2:21:01 interesting if you if they if there is a majority to explore um
2:21:05 when you look at those vpk assessments
2:21:07 from those those sites the community sites it would be
2:21:10 interesting to compare them to what the scores
2:21:13 are at the local schools um just there’s no testing till it’s
2:21:18 difficult yeah i’ll jump in there i i i’m 100
2:21:24 percent okay with exploring it what i would want to see though
2:21:26 is those specific sites that you’ve identified
2:21:28 um i a couple of them on here i’m going to use palm bay for
2:21:30 instance because that one’s showing a
2:21:32 vacancy of four spots and then on i don’t know this is on the
2:21:34 blended unit um there’s a couple of them
2:21:37 that have vacancies currently but i would also like to see that
2:21:40 in conjunction with um the maybe looking
2:21:44 at the overall i don’t know how to say this the wrong way the
2:21:47 behaviors uh if we have if we have a
2:21:50 huge amount of behaviors in the kindergarten area let’s look at
2:21:54 that right and then maybe that be an area
2:21:56 that we focus on we need to get ahead of it and start a vpk
2:21:59 program there so these students are
2:22:00 ready for school um and i don’t know if it’s it may very well be
2:22:04 the the ones that you named but i
2:22:05 just don’t i’m not aware of that so i’m sure they will be able
2:22:07 to give us that information yeah i um
2:22:09 i just so the uh the vacancies they’re really minimal like when
2:22:14 you have one two three sometimes
2:22:16 that’s also because kids like move out um but the the vacancy of
2:22:21 four is in the blended program for palm bay
2:22:24 elementary um and i would argue that’s a different kind of
2:22:28 program it’s a little bit harder to market
2:22:30 to families um and so that’s something i would have them
2:22:35 consider as well too like maybe we can move
2:22:38 that program and put in a different kind of vpk program that
2:22:42 might be more palatable to more families
2:22:44 i don’t know just something for them to think about dr bias and
2:22:47 i work closely together on
2:22:50 each year looking at where our blended programs are and what the
2:22:53 needs of our students are and
2:22:55 you know moving them accordingly for the upcoming school year so
2:22:58 we do work on that
2:22:59 whether it’s this this is an area this is a high needs area this
2:23:06 three schools you mentioned
2:23:07 definitely surrounding a high needs area to me it’s going to be
2:23:10 it’s going to come down to
2:23:11 i’d like us to if we’re going to pilot something i don’t we’re
2:23:15 not i don’t know if i can truly call
2:23:16 it a pilot because we’re already doing all these things but if
2:23:18 we’re going to change something it
2:23:19 seems like the things that we can do the quickest um let’s let’s
2:23:23 take that easy by the apple and some of
2:23:26 these schools that already have programs already have the
2:23:29 playgrounds established we won’t have to
2:23:31 do that we will have the the setup right to to add another
2:23:35 classroom to but also the the this these
2:23:37 particular schools in addition to apollo i really like to see
2:23:40 some apollo i think i think we’re all
2:23:42 like in favor of that um you got that right now um you know they
2:23:46 they already have the infrastructure
2:23:48 set up we know there’s high needs um in the community i think we’re
2:23:53 going to see the behavior
2:23:55 needs also um and in the same and i i appreciate that you you’re
2:23:59 bringing that up um and also i think
2:24:01 we’re going to have capacity except for not riviera well and
2:24:04 that’s that’s kind of what i meant by
2:24:06 yeah so wherever we can get it wherever we can get it done
2:24:10 realistically i think that makes the most
2:24:12 sense um because because the the need is there in areas but if
2:24:16 but if we have the capacity space wise
2:24:18 to do it too um you know i love i i appreciate i had meeting
2:24:22 with miss stamp here early last week and
2:24:24 she was talking about aligning where our ve classrooms are with
2:24:29 where they would be once they get out of
2:24:31 vpk so that we’re not moving kids after vpk so once we kind of
2:24:35 have that shift around we may actually
2:24:38 have some space where we didn’t have space before um so if we
2:24:41 can do that in conjunction with those
2:24:43 decisions that seems to make sense to me if we expand programs
2:24:46 that are already existing schools like
2:24:48 sherwood creel and all that stuff we can just add classrooms and
2:24:51 stuff like that i think in some
2:24:52 cases just so you guys know there already exists a pipeline and
2:24:56 a feeder provider network so i don’t
2:24:58 have any problem expanding it that’s what our goal was but i’m
2:25:00 going to work with you guys in my areas
2:25:02 to expand those and drive more participation by some of the
