Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
0:00 Thank you.
5:29 All right.
5:31 Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.
5:36 I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
5:43 and to the republic for
5:45 which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with
5:49 liberty and justice for all.
5:54 All right.
5:57 At this time, I’d like to offer my fellow board members and Dr.
6:00 Rendell an opportunity to recognize
6:02 students, staff, or members of the community.
6:04 Ms. Jenkins, would you like to go first?
6:05 Yes.
6:08 I had the opportunity to join the Do it for Hunter Foundation at
6:14 the U-Matter event at Merritt Island
6:17 High School this weekend, and both Dr. Rendell and I had the
6:22 pleasure of participating in the dunk tank.
6:24 Mr. Raymer chickened out.
6:25 He gave his time to a student.
6:26 Right.
6:30 He gave his time to a student.
6:31 And, you know, it may or may not have been because the water was
6:35 a little bit of a questionable color,
6:37 but it’s okay.
6:38 It was a good time.
6:39 It was a good time had.
6:40 It’s a wonderful event.
6:42 This event was even better than last year.
6:44 There were so many people there, and honestly, one of the most
6:47 positive moments was when I had arrived for my time slot.
6:50 I actually had seen a couple of teachers who work in the south
6:54 area leaving and going back to their cars.
6:57 So it told me that, you know, our staff was supporting this
7:00 event from all over the district, which is really incredible.
7:03 Again, a really important message just to tell the people around
7:07 you that you love them, that they’re supported,
7:10 and to understand that you may not understand everybody’s story
7:13 and their journey and what they’re going through,
7:15 and that if you feel like you’re struggling, there is help out
7:18 there.
7:18 There are people there for you.
7:20 988 is the new hotline number.
7:23 I am really – I said this last meeting because they were
7:26 present, but Hunter’s mom is an incredible inspiration,
7:30 and I will never forget meeting her and her sharing her story
7:34 with me because I can’t even imagine what it feels like
7:36 to lose a child who dies by suicide and then to turn around and
7:40 turn it into positive advocacy.
7:42 I have so much respect for that woman, and I just appreciate her
7:45 inviting me to be a part of that moment
7:46 and allowing all of us to be there to support her and her goals.
7:50 Thank you.
7:51 Thank you, Ms. Jenkins.
7:53 I’m going to go – I’m going to hop down.
7:54 We’re going to have Ms. Campbell speak last.
7:56 Mr. Susan, would you like to go next?
7:58 Yeah, thank you very much.
7:59 Just wanted to say thank you to a couple of the schools that I
8:03 visited.
8:03 First off, Sable Elementary School, I was moving through the
8:07 school, and I had –
8:08 it was really bizarre last week because I ran into a lot of the
8:12 former students that I had
8:13 that are now employees of the district, and there was one of my
8:16 former students that was actually a teacher at Sable,
8:20 and she was so excited to show me what she’s been doing and talk
8:23 about what we did in the past,
8:24 and it was funny because when we were talking, one of the
8:29 coordinators was there along with the principal,
8:30 and she said, “Well, you understand what Mr. Susan did in his
8:33 classroom?
8:33 This was the fun stuff that we did,” and she was going on and on
8:36 and on, and I realized I was like,
8:37 we may want to have some of those stories not make it all the
8:40 way out because some of the things that we did
8:41 was a lot of fun, but I don’t know if they’d be respectful today.
8:44 The other thing is is that we had a student that was inside of
8:47 there that once we started talking about –
8:49 he had heard that we were moving forward with our sports
8:54 programs for the elementary schools.
8:55 Many people don’t know, but we just put soccer inside of the
8:58 elementary school, and we also put flag football,
9:03 and so this student had his cleats in his bag, and when we
9:07 started talking about it,
9:08 he thought that for some reason that today was going to be the
9:11 day that he was going to run out onto the field,
9:13 so he put them on, and he came out, and he was wearing his cleats,
9:15 and I said, “What are you doing in between class?”
9:17 He goes, “I’m just getting ready for practice later on today,”
9:19 and I said, “No, man, it’s another couple of weeks,”
9:21 but I had asked him, I said, “Why are you so excited about it?”
9:25 and this is the reason we did it, is that many of your low
9:29 socioeconomic and single moms throughout the county
9:31 are not able to pay for sports, and some of those children,
9:35 because they don’t have that opportunity,
9:36 don’t get the mentorships that they need, and with this program,
9:40 not only will we be able to have parents
9:42 that can’t afford to have their kids, but some of the other
9:45 programs that are going to be in there,
9:46 they’ll be able to take advantage of, and it’s a lot nicer for a
9:49 family to be able to say,
9:50 “Hey, instead of you coming home and then me running around
9:54 trying to take you to practice from 5:30 to 7:00
9:57 and missing time with your family, that you can actually have
10:00 practice during school,
10:01 and then I get off work and I pick you up, and then our family
10:04 can break bread together.”
10:04 It’s a big opportunity for our elementary schools, big
10:07 opportunity for our development.
10:08 We’re just really excited to bring it, which brings me into the
10:12 other part of the part,
10:13 was is that we had a problem with not being able to fund some of
10:18 the soccer balls
10:18 and all the needs for the soccer program for elementary schools,
10:23 and so all of a sudden,
10:24 I ran into another one of my students, Alex Delhagen, and he
10:27 manages all of the Walmart stores in Orlando.
10:29 And I said, “Hey, Alex,” I said, “I got a big ask.”
10:33 I said, “Remember how passionate I was about sports and
10:36 everything else inside the classroom?”
10:38 He goes, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I said, “I got a big ask, man.”
10:40 I said, “I need you to fund all of our soccer balls.”
10:42 So he agreed, and he’s bringing 270 soccer balls today, along
10:48 with a bunch of other stuff.
10:49 But it was just funny because when you teach and you come back,
10:54 I’ve been out of the classroom now for 10 years.
10:56 And when I was in the classroom, Alex was in my class about 12,
11:00 13 years ago.
11:01 You still see these kids as students of yours.
11:03 You still see them as the kids that were inside your class.
11:06 You still see them as being 16, 17, 18.
11:09 And now they have families, and they’ve grown up.
11:11 And you kind of see where some of the work that you and others
11:15 have done inside the education system
11:16 and gave them the hope as far as individuals carries them
11:20 through.
11:20 And the thank yous that you get are tremendous.
11:22 So it was good because I’ve been out of the classroom for a long
11:25 time, but it reminded me of some of the stuff that we did.
11:27 It had an impact on some of the things in the future.
11:30 With that, I also went to Sherwood.
11:32 I got myself in trouble in the kitchen.
11:34 I stole some cookies, and there’s a picture of me getting caught
11:38 and yelled at.
11:39 The unique thing about Sherwood that many people may not know is
11:43 that she cooks for all of the staff members every day.
11:46 And they’re allowed to pay for it if they want, but she doesn’t
11:49 just cook some sort of meals.
11:50 She goes out of her way.
11:52 And the kitchen staff at Sherwood makes sure that our teachers
11:54 have a special meal every day for a reduced cost.
11:57 And that was phenomenal.
11:58 I also wanted to say that I ran into the STEM teacher there, and
12:02 she was doing some phenomenal things.
12:02 And she’s getting ready to take her kids up to Kennedy Space
12:05 Center.
12:05 So all around good at Sherwood.
12:07 And then I did – we met with Art Holke, Dr. Rendell and I, on
12:13 workforce.
12:14 Big shout out to Knight’s Armament.
12:16 Many people don’t understand.
12:17 It’s a manufacturing center up in Titusville.
12:20 And what he has done in 2008 when I was a teacher, again,
12:24 bringing me back to when I was in education.
12:26 Art and I developed some programs.
12:29 One of them was called the STEAM program.
12:31 But we fed a direct pipe from kids from Space Coast High School
12:35 to go to work at Knight’s Armament.
12:36 And it has been a program that’s been successful for many years.
12:39 And now he’s trying to expand it as his company went from having
12:43 15, 20 people to now having close to 400 or 500.
12:45 And so now he needs more children.
12:47 So we’re talking about how do we get the students from Titusville,
12:51 Astronaut, Coco, and everybody through the programs that we need.
12:54 And that, to me, was a big deal.
12:56 And Art being there, he’s a driving force.
12:58 So he’s talking about bringing in Eastern Florida, dual enrollments
13:02 and good opportunities.
13:03 And I just wanted to say thank you to Dr. Rendell.
13:05 There’s been a lot of people that have come before Dr. Rendell’s
13:09 position and that these things hadn’t gotten across the finish
13:11 line.
13:11 And when Dr. Rendell turned around and started talking, Art said,
13:14 I think we’ve got it here.
13:15 I think we’re going to do something special for the majority of
13:18 our kids.
13:18 So I want to say thank you to Dr. Rendell.
13:20 Thank you to Art Holke for coming and working with us with
13:22 Knight’s Armament.
13:23 And I could keep going all day.
13:25 It was a special week last week.
13:27 I just wanted to say thank you to my former students and the
13:30 opportunities that they presented back to us.
13:32 So thank you.
13:33 Thank you, Mr. Susan.
13:34 Mr. Trent.
13:35 I’ll keep it short.
13:37 It was a stressful week for many schools across the country, but
13:43 in Brevard with some of the useless, you know, meaningless
13:46 threats that they’ve received.
13:47 I do want to have a special shout out for Cocoa Beach Junior
13:51 Senior High School principal, Tim Powers, and the great job to
13:55 him and his administration and staff had done when they evacuated
14:00 Cocoa Beach Junior Senior High School this past week.
14:03 I’ve heard from parents.
14:05 I’m a parent myself and staff on just how good of a job that
14:10 they handled the situation with and the communication multiple
14:15 times during the evacuation, how they took care of the kids.
14:19 I mean, this is why we practice and we have so many drills
14:23 throughout the throughout the year, and they just did a
14:26 phenomenal job.
14:27 So shout out to you guys.
14:29 Keep it up.
14:30 And I’m sure that would have been the exact same way at any
14:32 school in our district.
14:33 But this is why we do the things we do.
14:36 And we get notifications all the time of all these drills,
14:40 because then when it really has to be done, it’s pulled off like
14:45 this.
14:45 So great job, guys.
14:46 And hopefully we don’t have many more of those.
14:50 All right.
14:51 Thank you, Mr. Trent.
14:52 I want to give a shout out to Astronaut High.
14:54 They held a college fair this past Monday where they had over 60
14:57 colleges come and participate.
14:58 They made that available to the students in the north end of the
15:01 county to come and really just kind of get a feel for different
15:03 colleges and opportunities that are there for them.
