2024-05-14 - School Board Meeting

0:00 outro music plays

14:50 Good evening, the May 14th, 2024 board meeting is now in order. I’d like to welcome my fellow board members and the public. It is so encouraging to see so many beautiful faces in the audience this evening. If you will, do us a favor to help the board meeting go a little smoother. Uh, please refrain from any kind of loud disruption, speaking, distractions, or other form of communication that will hinder the business of the board.

15:10 Paul, roll call, please. Ms. Wright? Here. Mr. Trent? Here. Ms. Campbell? Here. Ms. Jenkins? Here. Mr. Sousa? Here. At this time, the board would like to hold a moment of silence and I invite the audience to join.

15:47 All right, we are going to rise. I cannot see. Do we have someone at the podium? Yes, okay. All right, I think Miss Bella is over there from the West Melbourne School for Science to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. If you will stand with us, please.

16:01 I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

16:18 All right. We are very excited. We have West West Melbourne School for Science chorus here to perform for us this evening, and I’m going to go ahead and turn the floor over to you guys. Yeah,

20:59 there she is.

21:15 Thank you so much. I was wondering, I thought, I cannot see, I cannot see your teacher back there. I’m not sure if we’re singing another song or not. What an amazing job you guys did. Thank you so much. I absolutely love the song choices that you had for today. I’m gonna give my fellow board members an opportunity to, to tell you how amazing you already know you are and then maybe ask a couple questions.

21:33 We have a couple students that are back there at the podium, correct? Alright. Awesome. Miss Jenkins, would you like to go first? Yeah, so I love, you guys are the first group that turned around and looked at us. We appreciate it, because we can’t see you. We have to look in the computer to see your faces. And that’s the best part for us.

21:47 Um, you guys did such a good job. So, is there a Kinsley Campos here? Hey Kinsley, I promised your favorite educator, your mom, that I would call you out. Great job, great job. Um, so, How many by a show of hands, how many of you feel like music is your favorite class? Yes, that’s great. Great job guys. And you know, your song choice saying all you need is, is a little bit of love.

22:16 And you’ve got a lot of love here sitting in this room with your parents supporting you and your teacher. And I can say up here too, um, we care about you so deeply and you are the main focus of the school board. So thank you for being here today and spreading a little bit of cheer. Yes, thank you, Ms.

22:30 Campbell. Alright, so how many 6th graders? Raise your hand. How many 6th graders? Alright, how many 5th graders? How many 4th graders? Alright, Ms. Gibson’s got a great class coming up. Okay, so to you guys at the podium, did you get to do any fun, like, trips this year, performing outside of, like, school concerts and things?

22:57 Um, Yes, we did. Where did you go? Uh, we went to the King Center. Well, not all of us, but like some of us. So like, Miss Gibson would choose some people and we would go to the King Center and perform there. For the Elementary Music Festival? Yes. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. So, um, who are our other guests? So are you planning to do music in middle school?

23:21 Um, yes, I’m planning to do chorus again. Okay. What about you? Uh, I’m thinking about doing band and chorus. I love it, love it, love it, love it. Well, true story, I was the pianist for this very group for like, I was trying to count, calculate, I was thinking nine years. Nine years. So, and I miss it terribly. So, Ms.

23:44 Gibson, next year, if I can fit on my schedule, you need to just give me a call. Um, because I probably already know the songs. And I remember when this one over here on the bass was in your choir. So, anyway, um, you guys did an amazing job and I’m super proud of you. Good job. Thank you, Ms. Campbell. Mr. Susan.

24:04 So, first off, I wanted to say thank you to Ms. Benson. I, I was, I was sitting in here, your principal, and I walked up and she was so full of energy, came up and said, Ah, she was so excited that you guys were here. And that energy is something that you guys should appreciate because of how committed she is to you.

24:21 And I was mentioning it to some of the family members and they just kept all saying, Yes, we see the same thing every day. So Ms. Benson, I wanted to say thank you to you for being out here today and your dedication.

24:35 I also, I also wanted to give a shout out to Madison over there on the base When she was coming into the building, she was carrying this huge base, right? And, um, I said, Hey, can I help you with that? And she goes, Oh, no. No, no, no, no. She would not have any part of it. Because it’s something that you care for.

24:51 Yeah. What’s that? Smart choice. Yeah, well. But it’s something that you can see that she cares for that much to where she wants to make sure that nothing gets touched and she cares that much to present. So thank you, Madison, for coming. I appreciate you carrying that big thing. And I appreciate you, uh, Um, being here tonight, so thank you so much for that.

25:13 I also wanted to say thank you to you guys. I came in a little bit earlier on and I was talking to you guys for a little bit of time. And one of the things that I was, as I said, hey you guys, um, we appreciate you coming here because this is our favorite part of the day. And then once it’s over, we wish sometimes that we could just go home, right?

25:28 Because this is the most, our most positive thing. And then you guys, a couple of you guys said, no, no, no, we want to stay. And I was like, wait a minute, what is wrong with these children? And so we appreciate you guys coming, you guys probably will leave afterwards, but we always appreciate the student engagement and you guys ever being a part of anything that we do.

25:46 So thank you from that. Thank you for me. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Susan. All right, Mr. Trent. All right, guys. Uh, thank you once again. Just, just show off the talent that we have here in BPS and this also, uh, it just doesn’t get old for us. I mean, we see, uh, one school after another come up here and it just reminds, uh, Mr.

26:06 Susan and I, how little talent we have and, and how much talent you guys do have. So continue this, uh, keep it going where you guys excited about summer. Okay, I thought maybe, uh, I knew I’d get the biggest applause. Um, but, uh, uh, thank you again. You guys are, are the exact reason Miss Jenkins said you are what we’re doing up here and the reason we’re up here is because of you.

26:32 So, just keep up the good work and it makes us look good. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Trent. Alright, well I had the fun opportunity of meeting you guys backstage before you got on. So, let me ask you this. Was this It’s harder or easier than you were expecting because I know sometimes when you get in front of the crowd, it gets a little, all right, we have mixed reviews, mixed reviews.

26:58 Well, uh, thank you guys so much for coming this morning or this morning. It’s not morning as this evening, sorry, this evening and uh, spreading some cheer parents. Thank you so much for, for bringing all these children here. I know that that was a sacrifice and a labor of love as well. And then obviously to our, let me ask you, I didn’t get your name.

27:13 What is your name? Young man. Yes. Drew. Okay. So Drew and Madison, are you former students? No. Okay. One is, one isn’t. All right. So I just wondered that too. So I thought, what a cool legacy. Okay. All right. Wonderful. Well, thank you guys. Cause you, you too also came and sacrificed your time to, to help make this happen.

27:31 So we appreciate you guys tremendously. Uh, and we hope that you continue all things music related because it is so beautiful. The, the joyful noise that you make. We love it. So thank you. Dr. Rendell, do you have anything you would like to add? Nothing really except to congratulate them on a great performance.

27:47 This is the second time I’ve had the pleasure of listening to you all. I was at your school for the groundbreaking for the new edition and you guys were fabulous then, fabulous tonight. Thank you to the parents for supporting them in this endeavor. Thank you for bringing them here to perform for us. We have the student performances at the board meetings to remind us of why we do what we do, so thank you for bringing them.

28:07 Thank you guys for performing for us. Thank you, Ms. Gibson, for all your work. Um, it’s fantastic to see the talent. Thank you. Thank you. We’re going to take a short break for just a few minutes because we want to take a picture with you guys if that’s okay. So we’ll take a few minute break, probably about five minutes, and we’ll be back.

28:20 Thank you. Thank you.

29:09 Thank

29:16 you for watching.

34:58 All right. Thank you so much for your patience. I’m clearing the room out. We, at this time, I would like to offer my fellow board members and Dr. Rendell the opportunity to recognize students, staff, or members of the community. Miss Jenkins, would you like to go first? Yeah. Uh, so first I want to thank all of the staff at Serene Harbor Women’s Shelter for inviting me into their facility.

35:19 Um, not only providing me a tour, but just truly, genuinely advocating for the services that they provide women in crisis and their students, uh, our students from BPS that are sometimes unfortunately also present in those shelters. Um, thank you for being there. Uh, I felt your heart. I felt your service and I appreciate that.

35:36 And it was a really genuine, good conversation to talk about ways in which we can possibly have them support our school system a little bit more or just get some more advocacy out there so people know that those services are available to some of our kids. Um, I also had a, uh, opportunity to participate in Brevard Schools Foundation’s Champions for Education Luncheon, which was great.

35:54 There was great performances from the Satellite High School Chorus, um, as well as Mel High’s Jazz Band. Um, and we had the opportunity to listen to an incredible product of the Stakestock and Children program. Like we do every single year, but every single year, they continue to amaze me with the incredible service and counseling that they support some of these students and the mentorship.

36:14 Um, and to hear the incredible stories of how they overcome and what they become later in life was incredible. And this particular woman, uh, shared a story, um, about how she eventually Turned around, was supported, and ended up becoming an educator for Brevard Public Schools. So, it was really a full circle moment.

36:30 So, thank you for sharing your story. Um, and last but not least, I had an opportunity a couple weeks ago to, uh, participate in Judging the Senior Projects at West Shore Junior Senior, which is always a really fun event. It’s a great event to remind you as an adult that you are not as smart as you think you are.

36:45 Um, so, So many of those kids are just absolutely phenomenal. And I think that they stacked my room on purpose because almost every single student that was presenting in that classroom did some kind of project focusing on the chaotic state of education, not only across the state of Florida, but across the United States, as well as the crisis of teacher vacancies and low morale in our school system.

37:05 Um, it was incredible, uh, to see the research and the, the, the The development that they had inside of these projects also slightly disheartening that that’s something that they’re focusing on. But you know what? They’re our future. They’re going to be our change. So thank you for having me there. Wash your junior senior.

37:22 Thank you, Ms. Jenkins. Ms. Campbell. I’m gonna keep it short tonight because we’ve got lots of people to recognize over here. But I wanted just to give a shout out and encouragement to our high school students who are in the middle of exams, AP exams, IB exams, Cambridge exams, CTE certification tests, all those end of the year things.

37:43 You’re so close to the end. Just keep pushing through it and you make us all proud. I know I’m, my daughter should be at home right now studying for her AP music theory test, which is tomorrow. Um, so keep going, keep going. And then I just wanted, you know, we have all these on the agenda, these. for these different teams, future problem solvers, Odyssey of the Mind, all these people that are going to these competitions.

38:05 Well, Junior Achievement Space Coast just found out on Friday that the winner of our innovation challenge, um, the team from, uh, Bayside High School was, has advanced to nationals. And so, first of all, just let me just tell you a little bit about them. I know we mentioned them before, but this, the team, Isabel Sharp, Melissa Singh, um, I’m going to butcher this name, Konstantinos Kyparasiotis.