2:25:06 individuals that um i think we could add to
2:25:09 so our takeaways um that we’re going to go um off and do some
2:25:16 work and come back shortly and address
2:25:18 are is the apollo issue so we’ll be looking at do they have the
2:25:21 capacity um to meet those requirements
2:25:24 that mrs chaffee but we we agree with you all of our title one
2:25:27 schools and apollo is not one of those
2:25:29 schools that’s on the cusp of right title one um and then we’ll
2:25:32 look at the pilot looking at k behavioral
2:25:34 data and also what programs just at a glance the palm bay right
2:25:38 now we have the blended and we have the
2:25:40 head start so head starts you know the child has to qualify um
2:25:43 they don’t have to live in the zoned area
2:25:46 and then blended as mrs chaffee shared that’s going to have
2:25:49 seats in it for students with exceptional um
2:25:51 exceptionalities and janet um but what we don’t have is we we
2:25:55 want to see is there an appetite
2:25:56 that we could have a traditional step forward so then i live in
2:26:00 that zone um but it may be my family
2:26:03 does not meet the um poverty rate for head start and there’s not
2:26:07 a seat in the blended and so we want
2:26:09 to have an avenue for families in that community that just may
2:26:13 not meet those poverty or the exceptionality
2:26:15 criteria or maybe they do but the program’s full correct correct
2:26:19 and then yeah but i think i think
2:26:21 what we’ll do is look at a couple different feeder chains yeah
2:26:25 just to see what makes sense yeah that
2:26:28 might be one there might be another i think it would also be
2:26:30 smart of us to look at uh the surrounding
2:26:32 bpk options that are out there so if you look at a community and
2:26:35 there’s 25 right there i mean we
2:26:37 don’t obviously want to maybe maybe start one there didn’t make
2:26:40 the most sense so right yeah where’s the bpk
2:26:44 does or not yeah so i would like us to consider because there’s
2:26:46 a lot of them um i would like us
2:26:48 to consider the bpk assessment data too in terms of like quality
2:26:52 um just because i’ll talk to you
2:26:54 about that off off the camera um the other thing too is um our bpk
2:27:00 programs for the cte high schools
2:27:03 those are super difficult to staff because their schedules are
2:27:06 super wonky and weird um and sometimes
2:27:09 parents are really uncomfortable sending their kids four-year-olds
2:27:11 onto a high school campus but i think
2:27:13 if there was this more natural push in a smaller area easier to
2:27:17 market things of that nature you might
2:27:19 get someone who comes in that might want to go there they just
2:27:22 didn’t understand it or know about it so
2:27:24 hearing more about it being in the community in the first place
2:27:26 might might fill up those seats at
2:27:27 that cte program too and i think to that point is um just
2:27:31 because we know from you know our previous work
2:27:35 those cte settings uh there wasn’t as always as much
2:27:38 collaboration um across and now we have director
2:27:41 of early childhood and so bringing those whether you’re a cte
2:27:44 program step forward um or blended that
2:27:47 we are all collaborating as a bavard bpk program and so that
2:27:51 there aren’t so many pockets so what we’re
2:27:54 marketing one that we’re marketing across the board we also
2:27:57 could put district charter schools inside of
2:28:00 a lot of our faith-based schools to compete with and draw some
2:28:04 of the people who go to those churches
2:28:06 already and feel comfortable in those areas you can put in a vpk
2:28:09 program there that would then feed to
2:28:10 one of our schools or does uh transfer while it’s there so there’s
2:28:14 all kinds of good options thank you
2:28:15 okay we’ll be back thank you so much appreciate you guys all
2:28:19 right we are on to our next
2:28:21 topic which is the student achievement update and miss miss
2:28:26 right i know i’m usually the one
2:28:28 that makes sure we have time to eat but this is a really
2:28:31 important presentation so i would recommend
2:28:33 that we make sure we give um miss francis the time that she
2:28:36 needs to to get this information out to us
2:28:39 and we want to discuss it more tonight but this is really
2:28:41 important i know i know and usually we set
2:28:43 a time certain stops but we have an hour in between and um mr
2:28:47 susan the two topics that you that you
2:28:49 okay all right what’s your all right and while miss francis is
2:28:54 passing out um some handouts for you
2:28:58 we just want to keep reiterating this for all stakeholders that
2:29:01 we were so excited to get pm2 data
2:29:04 because remember last year was the first you know year the test
2:29:07 could did not have comparative data