15:04 I’m going to piggyback a little bit off of what you said, Mr.
15:08 Trent.
15:08 So every school I think in the in the nation, I don’t know,
15:11 definitely in Florida and Brevard County wasn’t unique in this,
15:13 experienced an influx of threats that were not viable threats.
15:18 And thank God they’re not viable threats.
15:20 But I want to shout out to our district security because I know
15:23 they have been running around and making sure that every one of
15:26 these schools are safe.
15:27 And that is not a small task to do with the amount of facilities
15:30 we have being 72 miles in length and the amount of students that
15:34 we care for.
15:34 So thank you so much for all that you guys have done.
15:36 I know you’ve been burning the candle at both ends to make sure
15:39 that everybody is safe as they possibly can be.
15:41 So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
15:42 Want to also give a shout out to the Brevard Autism Coalition.
15:46 This past Friday, they held a forum for candidates and really
15:50 wanted to hear from people what their thoughts were on how we’re
15:54 going to help our communities that have different abilities,
15:55 disabilities.
15:56 Autism was the main focus, but there were quite a wide variety
16:00 of people in that room.
16:01 I got the opportunity to go and listen and just hear from people
16:05 and really walked away with feeling encouraged and feeling like
16:08 this is an area that we need to do a better job as society on.
16:11 I had the opportunity to meet with a really wonderful man, Ken.
16:15 So if he ends up watching the school board meeting, Ken, I
16:18 actually asked for his contact information today because he was
16:20 phenomenal and he’s trying to find a job.
16:22 And he’s in this weird area of like, I can’t find a job anywhere,
16:25 but he’s got so many wonderful skills.
16:27 And so I’m going to connect him with a few people that I think
16:29 maybe will help him.
16:30 But thank you so much to Nicole Grabner for putting on that
16:33 forum.
16:33 It was very beneficial. Excited to see what comes about from
16:36 that.
16:36 I’m also going to shamelessly plug this right now because Challenger
16:40 7, as you guys know, is our one and only year round school.
16:43 And guess what? They’re on two week intercession right now.
16:46 Boy, wouldn’t it be nice to have a two week break right this
16:49 moment.
16:49 So going to go ahead and plug that. Shout out to Challenger.
16:51 I know that their teachers are very happy right now.
16:53 And I’ve heard from so many schools all over the place.
16:56 Bring this here. Bring this here. Bring this here. So just want
16:59 to go ahead and plug it again.
16:59 It’s a wonderful calendar. Keep looking for it as it comes
17:02 forward.
17:02 So Dr. Rendell, do you have any?
17:06 Just wanted to make sure that everybody watching live knows that
17:09 we are monitoring the weather system that is in the Caribbean,
17:13 the Gulf.
17:13 And if we need to make any announcements, we will make those
17:18 tomorrow, Wednesday.
17:19 It looks like the worst weather that we will experience is on
17:22 Thursday.
17:22 So if we’re going to do anything different Thursday, we will let
17:26 everybody know Wednesday as in tomorrow.
17:29 And if you’re watching this a few weeks later, you’ll know what
17:32 happened if we do anything.
17:34 That’s it.
17:35 All right. Thank you. All right.
17:36 Ms. Campbell, I’m going to turn the floor over to you.
17:38 Can I just ask a clarifying question?
17:39 Dr. Rendell, do we have a time tomorrow that we’re going to make
17:42 that decision by?
17:43 Thank you. Yes, ma’am.
17:44 We want to make our decision by noon tomorrow.
17:46 So if we’re going to do anything different with Wednesday, if we’re
17:49 going to cancel school or after school activities or anything,
17:51 if we’re going to do that, we’ll notify everybody by noon
17:54 tomorrow, noon Wednesday.
17:55 Thank you.
17:56 Thank you. All right.
17:57 Ms. Campbell, I want to turn the floor over to you.
17:58 You have a special recognition today.
17:59 I do.
18:00 And before I do that one, I just wanted to share one other event
18:03 that’s actually ongoing this week.
18:05 A few weeks ago we got an email from Julie with the Brevard
18:09 Cultural Alliance sharing all the wonderful things that the
18:13 funding that’s come through Brevard Cultural Alliance has done
18:15 with our art clubs.
18:16 So on Saturday, same organization, Brevard Cultural Alliance,
18:21 hosted Dr. Judy Bowers, who is a retired choral professor,
18:28 education, music education professor from FSU.
18:31 And she came down and they opened it up not only to all the
18:34 choir teachers in our district, but also to some other districts.
18:36 And actually I heard that there were some teachers who don’t
18:39 teach choir who came and really gleaned a lot of great
18:42 information on just classroom structure and organization and
18:45 technique strategies, things like that.
18:46 And so I just wanted to give a shout out to them because not
18:49 only did she do the workshop on Saturday, she has been yesterday,
18:53 today, and then also tomorrow going into several of our choir
18:56 classrooms.
18:57 And I think there was a, there was a me, me, pick me kind of
19:01 volunteer opportunity for choir directors to have her come in
19:06 and observe and give technique tips and help them work through
19:10 some things and give lots of good feedback.
19:11 And I got to do one of those yesterday.
19:12 I’m going to get to observe one tomorrow.
19:14 So thank you to Brevard Cultural Alliance for making that happen.
19:16 It was, I heard just great things.
19:18 And for the little bit of time that I got to pop in on Saturday,
19:21 it was really great.
19:22 Thank you.
19:23 Lastly, I want, we’re going to recognize a very special alumni,
19:29 alumnus this morning.
19:31 And that is U.S. Air Force Staff Sergeant Tristan Wright.
19:36 Tristan was a 2015 graduate of Heritage High School.
19:40 And while he was there, he participated in track, cross country,
19:44 and the sports medicine program.
19:46 Tristan tragically died on August 15th while serving in an undisclosed
19:51 location.
19:51 He is the son of retired Sergeant Ricky Wright and Navolia
19:55 Wright who were here with us this morning.
19:57 Mr. and Mrs. Wright and family, would you please stand so that
20:01 we can honor you?
20:01 Thank you.
20:11 I want to tell you guys a little bit more about Staff Sergeant
20:15 Wright.
20:15 Tristan had been serving in the Air Force since 2016 and was
20:20 assigned to the 27th Special Operations Logistics Readiness
20:23 Squadron.
20:23 During his career, he had deployed in support of Operation Resolute
20:26 Support in the Afghan Theater
20:28 and was recently in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, which
20:31 is in the Middle East.
20:32 His commander, Major Brent Eskay, said that he was the kind of
20:37 supervisor who took the privilege of leading and mentoring airmen
20:40 seriously.
20:40 He cared deeply for the airmen in his flight and volunteered
20:43 actively within the local community.
20:45 His decorations include a U.S. Air and Space Force Commendation
20:48 Medal, a U.S. Air Force Achievement Medal
20:50 with two Oakleaf Clusters and Sea Devices, an Air Force Good
20:54 Conduct Medal with one Oakleaf Cluster,
20:55 a Global War on Terrorism Medal, and a National Defense Service
20:59 Medal.
20:59 And he also served as a chaplain.
21:02 My favorite quote was from his mother in the Florida Today
21:06 article.
21:07 This is what Tristan told her.
21:09 “I’m serving my country and giving my life so that you can live
21:13 yours.”
21:13 So we very much appreciate your son’s service.
21:17 We thank you for giving him to us as a nation and as a community.
21:22 We commend you.
21:24 And I know that the last few weeks have been very difficult.
21:27 And I know Heritage recognized him with a moment of silence at
21:31 one of their football games a few weeks ago.
21:33 And I know there’s been special services.
21:35 We wanted to recognize him as a special alumnus of Heritage High
21:39 School and of Brevard Public Schools.
21:41 And so thank you.
21:42 Thank you for your son’s service and your brother’s service and
21:45 nephew’s service.
21:45 And also for your gift and sacrifice to us as well.
21:49 Thank you.
21:51 We’re going to take a short recess if that’s okay.
21:53 So I’m going to come down and give you guys a hug.
21:54 And thank you personally.
21:55 We’ll be back in five minutes.
24:41 All right.
24:56 Thank you.
24:57 All right.
24:58 We are on to our next agenda item.
24:59 I believe we have some other special guests that are in the room
25:01 today.
25:01 Mr. Susan, you have a group here today that you would like to
25:03 recognize, so I’m going
25:04 to turn the floor over to you.
25:05 Yes.
25:06 I want to say thank you for the ECAC committee for accomplishing
25:10 one of their goals.
25:11 Many people may not know, but the ECAC committee was formed to
25:15 bring better citizenship
25:16 to our students with both the support of military organizations,
25:21 STEM opportunities, scholarships,
25:22 and other opportunities that we have that are available that not
25:25 many people take advantage
25:26 of.
25:27 So we formed the ECAC committee over a breakfast, I think, napkin
25:31 where we were sitting down
25:32 and we said, this is something that we feel very strongly about
25:36 with a lot of the turmoil
25:37 that’s going on and a lot of the direction that we see in some
25:40 of our students that we could
25:40 give you some help.
25:41 And so the Dennis’s, Mr. Dwyer and Miss Tammy, were the leading
25:46 force behind getting it set
25:47 up.
25:48 And then from there, everybody knows who Don Weaver is.
25:51 Mr. Don Weaver came on board.
25:53 And then we had everybody else that slowly joined into the
25:57 committee.
25:57 And then we said we had some directions.
25:59 The first one was what we all saw, which was the passport, which
26:05 was very successful.
26:05 We launched it.
26:06 We have students that are coming in two weeks to get their
26:09 certificates.
26:10 And the other one that took a lot of work.
26:12 And I will tell you that if anybody ever wants to get anything
26:17 done, everybody always says
26:18 to bring in the veterans.
26:20 Well, it’s not so much the veterans.
26:22 It’s usually the veterans’ wives that are usually the ones that
26:25 do all the work.
26:25 And Miss Tammy is responsible for all of the success that you
26:30 see from a coordinating perspective,
26:32 along with some of the organizations and individuals that we
26:35 have inside of our audience.
26:36 We developed a website that has some amazing opportunities.
26:41 And I’m not going to say a single word.
26:43 And I just wanted to take a second and say, Miss Tammy Dennis,
26:47 thank you for your work as
26:48 far as coordinating everybody’s ideas and all the things that it
26:53 took to make this happen.
26:55 And working with one of our salutatorians, Miss Jessica Anderson,
26:58 along with some others.
26:59 So with that, if you’ll come up and explain what you have
27:03 created, along with everybody that’s in here.
27:04 Thank you.