38:29 I think that was pretty good. Um, their, their product is the ISCO slumber pack, a sleeping bag enabled with a solar panel to charge phones and to heat. Uh, they’ll be marketing to hikers and outdoor people and they’ll also donate packs to homeless shelters as part of their business plan. So we want to wish them luck but I just want to congratulate them and I also want to thank Mr.

38:50 Ramer’s office and the chief of schools for moving this item pretty fast because if kids go out of state. It has to be approved in a board meeting and the timeline for getting all the paperwork in was coming pretty fast. So thank you, Mr. Raymer and team, um, for getting this, uh, because we, they just found out on Friday.

39:05 So, and congratulations to the Bayside Innovation Challenge team and I can’t wait to hear how you do because I think this sounds like a fantastic product. Thank you, Ms. Campbell. Mr. Susan. Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you. That is, uh, 100 percent correct. Um, Mr. Raymer and staff have been moving it in years past.

39:23 We would have schools that would win something on a Friday, and they had to have us pass it on Tuesday, and they were told they couldn’t. And we would find out about them every once in a while and throw them on the agenda real quick. But that’s, thank you Mr. Raymer for putting those together, I appreciate you and many of the staff members that made that happen.

39:38 I also wanted to take a second and say thank you to Kevin Robinson. Not many people understand that we’ve expanded sports further past what it’s been since the last 20 years. And Kevin Robinson is the head of Athletics. for our entire school district. Many people don’t know that we’re expanding both volleyball and soccer in middle school next year.

39:56 And in order to do that, to give our kids those opportunities so that they can compete with other school districts like many other school districts do, it takes a lot in facilities, a lot in some of those athletic directors who are there. Have not been, um, prepared to have those sports come on from their daily lives normally.

40:13 And that gives our kids an opportunity. And you should see the energy in some of these, these sports where the kids are given that opportunity to go. So I just wanted to say thank you to Kevin for all his dedication and hard work. He’s also been facility upgrading many of our schools, uh, Ms. Han’s working closely with him on upgrading our basketball hoops in the elementary schools and stuff like that.

40:32 So there needs to be a big shout out because Kevin would never do it himself. He’s very humble. But I wanted to take a second and say thank you for that. I also wanted to say thank you to O’Galley High School. I went by there the other day for the, uh, to see the trades. And if anybody, it’s gotten to the point where McGinnish from our aviation program just literally you say, Hey, you’re going to do a tour?

40:50 Yep. And he goes right into mode all the way around. If anybody has seen that, this man has an aviation program at O’Galley High School that literally has a hundred percent placement inside of the community, inside of like they either go to college, military, or they have a job. When they leave there. The day that I was over there, there was a gentleman that had just started with Blue Origins at 26 an hour, right that day, because they graduated him early so he could start early.

41:15 The phenomenal programs inside our Career and Technical are off this chart. They’re better than any other one in the state of Florida, and that’s why the Governor flies here to do press conferences out of our aviation hangar. So, just wanted to say thank you to O’Galley High School for all their dedication and hard work.

41:29 I also wanted to say thank you to the ECAC. Many of you may not know. But there’s a group of military, um, there’s a retired two star general and a couple other individuals from the community that have come together to try to start organizing many of the STEM opportunities from the Department of Defense, many of the other opportunities for scholarships.

41:47 And then the third component, which we did, was we organized together and we came up with a plan to have our students go and visit all 21 of the major recognized museums of Brevard this summer. So, we’re going to be giving out a passport to the students who are going to be stamping the passport for going and visiting, and then those kids that do 10 or more can come back into the school board and get a certificate of completion, and if they volunteer their time for 10 hours or more, they’re going to be able to do that.

42:12 It’s phenomenal. We had all these 21 museums here. They were talking about all the things they do. And many of the people said, we didn’t even know there was this many museums in all of these places. So, we’re looking forward to that. And we look forward to the ECAC and many of the other individuals that are a part of that.

42:25 Um, and then I think that’s all I have. That’s it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Susan. Mr. Trent. Alright. So, uh, shout out to all the administration, the teachers, the students, and of course the parents. We almost made it. We’re right there at the end of the year. So, congratulations. We’re very proud of you. Um, I’m going to give a special shout out to all the testing coordinators in, uh, in, in the district.

42:49 Uh, I think, uh, Ms. Campbell talked about all the AP testing and the, uh, uh, IB testing. These people, uh, they’re not listening because, uh, it’s, it’s not 6. They’re still at the schools preparing for tomorrow. So, uh, you guys are, are this close to making it as well. Um, thank you. Again, extremely proud of all the administration.

43:10 We’ve done our best to stay out of the schools the last week or so because of the testing. And you guys are doing a phenomenal job. What we’re hearing back from teachers and parents on how they feel that the testing season is going makes our job that much easier. So, congratulations students who are not quite yet there.

43:29 Get some sleep, do well on your tests, and look forward to summer. Thank you, Mr. Trent. Alright, I have a few people that I would like to acknowledge, uh, this evening. So, there is a special educator in the North End. Uh, she came into education, and I, I’m hoping I got this math right, roughly started teaching in 1974.

43:50 Who’s quick on their toes with math, math teacher. How many years would that be? 50 years this educator has served in Brevard County. So Miss Sharon Davis will finally be retiring which is so sad because what a legacy to to lose but 50 years she actually has educators at her school that she taught in elementary school.

44:11 And so to see that full circle come around is really just something absolutely special. And so we thank you from the bottom of our heart for all the love and dedication you have given to Brevard County, uh, specifically our kiddos in the north end. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It’s not a big enough word to acknowledge all the years of service that you’ve put in here in Brevard.

44:30 Um, also want to acknowledge the Supervisor of Elections Board. You’ll remember a couple months ago, he, the Tim came before us and spoke about this. Your vote is your voice and I’ve been working alongside him. I had the opportunity to actually attend two of these events and just really see what are our students How receptive are they to this?

44:47 So it’s right now. We’re having 11th and 12th grade students come down to an assembly like Uh, scenario and they’re telling him, Hey, this is how you register to vote. A lot of times, some of our new graduates don’t know, they don’t know, what do I do to vote? What does it look like to vote? And so he’s walking them through, how do you register to vote?

45:03 And it’s, it’s been absolutely encouraging. He’s also aligned, uh, veterans to come alongside cause he, he has this program called Vote in Honor of a Veteran. And so a veteran will come up and speak to the students about their service, the time that they were in the military. And I think that message resonates with these students.

45:20 In a way, that it’s just very easy for them to say, oh my goodness, I can vote. I mean, you were willing to give the ultimate sacrifice. I can go out and vote. So that has been extremely encouraging. So thank you so much to our supervisors of elections for helping educate all of our students. And we’re hoping that we can turn around that demographic of those 18 to 25 year olds that don’t like to vote, get out there and vote.

45:40 It’s so important. So very excited about that. We are in a season of all things celebration, right? As we come come close to the end of the year, there are so many. So, I want to acknowledge a couple that I had the opportunity to attend. The City of Titusville gives an award to all of our students in the North End.

45:56 Dr. Rendell, you came and were there with me that evening. And it’s just a very special time for every single school to come together in the North End because a lot of times you feel like you’re siloed in your own school. And, uh, I just want to say to the City of Tysville for putting on that event. I think our students feel honored, and, uh, it’s a great night of celebration.

46:15 And then I also want to acknowledge our partners in education. We had their award ceremony. This last, was it last week? Yeah, last week. I’m like, oh man, there’s been so many things. Is it Friday? All right. Uh, so many amazing businesses that, that dedicate time, they dedicate treasure, they dedicate talent into our school system because they believe in education.

46:34 And so thank you so much to our business partners that are sacrificing and giving of themselves to help make our community a better area. We appreciate every single one of you, uh, and we love that you come beside us and help us in multiple different ways. And I think that that is all that I have. Dr.

46:49 Rendell, I’m going to turn it over to you now. Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m going to ask Mr. Dufresne, our Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources, to come up and prepare. He’s going to give you a short presentation. While he’s doing that and getting ready, I want to give a shout out to the Palm Bay Rotary Club, the Rotary Club of Palm Bay.

47:05 They also held a luncheon last week to honor students. From every, uh, school in Palm Bay, elementary, middle and high schools, both public and private. It’s something they’ve been doing for 48 years. And so all of the students in Palm Bay have the opportunity to be, um, recognized and honored by the Rotary Club.

47:25 So it’s quite a great event. I want to thank the Rotary Club for doing that. So the other day, uh, Mr. Dufresne and I were taking a look at some numbers and they’re really good numbers, very impressive, good stuff for us. They show a lot of the good work. That’s going on in our district. So I said to him this is really really good news.

47:44 We need to share it with the board We need to share it with the community. So he threw together a quick Presentation. So we’re going to go through that right now. Thank you. Dr. Rendell. Thank you board Um, i’m really excited to be able to prevent to present this information to the board and i’m really excited that we have a room full of our um Citizens here to see this because this is some great information So what we’re just going to kind of touch on is there 23 24 hr results and some of the things that we accomplished this This uh school year So again, on the agenda, we’re just going to say thank you to Brevard.

48:11 We’re going to talk about some facts about Brevard Public Schools. And then we’re going to talk about my favorite thing, retention, retention, retention. Um, when I started here a little under a year ago, I sat at this very podium and told you guys that, um, we’re going to shift from, um, recruiting and focus on retention.

48:29 And we’re going to take steps to retain our employees and treat them the way they should be treated and give them the tools they need to be successful. And, uh, we did that. We did various steps this year to do that, and I’d like to present that to you guys today. So again, thank you to the citizens of Brevard.

48:45 Um, you guys, uh, you voters recognize that the state isn’t giving our teachers the, uh, compensation, uh, that they require to live a good life. Um, there is a bridge that was gapped by the voters and I want you to know that we are super appreciative of it and I want to show you guys what it is that your efforts did.

49:09 So there’s a narrative going on around right now by different leaders in the state. Um, this is some of the statistics they’re quoting, um, this one right here is a little concerning. It talks about Florida being number 50 in the nation of average teacher salary. That’s out of 51 because they include. The, um, District of Columbia, right?

49:30 That’s concerning. Um, average teacher pay is 16th in the nation at 47, 178. And on the left here, you’ll see, this is just, uh, Florida school districts and where we land on Florida school districts, uh, this is, uh, uh, average teacher salary at 50, 000, this yellow line right here, 50, 863, uh, agree that’s unacceptable.

49:52 And again, you voters, uh, took it in your own hands to bridge that gap. And let me show you what we did. So again, using the information that’s being provided by the, uh, different leaders in the state, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll fact check their, uh, data. Um, right now, this year, our average, uh, BPS teacher salary is 53, 362.