2:29:10 well in full honesty uh pm2 is not able to be compared to pm2
2:29:15 like we had hoped and and let me
2:29:18 explain that to you so last year was our first year doing pm1 pm2
2:29:21 pm3 right then you know we got
2:29:23 informational grades um back in november december well then um
2:29:29 the new cut scores were created so what the
2:29:32 state did is they went back and retrofitted and miss francis you
2:29:36 pipe up if i’m misspeaking
2:29:38 but our pm3 based on those new cut scores they went into the
2:29:43 fast portal and changed the scoring so that
2:29:47 it matched the new cutoffs so if i’m a parent i can log in and
2:29:53 see with the new cutoff scores of last
2:29:56 year i can see where my child performed so we’re very thankful
2:29:59 that that happened for pm3 because as a
2:30:02 parent i want to see at the end of the year with this new cutoff
2:30:06 score but they did not go back and do
2:30:08 that for pm2 and so i can’t take you know a 492 from last year
2:30:14 and a 501 and really say that there’s an
2:30:18 incremental growth because now that is apples to oranges so
2:30:23 before we start off i just want everyone to be clear
2:30:26 what we are going to dive into today is what we do know is
2:30:31 finite and static is how much growth our
2:30:34 children made between pm1 and pm2 last school year and how much
2:30:39 growth they made between pm1 and pm2
2:30:42 this year okay what we are doing and working with schools and
2:30:46 miss francis is working with schools on
2:30:48 learning gains looking at last year’s pm3 data to where we are
2:30:53 now to say how close are we to where
2:30:56 we ended the year because if we want higher than we wanted you
2:30:59 know what we received last year we
2:31:01 know that as a target but i just need to when we go into pm2 to
2:31:05 pm2 it’s not apples to apples okay thank you
2:31:18 so today’s comparison like miss harris said we’re going to look
2:31:22 at the comparison of pm2 pm1 to pm2 and
2:31:26 pm1 to pm2 for 22 and then 23 and subsequently and one of the
2:31:31 things that i get asked a lot and that’s
2:31:35 the reason that it’s on there is what are the expectations and
2:31:39 the expectations from the state
2:31:40 of florida and it’s in statutory language if the students take
2:31:44 progress monitoring three times a year so
2:31:47 that’s why the test is not only called the florida assessment of
2:31:50 student thinking they also call it
2:31:52 coordinated screening and progress monitoring system because you
2:31:56 know they want to we want to make
2:31:57 it really long it’s for ela and for mathematics so we’re going
2:32:01 to start with looking at the vp uh the k2
2:32:05 data and when i spoke with um miss harris zero renaissance
2:32:09 provides a lot of different reports
2:32:13 and not all of them can be comparable and the reason that we say
2:32:18 that is because when they change the scales
2:32:20 although they have a unified scale and they also have the
2:32:24 regular scale that has been linked to the fsa
2:32:27 or i’m sorry to the fast in their wisdom they did not do that in
2:32:33 the in the site so they’re still comparing
2:32:36 the they’re using the unified scale so we decided to go with the
2:32:38 student growth percentile uh growth
2:32:41 and what that does is it looks at the relative growth for
2:32:45 students in the same grade level
2:32:48 so it compares the students themselves and it’s saying based on
2:32:52 you and you’re compared to other
2:32:54 students are you scoring above the 35th percentile if you’re
2:32:57 scoring above the 35th percentile then you’re
2:33:00 expected to make that the growth um the typical growth that is
2:33:04 expected for one year and that’s
2:33:07 where and luckily we’ve worked uh together long enough so we’re
2:33:10 going to kind of tag team for this but
2:33:12 that’s where it’s important is what we are looking for are you
2:33:15 on track to be proficient and so
2:33:17 sometimes when you’re comparing yourself to your peers growth
2:33:21 well it’s all based on that subset of
2:33:23 students and so what we are looking at is uh what we have
2:33:26 learned from looking at this data if you are
2:33:29 in the 35th percentile and continue to stay there that you
2:33:33 should be proficient and that’s where this
2:33:36 scale number of 852 that is the number that we have said you
2:33:40 know if you’re scoring at an 852 for first grade
2:33:44 the likelihood of you being ready to go and proficient is good
2:33:50 we can’t say exact because we don’t know how
2:33:53 you’ll be at the end of the year but that is the number and that
2:33:56 percentile ranking that we’re looking
2:33:58 at the other thing that the 852 is utilized for is to determine
2:34:02 and the reason i wanted to give you
2:34:04 these these brief reminders is because when we look at the total