27:07 I am very happy to be part of this team, to meet so many amazing
27:14 people and have them all come together.
27:16 And our ECAC launch team is particularly excited to release this
27:23 new website in partnership with Brevard Public Schools.
27:28 Much work was done by our team and, of course, by people on the
27:34 staff, including Yvette here, especially at the end with the
27:39 actual technical pieces that had to come together.
27:43 Our heart is to provide opportunities for students all the way
27:48 from kindergarten to career across Brevard.
27:52 And that’s truly where we’re coming from.
27:55 And we always come back to is about the students.
27:58 And, as Matt mentioned, not long ago, we had a little brunch
28:03 with him and brainstormed on how we could bring together veteran
28:07 and civic organizations into a consortium, a coalition, to where
28:13 the information could be put in one place so that people can
28:17 actually find it and know about all the wonderful and amazing
28:22 things that these organizations provide.
28:25 And especially for students.
28:28 And from there, we called or contacted Don Weaver.
28:32 Now, I have to tell you that Don never ceases to amaze me.
28:40 How many people he knows, but more importantly, how many people
28:47 he helps and his breath of the veteran organizations and all of
28:53 the things they do and bringing them together and motivating
28:59 them as they help the veterans in our community and everyone
29:05 around them is just amazing.
29:07 And so I would like Don Weaver to stand.
29:10 And I just want to give him a hand and applause.
29:14 And you may stay standing because Don helped us.
29:20 Hang on.
29:21 You see how these meetings go, right?
29:23 You can see it.
29:24 Yes, you got that.
29:26 So Don helped us identify other organizations.
29:33 And so representatives from those organizations came together
29:38 and met monthly.
29:39 And we call that the ECAC launch team.
29:42 So if you’re here and you were part of that monthly team or
29:46 representing one of those organizations, please stand.
29:49 Thank you.
29:50 None of this could happen without them.
30:01 And then when it came time after this organization collected
30:07 lots of opportunities, it was, as Matt mentioned, a Brevard alumnus.
30:14 Jessica Alexander Anderson, who put this beautiful website
30:20 together for us.
30:21 And I just want to go ahead.
30:23 She couldn’t be with us this morning, but can we just give her a
30:26 hand of applause anyway?
30:27 So the website.
30:32 Brevard Education Civic and Funding Opportunities.
30:37 Find and finance your future.
30:40 The key is in the find, right?
30:44 That’s the reason we’re here.
30:46 Launching these resources.
30:49 So helping students find the nugget or the nuggets that will
30:54 help propel them into the future.
30:56 Once we gathered all of the information, we divided everything
31:02 that we found so far into six categories.
31:04 Scholarships, and you can see them on the screen.
31:08 Military opportunities, contests and awards, activities and
31:13 experiences, the museum passport program, and educator resources.
31:18 And I actually want to start with educator resources.
31:22 I’m just going to give you a couple examples from each one.
31:26 The list is much longer, of course.
31:28 But under educator resources, the Civil Air Patrol is probably
31:36 one of the most amazing sources for teachers, and especially
31:41 with STEM.
31:41 So if you go on their site, you will find that they have STEM
31:48 kits completely free.
31:50 They are mechanics, renewable energy, robotics, rocketry, flight
31:55 simulator, remote control aircraft, building bridges.
31:59 You name it.
32:00 I feel like it’s on there.
32:01 It was so exciting to me.
32:03 And this is free to teachers.
32:06 So they can access it.
32:07 It includes curriculum.
32:08 It includes the products you need to do the projects.
32:12 It’s just absolutely super amazing.
32:14 And then the fun thing that they offer, at least I would think
32:19 it was fun, is free flights for teachers.
32:21 So there’s lots to look into, and I believe that is a good
32:26 example of what’s on there.
32:28 Another thing that is under education resources is the Air and
32:33 Space Force Association recognizes a teacher of the year.
32:36 And it starts regionally and goes all the way to national.
32:40 And you’ve heard the story before, two years ago, one of our own
32:44 teachers won that award.
32:45 So please go on and check it out.
32:48 Next we have the activities and experiences.
32:51 A different organization, the EAA, Experimental Aviation
32:57 Association, offers free flights to kids.
33:01 Now, how many kids wouldn’t enjoy that?
33:04 I would say probably a lot.
33:06 I know I would have as a kid.
33:08 And so that’s a fun thing to check out.
33:10 And then other things are like camps and design competitions.
33:18 The Air Force and Space Association offers a cyber camp.
33:22 And they also have Stellar Explorers space design.
33:27 And there’s many, many more.
33:29 That’s just two examples.
33:31 If we move on to contests and awards, on there you will find
33:36 that the VFW offers a patriotism essay and speech contest.
33:42 And also an art contest.
33:44 So kids that like to jump in and compete and find something they’re
33:49 interested in, this is a good area for that.
33:52 MOAC honors, and I’m going to read this because I don’t want to
33:57 miss it.
33:58 MOAC honors superior students in the 20 Brevard County ROTC,
34:04 Junior ROTC, Civil Air Patrol, Sea Cadets, and Sea Scout
34:09 programs.
34:10 So Brevard is very supportive and has a lot.
34:15 And we want to encourage all of those military opportunities.
34:19 Another one I wanted to mention is Daughters of the American
34:23 Revolution.
34:23 They have a history essay contest.
34:27 And I wanted to throw that out because different contests have
34:31 different themes.
34:32 And so the learning opportunity varies across which opportunity
34:37 your students would choose to participate in.
34:40 Then we have military opportunities.
34:43 We included all the service academies and links to join enlisted
34:49 ranks in all of our services, Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy,
34:55 and Coast Guard.
34:57 And also the maritime academies.
34:59 So you want to check all that out.
35:01 We also included some military schools like the Citadel and
35:07 Virginia Military Institute.
35:10 Then moving on to scholarships.
35:12 Now you probably know that, you know, that list is very long.
35:17 And so I’m just going to give you a couple examples.
35:21 But, and they also vary in what the scholarships are for.
35:27 So, for example, AFCIA gives scholarships that emphasizes
35:33 science and STEM.
35:34 The Propeller Club is for students interested in the maritime
35:40 careers.
35:41 Florida American Legion includes nursing, medical, and general
35:46 studies.
35:47 So there’s lots of opportunities on there.
35:50 Some of them are particular to military families.
35:54 So dependent of, or that sort of thing.
35:59 Because part of this program is wanting to support military
36:03 families within our Brevard community.
36:05 But don’t feel like, oh, Armed Forces is in the title.
36:10 I don’t have any military family.
36:12 None of this applies to me.
36:13 That is not true.
36:15 Most of it, you don’t have to be related to military families.
36:20 There’s absolutely something on this website for everybody.
36:25 And this website is very dynamic.
36:30 In that, I mean, as we learn more things, we will add to it.
36:36 And especially local things.
36:38 We’re very interested in getting anything local in Brevard onto
36:43 this website.
36:44 We did include some national opportunities.
36:47 But, of course, we want to let people know what’s happening in
36:51 Brevard.
36:52 And that’s why the program that already has been launched, the
36:58 museum program, with the passports, right?
37:01 Launched in June.
37:02 Many students already doing it and turning in that passport.
37:06 If you get, for those of you who may not be familiar that are
37:10 listening,
37:11 10 out of 17 of participating Brevard museums, they will get a
37:17 certificate.
37:18 And they will all be honored next month, October 8th.
37:21 So, go see the museums and finish that up.
37:25 And then we will continue to add local things to this website.
37:30 So, as we learn more, we’ll add it.
37:35 So students can find what inspires, helps, and energizes them to
37:43 thrive.
37:44 Thank you for this opportunity to work with you and with our
37:50 team to provide more things for our students.
37:52 Thank you, Tammy.
37:53 Thank you.
37:54 Yes.
37:55 I think one of the things as an educator, and I’m sure the
38:01 others that are on this panel understand this,
38:02 is that we would hear about these opportunities like a week
38:06 before they would come out.
38:07 And what we wanted to do is be able to say, if you’re a teacher
38:12 and you want some of these opportunities,
38:14 whether that’s STEM materials, you know what I mean, any of that
38:17 kind of stuff,
38:17 scholarships, possibilities for your students, all of that stuff.
38:20 We hear about it, but there’s never a place that we can all go
38:23 to get it all.
38:23 And this was a monumental undertaking because when you try to
38:27 contact all of the armed services for all their STEM
38:30 opportunities,
38:31 and these are some huge names, Air Forces, Navy, everybody, Sea
38:36 Perch, like these, there’s just some amazing opportunities in
38:38 there.
38:38 Now it’s all in one place.
38:40 We wanted to create sustainable resources.
38:42 So sustainable meaning that it’s not somebody that just decided,
38:45 we all know that when we came in to become STEM,
38:48 when STEM became the big term out there, everybody, including
38:52 like some of your local office furniture places,
38:54 became STEM companies and stuff like that.
38:56 And what we wanted to do is be able to provide resources to our
39:00 STEM teachers that were sustainable.
39:02 And that’s what comes with some of these opportunities in line
39:05 with our curriculum and organize it all into one place.
39:08 And you did that, and that’s incredible.
39:10 So I appreciate that.
39:12 Is there a way we can go down and get a picture with all of them
39:14 and have them come up?
39:15 Yeah, absolutely.
39:16 Let’s go ahead and come on up.
39:17 Just for the reference, can you say what the website is?
39:20 Because it’s not linked on the agenda, so we want to make sure
39:22 that that is out there, what the actual ECAC website is.
39:25 It is under Brevard County Public Schools website, and it’s
39:31 called Brevard Education, Civic and Funding Opportunities.
39:35 Okay, wonderful.
39:36 Thank you.
39:37 Because I just typed it in.
39:39 It is BECFO.org.
39:41 Okay.
39:42 So BECFO.org.
39:43 Thank you.
39:45 I want to make sure that that’s linked on there.
39:46 I wrote that part down.
39:47 I’ve just been clicking on it since they sent it to me.
39:50 Yeah.
39:51 Just want to make sure it’s out there, because I anticipate
39:53 people will go to that resource.
39:54 But the plan moving forward, just so you know, is that now that
39:57 it’s been put together, the opportunity is, is that we’re going
40:01 to have our STEM teachers take a look at it.
40:02 So they’re going to bring the organizations in, and they’re
40:05 going to meet with our STEM teachers to talk about the
40:07 sustainable resources, and then also show them where these are
40:11 at, along with push this out to the PTOs and stuff like that.
40:14 So it’ll get out there, but I appreciate that.
40:16 But it’s on our website.
40:17 We wanted to be in line with the school district.
40:19 And so that’s where it is.