50:12 Uh, so that moves us up the ladder a little bit, right around, uh, 25th place. If you include the millage, which each member of our, uh, teacher union, uh, they got an average of a little over 5, 000. Uh, so that, uh, And by the way, all that money is FRS eligible, meaning that counts towards their retirement. That raises their average teacher’s salary to 58, 762.

50:39 And again, thanks to the board and our voters, our teachers in 23 24 saw a 15. 53 percent increase in salary alone. Okay? Um, that’s, that’s, that’s pretty amazing. Thanks. That puts Brevard on this list, number five, on this list that the leaders of the state are promoting. So, uh, with your guys help, we jumped from 38 to all the way to fifth place on our teachers uh, salaries.

51:12 So that’s, that’s pretty amazing. Um, I’ll take blame for this, board, I apologize, I didn’t mark this 15. 3 percent, uh, increase. enough to the public. We really should have stood on a podium and screamed it from the mountaintops. Look, our voters and our board. Look what we did. Um, it’s pretty amazing. Um, you know, Orange County is in the news right now.

51:36 They just sell it. They just settled their impasse. They had to go to impasse to get to a 9. 7%. And everybody’s calling that the gold standard, right? 9. 7%. We can top that, we did 15. 53 percent, uh, and we didn’t have to go to impasse to get it. We worked with the union and came up with a deal. Um, they, obviously Orange County is a lot bigger county than we are.

51:59 They obviously have a lot bigger budget. Their budget is right around 6 billion dollars, uh, we can’t match that, uh, but we can out perform them in teacher pay. So if I just use Brevard teacher pay, 58, 762. Remember I told you we were ranked 50th in the nation. That puts us at number 28 in the nation. Just Brevard on the average teacher salary.

52:24 Some other payments that are made available because of our voters. We had an additional 7. 6 million dollars to be able to give to our teachers. That came in the form of supplements, the 4. 7 million. Those supplements included the coaches, um, some of our occupational therapists, our physical therapists, our speech language pathologists.

52:41 We had an extra 2. 9 million, uh, of employment incentives, uh, new employee trainings, some peer mentors, IA to teacher programs, again, all thanks to the voters of Brevard. So I’m, I’m sharing all these numbers. What, what’s the return on investment lag just after one year? What happened? Our retention is amazing.

53:05 Last year, this is a screenshot. We have a thing called Beacon, um, that’s our job board. This is a snapshot of 5 15 2023, um, we had 204 instructional classroom openings a year ago today. Current active instructional classroom openings, that same data, we have 98. We have 98. We cut that in half. Yeah, that’s great.

53:31 We also have some new teacher support. Uh, district mentors, uh, beginning of twenty three, twenty four, one of my first things I did when I came to this board, sir and ma’am, uh, we, uh, asked for more peer mentor teachers. We had two in the district. And I asked to double that to four. You guys approved it. And since then we’ve actually done some creative financing.

53:51 I have that level up to six right now. So we have six, uh, peer mentor district level, um, mentors. So what’s the result of that? Uh, We had 271 first year teachers respond to this survey. 95 percent of my very first year teachers say they’re coming back to teach here in Brevard. That’s pretty amazing. On the right there is some of the kudos that I’ve got a lot more, but this is just a quick snapshot of some of the kudos that our first year teachers, um, we’re, we’re, uh, wanted us to know.

54:25 Let’s give you just a few seconds to reach that.

54:34 Let’s talk about resignations. We did have 299 teacher resignations this year. Um, that is a lot. But in that number also is 45 of my charter school teachers, uh, who we didn’t renew their, uh, We didn’t renew their leave. So they were technically on our books as teachers. Uh, they resigned their position to continue teaching as a charge school, and that’s fine.

54:57 But that number is reflected in this 299 of that. You can see what, why people are retiring. I, I want a clean snapshot. I want to know exactly why. So we put job fatigue on there being, being a teacher is hard, right? And I want to know if job fatigue is an issue of why you’re leaving. I want to know if compensation.

55:15 It’s a reason you’re leaving. I want to know if there’s a new job out there, is career advancement, is that an issue, right? Um, as you can see, find it odd that only three people out of almost 300 said compensation was the reason they’re leaving teaching. Thanks to the voters. Again, I can’t, I’m going to keep saying thanks to the voters, thanks to the voters, thanks to the voters.

55:37 Uh, it’s what you guys did to help that. be possible. Um, and just kind of give you an idea of this bottom bullet here from July to August of 2023. Remember, I started here in June. And so July to August, we had to hire 360 teachers. Mind you remember, we only have 98 vacancies right now. Uh, day one on August 2nd last year, we had 187 vacancies.

56:00 That’s after we hired 360 teachers. So some takeaways, right? Um, Need teachers in the classroom. We need teachers in the classroom. We need to take care of them and give them the resources they need to be successful. All this equates to student learning, student growth. This is why we’re all here. Um, if there’s a teacher missing in the classroom, Vandenberg Study said that anywhere between 32 and 72 instructional days is missed.

56:31 That’s almost half a year, y’all. We can’t have that. We got to take care of our teachers. Um, so we’re going to continue building a supportive culture. Um, I want to be transparent with all of our communications. And, and really I just want to give everybody the best chance to be successful. Students, teachers, everyone.

56:48 Okay? Any questions? Appreciate you guys. voters. Mr. Dufresne. Uh, Board, I think you, I mean, that is absolutely, Absolutely. Amazing news. So thank you so much for sharing all of that. I wanted to, I failed to tell you that, um, also our, our professional learning and development team, there’s going to be a youth truth, um, survey that went out earlier this year and we’re going to be pretty soon with serving those results.

57:15 But I will let you know that, um, they were, uh, one of the highest factors of, um, um, engagement and job satisfaction for our employees too. So shout out to Bobby Prude and his team. And, uh, uh, just, they’re doing great work. Good things happening in Brevard County, we appreciate you. Thank you so much. At this point, that will bring us to the adoption of the agenda.

57:36 Dr. Rendell. Thank you, Madam Chair. On this evening’s agenda, we have administrative staff recommendations, 44 consent items, 7 action items, and 2 information items. Changes made to the agenda since release to the public include the following. F 25 Field Trip, Bayside School Innovation Challenge to Washington, D.

57:56 C. Revised Items F8, Administrative Staff Recommendations. F18, Reappointment Nominations of Annual Contract Teachers for 24 25. F19, Reappointment Nominations of Support Personnel and School Safety and Security Specialists for the 24 25 school year. Removed Items include F24, Job Description, Case Manager, Mental Health.

58:23 Do I hear a motion? Move to approve. Second. Any discussion? Hearing none. Paul, roll call please. Ms. Jenkins. Aye. Ms. Campbell. Aye. Ms. Wright. Aye. Mr. Trent. Aye. Mr. Susan. Aye. All right. We are now at the administrative staff recommendations. We have a full house tonight. So, um, do I hear a motion? Move to approve.

58:45 Second. Second. Any discussion? Motion. Paul, roll call please. Ms. Jenkins. Aye. Ms. Gamble. Aye. Ms. Wright. Aye. Mr. Trent. Aye. Dr. Rendell. Aye. Dr. Rendell. Aye. Thank you, Madam Chair. We have 17 appointments to review, so get comfortable. So, first we want to talk about the promotion of Andy Papzinski from the position of principal at Kennedy Middle School to the position of principal at Rockledge High School.

59:10 Congratulations, Andy. Come on up.

59:19 Thank you Dr. Rendell, members of the board, uh, our district leadership team, anyone who has taken any part of me ascending through leadership here in BPS. I appreciate all the work that you put in for me. Um, my family’s here. I have Adeline who’s waving at me there, Piper, and Amy. Um, they’re both products of Brevard Public Schools as well.

59:42 Amy is also an educator over at Century Elementary, where the girls also attend school. Very proud of our district and the hard work that’s going on, so thank you for that. My Kennedy family, it’s been a fast year, um, we’ve been doing a whole lot of awesome things there. I apologize to the community of Kennedy tonight, we have awards night tonight, so I’m here with you guys.

1:00:02 Um, but I want to give a huge congratulations to any of my students who are accepting an award tonight. Um, next, the Raider family, I’m coming back home to Rockledge, I spent two years there prior to me going over to Space Coast and spending a couple years. Uh, I can’t say how excited I am to take over and rejoin the Rockledge Nation.

1:00:23 Um, That’s all I have to say. Thank you guys. Raider pride. Thank you. Congratulations again.

1:00:34 So to fill that vacancy, we want to celebrate the promotion of Angela Owens from the position of assistant principal at Merritt Island high school to the position of principal at Kennedy middle school. Congratulations.

1:00:50 Thank you so much, Dr. Rendell and the school board. I’m just so appreciative of this opportunity to my husband, Jake. I just appreciate everything that you have done for our family to get us into this situation that I’m very excited about. Um, as you know, he’s also an educator. There’s a lot that we come home and we have really good conversations about.

1:01:12 Um, to my family, um, because we are both educators, there’s a lot of things that have to be done for both of my boys. And I just couldn’t do it without my family, my best friends. So thank you so much for all that you do for my, my boys. Um, to Mr. Raymer, the secondary directors, my former principals, and I have a few in the building right now, um, and my mentors.

1:01:39 I’m just so appreciative of the time and energy you put into me. Some of you saw something in the very early years that I never saw myself. And today it’s like full circle. So, thank you so much for everything that you have done. For, um, Mr. Kamensky, I know you’re in here. You spent four years with me and supporting me and cheering me on and just the belief in that I can do this.

1:02:04 And, you know, this past year with moving away and coming back, I’m just so appreciative of your support. Miss Lovers, so much. This year has been absolutely incredible. I got to see what it’s like to be a first year principal in the works. And just the amount of growth and the opportunities that we’ve had together.

1:02:23 I will dearly miss the Merritt Island community. And I am very, very excited for my students. My faculty and staff and my community to be joining Kennedy middle school. Um, go panthers. Thank you congratulations Pleased to teach together Next is

1:02:46 the promotion of christine risotto from the position of assistant principal at gemini elementary school To the position of interim principal at discovery elementary christine. Come on Congratulations.

1:03:04 Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everybody. I just want to say to the board, to Dr. Rendell, Mr. Raymer, Ms. Harris, my current director, Dr. Ivory, and my future director, Ms. Hudson. I thank you and appreciate you all so much. I would also like to thank my amazing mentors and outstanding principals in my life to being here this afternoon with me, Mrs.

1:03:29 Julian and Mrs. Carver. I also have to thank my Gemini staff and community for the opportunity of my growth to this, to this position. I’m grateful for my parents also being here with us this evening to experience this moment. I am blessed for my family also here, um, to be able to get me and build me through this journey in this, to this moment of principle.

1:03:57 I can’t wait to serve the Discovery community and do what is best for kids. Thank you, and go Finns. Congratulations.