2:34:08 number of students tested in mathematics
2:34:10 it looks like it’s a lot higher and you’ll see it in the next
2:34:13 slide than it is for those in let’s say
2:34:16 start early literacy versus the reading the star reading and
2:34:21 that is because the
2:34:22 the 852 if a student scores an 852 in pm1 in kindergarten then
2:34:28 they’re moved to start reading
2:34:30 if they score an 852 in first in first grade they go they’re
2:34:33 moved to start reading but if they’re not
2:34:36 they continue on until the first graders must attempt a pm3 to
2:34:40 start reading second graders must take
2:34:44 the um start reading for both all 3 pm 1 2 and 3. however if
2:34:49 they don’t meet the 852 or they can’t get
2:34:52 through the test then those second graders will then attempt to
2:34:56 take the assessment at the start early
2:34:58 literacy so it’s not we can’t say that all first graders took
2:35:03 one assessment and not the other so
2:35:05 that’s why i wanted to give you that brief explanation that is
2:35:07 so complicated i was just
2:35:09 going to say it’s as clear as mud and here is why our
2:35:11 stakeholders are confused yes never what i have
2:35:16 loved about fast and this progress monitoring is that we finally
2:35:19 you know when i think of grades three and
2:35:21 up i can say who is on grade level who is not yes at three times
2:35:25 because they’re getting grade level
2:35:27 assessment right in front of them and we have that data when we’re
2:35:30 looking at this first grade
2:35:31 um i will tell you because that is the critical year if you’ve
2:35:34 spent time with me like that is the game
2:35:36 changer for third grade um first grade you could have students
2:35:40 taking she’s taking one test i’m taking
2:35:43 another and so parents it’s very confusing because you’re
2:35:46 looking at the score based on the assessment
2:35:49 you’re taking if you’re in literacy or reading by pm3 every
2:35:53 first grader gets pm3 so there’s a lot of
2:35:57 conversation as you can imagine because if i’ve spent time in pm1
2:36:00 and pm2 around with
2:36:01 literacy i’m getting forced into pm3 ready or not um but at
2:36:06 least anywhere close to similar because
2:36:09 what i’m hearing sometimes is the test and maybe it’s more of
2:36:11 the second grade test going to third
2:36:13 grade test just the format is so different so many students have
2:36:16 to overcome the differences so among
2:36:18 these two are they are they formatted differently so that
2:36:21 students step into a new test and then they’re
2:36:24 you know they’re at a disadvantage because they haven’t taken
2:36:26 that kind of test before so these these are very
2:36:30 similar and according and i’m speaking only according to what
2:36:33 the the research that um renaissance has
2:36:36 provided us and we’ve invited them to meet with the directors a
2:36:39 couple of times and we’re hoping to
2:36:40 bring them back again to do a little more um training um what
2:36:45 they have said is that this student growth
2:36:48 percentile that is the closest that you can use to compare when
2:36:53 a student was a pm1 first grader
2:36:56 and took the early literacy but then they met that 852 and then
2:37:00 took pm2 they took the star reading
2:37:03 so according to them according to what they have said to us is
2:37:07 that growth model when they’re comparing
2:37:09 they’re comparing they’re comparing those like students to
2:37:12 determine that growth model specifically for us for a
2:37:14 student and mrs campbell to your point that it’s very
2:37:17 significant changes between that what they’re
2:37:19 seeing in second grade total different vendors so they’re seeing
2:37:22 one assessment type as a second grader
2:37:25 and then when they move into third grade it’s very very
2:37:27 different and and you will see that even in our data
2:37:30 um some i remember last year you know celebrating and feeling
2:37:34 great about some of that second grade data and then we did pm1
2:37:37 third grade same students um and it’s very significant changes
2:37:42 in their experience
2:37:43 so they’re both supposed to be computer adaptive
2:37:48 this is the different um the adaptivity for this one is a little
2:37:53 bit different
2:37:54 and i’m not as familiar with it as i am with the the way that it
2:37:57 is adaptive for three three through ten
2:37:59 because this adaptation goes down into foundational skills where
2:38:04 once you hit third grade it adapts but
2:38:06 only within your grade level band so it never dips below grade
2:38:09 level as she moves to these slides i’m
2:38:11 going to say that’s when the handout will come in handy because
2:38:14 we’re going to go over 22 23 data
2:38:17 then the next slide is going to be the 23 24 and you’re going to
2:38:20 want to again we’re looking at growth
2:38:22 between pm1 and pm2 not the number proficient two to three we