40:20 Okay.
40:21 Wonderful.
40:22 Well, we’ll take it.
40:23 We’ll take a quick recess and take a photo.
40:24 And Matt, Matt, could I just say real quick, if you do have any
40:27 questions more specific, please feel free to contact me.
40:30 Okay.
40:31 Yeah.
40:32 Thank you, Tammy.
40:33 You’re the best.
40:34 All right.
40:35 Thank you.
42:42 All right.
42:43 That will bring us to the adoption of the agenda.
42:58 Dr. Rendell.
42:59 Thank you, Madam Chair.
43:00 On this morning’s agenda, we have 22 consent items, two action
43:04 items, and one information item.
43:05 Changes made to the agenda since released to the public include
43:08 the following.
43:09 We added A6, Education and Citizenship Armed Forces Coalition of
43:14 Space Coast, or ECAC, which we just had.
43:17 F18, Job Description Specialist-ESESupport.
43:21 Revised were A8, Administrative Staff Recommendations, and F13,
43:27 Instructional Staff Recommendations.
43:30 Thank you, Dr. Rendell.
43:31 Do I hear a motion?
43:32 Move to approve.
43:33 Second.
43:34 Dr. Rendell, I think we will be acknowledging these
43:35 administrative staff recommendations at a future of the time.
43:35 I will be able to approve the agenda.
43:52 Thank you.
43:53 Dr. Rendell, I think we will be acknowledging these
43:58 administrative staff recommendations at a future upcoming
44:00 meeting.
44:00 Correct.
44:01 We will honor the people that we just promoted at a future staff
44:04 meeting, but I do want to announce that Kelly Rouse has been
44:05 promoted to the position of principal at Oak Park Elementary and
44:05 Margaret Thumming to the position of assistant principal at O’Galley
44:05 High School.
44:05 But we will recognize them at an evening board meeting.
44:20 Thank you.
44:22 All right.
44:23 We are now at the public comment portion of the meeting.
44:24 We have how many public comment speakers today?
44:26 So far, four.
44:27 Four.
44:28 All right.
44:29 We have four speakers.
44:30 Each will be allotted three minutes.
44:31 In an effort to remain unbiased, Mr. Gibbs will be calling
44:34 everyone to the podium.
44:35 I would like to take this moment to remind everyone of the
44:38 public comment rules as written out in Board Policy 0169.1.
44:42 All comments should be directed at the board or individual board
44:45 members.
44:45 Staff members or other individuals shall not be addressed by
44:48 name.
44:48 Abusive, obscene, or irrelevant comments will not be permitted.
44:51 Orderly conduct is expected from all public comment participants.
44:54 And the presiding officer may interrupt, warn, or terminate the
44:57 participants’ public comment opportunity.
44:59 Do we just get a couple more in?
45:00 a couple more in? Yes, six. Six. Okay, wonderful. Can you please
45:03 call the first three up?
45:04 Anthony Colucci, Bernard Bryan, Diana Haynes.
45:30 My name is Anthony Colucci. I’m the president of the Brevard
45:33 Federation of Teachers. While I believe that this is a pro-teacher
45:37 school board that works collaboratively to improve our working
45:40 conditions, it’s very clear that those you entrust to represent
45:44 you in HR do not share the same values. Last week, the response
45:48 by HR to several situations lacks integrity, common sense, and
45:53 an ounce of empathy. For instance, we had one teacher have a
45:56 cafeteria door slammed into her head by an out-of-control
46:00 student.
46:00 as she was trying to open it on the other side. She followed
46:04 workers’ comp protocols and on that Tuesday was diagnosed with a
46:07 concussion. She found herself not being able to make it to work
46:11 Wednesday through Friday. On Friday, she went back to the doctor
46:14 and was put out for Friday through Tuesday. Whatever convoluted
46:18 rules exist for workers’ comp prevented the doctor from retroactively
46:22 putting her out for the previous Wednesday and Thursday. As this
46:26 situation is clearly covered by her injury in the line of duty
46:30 contract,
46:30 language, language, I told the teacher to ask her principal for
46:35 the two days per contract. The principal brought it to HR and
46:38 they denied it. That’s right, they denied injury pay to a
46:42 teacher given a concussion by a student. Last year, you agreed
46:46 to contract language that stated all members of the bargaining
46:49 unit who are not entitled to preparation time shall be allowed
46:53 office hours for up to 40 minutes per day. How in the world HR
46:58 tells a principal that this only applies to those
47:00 those who are entitled to preparation time is beyond any logical
47:04 explanation. Last week, I learned that no one bothered to tell
47:08 the district recruiters about the MOU for the bonus at Endeavor
47:12 that this board pushed for. Is this the kind of incompetence you
47:15 want behind your name?
47:15 I had an asthmatic teacher who felt she needed to leave a
47:19 building that was over 85 degrees until the AC was fixed. When I
47:23 requested the teacher not be charged sick time for a couple
47:27 hours because our contract doesn’t require them to work in
47:30 hazardous working conditions, your HR wouldn’t do this because
47:31 the teacher didn’t earn the pay. Let me ask a very pointed
47:31 question here. Do you make sure all employees, even
47:31 administrators, earn every penny they’re paid?
47:31 And last week your HR folks tried to remove teacher pay to cover
47:49 vacancies claiming they don’t have any money for this even
47:50 though the funding comes from the vacant position. HR once again
47:50 took it on themselves to decide ESC teachers working two jobs or
47:50 teachers with very large
47:50 classes don’t deserve money for it. Is that the value of the
47:54 value of the student? HR once again took it on themselves to
47:57 decide ESC teachers working two jobs or teachers with very large
48:00 classes don’t deserve money for it. Is that the value of the
48:04 student?
48:05 you you share is our budget really that tight that there’s no
48:09 wiggle room hr is doing whatever
48:11 it wants they offered a one percent raise without your
48:13 permission now they’re not abiding by our
48:16 contract they destroyed our grievance procedure your associate
48:19 superintendent who’s supposed to
48:21 be a neutral party at step three is telling the principal what
48:24 to do at step one the director of
48:26 labor relations what to do at step two if you don’t believe me
48:29 look at the email he sent you
48:31 last week where he was clearly talking to a principal about a
48:35 step one thank you thank you anthony
48:37 bernard bryan diana haynes greg ross
48:43 good morning my name is bernard bryant and i’m the educational
48:49 chair of the south
48:51 bavard branch of nwcp as well as the concerned citizens of south
48:55 bavard uh first you know my
48:58 reasons for coming up here for the last two years is to share my
49:02 concerns about the reading and math
49:04 gap among all demographics and i just want to take this
49:09 opportunity today to thank dr rendell
49:12 we identified an issue about chronic absenteeism among the wide
49:19 public school students and i’m going to
49:22 tell you the report i just received from dr rendell’s team
49:26 showed a tremendous improvement in that area
49:29 because we we understand that if a child is not in school the
49:34 child cannot learn those instructional time
49:38 is so critical that’s why for the last two years i’ve been
49:43 looking at uh fishborne diagram
49:45 you know without getting emotional what what are the root causes
49:49 but i think this is significant root
49:52 cost and i want to just thank dr rendell and his team thank you
49:56 very much and i i see a good trend
49:59 over the last uh five weeks so thank you so much i also want to
50:03 bring up um i’d like to thank
50:05 uh miss megan wright uh we brought up at our last meeting about
50:10 the old schools you know what can we
50:13 do to upgrade our school and i want to tell you we have a young
50:16 man in this audience today that young
50:19 man right there mr joe mcneil who stood up he was one of the
50:22 original stone members stone high school
50:25 members so he’s saying mr bryant we got to upgrade our stone
50:28 school and i just want to thank this board
50:31 for taking the time to listen uh because i’ve learned that there
50:36 will be a workshop around capital
50:38 expenditures what can we do to to improve our schools uh schools
50:42 such as university park delora
50:45 those schools need to be upgraded and i’m not familiar with all
50:49 schools across the across the district
50:51 but i’m telling you that man my boss was an original member of
50:56 stone and it’s very sad to walk into
50:59 that school but i’m just so grateful for this team thank you for
51:04 listening and i want to shout out
51:06 mrs su hans and i know she’s going to do it right she’s a
51:11 professional and we trust her ability and
51:14 lastly one of the areas that the community is concerned about is
51:18 our vpk early learning you know i’m going
51:21 to continue to talk about that but we need to have a robust plan
51:25 in place so those students in
51:27 marginalized communities can have a hundred percent
51:31 participation of students that needs to be
51:33 attending vpk that is a root cause it will mitigate a lot of
51:39 spending of trying to recover so vpks we
51:43 definitely need a solid plan and i’m confident we will see that
51:46 thank you thank you diana haynes
51:50 greg ross kelly kirvin good morning i just wanted to start off
51:57 by saying that there is no greater loss
52:00 in life than that of a child you have to love these early
52:03 morning school board meetings what a great way
52:06 to circumvent parental involvement let’s schedule a school board
52:09 meeting at 9 30 in the morning when the
52:12 majority of parents in your system are at work i think that’s
52:16 just brilliant i’d like to go on to speak
52:19 about something called decorum and respectability and decency
52:23 some of these words might be foreign but
52:25 as school board members and alleged pillars of the community i
52:29 have a problem with the words and actions
52:31 of your school board member to the point i believe he should be
52:34 censured in some manner
52:36 i am a female i am a mother i’m a dog i have a daughter and a
52:40 granddaughter and i find it absolutely
52:42 appalling that a school board member would refer to another
52:45 school board member in a demeaning way
52:48 about her comments or comments about her looks but i also find
52:53 it disgusting that she was called
52:56 a whore mr susan no matter what side of politics you are on you
53:01 represent the school board
53:03 the entity that educates our children you publicly owe an
53:07 apology to jennifer jenkins you made these
53:10 comments it’s well known also that a state representative not
53:13 only called her that word but the c-word
53:16 maybe that’s the type of man you emulate maybe that’s the type
53:20 of man you want to be but we’re not going
53:23 to accept it the gentlemanly thing to do the decent and moral
53:27 thing to do is to publicly apologize to
53:30 jennifer jenkins you owe her that you owe the women that work
53:35 for you that apology you owe every mother
53:37 every daughter and every female the apology to jennifer jenkins
53:42 i would also like to clear up something
53:44 i haven’t seen not once but twice mr susan you have been
53:48 referred to in public as the chairperson
53:51 now that may be a fantasy you want to entertain but it’s not
53:55 reality or fact as a matter of fact at the
53:57 year at graduation you were referred to as the chairperson and
54:01 also at a breck meeting
54:02 megan wright as far as i understand you are our chairperson and
54:08 mr susan you should probably