1:04:09 And so next we have the promotion of Melanie Nelson from the position of Assistant Principal at Endeavor Elementary School to the position of Principal at Jupiter Elementary School. Congratulations. Dr. Rendella and the board. Um, I’m super excited for this. I want to thank my mentors. I’ve been in this district for about 20 years and I’ve had a lot of amazing people that have supported me and pushed me to get to this point.

1:04:39 So I thank all of them. I want to thank my family. There’s been a lot of, um, Sacrifices that have had to be made so that I could get to this point So I thank them and thank you for being by my side and helping me through it And I just look forward to being an Eagle Congratulations again

1:05:03 All right. So next we have the appointment of Sarah van Brimmer to the position of principal at Palm Bay Elementary School Sarah’s coming to us from Vero Beach. Congratulations.

1:05:17 Thank you so much to Dr. Rendell and the board tonight. I am so honored and grateful to be selected as the next principal of Palm Bay Elementary to lead our Little Pirates. Leadership and education has never been more important as Mr. Dufresne said earlier tonight. As leaders, we shape our school’s culture and vision.

1:05:38 We hold great influence to create environments where all students can be successful regardless of their background, their experiences or their access to resources. They can find opportunities to learn and grow and develop their own unique abilities. It is my hope that as next principal at PBE, that I will be able to shine a light.

1:06:02 On the bright spots in public education and show our brevard community that pve is the place to be Congratulations again

1:06:15 Next we have the appointment of dr. Tracy shanuski to the position of principal at university park elementary school Tracy is coming to us from osceola via franklin county. Congratulations

1:06:30 Good evening school board members bps staff and community members It is my distinct privilege and the utmost honor to be given the opportunity to serve the students, staff, and community of University Park Elementary. I look forward to continuing the lift as begun by Mrs. Diaz and her amazing team as we continue the rise in our mission to serve every student with excellence as the standard.

1:06:54 Let’s go Pandas. Congratulations.

1:07:01 So next we have the promotion of Tia Menendez Wilkerson from the position of assistant principal at Stone Magnet Middle. To the position of assistant principal 12 months at johnson middle school. Congratulations

1:07:15 Good evening everyone. Excuse my voice. I’m, sorry But I am thankful um for this opportunity I do think um my husband for his support and his encouragement. I do thank all my Stone family, um, the past, um, administrators from my past and the present that allowed me to develop as a leader. And I do thank Mrs.

1:07:40 Milton and Dr. Rendell and the board for granting me this position as Assistant Principal of Curriculum at Johnson, go Longhorns! Congratulations. Go Longhorns! So

1:07:59 next we have the promotion of Jennifer Hughes from the position of assistant principal 10 months at Bayside High School to the position of assistant principal 12 months at Vieira Middle School. Go Owls! Congratulations.

1:08:14 Good evening. so much to the board and Dr. Rendell for the opportunity to continue leading and serving the amazing students of our county. Um, I know that you’re God has placed me here to lead these students toward their highest potential, and I could not be more thankful for that. I want to first off thank my family as well.

1:08:33 They’re here tonight. I have my husband, Micah, and our two small children, Mila and Titus, and my parents, my mother in law, and I’m so grateful for all of their support. As the previous speaker said, thank you Appointees have mentioned working in education, especially in the leadership role requires a lot of sacrifice So I absolutely could not do this without them.

1:08:53 So thank you all so much for that Um, I would also love to thank my previous principals both of which are here tonight. Mr Judd Kaminsky and miss holly zander both of which have been an incredible source of encouragement for me Um cheering me on and really developing that leadership potential that they saw early on Um I am extremely ecstatic to have the opportunity to begin creating and building the school culture of Viera middle school I could not be more eager.

1:09:21 I know the families and community and Students have been eagerly awaiting for its opening and I cannot wait to establish That sense of community and foster that sense of pride in that community. So thank you all and go owls Next

1:09:42 we have the promotion of eric lindy from the position of assistant principal 10 months at melbourne high school to the position of assistant principal 12 months at Hoover Middle School. Congratulations Eric.

1:09:56 Thank you Dr. Rindell and the school board. I’d first like to thank my family first and foremost for their support and my wife Angie, my daughter Kira graduating Rockledge High School, high schooler ninth grade McKenzie, and a middle schooler at Kennedy Jackson. Um, I’d like to thank Dr. Ferrer for the opportunity to come back to Hoover.

1:10:21 This is not my first stint there. I was a teacher over 20 years ago at Hoover Middle School, and I was a dean for four years at Hoover Middle School. So thank you for the opportunity to come back to a place I know so well. Thank you, Dr. Kirk, for your support and guidance in everything you’ve done for me.

1:10:36 Some past administrators I’d like to thank that have helped mold me and guide me into the person that I’ve been, the leader that I am. BPS expects me to be. Thank you to Ken Nguyen. Thank you to Lena Weybout, Bert Clark. Kathy McNutt, I appreciate everything you’ve done. Thank you.

1:11:01 All right, now the promotion of Sarah Perry from the position of assistant principal 10 months at Rockledge High School to the position of assistant principal 12 months at West Shore Junior Senior. Congratulations.

1:11:16 Thank you to the school board and Dr. Rendell for this opportunity, um, I’d like to first thank Mr. Lindy is much taller than me. I’d like to first thank my husband, um, Dale Perry, for his, um, unwavering support and for keeping me grounded. Thank you to, same thing, Pompeii, representing Pompeii tonight, Mr.

1:11:38 Kaminsky, Ms. Owens, my girl Jen, I’m so happy for you. Thank you to the Rockledge teachers and staff and students who treated me like family since day one. And my Rockledge admin team, Mr. Waller, who’s here. Thank you, Mr. Waller and Ms. Cross, who have been my biggest cheerleaders. And, of course, thank you to Mr.

1:12:04 Clark for continuing to see potential in me. Um, I’m very excited about the opportunity and, um, go Wildcats! All

1:12:18 right, so next we have the promotion of Stephanie Tarapak from the position of Literacy Coach at Enterprise Elementary, the position of Assistant Principal at Element, at Enterprise Elementary School. Congratulations.

1:12:32 Good evening, everyone. I’m deeply honored and grateful to accept the position of Assistant Principal at Enterprise Elementary. I want to extend my gratitude to Dr. Rindell and the board. I also want to thank Ms. Jennifer Clark, the Enterprise Director, and my principal Ms. Kelly Dufresne um for believing me and giving me this incredible opportunity.

1:12:50 Um, I want to thank my family, my husband, who’s here with my, my kids who are, um, one’s in first grade and the other one’s coming into kindergarten next year. So, products of BPS, um, and I want to thank my mom who’s also a BPS employee who has pushed me to continue in education. Um, I’m excited to work with the Porte St.

1:13:10 John community to continue fostering a positive of learning environment for our students. So thank you guys again for this opportunity.

1:13:22 So next we have the promotion of Carolyn Leard from the position of teacher at Creel Elementary School, the position of assistant principal at Creel Elementary School. Congratulations.

1:13:36 Good evening, thank you Dr. Rundell and board for this opportunity, I’m very excited. I get to walk by two extremely important and strong women. Thank you, Nicole Gauman and Sarah Oberbeck for believing in me and all that you do every day. Uh, thanks to my husband who encourages me to spread my wings every day and I can’t wait to do this.

1:13:56 Thank you so much. Alright. Applause

1:14:04 Now the promotion of Dr. Whitney Gilchrist, the position of Assistant Principal at Fair Glen Elementary School. Congratulations, Whitney. Come on up.

1:14:20 Good evening. I first just want to say thank you, Dr. Rendell, and to the board for giving me this great opportunity. When I first interviewed last week, I just knew, I went home, and I knew this was where I was supposed to be. And I just hoped and prayed I would get it, and here I am. Um, I want to thank my family, my husband Joel, and and my mother in law and my father in law.

1:14:46 They’ve done nothing but wrap me in support and love and just encourage me ever since I moved down here. You can tell I’m not from here. So, I just want to say thank you and I’m so excited to be the assistant principal appointed at Fair Glen Elementary. Thank you.

1:15:08 So Madam Chair and the Board, those were all school based administrative appointments. Now we’re going to move to some district office positions. So the first is the promotion of Cynthia Rayen from the position of Asset Development Project Manager to the position of Director of Operational Support and Strategic Planning in Operations.

1:15:24 Cynthia, congratulations.

1:15:31 Thank you, Dr. Rendell, Madam Chair, members of the board, and cabinet members. It is with the immense gratitude and humility that I stand before you tonight and accept this promotion. Almost a decade ago, I began my journey at BPS. And little did I know then, it would lead me to this incredible moment. In July of 2016, when the Operations Division was created, I was entrusted with the role of Project Manager to the Chief Operating Officer, or the COO.

1:16:02 And throughout my tenure, It has been my privilege to have worked under the direction of four remarkable COOs, each of whom has left a significant mark on my professional journey. Their mentorship and leadership have been instrumental in shaping my BPS career, and for that I’m so very grateful. I must also express my thankfulness to God for guiding me on this journey and blessing me with opportunities beyond my wildest dreams.

1:16:34 And to my family, whose support and encouragement have been my motivation, I credit this accomplishment to them. And also to my dedicated colleagues, whose teamwork has made every challenge surmountable. And finally, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to our current COO, Mr. Rashad Wilson. I deeply appreciate his unwavering support and faith in me.

1:17:06 His mentorship and leadership and trust in my abilities inspires me to strive even harder. And so as I step into this new role, I promise to lead with integrity, commitment, enthusiasm, always aiming to exceed your expectations and drive BPS to even greater success. Thank you so much, and go operations.

1:17:34 Well done, Cynthia, well done. So next we want to congratulate, promote Michael Maul from the position of principal at Palm Bay Elementary School in the position of director of Human Resource Services. Congratulations, Mike.

1:17:50 Thank you, Dr. Rendell, thank you board.

1:17:55 Thank you, Mr. Dufresne. I think the common thread we hear tonight is mentorship, and I’m just so proud to continue to, uh, promote that lineage here at, uh, BPS. I’ve had some amazing mentors from Dr. McIntyre, Jim Wilcoxon, uh, Kathy Ewart. The list goes on and on, and I know I’m missing some. Dr. Ivory, uh, Ms.

1:18:13 Hudson. It’s just incredible, and I, I, I love the opportunity to continue to participate in that. I want to thank my parents. My parents encouraged and inspired me to be an educator. Yes, believe it or not, they said, Don’t be an attorney. Go into education. It’ll be the best thing you did. And I want to thank my team at Palm Bay Elementary.

1:18:31 They were here seven years ago. They’re here again. But Ms. Van Brimmer, they’re here for you. And I want to welcome you to the Little Pirate family. There is no greater family. They will shine a bright light on you. They will wrap you in their arms and take care of you. And they will make you look great.

1:18:45 They have been the captain of the ship for the last seven years. The 1. 57, the people that really make the change. So I want to thank them. Uh, for being here and continuing to do that. And finally, I want to thank my wife and children. They know what it’s like to sacrifice. I want to thank my mother in law, Cindy.