2:38:27 just didn’t want to muddy the waters any
2:38:30 any more than we needed to by putting them side by side because
2:38:33 then what people would tend to to
2:38:35 assume that you can compare them so what this one is showing is
2:38:39 the comparison of the fall
2:38:41 fall to winter 22 23 and then fall to spring and as you can see
2:38:48 when you compare and then when you’re
2:38:51 looking at the fall to winter 23 24 you’ll notice that we are up
2:38:55 four percentage points
2:38:56 and you’ll give it also gave i gave you the total number of
2:39:00 students that were
2:39:01 that were included so you’ll notice that there was a little bit
2:39:06 of a dip again that’s the reason for
2:39:07 that explanation at the beginning because could that be
2:39:10 attributed to the number of students that move
2:39:13 from from stuff from start reading to start early literacy so
2:39:17 that’s why i gave you all of the
2:39:19 precursor information i’m hoping that by next year when we get
2:39:24 the pm3 data we’ll be able to look more
2:39:26 at either the unified scale compared to what is the the the
2:39:30 scale that is tied to fast
2:39:33 for the mathematics you’ll notice the same thing we’ll notice
2:39:39 that we’re
2:39:40 11 percentage points up from when compared to last year and from
2:39:45 last year to the from the fall to
2:39:48 the spring they increased uh four percentage points
2:39:52 and this is the start early literacy and these are your your
2:39:57 youngest students and it’s um
2:40:01 again brevard is up four percentage points from last year
2:40:04 compared to this year and between uh winter
2:40:08 and spring there was a five percentage point increase
2:40:11 so this
2:40:20 this is where the fun begins okay so um it looks like it’s
2:40:28 overwhelming but the first thing i want you to
2:40:30 notice um this is the 22-23 data first column is pm1 second
2:40:35 column is pm2 and third column is pm3
2:40:38 you’ll note that in every single case our students improved from
2:40:42 pm1 to pm3
2:40:44 the most significant increase was for third graders between pm2
2:40:49 and pm3 which was a 27 percentage point
2:40:52 increase you want to flip to that slide too so this is like the
2:40:56 glance at last year and then if you flip
2:40:58 yeah no i’m only covering what’s what happened last year so i’ll
2:41:02 move into that and then um so
2:41:05 when you’re looking at at all the the grade levels last year
2:41:10 they all increased by double digits so
2:41:12 that’s great news for last year so now what’s important to keep
2:41:16 in mind is what was the growth
2:41:18 between pm1 and pm2 last year so that was a seven percentage
2:41:22 point growth so when we look at the next
2:41:26 slide and we note the same thing we note that all of our
2:41:30 students have improved from pm1 to pm2 we
2:41:35 also note that third grade has a 19 percentage point increase
2:41:39 which is the highest for them for all
2:41:41 but the thing to keep in mind is the average growth from pm1 to
2:41:47 pm2 was nine percentage points so if you
2:41:50 recall what i said here it was a seven percentage point increase
2:41:54 overall where now we’re seeing a nine
2:41:56 percentage point increase and i just have to highlight um
2:42:00 specifically third grade because this is the first
2:42:03 year that that is part of school grade and so our schools have
2:42:06 really stepped up our third grade
2:42:08 teachers um last saturday we had almost 70 here they are really
2:42:13 um showing up for their students and
2:42:15 their students and in turn are showing up for them so that kind
2:42:18 of growth in third grade is remarkable
2:42:20 other highlights would be just again looking at the amount of
2:42:24 growth is you know sixth grade seventh grade we
2:42:28 do have um when we look at our ninth and tenth a little bit of
2:42:33 flat or a reduction in growth and so we just we
2:42:36 know we have still work to do right but i feel like uh with
2:42:39 third grade being such a pivotal grade this year
2:42:42 being part of our new school grade equation this uh this shows
2:42:46 promise yeah another significant point
2:42:49 to note is that all grade levels were above where they were for
2:42:53 pm2 in 22 23. so that’s significant
2:42:57 we’re doing better that’s good we’re doing a lot better we still
2:43:04 have good we still have work we have
2:43:06 work to do on some other pages so ela don’t get too excited just
2:43:11 being fully transparent but we do have a lot to celebrate
2:43:15 so the the official uh demographic data is not available so what
2:43:21 i did was i used the the big file that is
2:43:25 released by the state and we put it into a big giant data mining
2:43:29 thing so that we can give you some
2:43:32 yeah yeah technical terms um so that we can provide you with how