54:10 correct individuals when they say that to you i’d now like to go
54:14 on with what’s been going on in our
54:18 school system that brought me to the first statement you’re
54:21 headed for a disaster the community knows it
54:24 and they’re concerned all over social media they’ve been talking
54:29 about what’s been going on from
54:31 titusville to palm bay in our school system gun threats bomb
54:35 threats sexual assaults vicious fights
54:39 assaults on not only student on student but student on teachers
54:43 and i understand you’re going to install a
54:46 metal detector in one school i can tell you they don’t work and
54:51 i would hope that you would look to other
54:54 solutions preferably dogs that can detect bombs and oh thank you
55:01 that’s left greg ross kelly kirvin paul raub
55:09 monitor disgrace everything good morning school board thank you
55:12 for this opportunity to provide public
55:14 comment um first thing i want to ask the board is if you could
55:18 be proactive in protecting
55:19 haitian students i haven’t seen anything come from the board or
55:22 the district
55:23 based upon the hate i’ve seen in this country against haitian
55:29 students it’s been displayed based on the
55:31 the last couple of news cycles it’d be nice if you could uh
55:33 maybe just speak about protecting both
55:36 their mental and their physical health um next i want to speak
55:40 about the proposed changes to
55:42 policy 0169 public participation specifically the uh part where
55:51 you claim to be defining irrelevant
55:54 comments uh my question to you is i don’t see this in the policy
55:58 who’s going to determine what’s an
56:00 irrelevant comment the board the chair how are you going to do
56:05 it are you going to parse every
56:07 paragraph you’re going to stop the public commenters and say
56:09 that paragraph was irrelevant you’re going
56:11 to parse every sentence that sentence was irrelevant are you
56:13 going to stop them you’ll parse every word
56:16 it’s a silly thing to try to do you can do better
56:23 matt i got a question for you my question for you is why are you
56:27 using bps staff on your campaign webpage
56:30 when we just heard um the great presentation about ecac which i
56:35 think is a great thing i i i i love the
56:38 program i love what the veterans have done uh the name of the
56:42 web developer was familiar to me and i
56:44 couldn’t remember why and then it hit me oh right that person’s
56:47 also doing your campaign work so let’s just
56:50 be specific you’re using somebody who’s working on your campaign
56:53 to also develop a website in conjunction
56:59 with the brevard public schools that you’re using to campaign on
57:02 because that’s what you did you sat
57:04 up here and campaigned from the dais for about 10 minutes
57:07 everybody here heard it
57:12 lastly dr rendell and matt i’m going to give you kind of a
57:15 little hint of what your week to come is going
57:17 to be um i have a question for you why are the students at viera
57:24 middle school getting busing
57:26 when you wouldn’t provide busing to the elementary school
57:30 students at endeavor and saturn elementary
57:35 is it because the kids of viera middle school are upper upper
57:38 middle class is it because the endeavor
57:40 kids are underserved why why the middle school kids don’t
57:45 deserve busing by policy or by statute
57:49 we both know you didn’t follow the statute you didn’t follow the
57:53 policy and we know you’re you denied the
57:56 busing to endeavor and saturn the question i have is why so be
57:59 prepared that’s going to be the discussion
58:01 this week do better thanks kelly kirbin paul raub
58:14 communication and transparency there’s often a short anecdote
58:22 that i share when talking about
58:23 these two things and it’s from bernie brown’s ted talk where she
58:25 describes what happened when people
58:27 are left to come up to their own conclusions based only on their
58:30 own assumptions otherwise known
58:31 as the story we tell ourselves now why would i bring this up we
58:35 are less than two months into the
58:37 new school year and this board and dr rindell has failed at both
58:40 transparency and communication
58:42 i once thought my long-standing opinions on metal detectors were
58:45 unpopular but turns out they’re not
58:47 there is decades worth of data that proved metal detectors on
58:50 school campuses do not improve safety
58:52 nor curb school violence the simple truth is a metal detector
58:56 can’t detect intent and until it can it is
58:58 security theater as a nation we have come to accept measures
59:01 that give the illusion of safety without
59:03 it actually making us safer well i know i can’t fight the
59:06 inevitable and this board is going to cite
59:08 the tsa to which i’ll remind you of the red team experiments i
59:11 will hold you accountable for your
59:12 lack of transparency and communication in this decision-making
59:15 process at the meeting where metal
59:17 detectors were discussed it was understood that bps would be
59:21 testing them at games and special events
59:23 that changed june 25th at a principal’s meeting but the public
59:26 was never told not in an email a social
59:28 media announcement or a follow-up meeting this is problematic
59:31 because many of the questions and
59:32 concerns i have myself and that i’ve seen from the public could
59:35 have and should have been addressed
59:36 already first why is each school receiving three devices
59:39 regardless of school population it makes no
59:42 sense that a school with nearly 2300 students is receiving the
59:45 same equipment as a school with less than a
59:46 thousand students in fact it sets the larger schools up to be
59:49 less equitable and accessible because the
59:52 processing speed of each student isn’t dependent on the school’s
59:55 population therefore students at
59:56 larger schools are more likely to miss more class time than
59:59 their peers at smaller schools students at
1:00:01 larger population schools are more likely to experience more
1:00:03 stress and therefore receive more discipline
1:00:05 actions second why aren’t dedicated security personnel being
1:00:09 hired to monitor these devices throughout the day
1:00:11 at what point does this board and superintendent recognize that
1:00:14 the backs of our teachers are
1:00:16 breaking with the additional non-teaching responsibilities saddled
1:00:19 to them teachers just want to teach
1:00:20 third what is the district’s plan for handing elevated rates of
1:00:23 tardies and absences that are attributed
1:00:25 to these devices despite your mission accomplished banner about
1:00:28 solving the bustling issue you haven’t
1:00:31 students continue to show up late every single day and many of
1:00:33 the routes that run late do so habitually
1:00:36 if you cannot get students to school on time how do you expect
1:00:38 to get students to the door on time
1:00:40 fourth in the event of a mass casualty event how do you plan to
1:00:43 keep students safe while they’re waiting to get inside
1:00:45 our policy for fire alarms was changed to keep students teachers
1:00:48 and staff from becoming sitting ducks and
1:00:50 now you’re making them sitting ducks
1:00:52 fifth are you working with local municipalities to address the
1:00:55 changes in traffic patterns
1:00:56 are you aware that car loops and butt loops loops are being
1:00:59 changed and adjusted for these devices
1:01:01 and what that will look like for traffic and arrival times
1:01:03 instead of being dropped at the curb
1:01:05 i now have to drop my daughter in the middle of a parking lot
1:01:07 and have her cross in front of buses to get to school
1:01:10 that actually the safest option when you make decisions that
1:01:13 fundamentally change the entire
1:01:15 structure of our schools it is your responsibility to
1:01:17 communicate with transparency and that didn’t
1:01:20 happen again and since my daughter’s school is the first guinea
1:01:23 pig thank you i’ll continue to hold you
1:01:25 so last time i was here uh i babbled for a while about the last
1:01:44 couple years of you know devolution of the
1:01:47 book policy and committee and so forth in the county and uh as
1:01:51 ferris bueller said life moves pretty fast
1:01:55 um the committee’s on hold again um because uh the i guess the
1:02:01 couple members who sort of somewhat
1:02:04 repeatedly you know we were supposed to have a meeting last week
1:02:06 but they belatedly said they
1:02:08 weren’t going to show up we wouldn’t have had a quorum we didn’t
1:02:10 meet that’s happened before
1:02:11 now they finally quit but with uh with one meeting to go uh on
1:02:15 our schedule uh the committee’s been
1:02:17 suspended because they’ve actually removed them you know
1:02:20 historically this will take some number of
1:02:22 months to find replacements uh if we’re following the past
1:02:26 trends don’t know why that is especially
1:02:28 mr trent has kind of a revolving door seat seems like you should
1:02:31 have a list ready
1:02:31 but uh i don’t imagine anybody’s going to hustle up on this
1:02:35 since the guiding principles of all these
1:02:38 changes seem to have been do nothing to make removal more
1:02:41 difficult and do nothing that might speed up
1:02:44 review there’s been promises to well we’re looking at adding
1:02:46 more committees no never happened uh you
1:02:50 could have supported you know narrower less legally dangerous
1:02:53 guidance about hey really stick to the
1:02:55 statutes maybe we can um not toss quite as many books on the
1:03:00 shelves maybe uh maybe we’d still have books
1:03:04 that are on the shelves even though they’re read you know back
1:03:07 to front um you could have done something
1:03:12 to limit challenges by non-parents or people who you know don’t
1:03:15 even live in this district now the state
1:03:18 has now implemented a rule to kind of limit that and i see the
1:03:20 new policy changes you’re going to follow
1:03:22 that you know because you’re bound to um but whereas you were
1:03:26 happy to lead the state on things like hey
1:03:29 there’s been a challenge let’s just go remove the book forever
1:03:31 um i notice we’re not happy to lead on
1:03:33 anything that might make the situation better um
1:03:41 it would be nice if you know the four books that are still
1:03:49 waiting on the you know the four books that
1:03:51 were currently scheduled to be challenged maybe some of them
1:03:53 could be back on the shelves two of them
1:03:55 could have been back on the shelves at today’s meeting if you
1:03:57 know if the committee had met if
1:03:59 we’d voted if we’d voted to keep and if you’d actually respected
1:04:03 our decision this time um but
1:04:06 that’s not going to happen and you know for people who don’t
1:04:08 know once those books have been formally
1:04:10 challenged by somebody dropping in from anywhere in the universe
1:04:14 they are off the shelves of all
1:04:16 the schools in the district indefinitely until such time as they
1:04:19 pass the insurmountable hurdles of
1:04:21 of getting reviewed getting approved and then the board agreeing
1:04:24 that yes this book is not actually
1:04:27 going to jump off the shelves and harm anyone it’s embarrassing
1:04:30 it’s just embarrassing and exhausting
1:04:33 do better
1:04:43 all right uh we are now at the consent agenda dr randall thank
1:04:48 you madam chair there are 22 agenda
1:04:51 items under this category thank you dr randall does any board
1:04:55 member wish to pull any items
1:04:56 hearing none i’m going to pull f31
1:05:04 for discussion um all right i’ll entertain a motion move to
1:05:08 approve all right any discussion