1:19:00 She’s just a phone call away when I say I’ve got a late night coming and she watches my kids. Uh, my wife and my daughters are both at volleyball practice right now training for, uh, nationals. So they finally listened to me and I’m excited about that, but, uh, I can’t do it without any of them. And I just want to, uh, thank you and thank you for the opportunity to continue to participate in the building of leaders and mentors at Brevard Public Schools.

1:19:21 Thank you. Thank you, Michael.

1:19:28 Next, I want to congratulate Joshua Kristol. He’s being appointed to the position of Director of Student Services. Joshua comes to us from the west coast Hillsborough County, Joshua. Congratulations.

1:19:41 I just want to thank uh, Thank the board dr Rendell miss dampier for the opportunity to work with your team and the trust you put in me to support your schools I’d also like to thank my wife kristin and my very patient children max and oliver Uh who are proud to raise in brevard county school with this opportunity.

1:19:58 So thank you so much Congratulations.

1:20:04 Probably should have put Josh up earlier. Alright, and finally, a homecoming of sorts. We want to congratulate Sean Hines on his appointment to the position of Director of Procurement and Distribution Services. Welcome home, Sean. Congratulations. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the board, uh, Dr.

1:20:26 Rendell, and Mr. Wilson for my appointment to this position. I’m excited to return to Brevard Schools in this capacity. Uh, I’d like to thank the Orange County Procurement Team from where I’m coming, uh, for their limitless support over the last two years. I couldn’t be where I am today without them. Uh, and a special thank you to Christine Rodriguez, uh, she per, uh, encouraged me to apply for this position, as well as my, uh, mentor Mitzi Loftus for her continued guidance.

1:20:49 Uh, and finally, uh, forever grateful to my wife Suzanne and our family, uh, who provide me with the strength and motivation to achieve my professional goals. I’m truly humbled for the trust and confidence that’s been placed in me. And I look forward to making a great impact on this community. Awesome.

1:21:09 Madam Chair, just in a minute we’ll take a picture, but I just want to make a comment. That’s 17 appointments tonight. There’s 18 actually on the agenda. One of the other individuals had duty they had to do tonight, so they couldn’t be here to be appointed. And it seems like a lot to be doing at this point.

1:21:24 We are actually way ahead of schedule. And we were doing a lot of these appointments in June and July last year, so we are way ahead of schedule. A lot of great people being put in great positions. Really excited about it. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We’re going to. Thank you guys so much. We’re going to take a pause again, a break, and then take a photo if possible.

1:21:42 So if you are appointed tonight, if you will come up front, we’re going to take a group photo. Thank you.

1:28:49 All right, welcome back. We are now at the public comments portion of the meeting. Uh, Mr. Gibbs, how many speakers do we have? Ten. We, tonight we have ten speakers, so each will be allotted three minutes in an effort to remain unbiased. I will be asking our parliamentarian, which is our attorney, Mr. Gibbs, to announce the speakers and manage the time clock.

1:29:07 I’d like to take this opportunity to remind the public of the rules written out in Board Policy 0169. 1. All comments should be directed at the board or individual board members. Staff members or other individuals shall not be addressed by name. Abusive, obscene, or irrelevant comments will not be permitted.

1:29:24 Orderly conduct is expected from all public comment participants and the residing officer may interrupt, warn, or terminate the participants public comment opportunity. Mr. Gibbs, can you please call the first three speakers? Genevieve Rugg, Richard Jones, Anthony Colucci.

1:29:52 Good evening, I’m Ms. Rugg. 56 year resident of Brevard County and a retired Brevard County school teacher. There are certain truths that good people in civilized society hold not only to be self evident but essential. Love is better than hate, peace is better than war, plenty is better than want, and knowledge is better than ignorance.

1:30:22 It is that last item that I’m here to discuss. Tonight, a famous advocate for democracy once wrote the secret to a thriving democracy lies in educating its people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant. Florida’s educational leadership is clearly engaging in the latter. By constantly banning and limiting access to books, you continually narrow the student’s scope of knowledge, thus narrowing their minds until they are diminished in capacity and barred from achieving greatness.

1:31:01 Helen Keller said, The highest result of education is tolerance. But tolerance is the enemy of the power hungry, whose goal is to divide and conquer. If that were not sinister enough, you are now violating the First Amendment doctrine of separation of church and state. Yes, teachers may pray. That is part of their First Amendment right.

1:31:28 They may not lead all students in prayer in a compulsory state run educational setting. Just because the Supreme Court ruled That a coach in a voluntary extracurricular activity could lead prayer after a game does not mean that classroom teachers may. Brevard County Schools serves students from many religious backgrounds.

1:32:00 Therefore, a classroom teacher would be guilty of exercising undue influence by promoting only hers. This can lead to alienate alienation excuse me and bullying of the students who are left out. This board needs to do better than that. The horrendous policy decisions of this board make me thankful that my children and grandchildren have already graduated high school.

1:32:32 Thank you.

1:32:36 Richard Jones Anthony Colucci and Logan Kearney.

1:32:43 Good evening. My name is Richard Jones. I am the Business Manager, Secretary, Treasurer for IUPAT Local 1010, representing the support staff. I’m here tonight to discuss agenda item 19 and request that you oppose it as presented. When I look at the agenda item, it indicates that the Local 1010 agreement establishes conditions for notice of layoff and termination.

1:33:16 It also references statute 1012. 22 and 1012. 27, both regarding the duties of the board and the superintendent. It is our opinion that these annual renewals are for instructional staff only. That is what the state statute affords annual contracts for. In fact, it, it purposely leaves out the non instructional staff.

1:33:49 There is no need to do annual contracts for the support staff because the collective bargaining agreement is clear. An employee who has completed 90 calendar days of continuous service shall not thereafter be discharged except for just cause. You’re violating the contract if you approve this list because there are 62 full time employees that are not on that list and will have their employment terminated for reasons other than just cause.

1:34:24 No discipline hearing, no progressive discipline. No reason whatsoever under a statute that has absolutely nothing to do with support staff. It is clear annual contracts are for instructional staff. Thank you.

1:34:46 Anthony Colucci, Logan Kearney, Leah Nepo.

1:34:59 My name is Anthony Colucci. I’m the president of the Brevard Federation of Teachers. To be blunt, teacher pay in Florida is abysmal. The state legislature simply doesn’t provide the resources for us to compete with other states except for West Virginia. I understand that asking you to offer wages competitive with other states may be an impossibility.

1:35:21 But where I’m stuck is that per DOE statistics, at the end of last year, we were 2, 279 below the state average in teacher pay. And no, you can’t compare our data from this year to other districts data from last year and add in millage. Is that the kind of used car sales tactics that this board supports?

1:35:46 BFT’s proposal at negotiations was based on a 9. 7 percent raise our neighbors in Orange County received last year, plus 3 percent for inflation. In return, BPS countered with a 1 percent raise, which isn’t even the total amount the state earmarked for raises. Board members, especially the three of you who were teachers in BPS, how would you have felt during Teacher Appreciation Week if your employer couldn’t pull together a dime?

1:36:17 From their budget for raises. I am amazed that Dr Rendell and his team haven’t spent any time this year preparing for raises, but rather have been hyper focused on taking away teachers planning Fridays, which 97 percent of our teachers are opposed to their removal. And I’m not sure how Mr Dufresne and Dr Rendell are so excited about a 1 percent raise that they did a presentation about it tonight.

1:36:45 Perhaps the best clue came when Mr. Dufresne, Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources, said at the table that he was trying to make principals kings and queens of their buildings. Based on BPS’s offer, I’m pretty sure that makes our teachers peasants in his mind. Frankly, I’m growing extremely concerned about the disparities in treatment between administrators who have done something wrong versus teachers who have done something wrong.

1:37:13 As of late, I’ve seen teachers and administrators engage in the same behavior and teachers are receiving letters in their personnel files while a verbal discussion is all an admin gets. On top of that, there seems to be no accountability for poor performance by admin. It’s questionable that Dr. Rendell is a member of the Brevard Association of School Administrators, which represents administrators in disciplinary meetings.

1:37:38 Why are administrators less accountable for their actions and performance than the people they lead? For that matter, where is the accountability for the assistant superintendent and superintendent for putting a pitiful 1 percent raise on the table? Where is the accountability for messing up ESE and gifted supplements?

1:37:57 Where is the accountability for providing the union the incorrect date about the payout of millage supplements? Board, we need your help making these folks accountable. Thank you. Mr. Clucci. Logan Kearney, Leah Nepo, Bernard Bryan.

1:38:56 Good evening, my name is Logan and I’m a fourth grade student here in Brevard County. I’m here today to talk to you about the To discuss why I love reading and why I think having access to books in school is important. One reading, I mean, one reason is reading helps me explore my emotions. This helps me learn how to control my emotions and handle situations.

1:39:21 Another reason is I can learn lots of things from books. According to an article from American Progress, more than 50 years of research and 60 studies show that students with access to well resourced libraries Constantly perform better academically. Some kids don’t get to go to public libraries or have books at home.

1:39:42 This is why we need to add more books, not ban books. In the same article it says, Although school libraries are advantageous to all students, students in vulnerable populations see even greater benefits. I hope my speeches encourages less book bans because, I hope my speeches Books help students learn and can make them happy.

1:40:04 Thank you. Thank you Logan.

1:40:11 Leah Nepo Bernard Bryan Hilah Mercer

1:40:31 My name is Leah Nepo and I’m here on behalf of Serene Harbor, a certified domestic violence center in Brevard County. I spoke here prior and I’ve emailed you all individually, so hopefully I’m pleasantly familiar. Um, today I’m coming to you once again to raise visibility of Serene Harbor’s mission and to show how it aligns with yours.

1:40:52 First, I want to thank Ms. Wright, Ms. Campbell, and Ms. Jenkins for being communicative with me and to Ms. Jenkins and Ms. Wright for responding to our invitation and coming to our shelter for a tour. I truly believe that you have to see it to believe it, and which you two did, and that is invaluable. I come here today because since I began as a child case manager and a prevention specialist, I can assure you there has been no less than a handful of Brevard County students at any given time in my care.

1:41:20 That means these students must learn to juggle schoolwork while also handling a traumatic situation, one that often uproots them entirely, leading to inconsistencies in their caregiving. Imagine grappling with the consequences of domestic violence on the school bus heading to fifth grade. Through meeting with non offending parents, there is one thing for certain.

1:41:39 It is imperative children exposed to violence are taught otherwise before the children themselves fall into violent relationships. Florida did a great job at mending this by implementing House Bill 519, which expands Florida Statute 1003. 43, which requires grades 7 through 12 receive mandatory domestic violence prevention education each year.