2:43:39 are our subgroup uh doing and we also
2:43:41 included the multi-racial the last time i spoke with you i said
2:43:44 that i would start including the
2:43:46 multi-racial group because it continues to grow faster so when
2:43:49 we look at our subgroup data in 22 23 we
2:43:53 note that every single subgroup made an increase our african-american
2:43:57 students from pm1 to 2 increased by
2:44:00 5.6 percentage points our hispanics by 6.8 our multi-racial by 7.1
2:44:06 our white students by 7.3 and
2:44:09 overall a 7.0 increase so when we’re looking at comparing again
2:44:14 22 to 23 22 23 to 23 24 it’s critical to
2:44:19 remember that seven point um percentage point increase because
2:44:24 when we look at the next slide
2:44:26 these are the same subgroups now we’re looking at a 7.3
2:44:31 percentage increase for our african-american
2:44:34 students so that means our african-american students are
2:44:37 performing better so our our hispanic students at
2:44:40 a 7.5 are multiracial at a 9.5 which is equal to where we were
2:44:45 last time uh 10 percentage point for
2:44:48 the white students and a 9.1 for um the totem so an average of 8.6
2:44:55 percentage points increase where we
2:44:58 had a seven percentage point increase in two in 2022 23 so this
2:45:03 is absolutely great and i just want to
2:45:06 highlight because i know we’ve talked to you about um school
2:45:08 improvement that a lot of our schools have
2:45:10 that atsi and tsi and we won’t go into what all those letters
2:45:14 stand uh for today but um our black
2:45:16 subgroups our students with disabilities um and our multiracial
2:45:20 those are some of the subgroups that
2:45:21 our schools have been strategic of uh creating systems and so i
2:45:25 think this shows again a lot of promise
2:45:28 when we’re moving the needle of greater growth uh than we
2:45:30 demonstrated last year and i think that’s our
2:45:32 our schools having a targeted approach to those subgroups so the
2:45:36 next slide um provides you
2:45:40 the same information but for esc and ell the only thing that was
2:45:44 not available was the free and reduced
2:45:46 lunch status on those files so you’ll notice that for 22 23 all
2:45:51 of the subgroups increased our remember
2:45:54 that the ell population is very different from the hispanic
2:45:58 those are your students that sometimes
2:46:00 are nes non-english speakers or les limited english speakers so
2:46:04 but even still you have a 1.1 percentage
2:46:08 point increase when you’re looking at 22 23 now when we flip to
2:46:14 23 24 esc has a 7.1 percentage point
2:46:18 increase and our ell babies have a 4.3 percentage point increase
2:46:23 and if you look at where we were where we
2:46:26 started in pm1 we started higher in both esc and ell and we are
2:46:32 higher in both pm2 for esc and for ell and
2:46:36 that that i think speaks to um true retention so the fact in
2:46:41 some of our other data we’ve shown greater
2:46:43 growth and we’ve ended in a higher knowing that it’s not apples
2:46:47 to apples but this in this case we’re saying
2:46:49 that what our students left with um at the end of last year they
2:46:53 started with that same level so when
2:46:55 we’re thinking of summer slide for our most fragile students uh
2:46:58 students with disabilities and students
2:47:00 where english is not their native language um they’re retaining
2:47:03 those skills um we demonstrated that in pm1
2:47:06 and now we’re seeing that significant growth so we’re going to
2:47:12 look at the same pattern for the
2:47:14 mathematics this is 22 23 from pm1 to pm2 we had an average
2:47:18 growth of 20 percentage points
2:47:21 um third grade being one of the the best 26 percentage points
2:47:26 between pm1 and 2 and then
2:47:29 you also have fourth grade with 25 percentage points between two
2:47:33 and uh two and three and sixth grade 22
2:47:36 percentage points between um one and two again all the grade
2:47:42 levels last year increased by double digits
2:47:47 now let’s when we look at the growth for um 23 24 we note that
2:47:55 it was a 16 percentage point increase from from pm1 to pm2
2:48:01 whereas we were at 20 percentage point increase the other thing
2:48:05 is and when we look at where we started
2:48:08 last year conversely to where we are this year we’re starting
2:48:11 just a little bit lower and we are still a little bit
2:48:14 lower um for pm2 in most of the grade levels um with the
2:48:19 exception of grade seven and eight those are the
2:48:22 only ones that we’re not starting up lower however the good news
2:48:26 is that the growth that we saw last year
2:48:28 between pm2 and pm3 was about five 17 percentage points so if we
2:48:33 are expecting the same type of growth
2:48:36 we should be at or where or above where we were last year and
2:48:39 here’s where you know we are going to