1:05:11 miss jenkins hi miss campbell hi miss wright hi mr trent hi mr
1:05:17 susan all right i’m going to go back to
1:05:20 f31 and so i’m just going to um i want to have a discussion
1:05:23 about this because it’s been several years
1:05:24 now that we see this it’s a 400 page report that gets uh
1:05:27 published annually and it really goes through
1:05:29 every one of our schools i want to see every motion in a second
1:05:32 sorry sorry yep do i have a motion
1:05:34 sorry all right discussion back into my discussion um you know
1:05:39 if you took the time to go through the
1:05:41 the 400 page report and look at what is on there and the citations
1:05:45 i would love our district to have
1:05:47 the goal of clearing every single citation off of this list um i
1:05:51 don’t like to see the ones that have
1:05:53 been found there for multiple years and so i’m just saying that
1:05:56 publicly i would like the fire
1:05:58 inspection report to come back clear no no citations or citations
1:06:01 have been corrected and that is
1:06:03 where i’m leaving that one all right any other discussion on it
1:06:06 no paul roll call please miss jenkins
1:06:09 miss campbell miss wright hi mr trent all right mr susan all
1:06:13 right all right dr rindell will you please
1:06:15 let us know about the items under the action portion of today’s
1:06:19 oh sam was coming up here no okay did you
1:06:23 sorry i didn’t even see her move across the room all right um
1:06:27 would you let us know about the items
1:06:29 today under the action portion of the agenda thank you madam
1:06:31 chair the first action item is h33
1:06:34 department and school initiated agreements do i hear a motion we’ll
1:06:37 do approve any discussion no paul roll call
1:06:40 miss jenkins hi miss campbell hi that’s right hi mr trent hi mr
1:06:46 season all right all right
1:06:48 and dr rendell will you please let us know about the items no
1:06:52 why is this on here twice sorry i’m going
1:06:54 through four five there’s one more action item the last action
1:06:58 item is h34 procurement solicitations
1:07:02 thank you do i hear a motion move to approve second any
1:07:05 discussion no all roll call miss jenkins
1:07:09 aye miss campbell that’s right aye mr trent aye mr susan all
1:07:13 right all right we’re going to move on
1:07:14 to the information agenda which includes one item for the board
1:07:17 to review and it may be brought back
1:07:18 for subsequent at a subsequent meeting no action is being taken
1:07:21 on this item today does any board
1:07:23 member wish to discuss the item no all right we are now at board
1:07:27 member reports does any board member
1:07:29 have any further things to report or discuss i have some you
1:07:33 have some i do okay mr susan all right so
1:07:37 i was talking to dr rendell and i i would like to try to make
1:07:42 you know i can he already said that it
1:07:44 would be okay but i wanted to kind of let you guys know every
1:07:47 time we ever talk about moving to five of
1:07:49 seven and giving an extra planning to our secondary schools
1:07:52 there’s always a conversation about it but
1:07:54 there’s never like a formal review there’s never a here’s what
1:07:58 it would take for us to do it they
1:08:00 come back and they say well it’ll cost us around this many
1:08:02 millions of dollars it’ll cost us around this
1:08:05 many people but there’s never been a formal like this is what it
1:08:07 would look like to make sure that
1:08:09 we move to it part of what we had said when dr rendell came on
1:08:11 that this is one of the things that
1:08:13 we would like to try to see if we can do now we all know that
1:08:16 this is a very big price tag along with a
1:08:19 workforce issue but i did ask dr indell if we could formally put
1:08:22 that together just for an idea
1:08:24 as we start moving to possibly trying to give our staff members
1:08:28 and our teachers some more planning
1:08:30 so i just wanted to let you guys know about that that he said it
1:08:33 was okay to do and they’re going to
1:08:35 take a look at it but i didn’t want you guys to hear about it
1:08:37 and not understand where it came from
1:08:38 um anybody are we good no i’m good this is a conversation that
1:08:42 we’ve had before in the past
1:08:44 i think i’m sure could i just ask for some clarification this is
1:08:47 something that’s going to require some
1:08:49 staff time and investment so i’m looking for consensus from the
1:08:54 board okay to move forward with a formal
1:08:56 evaluation all right uh it’s i mean it was under my unders it
1:09:01 was my understanding that we had this
1:09:03 conversation previously and we had a consensus of the board to
1:09:06 move forward with just an idea of how
1:09:07 much this would cost yeah i i feel like we already gave that
1:09:10 permission okay yeah i i’m in favor of
1:09:13 knowing how much it’s going to cost the district it’s very
1:09:15 appealing to a lot of our staff so i would
1:09:16 love to know what does that look like and is it even something
1:09:19 that’s able to be done and if i could add to
1:09:21 the request because um i think it would be fair to our
1:09:24 elementary school teachers who not who don’t
1:09:27 benefit from any of this conversation for us as part of the
1:09:31 report to just delineate the amount of
1:09:34 planning time secondary versus elementary in a typical week i
1:09:38 know they have shorter student days so they
1:09:40 get a little extra but they also generally have more duty time
1:09:43 so if we can just kind of compare it side
1:09:45 by side when we have that conversation i think that would be
1:09:47 helpful it’s funny you brought that up because
1:09:49 that’s the second point of discussion that i have i just wanted
1:09:51 to get the first one out so thank you
1:09:53 miss campbell um in my visits to the schools i noticed both with
1:09:56 the esc department and some of
1:09:58 the other areas that our ias are starting to that we could use
1:10:02 some help filling some of those positions
1:10:04 and possibly look at using some of the other positions that we
1:10:07 have so i spoke to miss pam dampierre
1:10:09 and i said hey i said talk to me about something that i i came
1:10:12 up with so let me explain how this works i was at
1:10:15 o’galley high school and i was sitting in an esc group room and
1:10:18 all of a sudden the best buddy
1:10:20 students came in and one of them sat down and the light that
1:10:23 came off of that student was incredible
1:10:26 because of the connection that that student had to him and i
1:10:30 said um i asked mr bill gatz my friend
1:10:32 that i’ve been with for a long time and he said matt these
1:10:35 children work very well with our students
1:10:38 and it would really help if we could utilize them and actually
1:10:41 give them jobs working with them
1:10:43 on the job training and stuff like that so i talked to dr rendell
1:10:46 about it in our one-on-one and i had
1:10:48 asked him if we could formally look at possibly looking at
1:10:51 allowing 18 year olds that are inside of our
1:10:54 schools to start doing on-the-job training and filling some of
1:10:57 those ia positions for two reasons one we
1:10:59 need to fill the ia positions but in some cases the students are
1:11:04 more inept to work with a student
1:11:06 than they are with teachers and ias currently now what that does
1:11:10 is is it also in the high school area
1:11:12 helps us with our esc and some of our other areas but in the
1:11:15 elementary school what it does
1:11:17 and this is part of what i asked dr rendell to take a look at is
1:11:21 if we can have those individuals
1:11:22 some ias that could fill some of those positions go out and
1:11:26 watch some of the students during planning
1:11:28 during their recess now all of a sudden instead of a teacher an
1:11:31 elementary school teacher having to
1:11:34 walk the students out to recess sit there out in recess and then
1:11:36 come back then that time can be
1:11:39 spent for planning which is a double end on top of their normal
1:11:42 planning that they would get now we
1:11:43 know that our elementary school teachers get about 30 minutes of
1:11:46 planning the problem is is that by the
1:11:48 time they walk the kids down by the time they use the restroom
1:11:50 and then they come back and then by the
1:11:52 time they go back down there it’s basically like 10 15 minutes
1:11:55 and we know that that’s not good but we know
1:11:57 that there’s also some opportunities i’ve always wrestled with
1:12:00 how to fit some more time for our
1:12:01 elementary school teachers inside of that workspace so what i
1:12:04 did was i part of the issue that i would
1:12:06 like to look at is seeing if we can utilize our 18 year olds
1:12:09 that would be able to fill those job
1:12:11 positions both in the high school coming down to elementary and
1:12:14 middle school and then also we did it
1:12:16 when we talked about the ias we in we increased our bus driver
1:12:20 pay by five dollars if we’re having trouble
1:12:22 filling those ia positions and they’re so critical to where our
1:12:25 teachers can utilize those as plannings
1:12:27 i’d like to look at possibly looking at raises for our ias so i
1:12:30 made those requests to dr rindell
1:12:32 i don’t know if that requires a lot of staff work to check the ojt
1:12:35 i think that’s something that
1:12:37 paul could take a look at and then the ia race would just be me
1:12:42 working with
1:12:43 hr to try to figure out what the cost is and bring it back that’s
1:12:46 all okay dr rindell are you looking
1:12:49 for direction again from the board on this one yes okay all
1:12:52 right board would you like to weigh in
1:12:53 on the conversation yeah um i i like the the thought of it um i
1:12:58 don’t support it uh i don’t know how many
1:13:02 18 year old students we have that are in their senior year the
1:13:05 whole time being 18 years old and if they
1:13:08 are uh traditionally they’re there for a reason um also just
1:13:14 having an esc background uh having a
1:13:17 master’s degree in exceptional student education i just believe
1:13:22 if we feel like there’s a deficit
1:13:24 there which i’ve been talking about for the past four years then
1:13:27 we should pay them better offer them
1:13:29 better wages better working conditions in order to ensure that
1:13:32 we have exceptionally trained people
1:13:35 working with our neediest students that is the most important
1:13:38 thing not to discourage our students
1:13:40 for participating and volunteering and being a part of that
1:13:43 absolutely not but these are our neediest
1:13:45 students and quite frankly we need people who are experts in
1:13:49 that area who are passionate about that
1:13:51 area and who have been trained um and i don’t even know the legality
1:13:56 of even pulling that off
1:13:59 the program that comes to mind is our um and i’m not going to
1:14:05 use the right term probably oops
1:14:07 i may not use the right term but we have a
1:14:12 it’s not work release that’s prison um there’s a program where
1:14:17 our students go
1:14:18 on the job yeah thank you where they have a job out in the and
1:14:21 they can be at a bowling alley or at a
1:14:23 restaurant or a manufacturing company or whatever and um some of
1:14:28 them you know depends the age range
1:14:30 depends on the workplace requirement right um i think that that
1:14:36 would be something um if it’s especially
1:14:39 if it’s by a semester because we do have a lot of 18 year olds
1:14:41 when we get to the spring i don’t think
1:14:43 that’s our long-term solution but i certainly wouldn’t um you
1:14:47 know if it’s if it’s legal and possible
1:14:50 and we can be one of the employers um we are doing that we we