1:42:01 I have spoken with social workers, principals, and other staff members at 10 schools, ranging from Titusville to Malabar. Many did not know this bill existed. To the schools that did, they had no answer to give me about how they teach it or if they did. While many teachers can give an overview of domestic violence education, I come to you humbly to say that Serene Harbor certification does not come without strong effort on our end.

1:42:26 Each advocate is trained and certified on domestic violence prevention by the state, and more specifically, I have been trained on how to facilitate conversations in the classrooms about unhealthy relationships, which is healthy, age appropriate, and of course with respect to the limitations put forth by Brevard County and the schools themselves.

1:42:43 Thank you. It’s important to note that the curriculum is totally editable, it’s already been approved, and it’s in 40 counties throughout Florida. School board, I assure you, although I look like a student, I am not. And this education would have changed the course of my life radically if I had received it while I was a child, silently suffering from living in a household ran by violence.

1:43:04 I’m proud to say that the person that saved me and saw me was a teacher when I was in 10th grade. That is to say, I have the utmost respect for school faculty and first hand experience at how the school staff can become a safe haven. I hope that through conversations and invitations that I have sent each of you, a true partnership can grow.

1:43:23 One where we can prevent future violence as Brevard County students lives depend on it. Thank you. Leanne. Bernard Bryan, Kyla Mercer, and Kelly Kerbin.

1:43:39 Thank you. Thank you for adjusting the podium. This is a great size for me. Thank you young man. I just want to say thank you to this board, Dr. Rendell and the staff, uh, Madam Chair. You guys have been great and I appreciate you so much. Um, I just want to say that we are still living in faith. Uh, we believe that, uh, God has a plan.

1:44:02 Thank you. And one of the things I want to remind you is that I saw your tremendous workshop about uh, improving VPK, uh, expanding VPK. And I just want to remind you that, uh, marginalized communities really need help with getting VPKs in those areas. When you look at the African American participation, and I shared with you several months ago, the participation rate is only 13%.

1:44:29 And with the Flickr Uh, the, uh, kindergarten readiness rate, if we don’t improve that spec, that criteria, the gaps will not improve. So, you know, we’re looking for your plan and we hope that you will share the plan very, very shortly because our young people, education is a key to drive poverties away from our community.

1:44:54 So, you know, I’m looking forward to seeing your plan. And I shared with you. At the last board meeting, a fishbone diagram. You know, one of the things that we are still concerned about is the risk ratio rate. Um, when you look at a fishbone technique, Um, it’s designed to really drive the root causes. And I heard a gentleman that spoke after me, um, at the last board meeting.

1:45:20 He mentioned some families are not ready, and he did it based on emotion. But when you look at true root cause analysis, Um, We really need to look at the data. So what Mr. Bryant did, along with some of the, uh, NAACP members, we met with some teachers, some experienced educators, doctors, and principals. And they said, well, Mr.

1:45:41 Bryant, one of the things that kept bubbling up is classroom management. Um, there’s an opportunity there, and based on what Mr. Dufresne has shared tonight, I I think there’s an opportunity with expanding classroom management training. You know, one of the things we looked at was that, uh, temporary certificates, uh, is a very high number here.

1:46:07 And those teachers are not trained with classroom management technique. So we’re hoping that you will increase the mentorship level. I, I heard Mr. Dufresne said he’s going up to six. Maybe you may need to double that. Uh, when you look at those teachers who have not experienced a background in classroom management and that would fall in on the, uh, Fishbourne Diagram that I shared under people.

1:46:35 So, that’s my explanation. That’s what I hope you will support our community and do everything you can to help all kids. Thank you, Mr. Bryan. Kyla Mercer, Kelly Curvin, Gregory Ross. Thank you all for the opportunity to speak. Trust is the foundation of a positive, productive environment where people work together to achieve common goals.

1:47:01 When subterfuge instead of transparency is used, trust is eroded. Mistrust builds and people question motives as well as actions. On Friday, April 12th at 12 at 10. At 322 p. m. an email referencing the guardian program with an attached survey was sent to all BPS employees. It announced BPS’s partnership with the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office to provide required training to employees who wish to be voluntary guardians.

1:47:34 Employees who are assigned to classrooms are ineligible. As you’re aware, a guardian is an armed school employee who has received training, passed a psychological evaluation, and a drug test. They may legally carry a firearm on school campuses. Should there be a threat on campus, the guardian’s role is to act and stop it.

1:47:57 Months had passed since Chairman Wright requested Superintendent Rendell to investigate the possibility of expanding the Guardian program when the email was sent. We want, uh, we all want our students to be safe from harm. There are vastly different viewpoints about how to best protect them from the evil of gun violence.

1:48:18 Some think more guns are the answer. Some believe that more guns make it more likely that innocent people will be shot. For more information visit www. FEMA. gov Sending that email and survey without recent board discussion or action erodes trust and builds into question why such a divisive action was taken.

1:48:37 Did BPS and the school board not want to be burdened with listening to those citizens who felt the expansion of the Guardian program was a bad idea, that the risk of more guns in our schools is not justified by the chance that an armed employee will not be in exactly the right place at the right time to stop an armed intruder?

1:49:00 Ask the citizens of Uvalde, Texas if more guns saved lives on May 4th. 24th 2022 When 376 armed law enforcement officers waited for an hour and 14 minutes in a hallway Before the shooter killed 19 students and two teachers Was stopped more guns are not the answer to keeping our children and employees safe More transparency is the answer to restoring trust in brevard public schools and in its board.

1:49:32 Thank you Thank you, Ms. Mercer. Kelly Curvin, Gregory Ross, and Jeff Mandel is withdrawn, so Julia Anton. The first time I heard someone talk about Matt Seuss and I

1:49:50 was attending a luncheon and the topic of the school board came up. This was in 2019, before the pandemic lockdowns and the rise of extremism in our school system. This woman was a former colleague of Matt’s, and she didn’t have many nice things to say. Specifically about, well Your track record with your female colleagues.

1:50:06 We all know your history, and I’m not here to judge you for your poor life choices and dishonesty. Except now you’ve brought the same misogynistic energy into the school board. Most people don’t know this, well, actually I think most people do know this, but Matt Susan loves to harass women when they challenge his fragile ego.

1:50:23 And the past year, and on more than one occasion, Matt Susan has harassed me over statements I’ve made. Now Matt doesn’t do that with an audience. He waited until I was the only non BPS person at a work session, or alone in the hallways of this building, or in this room at the last meeting. Now, he also isn’t bold about it.

1:50:39 He snaps at me and then scampers off like a small child. So let me address this for the whole county to hear, Matt Susan. I don’t work for you. You probably already know where this is going, so try not to scamper off like you normally do when I challenge you. The County Commissioner from District 3 and Matt Susan conspired together to remove Jennifer Jenkins from her district and from this board.

1:51:00 This isn’t just a theory. It’s now backed up by a deposition and sworn witness statements. But first, Matt Susan said these text messages didn’t exist. He denied their existence for so long it turned into a lawsuit that we, the taxpayers, are footing the bill for. And what do you know? The text messages had always existed, Matthew John Susan.

1:51:21 Why were you hiding them? Oh, right. I’m going to read a portion of the deposition between a former aide who worked in the county commissioner’s office and handled public records requests. And everyone will hear why you wanted these text messages not to have existed. Question. Did you actually see the entire conversation on the phone?

1:51:39 Answer? Yes. Question. What were the kinds of things that Matt Susan wanted to omit? Answer. Matt Susan had sent text messages saying derogatory things about Ms. Jenkins, that they felt were not related to the public records request and therefore were not to be included in the response. Question, what kind of derogatory things?

1:51:57 Answer, they said that she dressed provocatively, that she was a whore. Question, so I want you to use actual words that you recall them saying. They didn’t say provocatively, did they? Answer, no. They just said that, you know, she had big boobs and wore tight shirts on purpose to get attention and that she was a whore.

1:52:15 Question, who was saying those by text message? Answer, Mr. and Mr. Susan. They both were. Matt Susan is going to attempt to brush this off as the Hocker Room Talk. I mean, you guys know he was a coach, right? But this is 2024 and women will not be gaslighted into believing that this is acceptable behavior by a sitting school board member.

1:52:35 Matt Susan is not a role model or a pillar of the community. He is the reason why women are choosing to run into a bear in the wards. Matt Susan, you should resign. Gregory Ross and Julia Anton.

1:52:57 In case there was any misunderstanding of Ms. Curran’s speech, I too have in my hand the deposition she read from. For clarification, it is the deposition of the administrative aide of District 3 Brevard County Commissioner John Tobiah. The administrative aide is the records custodian for the county commissioner and is responsible for all public records and public record requests for the commissioner.

1:53:18 Let’s read from the deposition what the records custodian had to say about those magic disappearing and reappearing texts between you and County Commissioner Question you said you saw the actual messages that were on the phone Do these screenshots appear to fully and accurately depict what you saw on John Tobias phone answer?

1:53:37 No, I mean, it’s pretty obvious Mr. Ross, don’t use individuals names, please. That’s the second warning. Thank you Answer. No, I mean, it’s pretty obvious there’s stuff missing in here. I mean, the little screenshot here, that’s like something you cropped from something else. Same thing with the page above it.

1:53:56 Those cropped messages are obviously not the full message chain, and I don’t know why anyone would send something like that. Question. Okay, and so this is omitting some communications that you, answer. It’s obvious. It’s very obviously omitting communications at this point. Question. It’s obvious in the way that it was cropped, but it’s, is it also obvious because to you, you were actually saw the messenger on the commissioner’s phone?

1:54:19 Answer. Yeah. And you can tell right there on the 20th, you know, there’s stuff in that, that Mr. Susan had sent, you know, and that’s not in the message. Question. Were those communications pertaining to, and you felt responsive to the public records request? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Answer, I told him the whole entire message chain between him and Susan was to be included and the only way to fully, be fully responsive was to take screenshots of the entire message chain and send those.

1:54:44 But that’s not what the commissioner wanted. And that’s why he had another employee in the office fulfill the request. They text on a daily basis back and forth, you’re missing a lot of information here if this is all you have. So I can tell you that’s a substantial amount missing. Question. You said you saw the actual messages that were on the phone.

1:55:03 Do these screenshots appear to fully and accurately? Oh, I’m sorry.

1:55:11 Question. You mentioned when this records request came in that there was communication between the Commissioner and Matt Susan. Is that correct? Yes. They were on the phone, you know, talking on speakerphone. He said, I got the records request from Ms. Jenkins and I’m going to fulfill it today. to make it appear as though we have nothing to hide because I don’t want this to be a problem.

1:55:30 And he said, I’m going to send over what I, what I sent so that we can be in alignment here. So let’s be clear, Matt, you lied about your communications with the county commissioner on the redistricting and did so from the school board dais. Then you lied about the existence of those communication records in a court document.