2:48:43 always be extremely transparent and this is why we show up every
2:48:46 day there is still a lot of work to
2:48:47 do in the area of math so um the third grade i can absolutely
2:48:51 being a former third grade teacher
2:48:53 understand they those teachers know what’s going to be on the
2:48:56 school grade and that is and not that it’s
2:48:58 just when you put all your eggs in this basket sometimes the
2:49:01 potential to drop in one case but
2:49:03 something else we’re really looking at is when we look at our
2:49:06 seventh grade data we want to really be
2:49:08 focused on who um who is taking algebra in seventh grade to make
2:49:13 sure because if they’re doing that
2:49:15 eoc they’re not in here and um those are sometimes our our sixth
2:49:19 grade data has been very strong in math
2:49:22 but that doesn’t mean that you have all the skills ready for pre-algebra
2:49:26 and so sometimes they’re in that
2:49:27 algebra as a seventh grader we’re really addressing that because
2:49:31 we want to make sure the course is
2:49:32 meeting the trajectory that to meet with success but we also
2:49:36 think that’s a data point that we can improve
2:49:39 upon just by making sure we’re better meeting the needs of our
2:49:43 students in their math trajectory of
2:49:45 making sure we’re building foundational skills as they move up
2:49:48 the ladder when we look at the next slide
2:49:54 that’s the comparison of the ethnicities and then you’ll see
2:49:57 that this is 22 23 that um for black
2:50:01 african-american students 11.4 percentage point increase between
2:50:06 one and two 17 point percentage increase
2:50:08 for hispanic 20 increase for your multi-racial and so every
2:50:14 single one of the subgroups made gains between
2:50:18 pm1 and pm2 and then pm2 and pm3 conversely when we look at the
2:50:24 23 24 comparison
2:50:28 we’ll notice that 4 pm1 most of the uh grades three four and
2:50:34 five were above where we started last year
2:50:38 grade um i’m sorry grades i’m sorry black african-american
2:50:42 students hispanics and
2:50:44 multiracial were above where we started last year whereas the
2:50:47 whites were just slightly below two-tenths
2:50:51 of a point and then your as a total we started um three-tenths
2:50:55 of a point below where we started
2:50:57 now when we look at pm uh when we look at pm2 data in comparison
2:51:02 to pm2 data from last year
2:51:04 the black african-american students are lower than they were in
2:51:08 22 23. the um hispanics were
2:51:13 lower than they were in 22 23. suppose so was multi-racial and
2:51:17 so was black and so was um overall
2:51:20 the districts so we’re sharing the demographic data and the subgroup
2:51:23 data because we know that that is
2:51:26 an area of focus but i can tell you just from knowing
2:51:29 instruction if you’re having uh the levels of
2:51:32 proficiency across the board and grade levels before we even go
2:51:35 to the subgroup data when you have
2:51:37 proficiency where it is that’s a tier one instruction issue and
2:51:42 so if we had um significantly higher
2:51:45 proficiency and then we were finding subgroups of students that
2:51:49 were having um gaps then we would say
2:51:52 okay we need to do interventions but in this case when we’re
2:51:55 looking across the board this tells me that
2:51:58 it’s a tier one instruction so this is what do all students get
2:52:01 in a math experience and so that is
2:52:03 our area of focus when you have um huge gaps between or certain
2:52:08 grade levels that are not showing the
2:52:10 significant growth then you can say okay we may need to have
2:52:13 intervention to build foundational skills
2:52:16 when it is flat like this uh flat being growth or deficits in
2:52:20 that growth that is a tier one instruction
2:52:23 we need to change what all students are experiencing in math and
2:52:26 then everyone naturally levels up so then
2:52:29 all of your students level up when you increase the quality of
2:52:32 that math block
2:52:33 and when we look at the esc students um and the ell students we
2:52:43 know then 22 23 they demonstrated
2:52:46 growth 10.8 percentage points for the esc students 6.3
2:52:50 percentage points for the ell students
2:52:55 when we compare them to the 23 24 we note that the esc students
2:53:02 are performing for pm1 performed better than
2:53:05 they did in 22 23 and performed for pm2 performed better than
2:53:10 they did in 22 23 as well as the ell and the
2:53:15 um as well as the ell students for both pm1 and pm2
2:53:20 are there any questions
2:53:27 board members any questions or comments you would like to add
2:53:30 this data i’m ecstatic about honestly let me just say this is
2:53:35 very very encouraging so
2:53:40 we are moving the right direction okay i’m gonna i’m very
2:53:43 excited about the reading data the math data