1:14:53 hire students in the summer
1:14:55 for internships that we pay them for from different departments
1:15:00 and we have we are paying students for
1:15:02 tutoring through the raise program um i you know certainly
1:15:06 willing to have uh paul and staff take a look
1:15:11 um you know the other conversations are bargaining conversations
1:15:13 which we’re not going to have out
1:15:15 in the public you know there’s there’s always um you know just
1:15:20 lots of uh things that go into
1:15:23 those conversations but i think it would be worth as far as um
1:15:26 seeing if we have the right students
1:15:28 if it’s just a handful if it’s a half a dozen who are a perfect
1:15:31 fit um let’s give them the opportunity
1:15:34 so um if it’s legal and impossible feasible um i think that’s
1:15:39 that’s probably just as good of an
1:15:41 opportunity honestly i’d probably rather have them have those
1:15:44 opportunities in a school somewhere than
1:15:45 you know going to work at a fast food place because you know i
1:15:49 know i have a friend whose daughter was
1:15:50 in that program and she was all stressed because she had lost
1:15:53 her job earlier in the year and like
1:15:54 they had the deadline they had to get the job by the beginning
1:15:57 of the school year and so um if we have
1:15:59 those opportunities that we can we can offer um i’m good with
1:16:03 that if i may in no way did i say that
1:16:06 we want to fill every ia with the 18 year olds it was just an
1:16:09 idea to help fill it i did want to say
1:16:11 that the individual that was one of i i met with the ias that
1:16:14 were currently in that room and asked them
1:16:16 what they thought about it and they said that they would be a
1:16:19 spectacular idea to allow the students to
1:16:22 be there so i did i just wanted to let you know here’s my here’s
1:16:26 my pushback is you know one there’s
1:16:28 minimum requirements to become an ia you have to have your aa
1:16:31 and which very few of our 18 year olds
1:16:34 would have at the time you either have to have an aa or you have
1:16:37 to go through the para pro program
1:16:39 and so i don’t think i i i think probably where we might come
1:16:44 down on something like this is not
1:16:46 necessarily an ia because we have a job description description
1:16:49 and that you either have to go through the
1:16:51 parapro program pass the test or you have to have your aa and
1:16:54 and your certification that way ias
1:16:56 cannot walk in off the street and and get a job as an ia they
1:16:58 have to have they have those minimum
1:17:00 requirements we might have something that’s not an ia but a
1:17:03 special position like we would say an ia
1:17:06 intern or something like that the other thing that comes to mind
1:17:10 is
1:17:10 that the ias are sometimes used to fill minutes for certain you
1:17:18 know with ieps i mean so and i don’t know
1:17:20 that an 18 year old is going to be able to do that certainly the
1:17:22 extra hands-on and it seems like
1:17:24 it’s a really good match for our teaching academies as well even
1:17:26 though i don’t think it would necessarily
1:17:27 have to come from just those two schools to have the teaching
1:17:30 academies um but just some cautions and
1:17:33 i i add those in there and i know you know they’re they’re in
1:17:36 there but add this in there because i don’t
1:17:37 want anybody to watch this meeting or walk away from this
1:17:40 meeting going oh my gosh the school board
1:17:42 they’re just going to throw 18 year olds in the schools and they
1:17:44 think they’re going to take care of and some
1:17:46 parent goes not my kid you’re not having any we’re we’re not
1:17:50 moving that fast we’re not moving that
1:17:52 fast we realize there are hurdles here are some of them that
1:17:55 staff’s going to have to figure out but
1:17:56 if we can find a way to get our students meaningful work that
1:18:00 also meets a need i i’m for it all right
1:18:04 thank you mr trent yeah i i believe our our staff when you get
1:18:07 the thumbs up they’re they’re going to
1:18:09 look at everything and you know as far as those 18 year olds i
1:18:13 think they know when they’re going to
1:18:14 turn 18 so maybe the summer before when they’re 17 if there’s
1:18:17 any somewhat training they they’re good
1:18:20 to go when they are 18 we’ll find a spot for them we may have to
1:18:24 change a job description and put them
1:18:26 into something else but you know why turn away somebody that’s
1:18:29 uh you know can can be in the workforce
1:18:31 when we don’t have to so um again i have complete confidence in
1:18:35 our staff they’re going to look
1:18:37 through every possible avenue to to make this a reality they’re
1:18:40 just going to bring it back to us
1:18:42 and then we’ll have these same discussions so i look forward to
1:18:45 what they have to say yeah good idea
1:18:48 mr susan i i’m going to land too i am i’m in favor of this the
1:18:51 north end does something similar where we
1:18:54 have students that are going into classrooms and helping and um
1:18:57 not necessarily in the role of an ia
1:18:59 but sort of doing a lot of the same you know it’s it crosses
1:19:03 over in some some arenas um i think
1:19:05 it’s worth looking into i think we you know at graduation every
1:19:08 year we hear how many kids
1:19:10 graduate with their associate’s degree if there is a way to to
1:19:13 have them secure employment already
1:19:15 within our district here and they’ve already identified that
1:19:17 they love working with children then
1:19:19 by all means let’s find a path and a way to get them there that
1:19:22 way they can stay local stay here
1:19:24 and continue to invest in the community that they’re part of i
1:19:26 think it’s worth looking at but
1:19:27 the ia so you’re asking for a couple things here so you want to
1:19:31 look at an ia race correct like what
1:19:32 that looks like and how that’s going what that’s going to cost
1:19:35 the district um and then you’re also
1:19:38 looking at ias realities of having an 18 year old fill a
1:19:41 position okay all right so that’s why i’m like
1:19:42 there’s a couple different aspects i just want to make sure i
1:19:44 didn’t get a chance to kind of yeah
1:19:46 all right i’m in favor of getting the information and finding
1:19:48 out what does this look like and how much
1:19:50 does this cost is something feasible and will this benefit our
1:19:52 district i think it’s worth knowing that
1:19:53 yeah okay absolutely and then um i did want to tell you if i may
1:19:57 to close it out um lockheed martin
1:20:00 went two years to try to hire one of our 18 year olds like lockheed
1:20:05 martin was going to their
1:20:07 higher ups and saying guys we feel that some of the graduates
1:20:10 that are coming out of ogalley
1:20:12 can do the work of some of our 20 30 year old student employees
1:20:16 and then finally last year the first one
1:20:18 was hired and she knocked it out of the park and now they’re
1:20:22 hiring a lot of our students
1:20:23 at 18 years old when i was a teacher at i’ll get at space coast
1:20:28 uh high school i was part of the
1:20:30 founding team that started ateps the teaching academy and it was
1:20:33 my students that would go across
1:20:35 to enterprise elementary school and then teach with them and
1:20:38 stuff like that i see this as not only
1:20:40 being an opportunity for our students to fill a position and
1:20:43 connect with our kids but also the
1:20:44 pathway to become teachers so thank you so much for your support
1:20:47 i truly appreciate it thank you all right
1:20:49 um miss jenkins you said you had a couple things you need to
1:20:51 discuss yeah okay go ahead yeah um and i
1:20:56 know you’re all aware of it um but i think it’s my job and my
1:20:59 responsibility to to talk about it publicly
1:21:01 because my questions haven’t been addressed thus far um so
1:21:06 before i begin um i’m going to i don’t have any
1:21:13 interest of uh making a comment after this regardless of what’s
1:21:16 said after i speak um but i’m going to
1:21:19 refute the claims that are going to be made so um no i i don’t
1:21:23 have one-on-one meetings with dr rindell i’ve
1:21:26 been very honest about that and closed doors um and if you’d
1:21:29 like me to be publicly i have no
1:21:31 problem doing so but i don’t think he would appreciate that uh
1:21:34 but i do have a district paid
1:21:37 cell phone we all do uh that you know rings when you call it and
1:21:43 so i have a serious problem with
1:21:46 what went down recently and the problem i have isn’t what went
1:21:50 down it’s how it was dealt with how
1:21:53 it was communicated and how it was handled because the reality
1:21:56 is is if we discovered a problem
1:21:58 and we just notified the board about it and we moved on and we
1:22:01 learned from this
1:22:02 i wouldn’t have even blinked an eye at it but that’s not what
1:22:06 happened so
1:22:07 recently it was brought to my attention that we had
1:22:12 accidentally spent either a quarter million or half a million i
1:22:18 don’t i haven’t gotten confirmation of
1:22:20 which one it is um on extra administrative pay in a supplement
1:22:25 form and i completely understand
1:22:29 how this may have happened in terms of how we changed the way
1:22:34 title one schools are identified
1:22:36 because fun fact um i learned about that as soon as i got on
1:22:39 this board um and it’s not complicated
1:22:43 but it is very different than the way that it was done when
1:22:45 parents would fill out free and reduce lunch
1:22:47 forms what i’m not okay with is the only reason i was made aware
1:22:51 of it was because i heard rumors about it
1:22:55 i had administrators speak to me about it and then i questioned
1:23:00 it and the only reason any of you were
1:23:03 made aware of it was because i questioned it and when i was made
1:23:07 aware of it it apparently happened a week
1:23:09 or two prior and i’m not okay with that because the reality is
1:23:13 if it’s a quarter million dollar mistake
1:23:15 or half a million dollar mistake the board should have been made
1:23:19 aware of it within 48 hours we all
1:23:21 have cell phones and as far as i’m concerned it’s over the
1:23:25 threshold of solutions for the approval of
1:23:29 the superintendent by himself and how it was handled after that
1:23:32 was a disaster as well it is my understanding
1:23:36 that dr rendell gave the instructions that these administrators
1:23:40 can just keep the pay but then we
1:23:42 had hr calling administrators telling them they had to give the
1:23:44 money back and now we have rumor mills
1:23:47 in between administrators talking about who’s getting to do what
1:23:50 which is a disaster um i do not appreciate
1:23:54 the miscommunication and my quite frankly i’m going to call it
1:23:58 what it is the lying to individual board
1:24:00 members about what took place some board members were told that
1:24:03 the reason that they got to keep
1:24:05 the money was because basso was really upset well basso didn’t
1:24:08 even know about it so that’s interesting
1:24:09 um it’s it’s frustrating to me because when we talk about money
1:24:16 and spending mr susan do you have a
1:24:18 question i’m speaking to our general counsel would you like me
1:24:20 to wait so you can hear what i’m saying
1:24:22 yes i’m speaking that’s right mr gibbs i’m speaking god i’ll
1:24:29 wait i just want to make sure you hear
1:24:31 everything i think i’m hearing you and i know where you’re going
1:24:34 mr susan you are the one who got up
1:24:36 so i will wait till you sit down
1:24:45 okay so i have a problem uh with the lack of communication i
1:24:54 have a problem with the way it