1:55:46 Matt, you then doctored your test to remove your bigoted and misogynistic statements. You and the county commissioner then conspired to get aligned on what Dr. Tex you were sending over. To the rest of the board, you have to wonder what he’s saying about you behind your back, right?

1:56:04 Julia Anton. Miss Anton.

1:56:19 A few years ago I was babysitting a toddler. And the toddler had done something naughty. But you know he was really cute, even when he was being naughty. So he did this naughty thing and then he ran and he was so short that he was able to run under the table. He was standing up under the table. And I looked at him and I said, You know, you are so cute that you just got away with something that you shouldn’t have gotten away with.

1:56:46 But that’s not always going to work for you. There’s going to come a time, and it’s going to be soon, kiddo. So, when you’re going to have to own up to what you do, this was your one chance to get away with things from me. So why am I telling you this? I’m telling you this because a gang of four acts like a bunch of toddlers running under the table and thinking, ha, ha, ha, I got away with it.

1:57:14 And I want you to understand that when you think you got away with it, Well, maybe you got away with it because we only get three minutes to stand up here and speak, and it takes more than three minutes to complain about what you do. Maybe you think you got away with it because people are afraid of public speaking, so they don’t come up here and say anything.

1:57:36 Maybe you think you got away with it because people are afraid to write a letter to the editor because they’re afraid that it might impact their job. But I want to tell you, you didn’t get away with the garbage that you pull. I made a list and it was so long there’s no way to get it in three minutes.

1:57:54 That’s kind of part of my point. But, let me just give this one as an example. Um, y’all come in here and you act like the goal is to get home as soon as possible. And those of us who speak are in your way. We’re an annoyance to you. What was it Mr. Trent? You called us in the Florida today. You said we were a bunch of barking dogs is what you hear.

1:58:18 You didn’t get away with calling us that. We took offense. Mr. Susan, uh, made the statement at one of the meetings that, you know, you could all go home earlier. If we would just talk to the board in person rather than coming up here to speak, I don’t do that because I don’t trust you. An example of one of the reasons I don’t trust you, I talked to Mr.

1:58:42 Trent offline after one of the meetings and I told him about a constituent who was behaving in a way that if she’d been a black male she would have gotten shot. He looked at me and he said, Oh, was she running? And I thought of all the black males who’d been shot who were not running. And then later I thought of somebody who sits on this board who was running from the cops.

1:59:07 Who hadn’t been shot and is, in fact, running again. So when you think you got away with it, you didn’t. When you think you pulled a fast one on us, you didn’t. We see what you do, and shortage of time doesn’t mean you got away with it. Ms. Sampton. Do we have any other speakers? Nope. Nope? All right. Board, are you okay to keep moving, or do you need a short recess for restroom break?

1:59:32 Everyone okay? All right. We are now at the consent agenda. Dr. Rendell.

1:59:51 Thank you, Madam Chair. There are 44 agenda items under this category.

1:59:58 Thank you, Dr. Rendell. Does any board member wish to pull any of the items? I do. Which item? Um, I would like for us to pull, and I know that there’s probably going to be consequences, so someone can explain that to me too, but I would like us to, it’s now F20, it was F19, uh, reappointment nominations of support personnel for us to kind of inquire this.

2:00:19 Uh, no one’s ever said that before. Um, I appreciate you bringing that up. Um, so, uh, uh, Mr. Gibbs, I don’t know if, if you are knowledgeable on this enough yet to even answer that question. I don’t think that you are. I’m sorry, I heard your side comment. So, I would like for us to at least pull it and we can have a conversation about that.

2:00:39 Any other items on consent? Board members, any other items? Sorry, I guess I wasn’t supposed to discuss that. Yeah. We’re going to discuss in just a minute. I know, I’m sorry. We don’t do that often, so. Okay. Okay, I will entertain the motion to accept the consent. Oh, sorry. Yeah agenda Consent items on tonight’s agenda with the exception of f20 that’s pulled for discussion.

2:01:01 Do I hear a motion? Any discussion

2:01:09 No, okay, I’ll roll call please. Miss Jenkins. Aye. Miss Campbell. Aye. Miss Wright. Aye. Mr. Trent. Aye. Mr. Susan. Aye All right. Now we are going to discuss item f 20, uh, let’s pull it up on, so just to need a motion in a second. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Move to approve. Second. Any discussion? Sorry, . Um, just to add to what I was saying, um, I personally am not educated on this.

2:01:36 I don’t know, um, what you said sounds very logical to me, though. And then I don’t feel comfortable that our, our attorney doesn’t know the answer yet either, so I think the right thing for us to do is to pull this and research that before we. to put ourself in a situation. Is there any potential ramifications from tabling it to the next meeting?

2:01:55 That’d be a question for staff, I don’t know what their timeline is. Yeah, it’s an appointment list, so it’s employees who are being reappointed for next year. If you don’t approve it, they’re not reappointed for next year. Could they be reappointed to next business meeting? probably, but these are employees who are being reappointed.

2:02:13 Is that correct Mr. Dufresne?

2:02:19 This is the reappointment list. Yeah. I, you know, I’m, have to do some more research and I’m a researcher, but I, I’m just curious because why nobody from Tuntun has ever said anything about this ever before because we do this every single year. Um, I don’t, I’m not familiar with this 62 people, but I mean, uh, you know, yeah, probably be good to get our questions answers.

2:02:44 Don’t answer. Don’t want to put things in it. Timeframe. ‘cause you know, we don’t want people going, I don’t have my job. Right. And even though I don’t think that’s the case for most people, but, um, if we think we can get it, I mean, I, I would even be not opposed to if we needed to have a special called meeting.

2:03:01 We have, we meet in two weeks. But if that’s gonna be a difficulty, um, we’re, if we could even add a special meeting short onto next Tuesday if we, if we need to do that fast, you know. Paul, part of it is, is for you. I’m sorry, go ahead. No. If you hadn’t taken a look at it, it’s part of the process. Well, I don’t normally get involved unless there’s an issue.

2:03:24 Um, this is the, tonight’s the first time anybody’s raised an issue with me on the reappointment list. So, if you want me to take a look at it, I’m happy to take a look at it. It’s easy enough. Board, I think it would be wise of us to, to obviously research this. Um, the good news is we’re ahead on the reappointment.

2:03:40 So So, we were going to be ahead on the reappointments, but. So just to be clear, we were reappoint, I thought we were, someone was losing a job, but I thought we were reappointing. No, they’re not, they’re not all on the reappointment list. There’s individuals on the list. It’s not. You’re not supposed to be able to just be fired without cause.

2:03:56 Correct. Is what the argument is. So, it isn’t all 62 are not on there. It’s the document that has the thousands of bus drivers and IA’s and all that. So question about, if I can ask Madam Chair, a question about Robert Schultz’s order. We have a motion and a second. Can we now move to table this to? I would recommend you move it to the next meeting specifically, not this table.

2:04:18 Right. So postpone. Right, postpone until May 28th, I think. Can I make that motion with a first, with a motion and second? You can move to table. Okay. I would like to move for us to postpone this to our next, um, board meeting, whether that be the next regular meeting or a special meeting, if necessary. May 28th.

2:04:37 Move to the May 28th meeting. May 28th, yeah. Do they need to vote on the motion that’s on the floor to approve it first? She’s making a motion to move it to the next agenda, so that would be a superseding motion. Like an amendment. Okay. She amended it. I’ll second that motion you’re well does this person that seconded your original motion would yeah this is good you’re seconding my motion this is getting a little hairy all right any other discussions on this okay Paul roll call please miss Jenkins aye miss Campbell aye miss right aye mr.

2:05:08 Trent mr. Susan all right so dr. Randall will you please let us know about the items under the action portion of this evening’s agenda

2:05:21 Mr. Gibbs, did we, did we approve the other agenda items? No, it’s moved to May 28th. So, yeah, that’s the superseding motion is, uh, yeah. The consent agenda minus F20 is approved and F20 is moved to May 28th. Okay. The first action item is H55, Amendment to the Independent Citizens Committee for Millage Oversight Charter.

2:05:44 Do I hear a motion? Move to approve. Second. Any discussion? Motion.

2:05:53 Ms. Jenkins, Ms. Campbell, Ms. Wright, Mr. Trent, Mr. Susan, Dr. Rendell. The next action item is H 56 2425 meal price increase. Do I hear a motion? Move to approve. Second. Any discussion? No. Call a roll call, please. Ms. Jenkins, Ms. Campbell, Ms. Wright, Mr. Trent, Mr. Susan, Dr. Rendell, Ms. Wright, The next action item is H57 procurement and distribution services.

2:06:23 Do I hear a motion? Move to approve. Second. Any discussion? Call roll call please. Ms. Jenkins. Aye. Ms. Campbell. Aye. Ms. Wright. Aye. Mr. Trent. Aye. Mr. Sousa. Aye. The next action item is H58 department slash school initiated agreements. Do we have a motion? Move to approve. Second. Any discussion? Motion. Paul, roll call, please.

2:06:48 Ms. Jenkins. Aye. Ms. Campbell. Aye. Ms. Wright. Aye. Mr. Trent. Aye. Mr. Susan. Aye. The next action item is H59, reappointment nomination of annual contract teachers for 24 25 school year. Do I hear a motion? Move to approve. Is there any discussion? Yes. Um, I am abstaining from this vote due to a conflict of interest as my husband, David S.

2:07:10 Jenkins, is up for reappointment. Thank you, Ms. Jenkins. Any other discussion? Call roll call, please Miss Campbell, that’s right. Hi, mr. Trent. Hi, mr. Susan. Hi The next action item is h60 book review and challenges living dead girl Move to approve This one has to be more defined So do you want to? Are you approving the recommendation of the book committee to keep To keep this title with parental in high school only with parental consent.

2:07:47 I’m sorry to rem, sorry, wrong. I’m on the wrong book. Yeah. , you’re ahead of your yourself to, yeah, . All right. This, I just wanna, wanna clarify Mr. Susan’s motion, ‘cause this is the one we have to have move to approve, which would be accepting the recommendation of the committee, which three? Three members of the, the committee removed or recommended to remove.

2:08:03 Okay. Second. All right. Any discussion? Good catch, Ms. Campbell, just to make sure, but yeah. Just to go too fast. No discussion. Paul, roll call, please. Ms. Jenkins. Nay. Ms. Campbell. Aye. Ms. Wright. Aye. Mr. Trent. Aye. Mr. Shoeh. Aye. All right. The last action item, excuse me, The last action item is H61, book review and challenges this one summer.

2:08:29 Do I hear a motion? Move to accept the committee’s recommendation of keeping this one in high school only.

2:08:40 Okay. Second. Any discussion? Hearing none. Paul, roll call please. Ms. Jenkins. Aye. Ms. Campbell. Aye. Ms. Wright. Aye. Mr. Trent. Nay. Mr. Sousan. Nay. All right. We are now moving on to the information agenda, which includes two items for the board to review and may be brought back for action at a subsequent meeting.