2:53:46 shows we got some work to do yes i i just i just a couple of
2:53:50 things i thanks for the way that you
2:53:52 walk through the explanation part except for the beginning that
2:53:55 was really confusing
2:54:01 that’s not your fault that’s not your fault um i i think it’s
2:54:04 important to um i think it’s important
2:54:07 when people look at numbers just i have to just add this
2:54:10 disclaimer i’ve decided that i’m always
2:54:11 going to add this disclaimer we start talking about data because
2:54:14 the public sees data like you know that
2:54:18 you broke down for let’s say third graders and say you know let’s
2:54:22 say we’ve got you know 34
2:54:24 percent or whatever something you know 55 of students scored a
2:54:29 three or higher so that means that
2:54:31 45 percent of our students can’t read and when i hear that it
2:54:35 frustrates me because i have seen
2:54:39 students very close to me who can read proficiently but what’s
2:54:43 getting tested is comprehension vocabulary
2:54:47 shading you know if you have a disability or something that that
2:54:52 makes those complicated you
2:54:54 may be able to read fluently no rarely but so it’s so for the
2:54:57 public let’s just be careful with our wording
2:55:00 because if you have a student who scored a one and they can read
2:55:04 just fine but they can’t they have
2:55:06 deficiencies and things like vocabulary and finding the themes
2:55:10 and character motivation especially as
2:55:12 kids get older i think we need to be careful with throwing that
2:55:14 word around the students can’t read
2:55:16 because i think we’re going to find across our district that we
2:55:18 have a lot of students who are
2:55:19 scoring poorly that we have gaps and we want to meet those gaps
2:55:22 but to say that they can’t read is
2:55:24 is highly inaccurate and i’m so glad that you brought that up
2:55:27 because i failed to mention it although i had it at the on the
2:55:30 first
2:55:30 slide about progress monitoring and what does that really mean
2:55:33 we’re not the expectation is not that
2:55:35 we’re going to have 100 of our students on grade level for
2:55:39 progress monitoring one this is a progress
2:55:41 monitoring for the first time in the history of florida we have
2:55:45 a way of gauging where are the students
2:55:47 starting now that we can compare them back to where they ended
2:55:51 at pm3 based on their own scores and then we
2:55:54 can see where are they in pm2 and then where are they going to
2:55:58 end up so that temperature gauge that
2:56:00 we are able to do now the growth between pm1 and pm2 for
2:56:04 individual students that’s critical for a
2:56:06 school to be able to then say okay how what do i need to take
2:56:10 little nada and move her to be a
2:56:13 proficient student by the end by pm3 yeah thank you i appreciate
2:56:17 all this this is very important this is
2:56:18 why we’re here this is why we cut the grass yes yes to bring it
2:56:22 full circle and i think just before we
2:56:27 close i i just know that the numbers are the first you know page
2:56:30 of the story but what you really want
2:56:32 to know is what comes next and i i think when we speak to the
2:56:36 math um we know that legislation this year
2:56:39 70 69 came out with requiring the math interventions that have
2:56:43 been previously required for ela and so
2:56:46 while i know our classroom teachers felt that burden of one more
2:56:50 thing um i think that this shows the
2:56:52 need that as a state we know that we have to reprioritize math
2:56:56 and so we’re going to be raising the bar on
2:56:58 expectations but i know our students can do it and i know that
2:57:02 collectively you know we can do it but i
2:57:04 you know we’re moving to be number one in florida and um i think
2:57:09 that we can do it and
2:57:10 we will not i i wait for the day where we’re presenting pm3 data
2:57:15 where every child you know we’re
2:57:18 showing all of this promise but i think that we have plans to
2:57:23 improve this data and that’s what’s most
2:57:26 important like we’re not satisfied within even the ela
2:57:29 celebrations yeah but there’s a lot to be proud
2:57:33 with there so thank you so much um i asked if he’s okay with
2:57:37 moving his discussion topics till this
2:57:39 evening so we have time to break the room down since we’re kind
2:57:42 of up against uh a clock at this point
2:57:44 so we’re going to go ahead and adjourn the the workshop and guys
2:57:48 guess what we won’t have workshops
2:57:50 anymore on the same day as we have board meetings we shouldn’t
2:57:53 potentially run into this right because
2:57:54 now moving forward our calendars correct we will have more time
2:57:57 so we won’t be bumping into each
2:57:59 other so yeah and you can say more mr trent there you go all
2:58:03 right so thank you guys again appreciate you
2:58:20 um