1:24:55 was handled i have a problem with different board members being
1:24:58 told different things um dramatically
1:25:00 different things i have a problem with our administrators being
1:25:03 told different things
1:25:05 and i also have a problem with where the blame is trying to be
1:25:08 placed because quite frankly i don’t
1:25:10 really care where the where the blame lies i have a problem with
1:25:13 the lack of communication and
1:25:16 the lack of regard for the fact that it was either a quarter
1:25:18 million or half a million and we don’t
1:25:19 know what pot it came out of that is a lot of money for us to
1:25:23 accidentally give to administrators so
1:25:25 here’s the other thing i’m gonna refute before everyone starts
1:25:31 talking it was said miss jenkins is
1:25:34 bringing this up because it’s political i don’t know how it’s
1:25:36 political did we only pay republicans
1:25:38 did we only pay democrats did we only pay independents i don’t
1:25:41 really understand that
1:25:42 comment the only thing political about it is the fact that this
1:25:45 board chooses to ignore it because
1:25:47 i’m the one who brought it up much much like the fact that i
1:25:49 brought up firing our interim superintendent
1:25:51 a week after we hired him and you guys waited months to do it i
1:25:54 can’t even rationalize why none of
1:25:58 you have a problem with this why we pull items off the agenda
1:26:02 saying 50 000 is a lot of money and we
1:26:05 don’t have a problem with this someone should be held
1:26:08 accountable for the lack of communication
1:26:10 and for quite frankly the miscommunication it’s inappropriate
1:26:16 and so my ask at the end of this too
1:26:18 is because a lot of things had come to light i believe we need
1:26:20 to audit our supplements that we’re
1:26:22 giving out because apparently they’re not all accurate some
1:26:27 people are getting things they
1:26:29 shouldn’t get or we’re getting them for too long or at rates
1:26:32 that that they shouldn’t be getting them
1:26:34 at it is our job as school board members to create policy to
1:26:38 implement it to regulate and adjust the
1:26:40 budget and to approve the budget i don’t know how much more
1:26:44 clear that this exact problem is our job how
1:26:46 much more clear that can be so as you make excuses for it i’m
1:26:51 going to remind the public no one on this
1:26:54 dais knew about it until i inquired about it regardless of you
1:26:58 saying i don’t have one-on-ones
1:27:00 you all had them none of you knew about it until i inquired
1:27:05 about it and that is a fact
1:27:08 a provable fact it’s not true it it is true it’s not mr collucci
1:27:13 let’s have a conversation afterwards
1:27:16 because you all admitted it to him i don’t lie you can not like
1:27:19 what i say what i do what i believe
1:27:21 but you will never catch me in a lie it is a provable fact none
1:27:25 of you knew about it until i brought it
1:27:27 up and you’re covering it up because you want to cover up the
1:27:30 person who made the mistake and the fact
1:27:32 that i was told that this is because payroll looked to a column
1:27:35 all the way to the right is the most
1:27:37 ridiculous excuse i have ever heard in my life if we hand
1:27:40 payroll if our procedure is to hand payroll
1:27:43 a complicated title one form and expect them to only look to the
1:27:48 column to the right well man we
1:27:50 better come up with some better payroll procedures that is the
1:27:52 most ridiculous thing i’ve ever heard
1:27:54 in my life and quite frankly it is unfair to the person in
1:27:57 payroll because we all know it’s not their
1:27:59 fault we all know that and i asked these questions i put these
1:28:03 questions in writing i asked them
1:28:06 i even asked for the records because i wasn’t getting any
1:28:10 answers it’s crazy it’s crazy that
1:28:12 we don’t know where this money comes from and it’s crazy we don’t
1:28:15 know how long this mistake went on
1:28:16 for and it’s also crazy and unrealistic to say that we were
1:28:19 going to pull this money out of millage to
1:28:21 make up for the problem not okay and i think that the public
1:28:23 needs to know about it i’ve got two more
1:28:25 board meetings after this i’m not going to be quiet about this
1:28:28 stuff it’s inappropriate do your jobs
1:28:30 all right um moving on do you i mean we can either go back and
1:28:37 forth here about this i don’t i don’t feel
1:28:38 as though i need to explain my position on this because i don’t
1:28:41 um miss campbell you had a couple
1:28:43 things that you wanted to discuss yeah i’ll just very quickly i’m
1:28:46 not going to address all of that
1:28:48 because i have the date on one issue is brought to me and i can’t
1:28:51 tell you whether what you said was
1:28:52 true or not because i don’t know when you found out but i know
1:28:54 when i found out um let’s compare notes
1:28:57 and but i will say this i think we’ve had conversations about
1:29:01 supplements before i think
1:29:03 bfts have conversations about supplements i think we’ve talked
1:29:06 about it it probably would be a good
1:29:07 idea it if we don’t already have it in practice so let’s just go
1:29:10 through and i think that was
1:29:11 something we’ve had conversations about if not in the last year
1:29:14 if in the last two years so that’s
1:29:16 probably a good idea for staff to let’s just clean up some roles
1:29:20 so that i can absolutely support i just
1:29:23 wanted to share with you um since we uh haven’t uh had a meeting
1:29:28 in a few weeks um two things one
1:29:31 thank you all for allowing me to go to washington dc for the cospa
1:29:34 event a few weeks ago it was very
1:29:36 fruitful uh we actually the florida team actually met with every
1:29:40 single either the representative or their
1:29:43 staffer of the all the florida delegation including the senator’s
1:29:48 offices except for one
1:29:50 um and so i think that’s a pretty good a pretty good visit by
1:29:53 the florida team because we have a
1:29:55 large delegation that florida does it actually took us a couple
1:29:58 of days to get all those meetings set
1:30:00 up but and we had three teams going running all over the capital
1:30:03 back and forth from building to
1:30:04 building to make sure we got into but we had really great
1:30:06 conversations with them especially around
1:30:10 cyber security and the fcc is doing some new things to really
1:30:14 try to support there was a specific bill
1:30:16 we got to ask them to support that was um trying to expand uh
1:30:21 cyber security offerings for a specific
1:30:24 specifically for the k-12 space and we really just made them
1:30:27 aware a lot of our congressmen and senators
1:30:30 weren’t aware of the huge threats that we receive that brevard
1:30:34 specifically has received in the past
1:30:36 and the idea of you know just the amount of sensitive
1:30:39 information that we need and so it really needs to
1:30:41 be protected and so those were good conversations we also had
1:30:44 good conversations about the national
1:30:46 school lunch program and um you guys may be may or may not be
1:30:50 aware that um idea has not been fully
1:30:54 funded and full fully funded it’s not 100 fully funded from the
1:30:57 federal government is 40 percent it hasn’t been 40
1:31:00 80 percent ever um so we you know always ask hey can we can we
1:31:03 get a little more with our ida funding
1:31:05 because it’s up to the state and the district to um to fill in
1:31:09 those gaps and then we had a because
1:31:12 the house budget proposal had just come out and we were we’ve
1:31:14 been told this is not the way it’s going
1:31:16 to end up it’s just what because it’s passed across the table
1:31:18 first um the house proposal in particular had
1:31:21 cut all title ii funding all of it and so i again we were reassured
1:31:26 by people this is not where we’re
1:31:28 going to end up but one of the thing conversations that we had
1:31:31 again and again again with our congressmen
1:31:34 with their staffers with um our senator staff is that title ii
1:31:39 funding is especially important today
1:31:43 because of our efforts around the science of reading because the
1:31:47 science of reading is such a um i won’t
1:31:50 say it’s new because some of it is part of the pendulum swing
1:31:53 that happens in education but most of our
1:31:55 teachers were not trained in those methods and so we’re doing
1:31:59 such um good important work uh retraining
1:32:02 teachers in this and these according to this body of research
1:32:06 title 2 funding is more important than ever
1:32:08 before on top of the fact that we have so many teachers coming
1:32:12 from outside of education
1:32:13 education didn’t you know didn’t study education in college and
1:32:16 so we’re kind of doing on the job
1:32:18 training um and so we use a lot of those title two dollars to to
1:32:22 support our teachers who have come
1:32:24 from other fields including cte and so we those are really good
1:32:28 conversations it was very much received
1:32:30 well and so i appreciate you guys giving me the chance to go up
1:32:33 there it was super fun i promise we
1:32:34 didn’t just do a bunch of sight reading even though i did get to
1:32:37 go on the very last day the last hour to
1:32:39 the library of congress it was amazing um uh the other thing i
1:32:44 wanted to share with you is that um for
1:32:46 all of our district employees and board i’m going to challenge
1:32:49 you as well even though i’m not sure
1:32:50 if you’re ready to have a team again um but the walktober
1:32:53 challenge thank you you got an email
1:32:56 about it go online and sauna sign up for walktober there’s an
1:33:01 app and if you get your i think it’s like
1:33:04 six thousand steps a day you get a leaf on your tree and there
1:33:07 are there is a team page i won’t create
1:33:09 a team unless i’ve got a you know at least a good handful of buy-in
1:33:12 from us and maybe we can join with
1:33:14 gcr or something um but um or another small team yeah as long as
1:33:18 we have paul we’re we’re we’re
1:33:20 so many abduct paul uh but you guys go on the sign up is going
1:33:24 on from now through october 11th the
1:33:27 actual walking time starts october 1st and goes through november
1:33:31 the 11th so we um should all be
1:33:33 able to participate in that and it does have a way where to
1:33:36 track automatically with your device if you
1:33:39 have a device that’s keeping up with your steps you can sync it
1:33:41 and that way you don’t have to remember
1:33:44 to go online and put in your information so but i encourage
1:33:47 everybody to go to that and also all of
1:33:50 our employees i pre very much appreciate the benefits department
1:33:53 and our partners over there
1:33:54 who encourage us to get healthy stay healthy um because a
1:33:57 healthy workforce is a more effective
1:33:59 workforce so board let’s lead by example get your shoes on and
1:34:03 sign up for october i i would like to
1:34:06 know paul how do you do yours like because we decided last year
1:34:10 he puts it on the dog i know he
1:34:12 does i know he does that’s why i’m trying to catch him so i can
1:34:14 film this whole thing now this is a
1:34:15 whole deal i gotta watch do you have it attached to your watch
1:34:19 is that what it is yeah and then you
1:34:21 attach it to your animals is what it is or your kids they run
1:34:24 around i get it all right i got five
1:34:26 kids my kids would not get me any steps i promise all right um
1:34:31 mr trent did you have anything to
1:34:33 report no all right dr wendell do you have anything further to
1:34:36 report i do not all right being that
1:34:37 there’s no further business this meeting is adjourned
1:34:56 you