2:09:03 No action will be taken on these items today. Does any board member wish to discuss either of these items? Hearing none. All right. We are now at the board member reports. Does any board member have anything further to report or discuss? I have a discussion item. Thank you. I actually, um, I don’t know if she’s still in the room, but I got to meet with an exchange student, um, um, named Stella this evening from Merritt Island High School.

2:09:30 Um, but she brought up a concern as we were talking about, um, you know, what it’s like to be on the school board. And, uh, from a student perspective, from the outside, but also it’s a, it’s a concern. We actually have an in, I have an email in my inbox right now from another student from another school about this issue.

2:09:43 And we’ve heard from some teachers as well. And that is our, we’ve Our change in policy about failure due to absences, the adjustment that we made. And just to be clear, board, I am not advocating for us to adjust that because I think when we talk about why we made that change, the idea is when it comes to grades, grades should reflect content mastery.

2:10:06 And when we can fail a student because of attendance, we’re, we’re really making more about behavior because attendance is a behavior. And I shared with, um, This student, and I will share with the other ones who’ve reached out, um, Sometimes the reason why a student is absent is because they’re skipping class, skipping school.

2:10:26 But there’s quite frequently reasons that are beyond that student’s control. We have students who um, have transportation problems. We have students who, because of their family situation, a little brother or sister gets sick, and they’re the ones who have to stay home to babysit, and um, that’s not an excused absence.

2:10:44 And so, we have situations like that. But, I am, when we make a change, sometimes there is, there are things that need to be clarified and sometimes we don’t know what the fallout is going to be until it actually is implemented. So I would like for us to um, ask staff to really clarify all the way down to the teacher level what the expectations are because to be truthful, I am.

2:11:05 I think that student, we need to make sure that students are still held accountable for their assignments, for their tests. We have policies about late work. If you’re absent three days, you get three days to make it up. If you don’t make it up, it’s a zero. Um, if you’re not in class, then you’re, and there’s a participation grade, you know, those, those things are going to be hurt.

2:11:26 I don’t want us to go back to making students fail who have content mastery. Um, Because of the absences, and we always had layers around that, and if they could go around and they do some extra work and they got signatures and they could pass, but I don’t think that the absence, just to be clear, the absence issue that we’re dealing with currently are attendance issues.

2:11:46 It’s not Strictly revard. I have read multiple articles this year dealing with attendance issues across the nation It’s a post covid phenomenon But specifically in our district I think it would be really good to clarify with teachers that we still expect that they can hold students accountable for the work That they are responsible for It is certainly easier now for some students to stay home and still keep those grades Passing because so much of our work is online in google classroom tests are even offered sometimes Online And so that may be an adjustment for some teachers in how they do the assignments.

2:12:20 But I, if we can work, um, you know, with just what’s best, you know, best practices, Ms. Harris, um, on how, how do we make, strike that balance between holding students accountable for their work, but yet not punishing their grades because of really what is more of a behavior issue, which is attendance. So, um, I don’t know what the rest of the board thinks about that, but I just think it’s one of those things that we need to tweak and continue to communicate so that, that policy is not, that change is not, um, having the negative fallout that I think, um, and some of our students and teachers are experiencing.

2:12:57 Thank you, Ms. Campbell. Does anyone want to weigh in on this conversation? I, too, have received a couple emails, and so, um, I’m glad that everybody else is receiving them. So I’ll weigh in at the end if anybody else wants to add to this. Yeah, I feel very strongly we have to do something. We can’t allow these kids to stay outside of school the way that they have been.

2:13:13 I’ll, I’ll be honest with you. One of the things we used to have as a nine day past that the kids would get a form and it was a lot of work on administrators, right? Because everybody had to fill out a form that was past the nine days, but it held those kids accountable. What we’re seeing is, is, I mean, I was just in a classroom at O’Galley a couple of days ago and five teachers came up to me and said, Hey, how’s it going?

2:13:31 And this was the topic they were talking about. So we’ve got to figure out something. Um, it can’t go the way it is right now. You’re right. We’ve got to figure out a way to go either back to what we had, or figure out a way to allow it to move forward with some sort of constraints. Because we have parents, kids, students, everybody reaching out to us to say there’s something wrong here.

2:13:49 We need to fix this. So if you’re asking me, I think we definitely need to. I’ve brought it to Raymer and talked to him a little bit about it. I think the idea is let’s figure out a concept that we can move it forward because it is an issue. Alright. Thank you. My microphone turns on and off whenever it feels like it, so, uh, anybody else would like to weigh in on this?

2:14:08 Well, on that subject, um, yeah, it, the discussion is good. I like how you said bring it all the way back to the teacher because, um, I think that could solve a lot of issues, at least at the secondary level too as far as, um, I think that’s the worst. And that’s where the teacher has the most control of if the student’s not in the classroom and they’re missing instructional time, they’re I don’t know how they’re passing in the first place.

2:14:32 So that, that’s where the discussion can go in my eyes. Um, in the elementary school level, we call the phenomenon. It’s not really. I mean, for a couple of years there across the country, we said attendance is optional. And, and many of the teachers unions didn’t want to ever go back, uh, in this country. So it, that’s your phenomenon is, is the parents saw this for a few years.

2:14:52 Uh, but we need to get back on the emphasis, especially those early years. Early years, I’m, I’m seeing some principals saying I just need to get my kiddos here. We got a great staff. So that’s, um, that’s something we need to address. I, I don’t think we need to go back to the F. A. Uh, that was so subjective.

2:15:09 You know, I, I had to sign off on failing somebody who has a very good passing grade and, and it was beyond their control of why they, they had absences. So I, I never want to go back to having to do that because they mastered that. You know, they had mastery, they showed mastery in class and still had to fail, so I never want to go back to that, but it’s worth a discussion.

2:15:29 Thank you, Mr. Trent. Ms. Jenkins, do you have anything to weigh in on this one? Yeah, just real quick, I, um, I agree with everything Ms. Campbell said. I think it’s important for us to acknowledge that this is a behavior. Um, and they shouldn’t be punished by grade, and we have many, many families, especially in our elementary grades, not that it doesn’t happen in secondary, but, uh, many, many students who are in really tough situations, um, and most of those principals who are saying they really want to get their kids into class, into school, it’s really the responsibility of that parent, and so to put that on that child is an unfair, um, disadvantage to put on that kid, um, it doesn’t, um, It doesn’t help that kid get to school anymore.

2:16:05 It only hurts that child. So, uh, I think Ms. Campbell’s solution is the best. Uh, just, you know, having a conversation about what we can do and strategize as staff to make sure that, um, administrators and teachers are aware of, you know, the expectations and what they can and cannot do in those certain situations.

2:16:23 Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Gibbs, truancy still applies to any child that’s under the age of 16, correct? Yes. Okay. So, so for our younger kiddos that are not making it to school, there is still an answer there that the law obviously, uh, provides, but I, I’m of the mindset that I’m not interested in going back to the failing due to absences either, and I will tell you, I, I, my family was a direct, we were directly hit by this one time, uh, over a 90 day period when we lost several family members, and we had a wedding that was out of state, and.

2:16:50 And it’s like, oh my gosh, your family’s going through a million things, and you’re trying to figure out, okay, I’m going to miss school, but my child was a straight A student, and I’m going, okay, like, this doesn’t really make the most sense. So, failing due to absences, I don’t think is necessarily the right answer.

2:17:02 I will tell you, I have seen in my own child’s school. There are certain teachers who hold a very very firm line on that makeup work time And that seems to really alleviate a lot of the issues uh Because the students don’t want to miss because they know if they’re missed they’re going to have a ton of work And they’re not going to have their teacher there to help them And so my own child is a product of this this type of of a teacher So I would just say I think that we do need to clearly communicate from the district standpoint that you know Hey, what is the expectation there the makeup work?

2:17:32 And that is where it’s It’s becoming a problem, I think, for a lot of the educators, too, is that they’re allowing it to go on and on and on, and now they’re trying to figure out make up test days, and they’re letting, you know, make up work come in, and then it’s just bogging down the system. So if we held them to that, hey, for every day that you’re absent, that’s how many days you get to make up that work, uh, I think it could alleviate a lot of these issues.

2:17:49 And then also, for the kids that are under 16 years old, truancy still applies, uh, for the kids that are over 16, um, um, That’s a tough spot to be in, so. Well, they can lose, and, and this is one of the things that I’ve shared with parents who’ve emailed, we, or teachers, you know, before we changed the policy, we actually, our student services department a couple years ago, stepped up that partnership with the truancy court, right, and so we’re, We established truancy court.

2:18:13 We go every week. Um, we’ve actually had a parental prosecution this year, so a parent got charged in the criminal courts, and they pled out, and have now received their, uh, sentence, and I believe it’s probation. Yeah. So, yeah, it’s, it’s been, We have a pretty good success rate of getting kids back to school in some of the programs they’ve done.

2:18:31 And for those high schoolers, I remind people that they do, if they have their license, they can actually lose their license because of truancy. And so it’s, it’s it that doesn’t pull the levers for some students if they don’t have their license yet, or if it doesn’t matter so much to them. But we, we are.

2:18:47 We’re We’re working on the attendance side, and I do have to say, because I remember, I can’t remember which, which article, which news outlet it was, but, one of the articles that I read this year, you know, that kind of ranked the districts based on our, and our attendance in Brevard is actually not as bad as, we’re, we’re in the, in the upper.

2:19:03 The upper tier which on the positive side our attendance our absence rate is lower Tendency is higher than a lot of the other districts around the state, but we’re all doing with some of the same things and But I just wanted to point that out. We do Partnership between legal and student services to try to you know get better The goal is to get students in schools and the goal is not to send parents to jail.

2:19:23 We don’t want to get there. We want parents to bring their kids to school. Um, and I appreciate the work that, I just have to say this too, I appreciate the work that our, our school uh, teachers, administrators, our social workers, our parent liaisons, for those years that we’ve had them, um, have done to try to work on this attendance issue, school by school, uh, because, uh, That’s, that’s really important, um, you know, our principals, every time I do a, especially in elementary, a school visit, I hear the same stories about trying to get their kids to come, especially in our Title I schools.

2:19:52 So, um, Thank you, and I’m sorry Dr. Mandela didn’t give you a heads up. I had that conversation right before the board meeting. But I think it’s something we all want to get on board with. We want to find solutions. Not, there’s no finger pointing here. Um, but we want to find solutions to make this workable for our students and our staff and our families.

2:20:11 Um, so that, because we want to get kids in school, want to help them be successful, um, but not make it difficult for the people who are trying to help them find success. Thank you, Ms. Campbell. Is there any other further discussion points or things to report from anybody? Hearing none, this meeting is adjourned.